Down and Out in Paris

So our old friend Dominique de Villepin now knows how it feels to be
doing the right thing and getting hammered by know-nothings who aren't
living in the real world. Attempting to deal with the youth
unemployment problem, in other words helping the outcasts of French
society who rioted before, he has now offended the priveleged. And so
68% of the countrymen disagree with his CPE plan. And the children,
doing what children often do, are having a tantrum.

Meanwhile their elder, Jacque Chirac, lectures them on their democratic
system, hard won by revolution. At the same time he walks out of an EU
meeting because one of his ministers chooses to address the audience of
businessmen in English. Why he was asked. Because of course, English is
the language of business. Duh?

And how is this reported. By the BBC of course, incorrectly. On the
same day that LeMonde prints de Villpin's letter asking for dialogue
the BBC ignores the letter and reports that the students forced him to
meet with them as if it was against his will. What a travesty of a news
organizaton. Sometimes the anchors headlines are contradicted by the
reporters themselves. As if they don't even know the news themselves.

Yet around Europe there are real problems. In Belarus, where real
demonstrators are meeting real thugs. In Russia itself. The author of
Gulag, Anne Applebaum, actually thinks that Bush should refuse to
attend the G8 summit in St Petersburg because Russia is not qualified
to be a member. And in the Ukraine the Orange revolution has collapsed.

Of course there is some hope. The Basque separatists seem to have
decided to go for the political route. And Ricky Ponting has tied
Bradman's record of 29 test centuries. Which I learned thanks to the
BBC, for those who doubt its importance.

Correction: Seems like their tantrum has morphed into something more
serious. Would have been nice to see some of this analysis on the BBC
World Service.

http://iht.com/articles/2006/03/24/news/damage.php

The vandals are an unlikely mix of angry youths from the Paris
outskirts, far-left anarchists, far-right extremists and football
hooligans. United in their opposition to the authorities and their
aggression toward the riot police, they have become a major wild card
for both the government and organizers of the demonstrations. Analysts
warn that the vandals risk unleashing a new spiral of violence that, by
moving into central Paris, could become far more dangerous than the
autumn riots.

Emboldened by media attention, youths from the disadvantaged suburbs
are apparently becoming the majority among those disrupting the
marches. The scale of violence, which involved angry youths beating up
scores of demonstrators on Thursday, takes the problem to a new level,
said François Dubet, research director at Paris's School for Higher
Studies in the Social Sciences.

"From demonstration to demonstration, the numbers are up one notch and
the aggression is up one notch," he said. "We are in a profoundly
dangerous situation. If the students and suburbs both continue to
mobilize, we might soon have March and November in one."