[AGL] a clear day pov from across time and the big pond...

[Frances Morey]

 I received this from Phil Waters:

   
  Sent: Wednesday, April 05, 2006 8:50 PM
Subject: Popular Mechanics

Picture from 1954 Popular Mechanics Magazine.... 

     Read the caption and marvel!

 
   
  To which Joe Rowe replied with this, from Paris: 
   
    Greetings, Frances --- thanks for forwarding the hilarious computer photo. I'm tempted to conclude that purely rational speculations about the future, soundly based on present knowledge, are always wrong.
          Thought you'd be interested in the letter below.
  

  cheers,
  Joseph
  

  Dear Friends,
  

          Thought you might like to hear my perspective on the so-called "riots" and "violent protests" in France.
          One reason is because the  distortion of these events in the biggest US media goes far beyond simple ignorance of the world outside America --- it is a good illustration of the hidden political bias and agenda of big US media that has been growing over the last decades. See more about this in the (highly recommended)  essay from fair.org below.
          The truth is that there has been suprisingly little violence in these nationwide demonstrations and strikes, considering the many millions of people  involved. And virtually 100% of the violence that has occurred is due to kids from  hellhole housing projects in certain suburbs, who show up at the "manifs",   travelling into the city on the train (jumping the turnstyles, which is easy in many parts of the Paris metro area) to infiltrate these demonstrations,  so as to have a chance to express their rage, despair, and nihilism. (Average age of these "casseurs": 15; mostly of African and Arab ancestry, though some poor whites join them also) These violent kids  are indeed a symptom of social ills, but they have absolutely nothing  to do with the demonstrators or with the issues, of which they are mostly ignorant. The police have often been strangely absent when these hordes of adolescent casseurs arrive. When Catherine parked our car near Place d'Italie recently,
 where a demonstration was scheduled in a couple of hours, she had a sudden intuition to stop what she was doing, return to the car,  and move it, because she had parked it a bit too close to the path of the demonstration. She was just in time --- the small but effective gangs of casseurs were already in sight a block or so away, running well ahead of the demonstration,  rampaging, mugging passers-by,  smashing store windows and windshields of cars with heavy metal bars. Catherine noticed that some of them seemed no older than 12 or 13.  No police were in sight. There is strong evidence that this police incompetence is quite intentional, following orders from  high up, a tactic intended to tarnish the image of the demonstrators. Some of the shadowy leaders of these  casseur gangs, who furnish them with information as to when and where to show up,  may even be secret police-paid provocateurs.  However, the tactic no longer works, because there have been many astute news
 reports about the casseurs, and now everyone knows what is going on. And the police behavior has changed accordingly: in the demonstrations of the last week or so, beginning in late March, the gangs of casseurs were swiftly detected and neutralized by police in most cases. Hence much less violence than in previous weeks.
          The reason for these demonstrations and strikes is simple: the current Chirac govt (right-wing by French standards, probably left-wing by US neocon standards) wants to pull off a Thatcher-Blair sort of coup, dismantling 35 years of progress in labor relations, and allow  workers under 25 to be fired for no reason and with no substantial notice, at any time during their first two years on the job. This law, called the CPE (contrat de premier embauche) is so extreme that the polls show 70% of the French people against it. The reason for the nationwide reaction, especially by young students, is the intransigeance of Chirac and de Villepin, the President and Prime Minister. They have totally refused to negotiate, thinking that their substantial parliamentary majority gives them absolute power --- an attitude which the French press aptly calls "Bonapartiste". But in the last week, events have shown they were badly mistaken. Chirac tried to pull off a last-minute
 compromise of 1 year instead of 2, but it didn't work. The demonstrations only increased in size as a result. Their own party has now started to rebel against them, and their majority is crumbling fast. So it looks like there will at last  be some honest negotiation. As I write, even a few big corporate bosses are publicly turning against the CPE...
  

  FAIR MEDIA ADVISORY (fair.org)
US Media to French Youth:
Fight for your right to be fired

4/4/06

Given the mainstream media's general antipathy towards France and nearly
unanimous endorsement of neoliberal corporate globalization, it's no
surprise that reporters covering the massive student protests in France
would be unimpressed with pleas to protect workers' rights.

  The policy under fierce debate would allow many French employers more
"flexibility" to hire and fire young workers without cause—something that,
unsurprisingly, students and workers oppose. But they get little sympathy
from U.S. pundits and journalists, who endorse the changes as the proper
medicine for an ailing French economy.

In a March 21 editorial, the Los Angeles Times advised that the protesting
students deserve "Fs in Economics 101," since the law is necessary to
"restrict generous job protections" that prevail under the current system.
Such protections, the Times contends, are at the root of the country's
high unemployment rate; thus, it is "little wonder that French businesses
are reluctant to take on the burden of hiring new employees." Going one
step further, the Times suggested a different strategy: "A smarter
response would be for the students to demand that job guarantees be
loosened for workers of all ages."

