Blogging the democratic revolution
First, some words from France’s resident tough guy, Nicolas Sarkozy: I would like to say one thing, in what is my conception of the Republic, security is the responsibility of the State, I am against militias, I am against the private ownership of firearms, and I????????m trying to make you think about that. If you are assaulted by an armed burglar, he????????ll use his weapon more effectively than you anyway so you????????re risking your life. If the criminal is not armed and you are and you shoot, your life will be ruined, because killing someone over a theft is not…
Major mainstream television networks in France and Brazil have both taken aim at the odious regime of Fidel Castro in Cuba. And I don’t mean something small. They’ve put out huge high-advertising long programs out, firing a unusual cannonade at the dictatorship. This has never happened before. These TV programs document Cuba’s long lines, miserable shortages as a way of life, bureaucracy, commissars, vaunted health care that is nothing but a failure, monstrous communist indoctrination that passes for “education,” secret police surveillance, jailing of dissidents, and complete lack of freedom. It’s realistic programming on Cuba that no one in either…
I am writing this piece in response to the many allegations circulating in the Web regarding the Zidane-Materazzi case. One version has already been told, so I want the readers to read the other,too. There is an ongoing inquiry opened by the FIFA to find out what has really happened betwen the two players. In my opinion, everyone of us should refrain from expressing summary claims without having any proof. So far, the proof we have is that Zidane has committed a vile act of violence by head-butting a rival player. False claims have circulated according to which Materazzi would…
French fans celebrate their World Cup victory in Paris Source: Reuters, via Yahoo! The French team accomplished a beautiful victory against the Portuguese team today, putting it in the World Cup final match versus Italy on July 9. The French took it very well and were out celebrating the penalty-kick victory match in the streets of Paris. It sure beats burning Citroens and kicking in shop windows, no? Maybe the game did not entirely have a satisfactory endimg but it was a fine thing for France, because their team had been so underestimated, so dismissed as ‘all washed up’ and…
French fans cheering their team’s victory Source: AP, Reuters and AFP, via Yahoo! News Here’s why soccer is fun – France unexpectedly beat powerhouse Spain in the quarter finals of the match, 3-1, in a very good game. Nobody expected France to do it, not even me, but sure enough, they did. Spain’s a very strong, very impressive team, and they looked hard to beat. But the French team beat Korea earlier, which is not an easy soccer team, and perhaps the effort that went into that was underestimated. Anyway, most everyone wrote off France after their dismal performance in…
Carlos The Jackal, in his yeayyy-babeeee days Source: 24-Hour Party People Just as Venezuelan Hugo Chavez plays the role of clown-dictator in the world Axis Of Evil, so does Venezuelan terrorist Carlos The Jackal play the bozo in the world War On Terror. It’s like a bad parody that keeps repeating itself. Not that his crimes aren’t real. The fat balding terrorist, who had his heyday in the 1970s as an International Man Of Mystery, shooting up OPEC meetings and taking diplomats hostage, in the end ended up in Sudan down there with bin Laden, and eventually was scooped up…
Now that all the media glory for France’s masked shop-trashing thugs is over, something sad and quiet has happened in the wake of their violent “victory.” France’s best and brightest are leaving France. One by one, they are leaving their homeland, in search of work, and a better life. They are heading to the savage lands, the lands of capitalism, the places denounced as inhuman, darwinian, American. Places that no French person supposedly would ever want to live. France’s angry young men who actually believe this, taught well by their Marxist intellectual schoolmasters, rioted late last year to condemn that…
French Revolutionary Sabine Herold Source: Never Yet Melted La Margaret Thatcher of France? Source: The Telegraph, London Glenn at Instapundit has found the impossible, an authentic French revolutionary and Babe of Politics, Sabine Herold, 25, who takes it as a compliment when people call her Mlle. Thatcher. Mlle. Herold is a fierce free marketer who thinks Nicolas Sarkozy is a wimp and has begun running for office on a campaign ticket that says the French have got to stop going on strike all the time. Given the fact that the French are just northern Latin Americans, white-wine Latin Americans, deep…
The great political thinker, Alvaro Vargas Llosa, has written a beautiful essay on the trouble with France and its unsustainable economic model. He touches on the French sense of fear and insecurity as one reason why the protests were so sudden and virulent. He also notes the irony of French students saying they want jobs and security defending the very system that denies it to them. 25% unemployment is not job security. In fact, it’s not even a job. Read the whole brilliant thing here.
