The Riot Act

There have been so many events in the last few months that I could be blogging about, but I've decided to devote my energies to more healthy activities, such as sleeping. There have been other factors, too, in my silence since early September. The rest of that month I had so much work that I could have cut myself in two and both halves would have been busy. Then in October I spent most of the free time I had promoting a Princeton Nassoons concert. This experience alone is worth a detailed blog post. But it will have to wait for another day.

Several people have asked me about the situation in France over the past two weeks. All of these requests for information seem born of genuine concern for me and my family, and I would like to thank everyone for that.

Yes, we are fine, and indeed during the first week or so of the “urban violence” – there seems to be a reluctance to use the word “riots” – the only way I knew there was anything going on was by tuning into the usual media suspects.

Then events spread to Lyon suburbs and public transport here started to be disrupted. A city bus was attacked and someone threw a Molotov cocktail into a metro train. So since Thursday all trains and buses have been stopping between 6 and 7pm. This meant that just before 6pm on Thursday, prior to the three-day Armistice Day weekend, the Lyon subway was more packed than I have ever seen it (like the 4 and 5 trains at rush hour, for those New Yorkers who want a point of reference). After 7pm there were massive traffic jams, because so many people had decided to take their cars instead of public transport. A Moroccan friend said a lot of people she knew were parking their cars in the center of Lyon. Some of them chose to walk home.

In the last two weeks we have seen reassuring confirmation that rioters in France can be just as stupid as rioters elsewhere. I read an interview in Le Monde with some "jeunes émeutiers", young rioters. They don't like to be called "casseurs" – which could be translated simply as vandals - because jeunes émeutiers are fighting for a cause, you see. They explained that they attacked schools because school had not done them any good. So they were taking revenge. Get it? The same goes for other local infrastructure (community centers, swimming pools), not to mention all the cars, which all belonged to people living right in their neighborhoods. If they had wanted to campaign for Jean-Marie Le Pen and the Front National, they couldn't have found a more effective way.

Yesterday, S. went shopping in Place Bellecour, Lyon’s urban plaza centerpiece, and she saw police lined up in riot gear along some streets. She looked around, assessed the scene and thought to herself: this won’t go down well with certain young people. Sure enough, we heard later that there had been some skirmishes with police. We read in today’s Le Progrès that the police had got wind of plans to trash the city centre … and were ready for them. It didn’t last long.

Surely this is part of the answer to the question of why rioters trash their own neighborhood. To take the “battle” to another neighborhood, you have to be organized. And you have to be experienced enough in underground organization to make sure the police don’t find out what you’re up to. The thirteen-year-olds arrested yesterday clearly had not yet acquired those skills.

Of course, the causes go a lot deeper; these riots are an expression of pent-up anger, frustration and despair about discrimination, unemployment and the other ills of ghetto life. The few articles I’ve read in the US press (New York Times to Fox News with little in between) seemed an accurate summary of the situation. There has been a lot of comparison of the various integration models – the German “guest worker” model, the UK or US pluralistic models and the French melting pot model – and a lot of talk, for good reason, of the failure of the French model. It’s a model that most French people I know feel very strongly about and that worked quite well, up until about a generation ago.

I wonder how much longer Nicolas Sarkozy is going to last as interior minister in this government. He's too sure of himself, too angry, too politically motivated and ... too humorless to be effective. But the things he says make a lot of sense. Maybe Sarkozy isn't going far enough. He now says he wants any foreigners convicted of rioting to be expelled from the country. I'd like to find a way, whether they are French or foreign, to remove them from the gene pool. But on a 1-10 scale of human misery, cruelty and stupidity, these events probably rank only about a 3, so I suppose they don’t deserve that much priority. If at least they could have the Riot Act read to them….

Plame yogurt

The big news story here over the past week has been a story that is not yet a story: PepsiCo is about to launch a takeover bid on Danone.

Have they? Where have you seen that story, Steve? I haven’t, because it isn’t a story. It’s a rumor. About two weeks ago it was mentioned in Challenges, a French business magazine somewhat akin to Fortune, that PepsiCo had bought up around 3% of Danone’s stock. Since then, the rumor mill has been working more than 35 hours a week. The specter of an American company taking over one of France’s sacred cows – literally – has been raised and it won’t go away. On TV, the news programs have been interviewing dairy farmers who earn up to half their income selling milk to Danone. They’re sure that an American behemoth like PepsiCo will decide to source all of Danone’s milk for yogurt production in Poland or Morocco or China. They’re already talking of their current business in the past tense. Soon they’ll be nothing but numbers … in the unemployment line. In the meantime, the CEO of Danone gave an interview to Les Echos (subscription required, I think) in which he said no contact of any kind has been made with PepsiCo.

