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When we claim to have probelms with the French do we mean Rousseau or Jean-Luc Godard? But no, we mean Racine and Jarry. And when we think of yoots we think not of rampaging violent Muslim thugs but of -- soccer hooligans.Folks, this summer in France is going to be a long weekend.
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French lawmakers pass anti-hooligan bill on first reading
PARIS -- French lawmakers took a first step Tuesday toward approving an anti-hooligan bill that would give authorities more power to crack down on racism and discrimination at soccer stadiums.
[....]France, like elsewhere in Europe, has faced rising violence and racism at soccer stadiums. National police have counted 332 incidents of violence in French stadiums this season.
A law voted on in January allows regional officials to ban thugs from soccer matches, forcing them to report to police stations on match days.
Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who first announced the bill last month, has said he wants to rid stadiums of hooligans.
http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp
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France Beyond Remedy: Sarkozy a Worthy Dauphin of Chirac by Paul Belien, The Brussels Journal
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
France is beyond remedy. The country is heading for collapse, and its
fate will be well deserved. As expected the French trade unions and the rioting leftwing vandals (aka "students") in the streets won the fight for political supremacy over parliament and the government. Yesterday the French president Jack Chirac withdrew the French youth labour bill (CPE), approved earlier by a parliamentary majority, while the man he stabbed in the back by doing so, Chirac's former dauphin and France's Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, announced that he will not stand for the presidential elections next year.Villepin's CPE would have enabled French employers to lower the cost of job creation by allowing them to hire first-time employees under the age of 26 for a conditional two-year period during which they could be fired without much hassle. Last August a similar bill was introduced allowing small companies, with fewer than 20 employees, to fire new employees during a trial period without the normal prohibitive procedures that make it impossible for companies to hire and fire in response to market demands. As a direct result of the new bill, these small companies were able to create 335,000 new jobs. France's students, however, have made it clear that they would rather not have a job – and live at the expense of the state welfare system – than have a job which is not guaranteed to be virtually life-long.
It is to Villepin's credit that he fought for his bill. It is to the discredit of his rival, Nicolas Sarkozy, whom we at one time mistakingly took for a defender of law and order and of free-market reforms, that he called for surrender to the demands of the rioters and the trade unions. With Villepin's announcement that he will not stand for the presidential elections the road is now wide open for Sarkozy to become the presidential candidate of the governing UMP. However, those who assume that Sarkozy, if he becomes president, will be bold enough to deliver the market reforms that France badly needs, are deluded. His stance on the CPE has made that clear enough. Sarkozy has proved to be a worthy successor to Jack "Spineless" Chirac.
Last December 17th The Economist wrote an analysis on the situation in France, entitled "After the riots" (referring to the previous round of rioting in la douce France in November). Here is a quote, which shows how in barely five months a political situation can change dramatically:
"Mr Sarkozy's success is not guaranteed. A [poll] ranked him as only the fourth most popular politician on the right. Mr de Villepin came top, with a seven-point lead. UMP deputies know that the prime minister has wider appeal to the centre and the left, making him a better second-round candidate. [...] The more Mr Sarkozy leans to the right, the more space there is in the centre for Mr de Villepin."
In the end it did not turn out to be a competition between the politician of the right and the one of the centre, but between the principled and the unprincipled. As almost always, the unprincipled man won the day.
In this respect there is not much difference with the situation in Italy,
where Silvio Berlusconi might narrowly lose or win the elections in which the Italians were given a non-choice, between two unprincipled politicians, neither of them willing to introduce the economic reforms that Italy badly needs. The same was true during last year's German elections. Waldemar Ingdahl's contribution today also refers to the European disease. The "old continent" is dying from welfarism, but the patient is refusing treatment. The citizens are forced into voting for populists, most of whom do not want to reform the welfare state either and simply hope to prolong its survival by throwing out the immigrants, bad ones (Islamic jihadists) and good ones (Polish plumbers) alike.
Once, if my memory serves me well, my life was a banquet where every heart revealed itself, where every wine flowed.
One evening I took Beauty in my arms-- and I thought her bitter-- and I insulted her.
I steeled myself against justice.
I fled. O witches, O misery, O hate, my treasure was left in your care...
I have withered within me all human hope. With the silent leap of a sullen beast, I have downed and strangled every joy.
I have called for executioners; I want to perish chewing on their gun butts. I have called for plagues, to suffocate in sand and blood. Unhappiness has been my god. I have lain down in the mud, and dried myself off in the crime-infested air. I have played the fool to the point of madness.
And springtime brought me the frightful laugh of an idiot.
Now recently, when I found myself ready to croak! I thought to seek the key to the banquet of old, where I might find an appetite again.
That key is Charity. (This idea proves I was dreaming!)
"You will stay a hyena, etc....," shouts the demon who once crowned me with such pretty poppies. "Seek death with all your desires, and all selfishness, and all the Seven Deadly Sins."
Ah, I've taken too much of that; still, dear Satan, don't look so annoyed, I beg you! And while waiting for a few belated cowardices, since you value in a writer all lack of descriptive or didactic flair, I pass you these few foul pages from the diary of a Damned Soul.
Arthur Rimbaud, "A Season in Hell."
[More] http://www.geocities.com/athens/8161/saisonfirstpart.html#_Toc423194799
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First four stills from Jean-Luc Godard, Weekend.
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