I wonder why Villepin thinks this is a good idea. are the profits for his constituents to be improved so much by the ability to fire young people at will for the first two years of employment that the costs of all the strikes and lost productivity will be dwarfed in comparison.
I would have to think that they are….otherwise what would be the point?
also, this seems like a pretty good way to energize the left and that does not seem to be in his best interests either.
I too applaud the students, as long as they don’t get really stupid and turn public opinion against them they should do well.

Posted by: dan of steele | Mar 30 2006 20:40 utc | 3

Breaking News!
US judge declares passenger planes are Weapons of Mass Destruction
you can’t make this shit up.

Posted by: dan of steele | Mar 30 2006 21:07 utc | 5

@ralphieboy et al…
France’s young people have an unemployment rate of over 20%. That fact seems to have gotten lost in the debates and rioting.
Well, what does it say about Merica that the people haven’t rioted here, yet? Sheep? or manipulated victims?:
The Measurement of Poverty

According to the Census Bureau, many cities are even poorer than New Orleans. In Detroit in 2004, the poverty rate was 33.6 per cent; in Miami, it was 28.3 per cent; and in Philadelphia it was 24.9 per cent. (In New York, it was 20.3 per cent.)

Hell, domesticated primates that we are, even our distant cousins have a better sense of fair play than we civilizied carbon based bipeds.
Also see, Measuring Attitudes Towards Inequality

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 30 2006 21:41 utc | 7

I’m not a “neo-liberal,” and I’ve been living in France for quite a while. The country’s system of employment contracts is derangely complex–I’ve spent any number of hours trying to figure it out, and still have a long, long ways to go. But there’s one thing I do know: France hasn’t figured out how to make it possible for people to get jobs, lose them, and move on to other jobs. It’s a “niche” economy in which you can’t move from niche to niche, and in which, if you drop out of one niche for any reason, you can’t move on to another one. (Yes, there are exceptions, but the general rules apply.) And all this, by the way, happens only after your first full-time employment, which may not come before the age of thirty or thirty-five, if even then.
Putting aside for a moment the question o f=Domenique de Villepin’s competence or good faith, it’s apparent to all French across the political spectrum that the current set-up’s in trouble of some kind. By most accounts, the employment system has been falling into disrepair for a good twenty years at least, however you may choose to describe suchdisrepair. So something has to be done, and will be done–in a hundred different ways at a hundred different speeds over a period of decades.
It will be done as it’s generally done in France–through endless negotiating among real antagonists (and the French left, by the way, is still strong), including the yet-to-be-enfranchised immigrant populations in the banlieus. Because the French tendency is to work out an accommodation between all niches, including the ones you have no love for. It’s this negotiating, or it’s civil war.
Of all the major European nations, France has been really been defined for the past five hundred years by its civil wars, and the ways in which it either suffers through them, or figures out how to avoid them. What we’re watching here is an effort to stay out of civil war. We’ll just have to wait aned see….

Posted by: alabama | Mar 30 2006 23:26 utc | 9

Quote:
also, this seems like a pretty good way to energize the left and that does not seem to be in his best interests either.
—
Well I don’t know about France but here there is no difference between left and right. One of the workers few days ago addressed leader of the Labor party saying: You are the best RIGHT Labor party …” Look at UK …anywhere…elections do not matter anymore…they are all corrupted!

Posted by: vbo | Mar 31 2006 0:16 utc | 11

Good point b. Hope the students can make some headway in their struggle. Seems as though labor is losing ground globally to the forces of capital. Less job security, and falling standards of living seem to be the goal of the ruling elite for the working class. Greed and avarice are reaching new heights….lovely!

Posted by: ben | Mar 31 2006 1:44 utc | 13

b,
yes, there will be idiotic employers who hire people for 23 months and then fire them, etc. But any employer who is not an idiot (and I hear there are a few of them out there) will use the 23 months to train ther new employee into someone worth keeping.
It is not just the employees who need the years of training: employers need workers with skills that can be acquired only over years of on-the-job training. If they want to keep someone on for 23 months and then let these skills wander off to another employer, then it’s their loss.
I realize that this compromise, like all other compromises, sucks. So does work in general, or they wouldn’t be paying us to do it.

