When the State punishes, abandons, or stays silent

When the State punishes, abandons, or stays silent

A day when the verticality of power is expressed in a fragile ceasefire, contested political exemplarity and institutions that are withdrawing. While some debate AI and small businesses, others note that abandonment prepares the ground for tragedies.

The day opens with a geopolitical warning: Stephane Audrand publishes in Le Grand Continent an analysis of a possible ceasefire in Ukraine, recalling that while the cessation of fighting remains good news, there must be no illusions about the trap being set. The same reflex of vigilance runs through the quotation from Armel Guerne shared by Pierre Jean Duvivier dit Sage: in a world devoted to lies, the poet attempts to reintroduce a little tenderness, beauty and above all truth. Between realpolitik and poetry, the question of lies is raised from the outset. Hervé Polesi, Ph.D. adds an institutional note by judging particularly inappropriate the mobilization of RAID units planned as part of the day of 24 October, as if the security apparatus were filling an argumentative void.

This distrust of institutions finds a direct echo in Pierre Jean Duvivier dit Sage’s attack on exemplarity, which he refuses to regard as an empty notion: it would be the matrix of a just order. He points to the contrast between political leaders exposed to scandals and their retention in office, seeing in it no longer an order but state violence at work. The announced dissolution of the French Automobile Sport Federation inspires in him the same observation of a government that can only punish without thinking, at the risk of destroying a unique talent-detection tool and an exemplary policy towards young girls. Nathalie DREAN recalls on her side that teachers are entrusted with the future of our children, a way of stressing that the recognition owed to those who shape society cannot be decreed by sanction alone.

The debate on artificial intelligence illustrates the same tension between openness and a prohibitive reflex. Pierre Jean Duvivier dit Sage mocks a Western Europe which, between the RN in power and the advocates of an AI ban, seems to him to have no future, to the point of evoking migration to China and abandoning any democratic idea in favour of the technological race alone. La Quadrature du Net publishes on its side a document proving, according to it, that France Travail is seeking to deploy a generative AI of the ChatGPT type for the purpose of monitoring jobseekers, illustrating a shift from one control system to another. Between the injunction to innovate and algorithm-assisted surveillance, AI appears less as a promise than as a revealer of political choices.

The question of media and judicial treatment of violence returns sharply in Pierre Jean Duvivier dit Sage’s post about a shooter named Kevin, a follower of RN theories, who kills Mohamed and wounds passers-by: he denounces a classification that does not retain terrorism, questions the absence of certain media on the scene and recalls that the Lyon far right has been practicing beatings and racist raids for about twenty years in general indifference. The same author then describes shopkeepers at the end of their rope, battered by taxes and hounded by Urssaf, abandoned in the face of looting that the police no longer prevent, and warns that by leaving these small business owners alone, the State is preparing the conditions for a tragedy. La Croix finally relays Jérôme Perrier’s analysis of the culture of vertical power, from the Ancien Régime monarchy to Macronism, where the State claims to know everything to the detriment of civil society: three angles of the same abandonment.

Small businesses, precisely, are at the heart of a quantified observation by Pierre Jean Duvivier dit Sage: between 2012 and 2022, microenterprises created 870,000 jobs, SMEs 655,000 and mid-sized companies 346,000, while large companies eliminated 173,000 positions in their existing establishments, preferring to grow through acquisitions. According to Dares, 61% of subsidized hires in the market sector would have taken place without State aid, which potentially represents several billion in windfall effects out of 20.8 billion devoted to subsidized contracts over ten years. The author draws from this a synthesis that borrows from the right the reduction of charges and norms and from the left the criticism of useless subsidies, adding a personal pinch on administrative horror and absurd accounting requirements. Isabelle Bouilloux poses a neighboring question in another register: would AIs learn by exploring freely within a given perimeter? Bounded freedom, decidedly, is the subject of the day.

Exemplarity returns through the door of testimonies: Fédora Hélène relays the fact that two women testified against Darmanin, in a country that does not recognize the consent of women, of our mothers, of our sisters and of our daughters. Pierre Jean Duvivier dit Sage commemorates on his side October 23, 1956, when Hungarians rose up against the USSR, when Hungary withdrew from the Warsaw Pact before being invaded by sixteen Soviet divisions, with 2,500 dead and 200,000 people fleeing the country, and already the West abandoning a people wanting to become free. La Croix, finally, completes the picture by recalling that the verticality of French power is not a recent invention but a continuity of the Ancien Régime.

