Behind the Façades in France: What expats and the mainstream media (French and American alike) fail to notice (or fail to tell you) about French attitudes, principles, values, and official positions…
Marc Roche has an article on Bill Emmott's leaving The Economist while Rémi Barroux has a couple on France's work inspectors and Ariane Chemin has one on the possible Corsican gangster who was murdered at the Ajaccio airport. Meanwhile, the demonstrations are continuing.
There is this twisted notion of anti-trust floating around in some corners. The notion has to do with ‘busting open’ i-tunes even though there is nothing really monopolistic about a artist choosing to sell their work on it, nor does a buyer have some sort of natural right to be able to purchase it in the desired format.
«For its part, Apple hasn't yet commented on the pending legislation or any changes that may result from its passage. But this is isn't the first time Apple has been hassled for the way it does business in France. Last year, Apple's French unit was sued by the Union Federale des Consummateurs -- Que Choisir (UFC-Que-Choisir). The consumer group accused Apple of violating consumer law by not mentioning that iTunes songs don't work with other brands of players, and thereby tying sales of the two products. Apple is fighting the suit.»What if you wanted to buy a book in the B3 format and not “trade size”? What exactly are your ‘rights’ to that? Look at it this way – on one side you have a ‘foreign’ entity in Virgin with sought legislation favorable to them, and in the other case Vivendi Universal doing the same. The messenger, or complainant, mattered more that the concept. Like the ongoing anti-Microsoft zealotry anti-competitiveness is confused for ‘the killer app.’
«And in 2004, VirginMega tried to force Apple to open up the iPod so that French customers of other services could play their music on the player. That complaint was rejected by the French Competition Council, which said access to the iPod wasn't indispensable to the development of the digital-music marketplace.»It is the equivalent of passing a law saying that a newpaper had to be translated into every known language because the medium isn’t universal, regardless if it isn’t free for the stealing – my synapses just don’t do Finno-Ugric languages, THEREfore...
Are the protesting students just an ugly mob expressing their rage, enviously trying to have a 1968 of their own? Or do they have an endgame? Who’s to take hold of this “movement”, and what are they trying to accomplish?"We're touching something sacred here," said François Vergne, a lawyer in Paris with Morgan Lewis, a leading employment law firm in the United Statesto the International Herald Tribune's Katrin Bennhold.
The traditional French CDI, which still accounts for almost 90 percent of employment contracts, has an average probation period of 1.5 months, compared with 6 months in Germany, 9 to 12 months in Denmark and one year in Britain. After that, dismissals can cost employers 12 to 24 months of salary. Disputes take a year on average and are judged by employment tribunals, which must rule in favor of the employee where there is reasonable doubt.
Roubaud knows that firsthand. In his 33 years as head of Simonet, he said, he has fired only four people. Twice, the dispute involved years of legal wrangling; in one case the costs matched his company's annual profit.
"That sort of experience puts you off hiring," he said. "It gives you existential fears if you're running a small business."
Blog comment tread recently asked the question: does George Clooney belong in a dress? Feminized? Butch? or a Man?
Hot or not? Our irreplaceable readers decide.
Pourriel International is keeping the dream alive after all these years, and in so many ways:
Quarante ans après la Révolution culturelle 40 years after the cultural revolution, I would add, communism is STILL a bad idea.
Iraq's prime minister has met with Le Monde's Patrice Claude. The result is an article (which long remained unavailable online) in which the title has the word "terrorists" in quotes (M. Jaafari refuse de négocier avec des « terroristes ») and which goes on to highlight a sentence suggesting the Americans are unhappy with democracy (Pour M. Jaafari, Américains, Kurdes et Arabes sunnites qui rejettent sa candidature, doivent « respecter la démocratie »). As a general rule, the focus of the article is on Iraq's problems and on standing up to the Americans, whose departure would set everything well.
Khalas!:
«As a student currently attending the Sorbonne (history and language) I must say...WTF! I am more than a little irritated, I want to attend class. My conferences have been cancelled 3 times. I cannot go to the school office to pick up paperwork because it is closed...BLIMEY!!...»I guess someone, unlike the ‘leaders of the future’ they're surrounded by, sees something else in life then demanding a pound of flesh from others and bellowing out good intention while chucking bricks. It starts with being fed up:
Strange? Really? Isn’t scarcity and fighting over resources what a nanny-state inevitably leads to? The only place Malthus' theory really appies is in a disaster are, or a well planned commune.«but people have little foresight and like most college age idiots, kids will be kids, people want what they want, everything else...job growth, creativity, innovation, hard work...be damned....F*** everyone, I want to work at the supermarche for the next 40 years and if I am crap...TOO BAD! you cannot fire me. Vive les socialistes! Strange place this....»