Act II: politicians of all stripes, from tie-dyes to pin-stripes are now up in arms. The hodgepodge, shuffle-and-deal government cobbled together after the no-vote fiasco have finally found something they can all agree on. Nicolas Sarkozy, back in the government as interior minister, after being forced to leave the government as economy minister to take on the position of president of the UMP political party, a post he still holds, said the government should “do everything it can” (“tout mettre en oeuvre”) to prevent a hostile takeover of Danone in an interview in Le Monde. Thierry Breton, the economy minister, said the government “will make very sure” (“veillera très scrupuleusement”) that Danone’s rights are protected. Dominique de Villepin, the prime minister, said the government plans to “defend the interests of France” (“défendre les intérêts de la France”). Last and some would say least (Sarkozy), President Jacques Chirac, while on a State visit to Madagascar, said that he was “particularly vigilant and ready to act” (“particulièrement vigilant et mobilisé”). One journalist I read said that as market interference goes, it’s been no worse that the current uproar in the US about a Chinese company wanting to take over Unocal. Not sure I agree with putting the USA and China on the same footing, but I’m digressing again.

Act III: If PepsiCo does try something, it’ll be fun to watch, especially as France has a nasty habit of getting what it wants in the EU.

One story that has not received much coverage here is the Valerie Plame outing. Who knows, after seeing pictures of her in this week’s Time magazine, Paris Match might someday write a story about “an outing with Valerie Plame”, but I doubt the news media will publish any pithy analysis of the situation unless it leads to an impeachment of the president (I’d be rubbing my hands together if I weren’t typing), in which case they wouldn’t be able to avoid it.

You see, I wonder how many people really understand it. Or could explain it to the French public in fewer words than it would take to explain the reasoning behind the infield fly rule to a non-baseball fan. But when you look into it, you can see that it has given rise to some of the most bizarre twists of fate in recent memory. Firstly, you have three journalists involved. The seat of the one who originally published the story “outing” CIA agent Valerie Plame, Robert Novak, is not the least bit warm (see Frank Rich’s recent column in the New York Times for some scathing comments about him). Conversely, the one who never published anything after having a conversation with her confidential source is the one now in prison.

Ego, I think, has got the better of the New York Times and its journalistic brethren. When you read the Times' reporting on the subject, you get the feeling that Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper are defending some noble, timeless cause, an immutable, inalienable right, that they're some sort of latter-day Nathan Hale or Patrick Henry.

The Times has institutionalized civil disobedience. The Supreme Court of the United States, the highest court in the land, refused to hear the case, meaning that the judges preferred to let the lower court’s ruling, that the journalists must reveal their sources, stand. But still the Times didn’t budge. It apparently answers to a higher authority.

Now does this apply to all journalists? For instance, let’s suppose I became privy to some "confidential" information, and that I published it here on my blog, keeping my source anonymous. Then some (smart!) news organization picked it up and syndicated it across the country (yeah, dream on!). Would the New York Times then be claiming that the whole Constitution of the United States would be in tatters were I forced to reveal my source?

Many professions have enshrined secrecy in their principles: banking, law and medicine to name a few. Let's take banking. Banks have a responsibility to protect the privacy of their clients. But if a court of law, say, the Supreme Court, requests information in connection with a money-laundering operation or terrorist organization, for example, the bank hands over the information. End of case. I don't recall any recent cases of bank civil disobedience. I think the same is true of medicine and law. As industries, surely these are as important as the press, no? Correct me if I’m wrong. Yell at me. ‘Splain to me!

A faithful reader of this blog sent me a link to the brief the news organizations filed with the DC Court of Appeals. Before it gets to the heart of the matter, it waxes poetic about the historical role of the press in American democracy. Quoting former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, it suggests that the press is an unofficial fourth-branch check on the federal government. Un-elected and self-appointed, but they forgot to mention that. Last time I checked, which was five minutes ago, the First Amendment to the US Constitution did not go quite so far. It said:

“Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Fourth branch of government? A bit over the top. In fact, down the rabbit hole and through the looking-glass, too. You can’t take those Supreme Court justices too seriously, especially when they’re speaking at a law school sesquicentennial.

The brief then claims that a hearing should be held to determine whether a crime had been committed under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, the reasoning being that this Act intended to carve out an exception to the press’ right to keep sources confidential, but only under very narrowly defined circumstances.