The economic assumptions about France (and Western Europe as a whole) are
consistent throughout much of the media coverage, and are hardly new (see
"Europe Says No-- to Pundits Advice," Extra! 9-10/05). A March 21 article
in the New York Times referred matter of factly to the need for Western
European countries to "loosen rigid labor laws and trim costly benefits,"
then went on to chide those governments for hesitating in the face of
widespread popular opposition: "Few have the political will to force those
changes on their societies." How, or why, an advanced democracy would
"force" massively unpopular laws on its population remained unexplained.

Fox News host John Gibson—who once hoped that Paris would win its bid to
host the Olympics, because then they would have to deal with the threat of
a terrorist attack (7/6/05)—lampooned the protests (3/28/06): "The rioters
don't want to work and the threat of firing if they're lazy or won't work
is what they're mad about." Gibson added that "French youth are angry they
won't have the same chance at a lazy do-nothing job which they can't get
fired from—same as their parents."

But other, more serious reports sounded similar notes. "The French have
long enjoyed privileges all sorts of other people around the world do not
have," ABC anchor Elizabeth Vargas explained on March 28. Moments later,
reporter David Wright was making the same point to protesters. When one
told him, "We can't allow our bosses to lay off without any purpose,"
Wright said: "But it is this way the world over." CBS reporter Sheila
MacVicar was blunt, declaring on the CBS Evening News (3/29/06) that
"these students are not revolutionaries demanding change, but
  reactionaries insisting on the status quo." The usual definition of
"reactionary" is not one who defends the status quo, but one who attempts
to turn back the clock--by repealing labor protections, for example.

MacVicar's framing was the same as Time magazine's, with a headline in its
March 27 edition that read, "The Revenge of the Not-So-Radicals." The
magazine noted that protestors' wishes to maintain workers' rights might
be "a noble sentiment, but lurking beneath it is something darker: a deep
fear of change."

That assessment was matched by U.S. News & World Report, which headlined
its short piece (4/3/06) about the protests, "Is Paris Burning? Yep—for
All the Wrong Reasons." Reporter Brian Duffy critiqued the protestors,
oddly enough, for not being sufficiently radical: "Listen to the kids in
the streets, and there were brave comparisons between their hooliganism
and the May 1968 protests that toppled de Gaulle. But take a second look,
and it's plain as the sign on the corner tabac that the rioters not only
have nothing in common with the soixante-huitards but are their
  philosophical and intellectual opposites.... Today, the young running
roughshod over Paris want only stasis. They have gone aux barricades in
defense of the status quo."

The problem, wrote Duffy, is simple economics; the protesting students and
trade unionists must "understand that the 35-hour workweek, the six weeks
of paid annual leave, the jobs for life are as endangered a species as the
dodo bird. None of the kids outside Napoleon's tomb want to hear it, of
course, but change happens."

But while reporters and pundits are sure it's a simple matter of
economics, not everyone is convinced. As economist Mark Weisbrot argued
recently (Knight-Ridder, 3/30/06):



"The idea that labor protections are the cause of European unemployment is
part of an overall myth that Europeans would benefit from a more
American-style economy. The U.S. economy is said to be more competitive,
yet we are running a record trade deficit of more than 6 percent of GDP,
and the European Union is running a trade surplus. The U.S. economy is
supposedly more dynamic, but French productivity is actually higher than
ours. Their public pensions, free tuition at universities, longer
vacations (4-5 weeks as compared with 2 weeks here), state-sponsored
daycare, and other benefits are said to be unaffordable in a 'global
economy.' But since these were affordable in years past, there is no
economic logic that would make them less so today, with productivity
having grown--no matter what happens in India or China."



The fact that there is so little debate over these issues in the
mainstream media might be good for some overconfident pundits, since often
what they're arguing can seem a little peculiar. Fox News Channel's Bill
O'Reilly, for example, used the turmoil in France to rail against the
American left (3/28/06): "When you hear far left Americans use the terms 'economic justice' or 'income inequality,' you should know these are code words for socialism, a giant government that would guarantee each American a house, health care, nice wage, retirement benefits, the usual entitlement list."

As if that weren't supposed to sound bad enough, Fox's leading self-styled populist put it a different way to Jeff Faux, founding president of the progressive Economic Policy Institute: "Wait, wait, wait. Let's be honest here. If you're a French worker, you get seven weeks vacation. You work 35 hours a week. Thirty five hours a week! That's your workweek."

Faux's response was direct: "And what's wrong with that?" It's a question many in the media should ponder, instead of reflexively bashing French protesters for their unreasonable demands.
  

  

  PS --- here's another  site that's well worth the visit... the second in the Meatrix series:
  

  http://www.themeatrix2.com/
   
  Hmmm. This is a whole new slant on the unrest in France and how vaccuuous are our corporately immersed media pundits. The way Bill O'Reilly put it I, for one, thought, "Waitaminute, what's not to like?"
  May we ever see another LBJ style POTUS! We've become a nation of know-nothings-and-proud-of-it with the present bully in the pulpit. 
   
  Best, and A Happy Easter!
  Frances Morey

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