[HN Gopher] French police arrest reporter over leaked secrets
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French police arrest reporter over leaked secrets
Author : fatfingerd
Score : 34 points
Date : 2023-09-20 18:24 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| aatd86 wrote:
| If the French government really wanted to solve the problem of
| "passeurs" appropriately, they should help these countries
| develop instead of e.g. pushing for wars in countries where there
| is none such as Niger currently.
|
| But the appeal of cheap uranium is too strong apparently when the
| other suppliers are too close to Russia geographically, I guess.
|
| People should come first. It's very disappointing.
| Kretinsky wrote:
| Nigerien women have, currently 6 children, on average. This
| means that the population doubles roughly every 20 years. You
| have to rebuild 100% of the country's infrastructure every 20
| years, just to break even. This is the problem. France (nor
| european countries) are responsible for Africa's fertilty
| rates. France and french soldiers have been fighting to protect
| those countries against Jihadism.
|
| France doesn't depend on Niger for Uranium, and the royalties
| are low because it's very hard to extract Uranium in a
| landlocked semi-desertic country with no road nor proper power
| grid.
|
| Overall, I agree that France should leave this unprofitable
| mining operation - I'm sure that the Chinese or the Russians
| will propose much better deals!
| aatd86 wrote:
| Please don't start spreading misinformation.
|
| Waging wars has nothing to do with fertility rates. A bit
| strange that they tend to do that at times, and at others
| when it's favorable to them, all of a sudden a coup is not a
| coup.
|
| And France does depend on Niger for its uranium, check your
| facts, Niger is in 3rd position.
|
| It's also well known that Areva hasn't been up to notch with
| environmental safety wrt its extraction and handling of
| radioactive garbage process. Locals are suffering.
|
| It has nothing to do with how hard it alledgedly is to
| extract uranium. They wouldn't do that in Europe. Period.
|
| How is there no infrastructure and the country has such
| natural resources being exported is a better question. The
| exchange is obviously unfair.
|
| The country is free to do business with whoever they'd like.
| Not wanting to do business with the French government et.al.
| has nothing to do with the Chinese or Russians. They are not
| obligated.
|
| It's a free market, not slavery.
|
| And the so-called jihadism excuse, why is there no jihadism
| in the UAE, it's not jihadism, it's coopted poverty.
| slim wrote:
| allow me to disagree. fertility is related to war. if niger
| had a stable state, they could implement a fertility
| control program like a lot of african countries
| aatd86 wrote:
| No, as it stands it is irrelevant. Only the presidency
| changed but there is no civil war. Let's not start
| spreading unrelated excuses to justify a military
| intervention that would do more harm than good.
|
| As it stands, the Nigerien military has also explained
| that there had been roadblocks in the fight against
| jihadism because they were not allowed to coordinate with
| the new governements of Mali and Burkina which have
| veered against French interests. That was one of the main
| reasons given for the coup.
|
| It has nothing to do with too many people being born.
|
| Which countries with such policies are you speaking of by
| the way? (I'm curious, I honestly don't know)
|
| Besides, Nigeriens are currently 25 million which is less
| than half of the French population in a country that is
| twice the size.
|
| Poverty didn't start yesterday, nor did the exploitation
| of natural resources. How is that country so poor and
| others such as Qatar aren't?
|
| It's impossible not to notice that former French colonies
| are often poorer than their British, Italian (Libya
| before the French, once again, pushed for a military
| intervention and embarked the US in that campaign) or
| Portuguese counterparts.
|
| The only way fertility is problematic is that the
| population is young and the infrastructures that should
| have been built AND maintained... haven't. Along with
| education and the health sector.
|
| All the more reasons to understand why they can seem to
| resent the French government (and not France in general
| as is depicted in some media).
|
| Frankly, if solutions haven't been found after all these
| years, they simply haven't been sought. Going from first
| principles, if one wants to solve migrations and whatnot,
| just let them develop themselves properly.
| realusername wrote:
| > Poverty didn't start yesterday, nor did the
| exploitation of natural resources. How is that country so
| poor and others such as Qatar aren't?
|
| Well because Uranium just isn't petrol, there's no way
| around it. There's a very limited amount of buyers and
| most of the actual value is in the power plant. Nobody
| ever got rich from a Uranium mine.
|
| What will happen is they will sell it cheaper to China
| instead and get less money.
| jszymborski wrote:
| I was under the impression that Canada is the second largest
| producer of Uranium.
| aatd86 wrote:
| Possibly. Orano(ex Areva) operates there as well.
|
| But France depends/ was depending mainly on uranium from
| Kazakhstan, Niger and Uzbekistan.
| realusername wrote:
| I have no doubt that those imports will be replaced by one
| of those other exporters, it's not that hard.
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