«A student who attempted with numerous others to take over the College de France university, near the Sorbonne university in Paris, sits and cries on the street after clashes with riot policemen Monday, March 13, 2006. The French prime minister's vow to press on with a new labor law that has sent students into the streets drew fresh criticism Monday from unions and the opposition Socialists, who said President Jacques Chirac should intervene[ED.: even though they tacitly back the whiny punks in the street]. The top two unions of high school students called for classroom protests starting Monday.»Photo credit: AP/ Michel Euler.
In an attempt to be a ‘counterweight’ to everything in civilization, they end up pouring billions into one 2nd rate mimicry when it’s too late. If government wasn’t in the business of trying to run businesses, they might find themselves at the high end of the curve, and not the long tail.
Never, in the history of the Internet, has a broadband provider blocked a customer from accessing their Yahoo! Mail or Google search engine. Yet, these companies want Congress to enact legislation that will protect them from this non-existent problem.Tell Congress: Hands off the Internet.
Ironically, these calls for the government to become the Internet’s traffic cop are being led by companies like Google, which only a short time ago made headlines when it chose to cooperate with the Communist leadership of China.
Remember when Google caved to the Chinese government and agreed to block access to all information and websites that speak about freedom and democracy? When they agreed to censor all information that discusses Tiananmen Square and independence for Taiwan – or anything else that can be interpreted to go against the interests of China’s Communist leadership?
Can you believe it’s supposed conservative lawmakers who are now cow-towing to these interests and offering to legislate and regulate the Internet in response to these ridiculous demands?
We have witnessed the success of the Internet and all that it does: brings families closer, grows economies, creates a new generation of entrepreneurs and increases access to information for people all over the world. All this with little, if any interference from the government.
The Internet must remain free from government regulation and taxation!
«According to one of the signers, the French writer Caroline Fourest, the threat was made this Saturday on the website ummah.net. It mentions a who’s who guide and a list of targets scheduled for termination.
In contrast, this is what real men do. In my memory, it's a first for a Canadian PM.
The group urges its adherents to take their time but says it should happen soon. It adds that it isn’t necessary to first have a Fatwa from a religious leader, such as the one Ayatollah Khomeini issued in 1989 against Salman Rushdie’s life for having offended the religion.»
Just imagine you own a small company. How eager would you be to hire someone - anyone! - if you knew that you had to carry him or her forever? Never mind all the perks you are required to lavish on employees.In Vive la Sloth!, Jonah Goldberg takes on "what happened over the weekend at the Sorbonne, the creme de la Brie of French education."
Every sane economist understands that this is an untenable system. Unemployment among French workers under the age of 26 runs at about 23 percent, and it's higher than 50 percent in immigrant-heavy suburbs.
…parliament decided to add un petit peu of flexibility. Of course, they couldn't call it "flexibility" because the French consider that a code word for capitalism run amok or "Americanization." And what greater hell is there than Americanization? After all, between 1970 and 2003, America produced 59 million jobs. France, Germany and Italy put together managed to create fewer than 18 million jobs over the same period - and nearly half of that came from the demographic injection of the East German economy.
America, according to French politicians, journalists and intellectuals, is an economic state of nature. But in 2004, according to economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth, only 13 percent of unemployed American workers couldn't find jobs in 12 months of looking. In France, 42 percent of unemployed workers couldn't find jobs within 12 months. (In Germany the number was 52 percent, and in Italy it was 50 percent.)
In response to the hint of "flexibility," students at the Sorbonne rioted with the aid of France's powerful labor unions. Fifty-eight percent of French voters now believe the First Employment Contract should be repealed.
The Sorbonne takeover is the most interesting and revealing part of the story because these are the best students France has to offer. In other words, these kids should have the least trouble finding work. But they're revolting because they understand that France isn't an egalitarian society - French propaganda notwithstanding. It is a system designed to lavish job protections, perks and, most of all, the French "lifestyle" on the upper-middle class. France pretends to be a great civilization, but in reality it wants to be an Epcot Center attraction, a "FranceLand" where everything is comfortable and protected. Liberating the job market, even a tiny bit, threatens a system designed to keep the French upper crust from working too hard and to keep those brown-skinned and lower-class slobs out of the best jobs and cocktail parties.
What should be so frightening about this episode for Americans is that it shows how even the best and brightest can become addicted to welfare.