France has scrapped its proposed youth jobs laws that allows workers in their first two years of employment to be fired at will. The idea behind the bill, backed by Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, was to give employers more incentive to hire the young by alleviating their fears of getting a slacker they wouldn’t be able to get rid of. Things had been so bad in France that no one wanted to hire anyone. Consequently, young people had the highest rates of unemployment, by far, in the nation – something like 20%, with at least 40% unemployment rates among…
Fausta has an excellent French news roundup on all the riots that have engulfed the key European state this week, with links to tons of news sources. Many of her items are taken from the French press, adding a better dimension to the picture than ordinary media usually do. Check it out here.
Daniel Duquenal is a French Venezuelan with strong ties — and insights — to both countries. He is also a fervent believer in democracy as a man of the left. Daniel has written a spectacular essay describing the similarities between France’s angry antirevolution and Venezuela’s under the emerging Hugo Chavez dictatorship. Daniel sees similarities between the French thugs intent on burning Paris down in a bid to preserve their privileges, and the money grabbing and privilege-preserving maneuvers of Hugo Chavez’s vanguard party elite, who also are intent on forcing an unsustainable economic system on Venezuela, explicitly to impoverish it –…
Mass protests against a labor law making it easier to fire young workers have ignited throughout France. The law will allow employers to fire workers under 26 years old without cause. Over 700,000 people filled the streets of Paris alone, while estimates around the country top 3 million. Transportation, businesses, universities and other services have been paralyzed in a general strike. Pictures can be seen here. These mostly peaceful protests follow more violent actions by youths that began weeks ago. While the some may focus on the minor incidents of vandalism in hopes to disparage them, but the fact of…
Glenn at Instapundit has gotten some amazing information about France that you don’t see in the mainstream media, along with a couple incredible pictures. There’s a vast youth counterprotest full of beautiful young people who are standing up against the bandana-swathed firebomb-hurling losers who would burn the city down, all for the right to not have to work hard in their early years of employment. That’s right, sensible heads have prevailed, the protest babes are out, and the revolutionary spirit of Frederic Bastiat is resurrected. That means thousands of industrious French young people have taken to the streets to SUPPORT…
Not since 1968 has France seen so many educational institutions occupied and on strike. Thousands of students and young people have brought Paris to a standstill. Source: Thibautcho They are protesting a new labor law that would permit probationary employment for the first two years of employment for all new workers. That would affect them most of all. France’s young people grow up without the big dreams their American counterparts. But at the same time, they have their consolation. That compensation is that if they can land a job, no matter what kind of job, and no matter what kind…
Instapundit has found a terrific blog called Yannick Laclau from Spain showing that Nicolas Sarkozy of France is getting ‘down in the trenches’ of the blogosphere, which is to say, actually publishing comments on other peoples’ blogs. Yannick, the blogger who discovered this notes that while Dominique de Villepin writes love poetry and Napoleonic history, Sarkozy hops into the blog pool and blogs with the normal people. It’s an extremely clever political move and is certain to get him both popularity as well as headlines. It shows that he is both nervy and in tune. Yannick’s terrific post and analysis…
After nearly three weeks of silence when France was in a desperate time of need for leadership, President Chirac finally made a speech on television outlining his plan for solving the root problems that caused the violent suburban riots. He spoke bluntly of France’s problem with racism, a change of political discourse quite refreshing, but failed completely to recommend fundamental changes to the French social model. Instead of proposals to officially acknowledge the existence of racial demographics and create the economic conditions by which opportunity and growth can occur, he has proposed that the model for integration should remain unchanged.…
