The French have now earned every barb thrown at them for the last 500 years regarding their ghastly lack of courage. Chirac's surrender to the mob in a case where he was morally and logically in the right is something all of the West's enemies will take note of:
FRENCH President Jacques Chirac has scrapped a youth job law after weeks of angry unrest, in a climbdown that undermined his prime minister and handed protesters victory. Mr Chirac's decision was a personal blow to Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who had championed the First Job Contract (CPE) as a vital job-creating reform of the French economy but had seen his popularity slump as mass opposition grew.
The governmental U-turn over the CPE makes it unlikely France will attempt broader reform of its highly-regulated labour market before 2007, some economists said.
Mr de Villepin said in a television address that he regretted that the strikes and street protests showed the CPE could not be applied but gave no hints about his own political future, on the line over his handling of the dispute.
And what type of people was Chirac and de Villepin caving to? Gateway Pundit reports:
Besides the rioting and torchings, the students raided the Sorbonne and destroyed several of the ancient and rare books from the library.
At least six rooms were sacked, five offices of the National School of Chartres looted, two lecture-halls and all the cafeterias were destroyed, three other rooms were devastated, and forty rare books were mutilated or torched at the Sorbonne. (Via Galliawatch)
All of this, the riots, the strikes, the angst, over a law that gave employers the right to fire employees (imagine!) in the first two years on the job. After that, you're on easy street. Still, not good enough for the French, who rioted to keep a 10% unemployment rate (USA 4.7%, incidentally), to maintain a limp economy that grew a whopping .3% last year (USA over 4%), and to offer no hope of employment to the poor Muslims in the slums that they profess to care so much about (gee, wonder how that's gonna work out?).
From E-Nough! :
They don't get it. Nobody gets it over here. Or do they?
The government is going to pour yet more money - because France is a rich country you see - to help les jeunes en difficulté, freely translated "youths in difficulty". In French, it generally refers to the suburbs. The money should be raised by an increased tax on tobacco.
This country is a joke.
Only to get out. Before it's too late.
The "street" was yelling "power back to the street" during those demonstrations. The "street" holds the power now. It is too late for France.
The counter-model is running towards its ruin.
And from No Parasan!:
Jacques Chirac is discredited, Dominique de Villepin, too, and with them, it seems, a certain France that told the world it could avoid change and, as exceptionalist as ever, escape immobility's ridiculousness in the process...
....For some, this is a hoot. But ridiculousness can be sad, or even ominous. That's the direction this episode points to for the future because it shows the entire French political spectrum locking itself into the depressing cavern of Chirac's political creed.....
France, now just a live theatre of the absurd, played out on a national scale.
How utterly, utterly, depressing...like watching a suicide.
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