We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Trade union members in France and Germany are becoming conscious of the need to break the law if they are to keep their jobs.
At present it is illegal to ask any worker in France to work more than a 35 hour week, except in special cases determined by political lobbying. Not surprisingly this has led to the closure of low-paid jobs at an accelerating rate with relocation to Eastern Europe the current favourite.
When I was last in Slovakia in May this year, a deal had recently been struck to move a Peugeot factory from France. On my previous visit in 1993, unemployment threatened to hit 80 per cent in some towns.
The power struggle between Finance Minister Nicolas Sarkozy and President Jacques Chirac now encompasses the scrapping of the 35 hour week. Chirac did not veto the measure when the Socialist government passed the law, no doubt under the influence of his then influential leftist political advisor – his daughter.
So now Chirac cannot face anything more than cosmetic reform of a job-destroying law, without looking the cretin that he his. Of course, leaving things as they are makes him look thick-headed, or a “veau” (calf) as we say in France.
So in the marketplace the obvious solution is emerging: factory workers are agreeing to work an extra hour a week without pay. How this is better for social justice than letting people work and get paid for the hours they want beats me, but if it makes them happy…
Unless he was lying on national television again, or changes his mind like he did several times over the Maastricht Treaty, Saddam Hussein’s best chum has announced that the French (and colonies) will be given a chance to vote on the proposed European Union constitution.
Lucky, we know all the dirty tricks that can be used in such a referendum campaign, they were all used last time by the Florentine François Mitterand, to get the Maastricht Treaty through. So we shall be campaigning in Guadeloupe, and Martinique, and the Isle de la Réunion, and French Polynesia, St Pierre et Miquelon and New Caledonia, and Wallis et Futuna if necessary to avoid losing by 40,000 votes. Get the Atlas out!
I am starting a voter registration guide among the French refugees living in London. I am also checking whether foreign EU citizens living in France can vote and how to arrange this. My new blog Combat (named after the WWII Resistance magazine against the Nazi occupation) launched today will be tracking the campaign in French.
Instead of the national anthem’s “aux armes citoyens!”, let us “aux urnes citoyens!”
*”To the ballot boxes citizens!”
I wonder if the fact France is, get this, cracking down on opponents of the theocratic tyranny in Iran will produce howls of anger from the same people who complain that the US has on many occasions propped up unsavoury regimes for various reasons? I have my doubts as most are convinced that if the US is not involved in something, it does not really happen.
Why is the French state doing this? Well who knows… I am sure that fact lucrative deals have been signed in Iran by French companies over the last few months have nothing to do with it. Nope, that could not possibly be the reason.
It is fashionable to accuse the US of being an imperialist nation due to its extensive activities and interests overseas. The US, though, is sadly short of exotic tropical possessions, in contrast to one of its biggest and most self-righteous detractors, France, which is still a true imperialist, presiding over a bona fide colony of brown-skinned natives who have had the temerity to express a desire for independence.
Now, I am not sure exactly what the political arrangements are with respect to Tahiti. It is interesting to see that the French are placing their own self-interest ahead of Tahitian independence.
France is likely to oppose any move towards independence. Thousands of French troops and civil servants are based on Tahiti.
And a sweet posting that must be. 
“French Polynesia is part of France’s aspirations to have a presence in every ocean and any loss of territory would have an impact on their status as a power with global reach,” said Mr Maclellan. “The territory also has a huge exclusive economic zone, with rights to fishing and sea bed minerals.”
Classic imperialist/exploitative greed, non?
The Tahitians have been heavily subsidized by France, a way of getting French taxpayer to foot the bill for the aforementioned sweet civil service postings and for whatever sweetheart deals French businesses get for all those fish and minerals. However, in a real shocker “allegations of corruption, poor economic management and a desire for fresh political blood” have led to a political victory for the pro-independence party over the political hacks who stood for continued subjugation to the French imperium. In the punchline, the new leader is aligning himself more closely with the nearby Anglosphere nations.