Now maybe I’m oversimplifying, but it seems there’s a Catch-22 here. It must first be proven that a crime was committed under this Act before a news organization should be required to turn over its confidential sources, yet logic would seem to dictate that the news organizations must first turn over their confidential sources before it can be proven whether or not a crime was committed.

But here’s the most ironic part: to prove their case, all the news media, liberal and conservative alike, must take the side of the conservative media, who of course maintain that no crime was committed! That’s their whole point! The brief even quotes, as supporting evidence, an article from the pages of the Washington Times, that beacon of independent reporting, to the effect that Plame’s identity had already been revealed to the Russians and the Cubans, ergo Karl Rove did nothing wrong, get it? So if the media get their way and win the right to keep their sources secret, then the case disappears, which is just what the conservatives want. If sources weren’t an issue, the Times and other liberal media would be having a Rove-bashing party. But in their brief to the court, they have to protect him and disparage his critics to further their case.

Media rant

The Egyptian ambassador to Iraq has recently been abducted in Baghdad. There have also been three other attempts to capture or kill ambassadors in Iraq in the past few days, but let’s focus on the kidnapping. It happened on Sunday (July 3), but to find an article about it two days later on Le Monde’s web site I had first to click on “International”, then page way down to the bottom of the list of top stories. The next day, today, it had fallen off the bottom of the list altogether. On Liberation.fr, too, it was well into the peleton of articles on the “Monde” page. If this and my daily morning radio intake from France Info are anything to go by, there hasn’t been nearly the media blitz there was when Libération reporter Florence Aubenas was kidnapped. Sorry, media, but I can’t resist the temptation to note that when a journalist is abducted, that’s news, but when a diplomat is, it’s business as usual. Wait, let's be fair, now. Only time will tell if we'll soon be waking up to "And today is the 112th day of captivity for Ihab al-Chérif, the Egyptian ambassador to Iraq."

While Florence Aubenas was a hostage, the media attention here was relentless. It was media nombrilism at its best, with radio, TV, print and on-line media all focusing on an issue that was of paramount importance to ... them. True, a journalist taken hostage threatens the very core of the media’s existence and affects us all, because it restricts our ability to obtain real, objective, primary-source information about world events. But as troubled as I was by the event, I was no more troubled than I was by the fate of any other hostage. It was not the world’s most important event. Living in France during the first few months of 2005, however, you could have been forgiven for thinking it was. Human beings can’t deal with the notion that there are millions of equally if not more deserving victims. We need a symbol, we need to be able to put a face and a name to the sufferer. Only then can we feel compassion. This is how I felt I was treated by the media.

The French government’s reaction was, in my view, equally reprehensible. You know what I think the French government should have done about Florence Aubenas’ abduction? Absolutely nothing. It’s heartless, but I think there’s no other way to short-circuit the vicious cycle of hostage-taking, ransom and more hostage-taking. You know what the French government did? It virtually ordered journalists to leave the country, while conducting a flurry of negotiations, culminating in a release under circumstances that have still not been elucidated. Or not widely reported, anyway. A search today (July 6) on “Florence Aubenas” on Le Monde’s site turned up seven pages of articles but only two more recent than June 16, a few days after she was freed. None offered any specific information about what “convinced” the hostage takers to make their “humanitarian” gesture. I’m very pleased that Florence Aubenas was ultimately released, but now a month after her release, I’m still as curious as I was pleased to know how much was paid in ransom. I suppose we should keep an eye on Le Canard Enchaîné.

Predictions

Do I still have time for some last minute predictions?

I’ll bet you all know which one is first on my mind. The new president of the Medef, the Mouvement des entreprises de France, of course. This is France’s employer’s federation. Whenever the government wants to change rules or laws affecting companies, particularly regarding employment, the Medef is consulted, as are labor unions. The current president, Baron Ernest-Antoine Seillière de Laborde, who, by his own words has endeavored to make the organization more “democratic”, is stepping down. Three candidates are in the running: Yvon Jacob, chairman of the Supervisory Board of Legris Industries (construction equipment), Hugues-Arnaud Mayer, head of the Abeil group (pillows & comforters) and Laurence Parisot, CEO of IFOP (market surveys). Yvon Jacob has received the blessing of the UIMM, the Union des industries et métiers de la métallurgie (which calls itself the succinct “Union of Metal Manufacturing, Mining, Engineering, Electrical and Metal Equipment and Allied Industries” in English), a large trade federation under the Medef umbrella. In the past, its candidates have often acceded to the top post in the Medef. But that was before the advent of the latest political twist. For those of you unfamiliar with French given names, Laurence Parisot is a woman, and the idea that appointing a woman to the post would be a symbol of the organization’s modernity has been launched and gained momentum. Once a symbol idea has been launched and gained momentum, it’s hard to get it back onto the pad. My vote is with the lady.

