WORLD WORLDWIDE FRANCE News Journal Update - (en) France, monde-libertaire: IDEAS AND STRUGGLES: STATE LIES, ANOTHER HISTORY OF THE VE REPUBLIC (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Don't get used to the poison of lies! ---- It is long, the list of heads

of state, government, ministers not to mention the aficionados in the
service of the State practicing lies. The book Lies of State, another
history of the Fifth Republic published by Éditions du Nouveau Monde
under the direction of Yvonnick Denoël and Renaud Meltz, draws up a
copious inventory of the lies of the Republic. Everyone has in mind the
words of Sibeth Ndiaye, government spokesperson: "I assume perfectly to
lie to protect my president". Each word would have to be analyzed but
the essential lies in the recognized lie and the disguised truth, hidden
from the inhabitants of this country.

The confession! It is an attack on respect for relationships between
individuals in a society. Certainly, we are not in the habit of having
any illusions about public affairs. The doctored files, the forged
documents, the attacks instigated by the police then attributed to
anarchists. The 19th century is punctuated by these behaviors. Let us
remember in particular the attack on Haymarket Square, which occurred in
Chicago on May 4, 1886, and the Dreyfus Affair in France. One might
think that the institutions have calmed down... Not at all and the worst
as the authors point out: "For lack of thinking the truth in political
matters, we have become accustomed to poison". Government statements at
the time of Covid were caricatures and residents were not fooled.

The lie is multifaceted. It ranges from ambiguity (General De Gaulle's
famous "I understood you"), to the unspoken in terms of public health,
to concealment (statistics are not communicated), even to the rewriting
of the History, of the national novel (Paris liberated by its people or
all of France was resistant). The government does not provide
information, it manufactures ignorance, the effects become worse than
the causes. "Political lies unravel the social contract and prevent
civil peace.»

A President at the heart of the system

In the Fifth Republic, the President is at the heart of the system. He
can't kick in and make people believe he didn't know. The authors
provide examples in a number of factsheets, all political sensibilities
combined. This is the case with diplomatic lies and nuclear tests in the
Pacific. To clear customs, leading politicians call on communicators,
variants of consulting firms, but also on civil servants, commissions of
experts, barbouzes, journalists, and even the beneficiaries themselves.
Thus Breton agricultural institutions participate in the lie with regard
to green algae just like local communities.

Throughout the pages, you will find "nagging" lies (see Flaubert), the
illnesses of presidents, the sniffer planes, the diamonds of Giscard
d'Estaing, the chemical gases during the Algerian war, the hypocrisy of
the sales of weapons, unexplained accidents. Defense secrecy makes it
possible to cover a number of facts. The Algerian war was a great state
lie: the use of torture, the fate of the harkis, censorship, the
rewriting of events, the very notion of hidden war, amnesia. Access to
military archives is called into question even though the law favored
the opening of these documents.

Among the great lies of the State

Dismantling the Rainbow Warrior case is very complex. "The fact remains
that the state lie is replaced by the gray zone of the decision-making
process which led to this operation" as Alexis Vrignon points out. The
same is true of French policy towards Libya. In nuclear matters, a very
narrow circle of senior civil servants and industrialists decides on the
locations of reactors, factories and storage centers. Transparency is
illusory.

The other two big state lies concern the health sector. The management
of the AIDS tragedy is frightening due to the silence of administrations
and today a form of forgetting. The technique is quite simple, just say
nothing, then deny, then ridicule the protesters and then take measures
that would have been more effective if taken earlier. The worst is
certainly the reiteration of this method for other situations such as
the Covid crisis. You remember the management of masks, the mobilization
of journalists to say that it is a "flu". politicians lie and they are
always there in different positions.

Reading this book will make you feel dizzy. So many facts, so many
words, but what's the point of talking about them? Quite simply to keep
in mind our requirement for lucidity and the refusal to accept state
injunctions. Be careful not to fall into conspiracy, it is useless and
absurd but "the lie will not disappear from the panoply of leaders", the
public authorities repeat themselves and adopt the same methods, it is
up to us to be able to identify the elements of manipulation and
denounce it.

Francis PIAN

* State lies,
Another story of the Fifth Republic
Under the direction of Yvonnick Denoël and Renaud Meltz
Ed New World, 2023

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