Will the usual suspects who decry US imperialism at every turn show up to protest the real item when practiced by the French? Will there be international objections to the heavy-handed tactics the French bureaucrats will employ to defend their perquisites? Will one of the last outposts of colonialism disappear? Stay tuned.
This is oh so typical. Support Marxism and Islamo-fascism, and you get French police protection… support the USA and you get arrested.
While researching for my weekly CNE Environment column I came across a barking mad website. This led me to another loony story. Unfortunately, neither of these would do for an environment column that is meant to present a credible analysis of the eco-fascist movement.
So I ended up with this story from the French TV station TF1. In what has to be the most perfect economic suicide note since the 1920 Soviet Constitution, the French National Assembly has voted to amend the French constitution so as to enshrine the precautionary principle by 328 votes to 10. This could make any future government decision to deregulate anything illegal.
It is a shame that the precautionary principle is not applied to government regulation: in the absence of any overwhelming proof that it will work, such regulation ought to be prohibited. One might expect such lunacy in the French Assembly to be supported by the extreme left and the Green parties (there are several of these in France). But no.
The “centre-right” parties of the UMP and the UDF voted in favour, the Socialists and the Communists abstained, and the Greens voted against.
If this was appeasement, it failed. So which story was the barmiest?
In France on Sunday, Nicolas Sarkhozy has manouvered the UMP government party into supporting a referendum for the proposed EU constitution [link in French].
The decision to hold a referendum will be taken by President Jacques Chirac (anyone’s guess what that will be), but the call by the newly appointed Minister of Finance represents a shift away from automatic rubber-stamping by the French parliament.
Privately Chirac will be fuming. He hates Sarkhozy and fears his possible election in 2007 as President. Unlike the recently convicted fraudster Alain Juppé, Mr Sarkhozy might not feel inclined to whitewash the current President’s dubious financial history. Meanwhile, Alain Juppé the UMP party chairman, has endorsed Mr Sarkhozy’s call with the qualification: “within the constitutional prerogatives of the President”. Mr Juppé no doubt feels it is a good time to roll with his colleague’s punches.
A mindboggling article on the TF1 (French TV) website.
Apparently, Jacqeues Chirac is dedicating today’s presidential press conference to the subject of EU enlargement. The analysis is that this will dillute French influence in the EU, shift the balance of power in a more “Atlanticist” direction, and help bring about back-door free-market reforms.
The French Socialist Party has decided to make the threat of a libertarian Europe (Europe libérale) the main plank of its European election campaign, citing the EU constitution as part of the potential problem. They think it is going to be amended into something terrifying (i.e. good). Especially horrible for the European left is the prospect of cross-border private welfare arrangements: buying private pensions and health insurance without the ‘protection’ of nationalized welfare monopolies. Get your life insurance in France, health insurance in Germany and your pension in the UK for example.
Jacques Chirac as the agent of Anglo-Saxon capitalists! Priceless.
Only yesterday I had good things to say about “Continental” medical provision, and it was France in particular that I had in mind.
Here on the other hand, is another view:
The French health service, regarded as the world’s best, is falling apart, a petition signed by 286 of its most senior hospital doctors claims. Waiting lists, almost unknown in France five years ago, are becoming common, and there is a severe shortage of doctors and nurses.
However, you need to be aware that this is being said by people who want this to be believed, so that they can be given more money to give to themselves, and each other. When did you last hear of people saying, when their annual grant was being discussed: “Oh, things are fine, really – in fact, we could probably get by with rather less money, if the truth be told” ? Not lately, I should guess.
“In casualty units, sick people have to wait for hours, sometimes even days, on stretchers, because there are no beds for them in the hospital,” said the doctors’ petition, sent to the newspaper Le Monde.
Nevertheless, that does sound rather anglais.
The recently appointed Health Minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, has said the public health service budget would be €12bn (£8bn) in the red this year, €1bn more than the previous forecast.
The two events are closely connected. The doctors’ petition was a shot across the bows of the unpopular centre-right French government, which is expected to announce plans next month for the most radical reform of the health service in more than 50 years.
