Privileged French students demonstrate to preserve their entitlements

The French government wants to make all young people more employable by making it easier to fire duds, but .....

The current demonstrations by students of French universities against a proposed liberalization of the labor laws, so that it will be easier for French employers to hire and fire young people, remind me very much of the strike by miners on the Witwatersrand in South Africa in 1922.

The demonstrators in France and the strikers in South Africa are and were supported by their respective national communist parties. The miners went on strike because the mine-owners proposed to replace expensive white labor with cheap black labor, hoping to increase profits. This move provoked one of the most bizarre political slogans of all time, promoted by the communist party: Workers of the World Unite for a White South Africa!

What are the French university students demonstrating for? By opposing the proposed law of Dominique de Villepin, the prime minister, they are in effect demanding that the children of Maghrebin and African immigrants stay exactly where they are, in the dismal and dispiriting housing projects that surround all French towns and cities, and accept their state of dependency on handouts derived from the taxes of their elders and betters.

The students are demonstrating for the continuation of their own protections and privileges once employed, as most of them soon will be. They do not wish employers to have the freedom to sack them, except at the cost of huge redundancy payments that the law currently grants them. Obliviously, of course, they are in effect also demonstrating for the continued segregation of the Arabs and the Africans.

And you can be sure that the "principled" young Frogs demonstrating are all Leftists. (Excerpts above from Theodore Dalrymple)

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ELSEWHERE

About time! "The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston said today it had defrocked seven priests accused of molesting children, as it cleans house following a 2002 scandal over paedophile priests. The seven included Rev Monsignor Frederick Ryan, a former vice-chancellor of the archdiocese accused of abusing two teenage boys and photographing them naked about 25 years ago in his quarters at the archdiocese's chancery. Ryan was placed on administrative leave in March 2002. "This moment provides an opportunity to express to the survivors of clergy sexual abuse and to their families my deepest sorrow for the grievous harm done to them," Archbishop Sean O'Malley said. The Boston Archdiocese, faced with an $US93 million ($126.23 million) bill to settle cases involving about 1000 sex-abuse victims, has shut more than 60 churches to raise money since the scandal erupted in Boston in 2002 and spread nationwide. The seven men are no longer allowed to perform any public ministry in the church and can no longer receive any financial support from the archdiocese."

Wrong target: "Last week, invoking national security concerns, members of Congress hastily acted to prevent a company from the Persian Gulf nation Dubai from taking ownership of facilities at several American ports. This Wednesday Dubai Ports World announced that it plans to sell all its United States operations, presumably including the Port of Miami facility it has run for years without any problem, to an American-controlled company within the next six months. Longshoremen union members will continue to handle packages at America's ports, no matter who owns the facilities. Oddly, none of these same members of Congress have called for inspecting the disturbing history of these unions. At least three aspects of Longshoremen history suggest that these union members at our ports might pose a risk to national security. They have been associated with organized crime, specifically the Mafia. They have a history of anti-American radical politics and have committed acts of violence. But the Longshoremen have been shielded from scrutiny by their high-placed political allies - including Hillary Clinton"

Official Canadian thugs: "A Nova Scotia couple facing an $800 municipal bill for refusing to shovel the snow from their sidewalk have paid half that amount to save their home from being sold by town officials. John and Rona McQuillan of Guysborough have refused to shovel the 20 metres of sidewalk in front of their house since the municipality introduced a snow-clearing bylaw five years ago. The municipality told the couple they would have to pay at least $400 by Friday or face losing their home in a tax sale -- a demand the McQuillans called blackmail. ... 'It gives people four hours after the end of a snowfall to clear their snow, and an awful lot of the people work outside of Guysborough,' said McQuillan. 'It was a bad bylaw and we took on the job of objecting to it.'"

Direct from Iraq: "General John P. Abizaid, commander, United States Central Command, puts out an annual statement on the posture of the United States Central Command. The 2006 posture statement that discusses various topics on the Global War on Terrorism is now out. Some of the topics include "Nature of the Enemy", "Situation Overview in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa", "Other Regional Partnerships" and "Iran and Syria."

Palestinian parasites to feel cuts: "If Israel withholds revenues from a Hamas-led Palestinian Authority and donor countries reduce aid, the Palestinians would be thrown into a deep depression, with personal incomes dropping 30 per cent this year alone. A new World Bank study says the Palestinian economy would shrink by 27 per cent in 2006 - a one-year contraction that compares to the 1930s Depression. Unemployment would nearly double, to 39.6 per cent, and two-thirds of the population would be living below the poverty level."

The useless TSA again: "Security screeners at 21 airports across the United States failed to detect materials that could be used to make bombs in recent tests by government agents, US legislators said overnight. "The fact that government investigators were able to pass through TSA's (Transportation Security Administration) screening at 21 major airports with bomb-making material is frightening," representative Bennie Thompson, a member of the Committee on Homeland Security, said in a statement. "It's like the story of the Trojan Horse," he added. "TSA has spent so much time telling people to take off their shoes and belts, that they have missed the bomb-making materials." The tests were conducted last year by the General Accountability Office (GAO), the Department of Transportation and the Department of Homeland Security at the request of US Representative John Mica, a Republican".

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here). I also post several times a week on "Tongue-Tied". There is an archive of my "Tongue-Tied" posts here or here

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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