On to more important predictions. Where will the 2012 Olympic Games be held? My instinct is that, like Academy Awards, Olympic Games selections are largely political. Wasn’t the choice of Beijing for 2008 just a wee bit political? But first the purely practical. I’m surprised New York still thinks it has even a glimmer of a hope of a prayer of a chance. Not only hasn’t the intended venue for most Olympic events been built or ground even been broken, but there has been more bickering over it than over working hours at a French labor negotiating session. And Mayor Bloomberg has got to feel outgunned. The UK and France have sent their prime minister and president, respectively, to Singapore. I’m going with an outsider on this one: Madrid. The Summer Olympics have never been held there, whereas they’ve been held in all three other cities – Paris (2x), London (2x) and Moscow. Also, Madrid is the latest martyred city, and I’m hoping that’ll work in its favor.

Last but far from least: will Lance Armstrong win a seventh Tour de France? I haven't a clue, and there's more time, so I leave it to you ....

Jaloux !

Over the past few weeks, I have hardly had time to cut my fingernails, much less blog. I have been working day and night it seems for the past month. My singing career, on a tear only a month ago, is now in serious trouble. This in a country that supposedly has a 35-hour workweek. Actually, this is not inconsistent with my customers’ approach in recent weeks. Several of them think I do work 35 hours a week, … for each of them!

Despite all this, I am able to get a few minutes of radio news in each morning, and it was refreshing to wake up the other day to news reports of Newsweek’s latest exploit. As we all know, Newsweek has been in the news lately, but not exactly for the reasons it would have liked. It’s had to retract a story about alleged desecration of the Koran that has produced a firestorm across the Islamic world. My (French) radio station followed up with the item that Newsweek had found a sure-fire way to divert attention from that “news story” to one it thinks all its readers can agree on: France-bashing.

Apparently it was the cover story on last week’s international edition. I tried to find a print version of it, but my work schedule limited my search to the newsstand outside my office, which had only “Time”. I would have had to go to the railway station to find more. Anyway, we can all read the article here.

The article trots out the usual charges. French government showers money on unimportant things. The social welfare system needs reform. France has a rich past but its present is mediocre in every way. It is having trouble integrating its growing Muslim population. Its president is old and out of touch. In fact, the article harps so much on Jacques Chirac that one wonders if the editors realize there are 60 million other people in the country.

Even the caption under the picture accompanying the article on the magazine’s web site is called into service: “Lonely figure: After 10 years, Chirac looks weary”. In the picture, Chirac looks as if he’s ready to keel over. So would I if a picture of me were printed at a gravity-defying angle!

I’ve seen so many books and news articles with titles like that of last week’s article (“France: Delusions of Grandeur”), so much attention lavished on this Texas-sized country with a lot of old churches and surly waiters smoking Gitanes on their interminable breaks, that I’m beginning to think some quarters of American journalism are not so much disparaging of French people’s attachment to their history as they are ... jealous of it.

Many French people already believe this to be true. Several have told me personally, knowing that I’m American, that they view the United States as a country without a history. They sense (or think they do) a need for history amongst Americans and they associate Americans’ fascination with France and the rest of Europe as an expression of this. I tell them that we Americans view European history as our history as much as theirs, that it was Europe that gave birth to our country, but they don’t buy in. They want to see something deeply rooted – geographically – to the country. They want to see old stone buildings (“de vieilles pierres”). Are they on to something?

I’m going to drop out of sight for another week or so, but I promise to back with something exciting. I’m going to see lots of people I haven’t seen in years, 25 years for some of them.

Lundi de Pentecôte

I said in my last post that the French government has been in the doghouse lately. Well, it’s not as if they haven’t been barking. The latest thing they’ve bungled by making all the wrong noises is the Monday Pentecost holiday. Two years ago, after a heat wave sent an estimated 15,000 elderly people to their graves a few years earlier than expected because there weren’t enough doctors, hospital workers or air conditioners in Paris that August, the government decided that a grand gesture was needed. They decided that lundi de Pentecôte, normally a holiday here, would no longer be and got a new law passed to make sure of it. People would work on Pentecost Monday, but it’s still not clear to me whether they would be paid. I think they would be paid if they were hourly workers, but not if they were on a salaried basis. Anyway, let’s assume they were to be paid. Then companies would pay more payroll taxes. Come to think of it the workers would have to be paid, otherwise how could the companies pay more payroll tax. But then why is there now all of a sudden an uproar and threats of strikes on the grounds that the government can’t force people to work without compensation? I must be missing something.

