END JOB LAW IN 10 DAYS OR FACE CHAOS, FRENCH PM TOLD

PARIS April 6, 2006 (Guardian) - French unions and student leaders yesterday gave the government 10 days to scrap its youth employment law, or face renewed strikes and protests. ... The 12 unions said in a joint statement that if the government's "first employment law" was not revoked by April 17, the French parliament's Easter break, they would step up protests which have seen hundreds of universities and high schools blockaded for weeks. Asked what they would do if the deadline was not met, unions said that nothing was ruled out.

After meeting UMP politicians yesterday, one trade union leader, François Chereque [secretary general of the CFDT], said: "They had nothing to say."

Mr de Villepin, whose presidential hopes have been dented [sic, the trope the Guardian seeks is "vaporized"] by the crisis, told parliament yesterday he would "draw the necessary conclusions" from the union talks. Some media said it was a veiled resignation threat, others said it was unclear. Although Mr Chirac urged students and pupils to return to class, protests and school blockades continued.

It is amazing to us that an unelected club can dictate what is and what is not law in France. Equally amazing is a duly appointed government that meekly withdraws to consider the conclusions of the diktat.

Democracy is slow and messy and advances haltingly in fits and starts on the strength of arguments and counterarguments that are decided at the ballot box, the political marketplace. Mobs are also messy but advance rapidly on the strength and threat of numbers huddled under the sentiments of a watchword or the command of a slogan (e.g., mom, apple pie...Retrait du CPE).

Ideas secured at the ballot box are ideas that are held accountable to an expectation of success. If they fail, vote the authors and sponsors out, vote in people with better ideas. When a mob fails, well, it simply melts away, back into the everyday without a trace.

Lastly, democracies are delimited by rules and the structural logic of rules. Mobs are not.

The essential difference, a functioning democracy is deliberative and a hopped-up mob is physical.

INJURY AND STRESS TAKE THEIR TOLL ON FRENCH RIOT POLICE

PARIS April 7, 2006 (Telegraph) - The cry of the jeering, missile-throwing mob is "police everywhere, justice nowhere". The lot of French officers caught in the violence of job law protests is indeed far from happy.

The scale of the police officer's task, when confronting bands of persistent troublemakers, is illustrated by the numbers of the respective sides. About 4,000 were marshalled for Tuesday's march through Paris and to cover other sensitive parts of the capital. The number of protesters is likely to have been around 220,000.

During skirmishes at the end of the protest, police were taunted and attacked by groups of Left-wingers, anarchists and some students, their numbers swelled by marauding gangs from the poor, immigrant-dominated suburbs. Although the rioters can be counted in hundreds, they frequently outnumber riot police when isolated trouble breaks out.

France, our topic, advertises herself as a nation of philosophes. Yet from day one of the First Republic her political reflexes have remained physical and rough. Republican France has become comfortable with a system of manufactured and distant career politicians who are, from time to time, chastened by mobs. This is not deliberative democracy and it's not philosophy.

PFFT (What is this?): Nice tawking t'ya 4 | Rayonnement français 0

Crazy.

Bonjour,

Affaire irakienne:

LE REPRESENTANT WALTER JONES FAIT AMENDE HONORABLE !!

Cet abruti américain (un pléonasme) qui avait débaptisé nos frites lors de l'agression US en Irak est devenu un adversaire acharné de la dite agression.
Débaptiser les frites françaises;

"UNE IDEE QUE JE NE VOUDRAIS JAMAIS AVOIR EUE !"
avoue cet abruti.

Les excuses de Bush à la France approchent à grands pas….

Good luck for your country in Irak !!!