The [French] Constitutional Council declared access to the internet to be a basic human right, directly opposing the key points of Mr Sarkozy‘s law, passed in April, which created the first internet police agency in the democratic world.

…

Les sages – the wise men – as the council is known, took the teeth out of the law. They ruled that “free access to public communication services online” is a right laid down in the Declaration of Human Rights, which is in the preamble to the French constitution.

OK, I wasn’t a fan of Sarkozy’s heavy-handed attempt to control access to the internet, but internet access being a basic human right protected by their Constitution is completely absurd. What’s next?

- access to affordable and soft toilet paper
- access to free marijuana while heavily taxing and restricting nicotine
- the right to free vacuum cleaners and bottles of Windex
- not just free condoms, but a right to quality orgasms

Welcome to the Brave New World.

access to the internet, basic human right, Sarkozy

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Last year when the Islamic riots were raging in France, a seemingly endless parade of apologists told us over and over that the violence was due to economic oppression and alienation, and had nothing to do with radical Islam.

From Times Online UK via littlegreenfootballs.com:

Flames lick around a burning car on a tiny telephone screen. Omar, 17, a veteran of France’s suburban riots, replayed the sequence with pride. “It was great. We did lots of them and then we went out and torched more the next day.”

Before next week’s anniversary of the Clichy riots, the violence and despair on the estates are again to the fore. Despite a promised renaissance, little has changed, and the lid could blow at any moment.

The figures are stark. An average of 112 cars a day have been torched across France so far this year and there have been 15 attacks a day on police and emergency services. Nearly 3,000 police officers have been injured in clashes this year. Officers have been badly injured in four ambushes in the Paris outskirts since September. Some police talk of open war with youths who are bent on more than vandalism.

“The thing that has changed over the past month is that they now want to kill us,” said Bruno Beschizza, the leader of Synergie, a union to which 40 per cent of officers belong. Action Police, a hardline union, said: “We are in a civil war, orchestrated by radical Islamists.”

From International Herald Tribune via the Jawa Report:

Paris Police held two teenagers for questioning Monday after a gang of youths forced passengers out of a bus in a Paris suburb this weekend and set it on fire, officials said.

The two teens, aged 13 and 18, were rounded up after the attack Sunday in Grigny, south of Paris, and were being held in a regional police office in nearby Evry, police said.

Sunday’s assailants, some wearing masks, forced passengers out of the bus in broad daylight, set it ablaze and then stoned firefighters who came to the rescue, police officials said. The local prefecture said nearly 30 youths were involved in the incident.

But who would do such a thing? North African Muslim immigrants.

Since January 2006 +31,000 cars have been torched. What will the apologists say this year when the riots repeat, as even French police have stopped denying the nature of the enemy? These people are Occupiers, not Immigrants. Immigrants assimilate. Occupiers burn villages when they don’t get what they want.

Is this simply Stockholm Syndrome: coddle up to those who threaten you in the hope that they will not hurt you? Or is this simply the White Surrender Flag Of France?

Islam, riot, France, Clichy

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France faced criticism in the European press for not offering more troops for southern Lebanon, which was seen as jeopardizing the UN force’s difficult task of imposing peace.

Despite expectations that France would provide the bulk of a planned 15,000 strong UN force, Paris said Thursday it would send 200 troops to reinforce the UN mission in Lebanon.

“For France to have retreated from a key role to the realm of ‘symbolic’ gestures ‘symbolises’ only one thing: a French loss of nerve,” [The Times of London] said Friday after having previously praised French efforts to find a solution to the crisis.

Resolution 1701 calls for Israeli troops to withdraw from southern Lebanon in tandem with the arrival of Lebanese troops to the Hezbollah heartland and a beefed-up UN force.

While France said it was prepared to command the enlarged force, it also called for safety guarantees for its soldiers before making further commitments. That’s right – “safety guarantees” for its military. Something like “France agrees to go into the area as long as everyone promises not to shoot at us.” One wonders if Eisenhower asked for safety guarantees before sending his troops into Normandy to save France from the Nazis.

I am sure the Islamofascists will be more than happy to give them all the guarantees they want. Afterall, they have always honored their peace agreements with infidels in the past.

Paris has come under criticism for sending just 200 soldiers to the expanded UN deployment mandated under UN Security Council Resolution 1701 agreed August 11 that set out the terms of ceasefire between Hezbollah and the Israeli military. Apparently France, the former colonial power in Lebanon, is unwilling to send military troops into an area that could see actual military action. France learned long ago that bullets hurt, and symbolic gestures are about as aggressive as they perfer to be. Retreat is another option Paris is ready to explore, even a retreat before any troops have actually landed.

The deployment is far below what was expected from France when it co-wrote the UN resolution with the United States calling for a combat-ready UN force of up to 15,000 troops to bring peace to southern Lebanon. Seems that French pens are stronger that French swords. Sure, says France, let’s send 15,000 troops into the area – just as long as none come from France. Perhaps we could ask Iraq to send 10,000 troops?

The Le Monde newspaper said Paris’ apparent U-turn was due to fears over “reprisals from Syria or Iran”, which both support Hezbollah. French military forces, it has been discovered, might have to perform genuine military actions, something not allowed by Paris officials.

France was once the most powerfull empire in the face of the earth. Napoloen’s armies marched across Europe and won countless battles. And now they have been reduced to “Oh, we don’t want to get hurt”. How the mighty have fallen.

France wants “safety guarantees,” only to provide 200 out of 15,000 troops, and they want to command the force. There’s arrogance, breathtaking arrogance, and then there’s the French.