The government has done nothing to promote this grand gesture. Meanwhile, union leaders have moved into the media vacuum and managed to turn the debate around to their terms, and I can’t say I blame them. They ask why should only salaried work be contributing to this noble cause. What about financial income? Shouldn’t that also be “taxed”?

While the government has been doing nothing, companies have been taking what little initiative they can. Some have decided on a grand gesture of their own: They’ll give their employees the day off, but they’ll still pay the extra taxes. Others have decided to let their employees take the day off, but in return, employees will have to give up an RTT* day. Still others will require employees to work, in accordance with the new law. S. says that soon the travel industry will be complaining, because families won’t be able to go away for a three-day weekend. Weekend getaways are hard enough to organize as it is. If you add more stars that have to align, the chances diminish.

See how helpful this will all be for elderly people?

* “RTT”, or “réduction du temps de travail”, is an outgrowth of the previous government’s inspired, forced-progress initiative, the 35-hr. workweek. Rather than increase the number of vacation days outright for people who are paid a yearly salary (as opposed to an hourly wage), it was decided that floating days would be given that could be combined with other vacation days only in very limited circumstances.

The French government's mistake (one of them)

I’ve just come up for air after a week or two of non-stop translation of a company’s sustainable development report, in which the company explains what a good corporate citizen it has been. Even if this is true, to reassure myself that all was not yet quite right with the world, I asked S. what she thought of the EU Constitution.

As usual, her answer was enlightening and went right to the core of the issue. She knows instinctively how to access and give voice to unconscious thoughts. She said that people who want to vote against the constitution feel that they’ve watched Europe grow by leaps and bounds. They’ve watched European “laws” and “directives” govern more and more of life in France without anyone asking them about it. They understand very little of how “Europe” functions, how the powers of the Commission compare or interact with those of the European parliament or the Council of Ministers. I would add that they’re vaguely aware there’s a rotating six-month presidency, but they haven’t a clue as to what the EU president actually does. So now, for once, someone’s asking their opinion, and they’re not going to miss the opportunity to say a resounding “no”.

I would also add that it’s especially because the government in power is asking them to vote yes. The French government has been in the doghouse lately. It can’t seem to get anything right. Voting yes would be very uncool.

Curiously, when the people’s vote is requested, such as at European parliament elections, participation is the lowest of any type of election. Maybe it’s because people believe the EU parliament has no power, but I suspect it’s because no one really knows what the EU parliament does. Also the candidates seem to be a sort of second-tier group of politicians whose real ambition is to land a prestigious post on their domestic political scene.

Many people view the constitution as written by and for Eurocrats, and what Eurocrats want, according to this view, is for Europe to continue down its current path, only faster. They view the Constitution as facilitating the entry of Turkey, for example. Yet it seems to me the Constitution’s declaration of values, including for example, equality between men and women, would set a tougher standard than exists today, tending more to forestall the entry of a country like Turkey until certain standards were met.

The French government’s error in this campaign has been to think it can reverse 30 or more years of pent-up frustration in a two-month campaign.

"Don't be afraid" (of the big, bad constitution)

Last Thursday evening there was a debate on TF1 about the EU Constitution. It was President Jacques Chirac going up against a hundred or so young people. I was at my singing rehearsal, so unfortunately I didn’t see it, but the next morning on every radio station I tuned in to – one at home, one in the car, and one in my office – they were talking about it. From what I heard, the hundred weren’t convinced. So the likelihood is the millions watching weren’t either. Meanwhile, the survey machine has churned out more indications that the “no” vote is solidifying. It’s now at about 56% of voting intentions, and the referendum is only a month and a half away.

Both on an off the TF1 show, people opposed to the constitution seem to be opposed to it because they don’t like the direction Europe is taking. They don’t like what they view as the EU’s leanings towards a deregulated, unfettered, free market (libéralisme). Chirac maintains that the constitution, by virtue of the values written into it, is a bulwark against the unfettered “Anglo-Saxon” style free market. They’re against current trends such as globalization and delocalisation. A young lawyer brought up an interesting example, saying that her law degree and qualifications are not recognized in other European countries yet many other services are freely available here in France. So Europe remains a barrier for her. The president was apparently caught unawares on this and other issues raised.

I’m afraid my reading of the constitution hasn’t progressed much since my previous post on the subject, so I can’t really give you an informed opinion on that one. But the debate does seem to confirm what a French politician (sorry, can’t remember who it was!) recently said on France Info, that people who vote “no” on the constitution because they don’t like the direction the EU is taking will get the EU in its current state, with all its faults.