Macronism receives a definition without nuance under the pen of Pierre Jean Duvivier dit Sage, who sees in it a “merdisation” of everything, a union of the idiocies of the left and the right wrapped in a rare self-satisfaction. The formula is brief, almost a slogan, but it extends the critique of vertical power and failing exemplarity developed above.

On the technical side, two publications remind us that AI does not forgive approximation. Julien Mutzenhardt recounts the 17,000 euros in penalties imposed for a badly formatted JSON, and the fatal error with LLMs that he attributes to constrained decoding. Pierre Jean Duvivier, known as Sage, explains how AI, using OpenCode, leads him to discover new sites and systems, such as Runware AI, which allows him for two dollars a month to generate thirty thumbnails per day via API, with a DeepSeek call that understands the text and translates it into image generation prompts. He also mentions Jitter, added to the crontab to introduce randomness into task execution, and the overall architecture that he promises to present. The explorer’s enthusiasm contrasts with the bill for the bad format.

Privacy is becoming a breaking point: Pierre Jean Duvivier, known as Sage, explains that a DNS resolver placing privacy protection front and center chose to simply leave a country rather than lie to its users. That country is France: Quad9 will stop providing its free DNS service starting November 24, after a French court ordered it to block domain names that BeIN Sports accused of facilitating the piracy of sports broadcasts. Quad9 refused, stating categorically that it refuses to modify or falsify DNS responses in a manner contrary to users’ expectations. Julien Mutzenhardt, with his badly formatted JSON, illustrates in his own way that technical rigor has a cost, but here it is ethical rigor that has a price.

The day closes with a reading and a question. Hugues Jallon and Franck Bourgeron publish Le temps des salauds with Casterman BD, with this phrase that sums up the spirit of the times: fascism begins with madmen, is realized thanks to bastards and continues because of idiots. Pierre Jean Duvivier, known as Sage, recommends keeping the book warm before its characters come to power in France. Yousuf Bruno Latif, for his part, soberly signs “Connect” around health insurance and Swiss purchasing power, as a reminder that substantive debates continue far from grand indignation. Between the comic book and the health insurance fund, there remains room for nuance.

My bestiary of the day

The pens and voices crossed in this edition:

Editorial summary produced with the assistance of DeepSeek from the publications listed above.

The post When the State punishes, abandons or stays silent appeared first on les plumes qui mordent.

Frequently Asked Questions
FAQs When the State Punishes Abandons or Stays Silent

Definitions Basics

1 What does when the state punishes abandons or stays silent mean
It refers to three ways a government can fail the people it governs actively harming them withdrawing support or protection or failing to act when action is needed

2 What counts as state punishment
Any action by authorities meant to penalize deter or retaliate against people such as arrests fines force restrictions on rights or cutting off services as a penalty

3 What is state abandonment
When the state withdraws from its responsibilities leaving people without protection services or support it is supposed to provide like failing to respond to a crisis or neglecting a region or group

4 What does state silence look like
Inaction in the face of clear harm not investigating crimes not speaking out against abuses ignoring warnings or refusing to acknowledge a problem

5 Is this about one country or many
Its a general framework All states do some of these things at some point the question is how often against whom and with what consequences

Why It Matters

6 Why should ordinary people care
Because these behaviors affect safety rights and trust in institutions When the state punishes unfairly abandons communities or stays silent about harm people pay the price often the most vulnerable first

7 What are the costs of state silence
Unaddressed harm grows Crimes go unpunished crises worsen and trust erodes which can lead to more conflict or instability later

8 Can punishment ever be legitimate
Yes punishment through lawful fair and proportionate processes is a normal state function The concern is when punishment is arbitrary excessive or used against people for who they are or what they peacefully believe

Common Problems Examples

9 What are common examples of state punishment
Excessive force against protesters punitive fines arbitrary detention retaliation against whistleblowers or withdrawing benefits as a penalty

10 What are examples of abandonment
Failing to evacuate a disaster zone neglecting public services in poor areas or leaving vulnerable groups without protection

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