Facing a new, militant tone from Damascus and Tehran — as well as a Beirut government that is too weak to confront the strengthened Hezbollah — France is hesitant about sending soldiers. France recently noticed on CNN that Hezbollah uses guns that go -bang- and bombs that go -boom- and great fear and trepidation have set in.

But in France’s defense it has to be noted that, in the past, UN-led forces proved to be a failure, in some cases a total disaster, with field commanders needing to consult the elephantine bureaucracy of the United Nations and are unable to take decisions without consulting the glass building. Military failure is nothing new to the UN. The primary mission of the UN is to bolster oppressive militants, not to bring them down.

If Paris does not stump up more soldiers, “its decision cannot but contribute to bring us a step back, with the rearming of Hezbollah, which will wait for an opportune moment to restart its hostilities,” a senior Israeli foreign ministry official said.

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Why the unrest? Because their place in the great French social welfare state is being threatened. More specifically, they’re rioting because they are actually facing the prospect of having to earn their jobs and work to keep them.

Giving employers flexibility in dismissing young workers during a two-year trial period may seem modest by the standards of other countries. But the French jealously guard a costly benefit system that makes firing workers extremely difficult. Employers say those benefits discourage hiring and job creation.

The solution was basic, rational, logical and simple. Remove the onerous restrictions on employers hiring younger workers, and that is exactly what France‘s prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, did. Under new regulations a French employer is allowed to hire someone 26 years old and younger on a two-year trial basis. After those two years the full range of employment guarantees would kick in. The whole point of the law was to encourage companies to hire young people.

Wow. Imagine that. You might get fired from your first job. Oh God, the horror!

These young people in France really believe that they should be able to be hired at their tender ages and that a company must not be allowed to fire them from their first day at work (except “for cause,” which, as we are learning in America, is increasingly difficult to establish). In America, most of us would call the French young people’s attitudes “childish”, “immature”, or “spoiled.”

• Socialism teaches its citizens to expect everything, even if they contribute nothing.
• Socialism teaches its citizens that they have a plethora of rights and few corresponding obligations – except to be taxed.

And that is why the citizens of less socialist (and more religious) America give more charity per capita and per income than do citizens of socialist countries. That is why Americans volunteer time for the needy so much more than citizens of socialist countries do. That is why citizens of conservative states in America give more charity than citizens of liberal states do. The more Left one identifies oneself on the political spectrum, the more that person is likely to believe that the state, not fellow citizens, should take care of the poor and the needy.

Under socialism, one is not only liberated from having to take care of oneself; one is also liberated from having to take care of others. The state will take care of me and of everybody else. The socialist idea sounded altruistic to those who began it, and it sounds altruistic to the naive who believe in it today. In practice, however, it creates self-centered individuals and a narcissistic society. So while it may have begun as a way to help others, it has come to mean a way of evading responsibility for oneself and for others.

France has a real problem with youth unemployment. The general nationwide rate is 23%. In some minority neighborhoods the youth unemployment is much higher. There’s a reason for this. Young people in France don’t have a work history to tout when they’re out there looking for a job. A prospective employer has no job history to review when considering a young French man or woman for employment. If an employer decides to take a chance on a young employee with no job history, and if that young employee turns out to be a slacker, the employer is, to coin a phrase, pretty much screwed. French law protects the slacker. Job guarantees make it a very expensive proposition for an employer to get rid of a bad employee. One good way for a French employer to protect himself is to hire an experienced worker; someone with a good track record. The result? Young workers have more difficulty finding a job.

Now you understand what the French “youth” and their labor union friends are so upset about. These new regulations might actually mean that they will have to prove themselves at work. No longer will these kids be able to walk into their new workplace with instant job protection. This is so contrary to the great French social welfare state. The government is supposed to protect these people. They aren’t supposed to have to to go out there and actually work to earn their employment status. It’s supposed to be guaranteed by the state. Your life belongs to the state and the state must provide.

What these massive demonstrations reveal is the narcissism, laziness and irresponsibility inculcated by socialist (a.k.a. “French” or “Euro”) societies. Personal responsibility? Non.

Youths threw stones at police and set fire to the door of an apartment building in running battles at the end of a largely peaceful rally by thousands of students and workers against the CPE First Job Contract. Dozens of young people, many wearing masks or hoods, overturned cars, smashed shop windows and robbed student demonstrators of clothes and mobile phones, witnesses said. Police said they had arrested 42 people.

“This time, there are lots of young criminals on the march who are there to steal and smash,” said Charlie Herblin, a 22-year-old worker on the march.

Clashes also erupted in the western city of Rennes, where about 300 to 400 youths battled with police. Tens of thousands of students marched in cities throughout France, including Tours, Orleans and Marseille, as part of rolling protests.

Protests over the measure have disrupted three-quarters of the country’s 84 universities and Education Minister Gilles de Robien said looming exams could be postponed until the autumn. The dispute has galvanized aggressively leftist student unions, which tend to be dominated by middle- and upper-class young people who are not, if you can believe this, the primary victims of unemployment. Marches, campus takeovers and skirmishes with riot police have shut down dozens of universities in past weeks.

Enough generations of socialist policies have now passed for us to judge their effects. They are bleak. Socialism undermines the character of a nation and of its citizens. In simpler words, socialism makes people worse. That is why France is so frightened of the utterly rational idea that a young person should have a two-year trial period at work before being granted a lifetime job. Such an innovation in France would mean that young people would have to work hard and earn the right to lifetime employment. But if socialism means anything, it means that one shouldn’t have to earn anything. One merely has to breathe.

youth, Villepin, unemployment, welfare, France, employment

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