Everybody knows the famous American 911. But do you know we have such an emergency phone number in the European Union ?
This number is the 112. You can use it to call the police, in case of fire or in medical emergency and is available in every country member of the Union (even in the newcomer Romania) except Bulgaria, which has started taking steps to introduce it. You can call this number either with a fixed phone or with a mobile phone and you should be located by emergency services in both cases.
Unlike in the US, Europeans do not share the same language and that is the first challenge (especially in the Eastern and Central European countries but France should improve that too) : the operator will have to speak with its first language (at least) a really good English without any accent in order to understand you and take the appropriate measures to save you. In a case of emergency, when you cannot find even your words in your first language, this becomes a more difficult situation in English.
Moreover, the marketing around this great idea is not sufficient. Given the increasing mobility of European citizens within the EU, we need this common tool to save lives, wherever we are. This number should be taught to kids at school and be advertised everywhere to eventually replace the old national numbers.
Unity, step by step…
Since Internet has become a huge communication platform for million of people, some badly disposed-people have discovered, that they can take advantage of it. The motives for such activities are very different : from the hacker, who wants to help companies to enhance their IT-security, to people who download mp3’s, from terrorists, to people who counterfeit Vuitton bags and sell it on eBay, these people all break laws daily and are seen as a threat.
In order to fight them, some governments try to catch the authors, not by investigating only them, but by controlling the whole Internet traffic on their soil.
Chinese authorities forbid access to some websites made by opponents to the regime or Tibetan activists. You cannot reach them if you are connected through a Chinese official Internet provider (you can see if your website is available from China). Nonetheless, much nearer from us, in Europe, both French and German governments – both surprisingly democratic countries - plan to introduce new laws, in order to reduce considerably the privacy of their citizens.
In Germany, the Minister of Interior Department, Wolfgang Schäuble, proposed to install a Trojan horse on every personal computer in Germany, so that authorities can exactly know what is going on on it and have access to the hard disks.
In France, according to the newspapers “Le Monde“, a new law project has been proposed, in which the whole Internet data traffic (i.e. all data, credit card numbers, passwords, contents, logins. etc…) must be saved, either by the Internet providers, or by those who offer services on the web. Not only judges and policemen of the judiciary police will have the right to check it, but any administration ( the RG -the intelligence department of the French police- for instance ) and that, without any legal control.
Both projects are a real nightmare for anyone. who cares for his privacy and liberties. People who think, they have nothing to hide, are wrong. Because if you give up freedom in the name of fighting criminality, you take the risk of giving up much more freedoms, for the same reasons.
The postal secrecy is guaranteed in most democratic countries, why would this right not apply for emails ?
Democracy and civil rights are not just a matter of some activists in the third world ! It is an issue, people must daily fight for. Nothing is acquired and we are all concerned about it.
These initiatives remind me the book of George Orwell “1984”, in which all citizen are supervised. As soon as they express any opinion against the regime, they disappear. Of course, this book is primarily a criticism against the communism and it cannot be transposed directly to our western societies, but it is an interesting introduction in how you can direct people and control what they are doing.
The Internet is known to be one of the greatest factors of economical growth during the last five years. If all data were stored, a lot of citizens would mistrust the actors of the new economy. Moreover, most of the companies would have to pay a lot of money in order to improve their storage capacity and this could reduce their competitiveness.
In the end, this freedom-killing policy will not be a serious obstacle for terrorists who plan an attack. When I see, how easy it is to buy a cell phone (My name is officially Jaqes Macy for Vodafone in Germany), I think this is really not a problem to obtain one with forged identity papers. All those measures will not just be inefficient, but they also will create mistrust and, in the end, limit the economic growth of the whole country.
Of course, terrorists sites and, in general, illegal content must be forbidden, but this must be done without treating the privacy and the freedoms of the Internet users so badly.
Foreigners often make fun of French people for their poor language skills: they are seen as unable to have a good accent in any language.
Even if solutions were proposed in the past, like learning English in primary schools, French people regularly complain about the English level of their fellow countrymen. In this global world, English-speaking students have obviously more chances to find a job than the others. Nevertheless, English (and knowledge of languages in general) remains at the bottom of the French Education system priorities.
First of all, there is a clear problem regarding to the contents of language courses in France. Pupils must learn grammar for years but they are not taught how to give an oral speech ! Moreover, teachers speak, answer and communicate only in French during the class: the teenagers only listen to audio tapes, which is far from being attractive!
The problem comes from the pupils too. They are ashamed of speaking with the right accent: they are absolutely not used to it. When they are asked a question, they answer it without even trying to improve their pronunciation at all (what the teacher does not require anyway). This feeling of shame is not to be related to any anti-Anglo-Saxon (especially anti-American) feeling within the French society, but rather to a mistrust regarding the English language and to the lost pride of French. Indeed, our language can no longer compete with English on an international point of view.
The successive French governments have been claiming to be fighting for the protection of the French language, which contains more and more English words. The Toubon law for instance, imposed French as the official language in French companies. Any advertisement on television or in the newspapers containing foreign words must be translated. However, this law had very little effect and new English words are still being inserted into the French language day after day. And the wide-spread and Anglo-Saxon Internet vocabulary will not help to reverse this situation!
It would be nonsense to try to “save” the French language and to prevent English words inclusions, as if France were a Gallic village, surrounded by nasty Romans!! The German language is full of French words imported during the XIXth century and German people do not have the feeling to speak French at all. Scandinavians are known to be excellent English-speaking people, and yet neither Swedish nor Danish are dying languages. Why should it be otherwise in France?
English-speaking people are blamed in France for not speaking any other language as well but unlike French people, everyone can understand them, in China, India, Germany and so on…
There could be some simple methods to improve the English level in general: teachers must only communicate in English with their pupils, so that they appropriate this language. Then many more movies and programs should be broadcasted in original version in theaters and on television and all interviews or talks of famous foreign people on the daily news should be subtitled and not synchronized. The impact on the general population could be huge if they got used to listening to English programs.
French politicians dare to make such decisions. In the first place, this could look like a the defeat of the French versus English. But people could take great advantage of it and on the long run, such decisions would turn into a success.