One thing I do know, from reading the daily series of articles appearing in Les Echos on the subject (subscription required), is that the constitution has a declaration of values including for example, “equality between men and women”. Rather than facilitating the entry of countries having trouble accepting such arcane principles, clauses such as these would seem to raise the bar on them (I’m thinking of a hypothetical example of a country straddling Europe and Asia that is demographically and culturally very different from the current European Union members).

President Chirac chalked it all up to pessimism. His message was “Don’t be afraid” (“N’ayez pas peur”). He even said that in the US young people are fundamentally optimistic whereas in France they are fundamentally pessimistic. Any comments on that one?

Anyway, nice message, but a wee bit late. He should have started putting it out, say a year ago. If the Bush administration’s tactics are anything to go by, if you drumbeat a message for long enough, people will believe it.

The French government would be having an easier time of it if there were less infighting. The strutting Nicolas Sarkozy, head of the right-wing UMP party currently in power (Chirac’s) is already jockeying for position in the 2007 presidential election. He didn’t watch Thursday’s debate because he was at some party meeting denouncing the current direction of French society. But he says he taped it and promises to watch it. Maybe I should give him a call so we can watch it together.

Very little of what you always wanted to know about the EU Constitution

Two recent polls in France have indicated that if the referendum on the EU Constitution were held today, the French would vote against it. This has sent the entire French political class into a panic, because no one is quite sure what would happen if French voters actually vote against the Constitution.

In a discussion yesterday morning on Radio Classique, someone (sorry, can’t remember who it was) pointed out that the Constitution has a very French flavor to it. A Frenchman presided over the drafting of it, and many ideas dear to France were included. So in Brussels, there’s just plain confusion about France at the moment, he said. Another participant in the discussion said that Europe hadn’t quite decided yet whether it wants a "United States of Europe", with a strong federal government and tight political, monetary and fiscal integration, i.e. an extension of the euro zone, or a big free trade area, where goods and services can circulate with a minimum of restrictions, but no real political union.

If the Bolkestein directive is any indication, French people do not want a big free-trade area. They have a mistrust of Brussels generally, of free-market ideology, which here is called “libéralisme”. The Bolkestein directive, a Brussels initiative, would have allowed services approved in one EU country to be sold in every other EU country. Personally, I thought this was already the case (e.g. insurance), but OK, I hadn’t been paying attention. The French cried “dumping social !” and president Chirac demanded that the text be rescinded, modified, delayed or all of the above, which he obtained.

From my scattered discussions with people here, many seem to think Europe is moving ahead too quickly. Ten, twelve, fifteen, now twenty-five countries, soon who knows how many more. Will the EU be a victim of its success? Will it collapse under the weight of its own bureaucracy? The prospect of Turkey entering only exacerbates this feeling of uncertainty.

People are also unhappy with the government’s economic policies – unemployment is creeping up, so is the workweek, a cause célèbre here – and alarmed that the economics minister needed a 600m² (6,000 ft²) apartment in central Paris for himself, his wife and his eight children and that he “didn’t know” the price of said apartment (he was forced to resign).

Now, just when the government is supposed to launch its “oui” campaign, it is beset with infighting. Both the mainstream left and the mainstream right support the constitution, but the right has managed to disagree with itself. Some see the prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin as the problem. As outside France, the name Jean-Pierre Raffarin probably evokes more “Who?” than any other reaction, just think Gérard Depardieu minus stage presence. Never viewed as charismatic, even in France, Mr. Raffarin now has his own party members telling him that his government’s image problems make him a liability in the campaign. They’re very concerned that the upcoming referendum on the EU constitution will turn into a vote of confidence on the government’s domestic policies. Consequently they’re talking about it so much that they risk turning the upcoming referendum on the EU constitution into a vote of confidence on the government’s domestic policies.

Of course, all of this has nothing to do with the EU Constitution. So I decided to have a look at what the Constitution itself actually says. Mind you, it’s long, and I also have a day job. More specifically, it’s 475 pages long, or 157,327 words – good translation work if you can get it – compared with the US constitution, which runs 8,189 words, including amendments. I chose a section more or less at random: “Protocol on special arrangements for Greenland”. Here is the essential part of the text of that “protocol”:

The treatment on import into the Union of products subject to the common organisation of the market in fishery products and originating in Greenland shall, while complying with the mechanisms of the common market organisation, involve exemption from customs duties and charges having equivalent effect and the absence of quantitative restrictions or measures having equivalent effect if the possibilities for access to Greenland fishing zones granted to the Union pursuant to an agreement between the Union and the authority responsible for Greenland are satisfactory to the Union.