Battle-lines are being drawn for what is likely to be the most bitterly contested domestic political issue in France this year, the future of a €130bn-a-year health service which is regularly named by the World Health Organisation as the world’s finest.
A committee of inquiry reported in January that the “health insurance” section of the nation’s social security system faces a €66bn deficit by 2020 unless something is done to increase its revenues or reduce its spending, or both. Half of public spending on health goes on the state hospital service, which was originally to be excluded from the reforms.
The argument is all about money in other words. Suddenly the French system looks good, yes, but rather expensive. The health equivalent of Concorde. And they want, if not to cancel it, then to clip its wings rather severely.
A French-based imam who preached polygamy, the right of husbands to beat their wives, the stoning of adulterous women, and the eventual conversion of the whole planet to Islam was bundled on a flight to Algeria at 9.20 this morning (European Summer Time). Abdelkader Bouziane, a father of 16 children who hold French citizenship was arrested at Lyon airport on Tuesday.
The expulsion was justified by the French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkhozy (since moved to the Finance Ministry) in a ministerial decree dated 26 February 2004 on the grounds of incitement of violence, especially against women, as well as because the imam was allegedly “an apologist for terrorism”, a charge disputed by Mr Bouziane’s lawyers.
A complaint had been submitted to the French government by the Deputy Mayor of Lyon following remarks published in a local paper, which are the subject of dispute.
In unrelated news, official unemployment figures in France suggest that unemployment reached 2,707,000 in December or 9.9 per cent of the workforce. Meanwhile a proposed law – which would prohibit the wearing of the Islamic veil and other visible religious symbols in state schools – now proposes that bandanas would be exempt if worn as a fashion accessory but banned if worn as a religious statement.
In many ways I would not get so put out by the machinations of the French political class if they were just more upfront about what motivates them. If they just came out and said “we could not care less about the fact the Iraqi people are ruled by a mass murderous tyrant, we are just interested in protecting our economic sweetheart deals”, I would still think that was appalling, but at least one could hardly help but admire their brazen pursuit of self-interest at the expense of others. What is another 20 years of Ba’athism when a sweet below-market oil deal is at stake? No (Ba’athist) blood for (French) oil, please?
But no, Dominique de Villepin and Jaques Chirac actually have the bare faced effrontery to claim the moral high ground when anyone with a passing knowledge of French economics and a ‘who’s who’ of French interests has been able to see what is really going on from day one. It is a measure of the web of corruption that lies over the French media and chattering classes that ‘The Big Lie’ is accepted so widely in France. Perhaps Colin Powell should have just responded to one of de Villepin ambushes in the UN during the lead up to the recent Gulf War by simply reading out a list of the names of the great and good in France and their interests in Iraq, without further comment.
Not that the French political class are alone of course, not by any means… they are just the most cynically sanctimonious about it.
As Antoine is fond of pointing out here, the French are not totally supine in the face of radical Islamism:
Yahia Cherif, who preached in Brest, on the coast of Brittany, was deported to Algiers after being found guilty of “proselytism in favour of radical Islam” and “active relations with a national or international Islamic movement linked to organisations promoting terrorist acts”.
He was also found to have incited violence and hatred against people due to their origin. During the hearing, a lawyer representing the interior ministry cited evidence supplied by French intelligence to accuse Cherif of calling for a jihad during a sermon on March 19. The call represented a threat to national security, he said.
Cherif had also asked his followers for active support of Jamal Zougam, the prime suspect held in connection with the Madrid bombings, in which 191 people died.
Here is the case against deporting Cherif:
His lawyer argued that he did not promote terrorism but had been a victim of it, since he had witnessed his own father’s murder in Algeria. He said he feared for Cherif’s safety at the hands of Algeria’s military authorities.
I know that there is an argument that people like this just, you know, giving sermons, is just them exercising their right to free speech, but meanwhile, this man was clearly breaking French law as it actually is, and from the sound of it he certainly intended his words to give rise to actions. So my immediate reaction to this story is, in the words of the Sergeant Major with the moustache played by Windsor Davies in It Ain’t Half Hot Mum: “Oh dear. How tragic.”
As was this. Not.
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