The so-called left wing French government is looking more and more like its neoliberal US counterpart, and the similarities are hardly complimentary. With the news of the horrendous terrorist truck attack in Nice still fresh in the media and in people’s minds, another story about France flew below the radar. On July 1st France broke its own record for the number of its citizens incarcerated, with almost 70,000 people in prison. Of course the US leadership in its incarceration rate is not in jeopardy, nor is it one most countries would seek to emulate. From TeleSUR

One of the main causes for the record-breaking number of inmates is linked to the recent security policies implemented during the state-of-emergency following November's terror attacks, according to a penitentiary source anonymously quoted by AFP.

Given the fact that France has been the object of three deadly attacks in the past 18 months, one might question what the government has used these expanded powers for. After all, the ability to search cars, cell phones, computers, and even peoples homes without a warrant, coupled with summary detention and house arrest powers, must have been of some use besides suppressing legal dissent against the government’s unpopular “labor reform” proposals. But one would be wrong in assuming so. And according to a new poll for Le Figaro, 67% of respondents have no confidence in the government's ability to protect them from terrorists. According to the Guardian.

France is the second biggest contributor to U.S.-led airstrikes against ISIS. After the Nice attack, Hollande said he would step up airstrikes further. His defense minister will travel to Washington this week to discuss this.

So faced with a failure to execute its mission despite extraordinary means granted to them by a parliament that has shown little respect for civil liberties, Hollande chooses to double down on a policy that is not only ineffective, but which is in all likelihood responsible for the attacks in the first place. A more rational response is proposed by Phillippe Marlière of University College London in a Counterpunch article.

A progressive and effective anti-terrorist strategy would make different choices: it would put an immediate end to France's military interventions overseas, as, it can be argued, they only foment political instability and sustain the refugee crisis. It would abandon the neoliberal and austerity policies that have impoverished the working-class populations (which include immigrants and their descendants). It would finally train a police force to protect and serve the people and not, as is generally the case at present, to repress members of the ethnic minorities and behave in an arbitrary manner.

So could it be that in addition to pursuing the wrong strategy, Hollande is also looking in the wrong place? The killer in Nice was not a member of ISIS/Daesh, and came from Tunisia, one of the Maghreb countries in Africa. According to Alternet:

The persistence with which France is being targeted can only be explained by the escalation of a secretive war with Daesh being carried out just across the border in the Maghreb.

Over the last half decade, Islamist militant factions affiliated to both the Islamic State and al-Qaeda have dramatically expanded their foothold in North Africa. Spurred by the vacuum left from the aborted NATO war on Libya, which successfully ousted Gaddafi but left the country in a state of internecine civil war, Islamist groups have found a new base there.

Libya is now the perfect springboard for Islamist militants to expand their reach across North Africa and the Sahel

The result is patchwork of rapidly growing cells of jihadists loyal to multiple terrorist franchises: Ansar al-Shariah, Al Mourabitoun, Boko Haram, al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, and Islamic State.

It begins to sound more and more like the French have taken a page from US foreign policy from the neocon Bush years. The US blamed Sadaam Hussein for terror attacks hatched by Saudis in Afghanistan, invaded Iraq and created a failed state, which in turn gave us ISIS/Daesh. Because regime change.

Fast forward to the Obama administration. We had a Secretary of State whose policy was “We came, we saw, he died”. It was Hillary Clinton, who persuaded a supposedly reluctant Obama that deposing Gaddafi was the right thing to do, or that implementing a no-fly zone in Syria was a good idea. Because regime change.

As elections approach we are faced with a choice between the weak “center-left” candidate in Clinton, the psychopathic war mongering neocon, and Trump the neofascist lunatic bolstered by a white racist base. So too will the French be faced with a similar dilemma next spring when Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right anti-immigrant Front National, is expected to reach the final round of the 2017 presidential race and face a weakened neoliberal Hollande, who has failed to keep his people safe. Counterpunch again sums it up from the same article:

For most French people, 14 July (as we simply call it) is the festive enactment of republican France and of its motto: “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.”

,,,but for many French people, the combination of economic hardship, political instability and physical insecurity (due to the now regular terrorist attacks) has deeply undermined France’s republican ideal. There is no liberty when people fear for their lives whenever they go about their daily business; there is no equality when the young have no faith in the future; and there is no fraternity when the Muslim population, an important and large component, is discriminated against and regarded as the “enemy within”.

Both countries are headed down the same dark neoliberal path, and the corporate elites are working in concert on a military and economic basis. Our civil liberties are being trampled on, our police forces militarized and turned against the people’s righteous dissent, our economies broken and stolen by the oligarchs. But the veil of corruption has been ripped aside and the situation calls us to action. We must join with our brothers and sisters in France in taking to the streets and picket lines, use our power of economic boycott, petition the courts to restore our democracy, and rebuild our electoral process.

And there is hope. Bernie’s revolution is alive and growing. Jill gives us a choice against the neocon and the fascist. The People, united, can never be defeated. All is not lost, but we must not give up - never give up.