Clear? I’m still savoring this section. For languages fans like me, I also found the following passage, and I’m sure there are many more like it. This is the 50th of the 50 “Declarations” annexed to the treaty after the “Protocols” (including the one quoted above) and Annexes I and II:

Declaration by the Republic of Latvia and the Republic of Hungary on the spelling of the name of the single currency in the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe: Without prejudice to the unified spelling of the name of the single currency of the European Union referred to in the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe as displayed on the banknotes and on the coins, Latvia and Hungary declare that the spelling of the name of the single currency, including its derivatives as applied throughout the Latvian and Hungarian text of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe, has no effect on the existing rules of the Latvian and the Hungarian languages.

I wonder how the Greenland protocol reads in Latvian. Now I sooooo want to read the whole thing, but I’ll have to get back to you on it.

On Strike

When you live in a country you didn’t grow up in, there are certain things you never really understand. At first you ask people around you, but the language barrier makes it difficult to formulate your question in a way that goes to the core of your misunderstanding. Even if it does, you often don’t understand the answer. If there are several people present, you might think you’ll have the benefit of comparing and contrasting several points of view, but instead, your question will spark a full-blown political discussion amongst the natives, while you hang on for dear life. These problems go away with time, but in the meantime, you’ve grown accustomed to the idea of not understanding, of not fathoming the unfathomable, until something rises to the surface again.

So it is with strikes in France. The first question the foreigner wants to ask is “Why are they striking?” Indeed the most striking thing about the strikes is that no one really seems to know why people are striking. Or rather, everyone does (see above: full-blown political discussion).

Last Thursday was a day of strikes throughout the country. Teachers and high school students, who have been active protesters over the past few weeks (more on them later) were joined by civil service workers, and even employees of private companies. This was not unprecedented, it’s just the first time it’s happened on my blog watch.

At the international school our kids attend, some classes were cancelled and others were not. So my wife had to go pick one of our boys up at midday. On their way back they were stuck behind a massive demonstration and had to abandon the car several blocks from home and continue on foot. Fifteen minutes later, as they neared home, demonstrators were still filing down the avenue where they left the car. This is unusual in Lyon. Even so, many people take it all in stride, because they sympathize with the strikers.

Last Thursday’s massive demonstrations were held to protest “the government’s social welfare policy”. This refers to general dissatisfaction with salaries, unemployment, purchasing power, etc. But what does an employee in a private company hope to accomplish by striking, the American observer might be tempted to ask.

Looking a little bit further, you realize that minimum wage laws are set by the government. So are rules governing corporate profit-sharing plans, or company obligations regarding lay-offs or redundancy plans. Furthermore, there’s always some election coming up in the not-too-distant future (municipal, regional, parliamentary, presidential, European parliament, referendum on the European constitution, etc.), so when a demonstration gets a lot of support, the government starts worrying. The government has already said it wants to explore these topics with the MEDEF, the employers’ representative body, but according to the MEDEF’s president, it’s having nothing of it. Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin is also proposing a little increase in civil service salaries. The government’s particularly afraid now that any dissatisfaction with its policies will translate into a “no” vote on the European constitution next month.

But wait. High school students on strike? This is legal? Are these spur-of-the-moment demonstrations organized by SMS? Rest assured, I don’t quite get it either, but from what I’ve heard, it isn’t as well organized as all that. A teacher-friend of mine said high school student demonstrations are much like toothpaste tubes. You press, but you never know how much is going to come out.

The high school students were protesting the loi Fillon, named after the education minister, which is supposed to reform (or revolutionize, depending on who you talk to) the middle school and high school experience nationwide. It appears a lot of course requirements and options will be changed, and staffing cut, but it’s hard to know just how much, in the end, will really change. My wife says she’s been hearing about reforms since she entered first grade.

Bruno Gollnisch finally booted out of Lyon III

Usually when there is an anti-Semitic event in France – the vandalizing of a synagogue, the defacing of Jewish graves – my inbox fills up. The content ranges from concern about anti-Semitism in France, which many people outside the country think is rampant, to tirades against France as the most anti-Semitic country on Earth, parallels to the Dreyfus Affair and “humor” about French anti-Semitism. In the past few weeks, my inbox has not been so full. But look at what has been happening.

