French labour laws trigger immense protests

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui


And without permit, it's illegal.

Yes, indeed. But I'm also of the opinion that there is a de facto legitimacy to a demo that gathers thousands of people, whether allowed or not by the city.

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
fakeboris pretended as if he knew what he was talking about and I believed him.

And what is it that I don't know about the CPE you need to enlighten me with?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
Yes, indeed. But I'm also of the opinion that there is a de facto legitimacy to a demo that gathers thousands of people, whether allowed or not by the city.

That's nice, but your opinion is entirely irrelevant to the matter at hand.

[Lonestar]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris


And that's why it sucks, it's like you can demonstrate but I'll hold your hand with a baton above your head.

There is a moral difference between "You can't demonstrate" and "You can demonstrate, but it has to be in this location so as to not interfere with emergancy services when you ****-ups get heatsroke/hypothermia/catch yourselves on fire by accident."

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui


That's nice, but your opinion is entirely irrelevant to the matter at hand.

Not exactly, I've been to a lot of demos where we didn't have a permit. The cops could very well have beaten the **** out of us, but unlike some posters here, they know better than to throw the sh1t around the fan.

[Fake Boris]

500 persons gather in a public place. They don't have a permit. You're a police supervisor. What do you do? you could call for reinforcements and have the bunch arrested, but it would be plain stupid. First because arresting people for no other reason than them being there will inevitably result in ambulances and broken windows, and second because it sends a message to the others - I mean those not at the demo but who will go to the next one - that violence is the only possible outcome.

Even the police is smarter than some of you guys, and hell, that's not a compliment.

[Imran Siddiqui]

If they are blocking traffic and don't have a permit (ie, a dedicated part of the city is set aside for the protest, with detours to keep traffic flowing), then **** yea, you try to get them to stop blocking traffic. If they refuse, you start arresting.

Try your **** in NYC. They've arrested groups for blocking traffic without a permit. Your right to protest doesn't mean that you can cause harm by preventing essential services from getting to their destinations.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

todays strike isn;t as big as before - in Paris, most of the RATP is running as is most of the eurostar and thalys networks, and 2 out of 3 tgvs on the national scale.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

http://www.lemonde.fr/web/portfolio/0,12-0@2-734511,31-757657@51-725561,0.html

here's a cool photo slide of police brutality, the use of painball guns. theres audio and captions in french.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris

What I mean is that a large demonstration will necessarily be diverting traffic, permit or not.

The point being that detours can be created, emergency services can be notified ahead of time so that road blocks can be avoided, etc... Also where I come from nearly all authorized demonstrations do not block any public roads and people who do attempt to block public roads are normally fined or arrested. Instead the authorities allow demonstrations to occur in public parks, open lots, sidewalk areas, or very rarely a secondary street with in view of some big event. One of the only times they actually let a street be blocked was during the Republican convention of 1996 and that was only because there wasn't a public park near the convention center and there were to many people to just use the sidewalk. The authorities designated a protesting area in front of the convention center where all of the convention attendees would see the protests and be able to read the signs/hear the chants but where the protesters didn't stop the convention and where traffic detours were set up ahead of time.

[The Mad Monk]

Philip Meeson, chief executive of Jet2.com, was angry that one of his planes was delayed flying back to Britain by protesting French students.

About 50 students staged a runway sit-down that stopped around 100 passengers boarding a Boeing 737 at Chambery airport in the French Alps.

Eventually the plane was able to take off for Leeds Bradford airport, where it arrived 90 minutes late.

Mr Meeson said he was annoyed French police had done nothing to stop the Chambery runway protest which also forced Jet2.com to divert a flight from Manchester to Grenoble.

He repeated his comments of last week when, on the back of a strike by French air traffic controllers, he urged "lazy frogs to get back to work".

"I am absolutely furious about the events in France over the last week. We are a low cost airline that has had passengers stranded through no fault of our own," he said.

Earlier, he wrote on his airline's website: "Whilst France is undeniably a beautiful country (with equally good food and beer I hasten to add) we are appalled and quite frankly tired of the air traffic controllers' old fashioned attitude to dealing with any issues they may have."

His comments were illustrated by a picture of a toy frog in front of an air traffic control tower, holding a sign reading: "I am lazy."

Mr Meeson concluded: "In short we urge the controllers to get back to work or get another job."

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1789096.html

Anyone care to hazard a guess as to what would happen to unauthorized people on a runway in the US?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Perfect encapsulation (the "I am lazy" frog).

[Lawrence of Arabia]

Its funny how the french get no sympathy from anyone.

[Sandman]

Guardian article on 'declinology'

France seems to invest a huge amount of political energy in hopeless, often nonsensical causes - remember when it wanted to keep the same number of votes as more populous Germany in the EU? Or the CAP, of course.

[Spiffor]

Excellent Guardian article (even though I often disagree with Libération, to which the author belongs). It encompasses pretty much the entire debate on the French decline.

However, I'd like to add that the article doesn't mention the role of the "left of the left", which is still discreet, but whose weight is increasing. The Socialists indeed offer nothing but an ideological void in the face of the right. However, the various flavours of commies are offering such actual ideas (of an alternate economic paradigm), and they are growing in popularity. Their time hasn't come yet, but if the Socialists remain as useless as they are now, these ideas might very well become huge in the next decade.