A few days ago I predicted that the riots in France would become fodder for the French far-right — the Le Pen and National Front types oft considered xenophobic zealots. Because of the high amounts of violence coming from immigrants, and the weak response by the government, politics will move further to the right. Le Pen will look more appealing, and the governing center-right will have to move further right in order to compete. That’s the gist anyway, so make sure to read the whole article. Well, guess what? It just may be coming true already. Once the flames, if…
As the French riots near the two-week point – 13 nights now – there is a debate both as to whether a moderate drop-off in violence Tuesday means it is winding down or just fluctuating, as well as the broader question of what the riots mean socially and religiously for France. The purpose of this post is two-fold. First, I will do a round-up of news and commentary in the European English and French-language medias. Second, under the section subtitled Jihad, Intifada or Mere Degeneracy?, I will examine the broader issue of Islam and the future of France. I conclude…
Jacques Chirac was swept into power in the runoff presidential election of 2002 with 82% of the vote. He achieved this unprecedented tally because his opponent was Jean-Marie Le Pen, a xenophobic man often called a French fascist. Le Pen’s defeat was preceded by a million man march in which the whole country, except for far-right National Front voters, rejected his anti-immigrant and racist views. They wouldn’t allow France to become the kind of vision that Le Pen wanted, which left him with a mere 17% of the vote. The election campaign that year says quite a bit about the…
Awhile back I was disagreeing with someone I respect on the nature of France and its need for democratic revolution, same as the rest of the unfree world. Today, I feel sad but sort of vindicated. The eighth day of rioting in France can’t be called a democratic revolution, but it’s the end result of what happens when you don’t get one. The persistent joblessness, the inability to assimilate immigrants, the government control of every aspect of life and above all the lack of freedom are exactly what’s behind this spreading explosion. Yes, France needs to expand its democracy. Badly.…
France is desperately in need of a democratic revolution. Socialism has failed, as it has failed everywhere else, and the French people face a bleak future. Instead, they’re getting a non-democratic revolt. Unions desperate to preserve their privileges are protesting in the streets, trying to shut the country down. Incubating revolution is complicated. The French cannot make themselves repudiate socialism. They’re not like Eastern Europeans. So, there’s all kinds of strife, blaming the wrong things, fighting productivity gains, screaming at the reality of capitalism, and refusing to change and grow – the same mirror of confusion that characterized the May…
France is such a benighted backward place that could be so otherwise. The broadest, brightest light in all Western Civilization in recent years seems to have given all of that up to pursue America-hating instead. It’s insane. Not even the May 29 referendum on the EU constitution was entirely good in results, given the provincialism of a nation that seems to have lost its national confidence. But Franco at Barcepundit alerts us to an important exception in this trend, in an article he found about a friendly Frenchman named Nicolas Sarkozy. He is immensely popular in France, not an enemy…
The Times has an incredible piece on how fast and how hard the revolutionary winds of change are hitting Europe. Europeans everywhere are rejecting the Franco-German centralized-welfare-statist model and embracing the Anglo-Roman ideal of freedom and rule of law. It’s happening at breakneck speed, and among people no one ever expected such enthusiastic support from. East and West are uniting under common ideals, not degrading spoils-grabbing. Europeans everywhere are rejecting subsidies, taxes, bureaucracy, privilege, inequality and inertia, in favor of free capitalism and fairness, something that could make Europe the dynamic powerhouse it is meant to be. The Revolution is…
So the French have rejected the proposed new constitution for the European Union. This is a vote of potentially massive importance for the future of Europe and the Western world as a whole. The European project for an “ever closer union” has long been an elite one, and especially over the past decade the gap between the elites and European populations grew large. All maintream French parties supported this constitution, yet the French people strongly rejected it. The Communists, Greens, hardline socialists and the National Front voted overwhelmingly against the treaty; the moderate socialists and the center-right Gaullists of President…