In late January, President Jacques Chirac attended the ceremonies marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and gave a moving speech. A few days earlier he inaugurated the Mémorial de la Shoah in Paris, now Europe’s largest documentation center for Jewish contemporary history, on a level with Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Last month, Israel opened its new embassy in Paris and the Israeli foreign minister, Sylvan Shalom, was received by President Chirac. Shalom expressed satisfaction at recent French domestic and foreign policy positions, specifically, that the French government had taken a pro-Hezbollah radio station off the air (even if it hasn’t agreed to call Hezbollah a terrorist organization), that it favored Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon (this was before Hariri’s assassination) and that it was determined to stop Iran’s efforts to develop nuclear weapons. Around the same time, Israel’s head of state visited France, only the second time an Israeli president has done so since the State of Israel was founded. Was Chirac just posturing? If so, why was he posturing when he was friendly to Israel but sincere when he visited Yassir Arafat in the hospital? (I got some lovely e-mails after that one.)

The biggest news came this week. Bruno Gollnisch, heir to the throne of the far-right Front National political party – if its superannuated leader Jean-Marie Le Pen ever steps down –, member of the European parliament, Rhône-Alpes regional councilman and professor of law and Japanese civilization at Lyon University (“Lyon III”) has finally been kicked out of that university for his revisionist remarks.

In a press conference last October he said that “no serious historian still believes in the conclusions of the Nuremberg trials” and claimed that historians should be able to debate the “real number of victims” of the Holocaust. Finally, he said that “there should be debate about how the people actually died” (my translations). He didn’t call the existence of the gas chambers into question directly, but … let’s just say this wasn’t the first time Mr. Gollnisch’s tongue got away from him. Nor, as we’ll see in a minute, the last.

Interestingly, in an absolute sense, I agree with him. We should be able to debate these things freely and openly. France’s strict prohibition against the expression of revisionist, anti-Semitic or racist beliefs may, in theory, go too far. In reality, however, it seems to me the vast majority of the those who say these things harbor deep-seated anti-Semitism and allowing them free rein would just be encouragement, not for debate, but for pursuit of their pre-determined agendas.

There was indignation throughout France after Mr. Gollnisch’s October remarks, and particularly here in Lyon (he teaches a few blocks from here). Once the heat got turned up on him, he said that the Minister of Justice, Dominique Perben and the Minister of Education, François Fillon, were persecuting him because they “had promised his head” to the Conseil représentatif des institutions juives de France (CRIF), the French Jewish umbrella organization. Naturally. Everyone knows that Jews control the country, and French politicians are their lackeys.

Mr. Gollnisch has both supporters and detractors, so the climate at the university was confrontational. To prevent an outbreak of violence, in December the dean of the university denied him access until the school’s disciplinary committee rendered its report. The Conseil d’Etat overturned that decision, and he resumed his lectures, with bodyguards at his side and police standing by, but then Mr. Fillon decided it was best to suspend him pending the decision of his peers.

That decision came on Saturday: a five-year suspension. Until now Mr. Gollnisch’s teaching post and standing as a specialist on Japanese civilization have always lent him respectability. They have also tarnished the reputation of Lyon III. That advantage is now history. When the suspension is over, he’ll be 60 years old, and eligible for retirement. Of course he can always appeal….

To be sure, not every prominent person in France has condemned Mr. Gollnisch. In February, Raymond Barre, former prime minister under Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and former mayor of Lyon, said in an interview that he knows Bruno Gollnisch personally, and that “he gets carried away sometimes, but he’s a good man. Comments escape him, but underneath it all, I don’t think he believes them” (my translation again). Raymond Barre was PM when the synagogue in the rue Copernic was bombed in 1980 and uttered an infamous slip of the tongue, lamenting that the attack had struck “Jews and innocent Frenchmen”. Just thinking about that comment now makes me realize how far French politicians have come in the past 25 years.

Also to be sure, there are still plenty of anti-Semitic incidents taking place in France. As there are, sadly, in other European countries, in the United States and elsewhere. (Here are two web sites that catalog them: the CRIF, mentioned above, and the Anti-Defamation League.)

I searched for “Gollnisch” in the online versions of several US publications for news stories about this series of events and here is what I found:

Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle Times, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Cleveland Plain Dealer, St Louis Post-Dispatch, Miami Herald: no stories

New York Times: most recent story – Nov. 2003

Washington Post: “World in Brief” item, dated March 5, 2005, as follows (entire text):

LYON, France -- Lyon University, part of which is named after Jean Moulin, the hero of the French Resistance murdered by the Nazis in 1943, said it would suspend a professor for five years after he questioned whether the Nazis used gas chambers in the Holocaust.

Bruno Gollnisch already faces a legal probe in France for questioning how the gas chambers were used by the Nazis and how many Jews were killed.

Just wanted to let everyone know that mixed in with the bad things, good things are happening too in France, even though the France-bashing media aren’t reporting them.