Posted by: ralphieboy | Mar 31 2006 4:54 utc | 15

Murray Waas: Insulating Bush

Karl Rove, President Bush’s chief political adviser, cautioned other White House aides in the summer of 2003 that Bush’s 2004 re-election prospects would be severely damaged if it was publicly disclosed that he had been personally warned that a key rationale for going to war had been challenged within the administration. Rove expressed his concerns shortly after an informal review of classified government records by then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley determined that Bush had been specifically advised that claims he later made in his 2003 State of the Union address — that Iraq was procuring high-strength aluminum tubes to build a nuclear weapon — might not be true, according to government records and interviews.
Hadley was particularly concerned that the public might learn of a classified one-page summary of a National Intelligence Estimate, specifically written for Bush in October 2002. The summary said that although “most agencies judge” that the aluminum tubes were “related to a uranium enrichment effort,” the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Energy Department’s intelligence branch “believe that the tubes more likely are intended for conventional weapons.”
…

Posted by: b | Mar 31 2006 6:23 utc | 17

BAGHDAD, Iraq – A LETTER from President Bush to Iraq’s supreme Shiite spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, was hand-delivered earlier this week but sits unread and untranslated in the top religious figure’s office, a key al-Sistani aide told The Associated Press on Thursday.
………………………
Al-Sadr, who is staunchly anti-American, met with al-Sistani in Najaf on Thursday but emerged without making a statement.
………………………
Ouch! Sistani won’t even read W’s letter, or see his ambassador, but has tea with Muqdada.

Posted by: anna missed | Mar 31 2006 6:44 utc | 19

Via Laura Rozen:
Mark Perry and Alastair Crooke: HOW TO LOSE THE WAR ON TERROR PART 1: Talking with the ‘terrorists’

Allawi’s failure, Hamas’ success, the Aoun-Nasrallah agreement – and the inability of the West to predict, shape or even understand these seminal events – have been variously interpreted: as a signal that the US intelligence community needs increased resources, that the West has not been doing enough to sell its “program” in the region, that the US and its allies have not been harsh enough in their condemnation of “radicalism”, that the West has underestimated the amount of support its secular allies need, and (in the case of the Palestinian elections) that Hamas didn’t really win at all – “Fatah lost.”
We have reached a much more fundamental and alarming conclusion: Western governments are frighteningly out of touch with the principal political currents in the Middle East. The US and its allies overestimated Ayad Allawi’s strength, were “stunned” by Hamas’ win, and were surprised by the Aoun-Nasrallah agreement because they don’t have a clue about what’s really going on in the region.
But why?
…

Posted by: b | Mar 31 2006 6:52 utc | 21

John Robb at Golbal Guerrillas has a good post on how the US missed a window of withdrawl and now is faced with this:
Here’s a likely scenario for how this will play out: deeper entrenchment within US bases (to limit casualties) and pledges of neutrality (Rumsfeld) will prove hollow. Ongoing ethnic slaughter will force US intervention to curtail the militias. Inevitably, this will increase tensions with the militias and quickly spin out of control. Military and police units sent to confront the militias will melt down (again), due to conflicting loyalties. Several large battles with militias will drive up US casualties sharply. Supply lines to US bases from Kuwait will be cut. Protesters will march on US bases to demand a withdrawal. Oil production via the south will be cut (again), bringing Iraqi oil exports to a halt. Meanwhile, the government will continue its ineffectual debate within the green zone, as irrelevant to the reality on the ground in the country as ever. Unable to function in the mounting chaos and facing a collapse in public support for the war, the US military will be forced to withdraw in haste. It will be ugly.
p.s. could have sworn the barkeep had a comment.

