From the Saudi Gazette, March 23, 2006 via The Religious Policeman:
Yikes…I’m offended and I am not even Jewish or American.
Of course, actually believing in freedom of speech - even in nations where there is none - I have no problem at all with the publication of this vile bit of anti-semitism. It simply underscores how pervasive anti-semitic imagry is in Saudi and the rest of the Arab world. And that is an important thing to know.
(And, hey, Antonia, should I have published this or should I show a modicum of good taste and discretion and merely described the cartoon and maybe include a link? Just asking.
Written by jay on March 29th, 2006 with 6 comments.
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“In both countries, the lack of reform of the labour code and the social-assistance system make for the most significant part of the unemployment problem,” said Raymond Torres, head of employment analysis at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris. “Both countries have 35 to 38 per cent of young people of working age without a job compared to [lower rates] in successful countries like Denmark or the U.K. or Sweden.”
Those countries have changed their economies so that they are dominated by the service industries, abandoning much of the industrial manufacturing sector that has moved to the lower-wage economies of eastern Europe and Asia.
But the French and German employment schemes are built around the idea of industrial manufacturing economies dominated by large, state-supported corporations. This month, France set itself against the European Union by forbidding neighbouring countries from buying stakes in its big manufacturers; instead, Mr. de Villepin led the consolidation of competitors into huge, French-only monopolies that seemed like a return to the authoritarian economies of the postwar years.
the globe and mail
The rigidity of the French labour market is very much on the lines of the world of “I’m alright Jack” pre-Thatcher England. And the mass industrialization and state ownership model owes more to Stalin and the New Economic Plan than to relatively modern economic thinking.
There are going to be several million people in the streets of France demanding an end to a minor liberalization of French labour practices before they are even implemented. At a guess they will force the government to back down. Which will push France even further down the economic league tables.
The French illusion can probably be sustained for another few years; but, rather quickly, France will become even less competitive in the world economy than it already is. Unblessed with natural resources and cursed with slums full of annoyed Muslim youth the loss of competitiveness is going to begin to destroy the French economy’s capacity to continue to deliver the “social benefits” the nitwits in the street think that they are protecting.
This would be an excellent time for Canada to begin seriously recruting young, educated, French immigrants. Those would be the people at the counter demos.
They will not be people like this student quoted by the Globe:
“We have to defend the rights that were won by our ancestors and which the current government is trying to take away,” said Maxime Ourly, a literature student who joined tens of thousands protesting on Paris’ Left Bank.
globe and mail
M. Ourly should stay in the land of her ancestors.
Written by jay on March 29th, 2006 with no comments.
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