Posted by: anna missed | Mar 31 2006 7:03 utc | 23

Quote:
But any employer who is not an idiot (and I hear there are a few of them out there) will use the 23 months to train ther new employee into someone worth keeping.
—
Do you know how long on average (especially young and educated) people stay in one private company here in Australia nowadays…I have not statistics but according to some observation I would say generally not more then 2 years. They call it flexibility, haha. This is because there is no bloody way for worker to get mentioning worthy salary rise or anything else out of these companies. We are still lucky here in Australia because looks like there is quite a few jobs on the market. Now imagine some jobless market and what are one’s chances to get any improvements working for same company for years. And there is no choice to move anywhere else. Workers will hesitate even to ask for rise and benefits. They’ll even work overtime without pay (it’s becoming more often case) and will be forced to take another job just to sustain life style and service his debts. It’s a blackmailing situation…There will be no time to live, family time, entertainment, just work…modern slavery…

Posted by: vbo | Mar 31 2006 8:26 utc | 25

A rather sane piece in LA Times about Iran
Calm Is Urged in Iran Debate

United Nations atomic energy chief Mohamed ElBaradei urged the international community Thursday to steer away from threats of sanctions against Iran, saying the country’s nuclear program was not “an imminent threat” and that the time had come to “lower the pitch” of debate.
ElBaradei’s remarks at a forum in Doha, the capital of Qatar, came at a sensitive moment in the discussions over Iran, as the United States and other members of the U.N. Security Council calculate their next steps. His comments publicly expressed the dismay that many diplomats privately have voiced about what they consider an air of crisis that the Bush administration and some European governments have created with recent statements.

Posted by: b | Mar 31 2006 9:25 utc | 27

annie,
I think when the whole constitution process was put into motion (in the CPA days) it was stipulated (by international law?) that indeed the elected government could ask the US to leave — and also discard the CPA economic edicts. Jaafari is anti-privitization, and is now joined at the hip with Sadr, who is anti-occupation — hence the freak-out.

Posted by: anna missed | Mar 31 2006 9:51 utc | 29

Here’s an honest comment that just might stir a hornet’s nest. I’ll have to type this without review or revision otherwise I would likely not post this at all.
For far too long, the debates about American foreign policy, the ME wars, Israel and Israeli espionage, the West Bank, Iran, Iraq, PNAC, AIPAC, JINSA, 9/11 and the dancing Israelis, nuclear weapons, death, destruction, Armageddon .. have all skirted around the mention of Jews.
Now, I have knowingly met about as many Jews in my life as I have Australian Aboriginals (damn few), and my take is that Jews in general have no personal distinctions or personal attributes as individuals to warrent “anti-semitism” whatever that means. However, there is an almost universal tendancy to ignore nuances and talk about “classes” (middle class, working class, Americans, Jihadis .. whatever). So how should American Jews / Israeli supporters / “Neo Conservatives” be classified? Will the painstaking care taken by most to distinguish “Zionists” from “Jews” be maintained?
The “Lobby” that Justin Raimondo is talking about is principally a Jewish lobby.
As Justin says “Avoidance of candid discussion might make good sense to the Lobby, but it is unlikely to either advance Israeli interests or the U.S.-Israel relationship …”
It seems to me that Justin Raimondo and many many others have tried to raise the issue of dual loyalties and the undeniable influence of “Zionists” in America and the undeniable fact that the “Israeli lobby” are joined at the hip with the war in Iraq and all this crap about Iran.
I also have a gut feeling that if this issue is not resolved in the forseeable future, then the blowback may be that when push comes to shove, any nuanced distinction between Zionists, Neo-Cons, and Jews will be lost.
And it seems that this issue will not be resolved, because nobody will talk about it (some, including Malooga, excepted).
Where is the debate about Jews/Israel, the West Bank occupation, the Palestinians. I’m just getting a little pissed off with all this negative shit in the world. What a waste.
Well, I’m rambling, and I have only been drinking Beck’s. I’ve started on the Glenmorangie, so I’d better leave this as it is before it gets worse.
.. And Alabama promised me a debate a year or two ago about the “reality on the ground” in Israel. Now that you are safe in France, can we have this discussion?

Posted by: DM | Mar 31 2006 11:11 utc | 31