French ready for a new revolution

http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,1527921,00.html

Today should be Jacques Chirac's big moment. As the standard bearer of France's republican tradition he oversees an impressive parade on Bastille Day. Horseguards, soldiers, pilots, police officers and firemen will march down the Champs Elysées accompanied by as much hardware - tanks, rocket launchers and fighter jets - as France's military might can muster.

But, even in his Bastille Day best, Mr Chirac cannot ignore the fact that France is deeply fed up, and with him above all.

The latest poll shows that only 32% of French people have confidence in the president, while the Parisien newspaper said this year's July 14 celebrations "smell like the end of Chirac's reign". That France is not in the mood to party is clear. But this is more than a nation in economic and political depression. It is a crisis that some analysts believe could turn violent.

Many believe France has another crisis coming. For 30 years the country ignored warnings that its system needed an overhaul, that it could not sustain its massive public expenditure, enormous bureaucracy, expensive public services, high taxes and crippling social charges. Paradoxically, French people often say they want changes, and then bring the streets to a standstill when their politicians try to introduce them. Instead of pressing ahead with difficult reforms, ministers have all too often taken the soft option of retreating.

But, no soft option for BushCo. They're hunkered down and waiting for an excuse to drop the Big One.

In case the revolution comes, What is to be done?

So it goes...

:shrug:

... later employed by Dante Alighieri and others.

...move radically to the right.

CDU rightwinger Angela Merkel will win in Germany in a few months, and UMP leader Nicolas Sarkozy will soon be President of France.

I'm afraid we are going to see Reagan/Thatcher clones in both Germany and France in the not too distant future.

Imajika

Enough DUers (which is very few who openly respond to my commentary, but that's still plenty IMHO) criticize my beliefs about money, even though I'm (very surprisingly) hearing more Dems on the street now hating the stuff because of how those in power use it not just for greed but for leverage too. Even more comments from repubes 2 years ago who loved idiot* then but despise his tapeworm ridden guts these days.


Still, the human population is too large and there aren't any other habitable planets even remotely close. Either do in Rome or suffer (well, suffer even more...); that's the question we're all going to have to face. Nobody is going to fight for what is right; they're too busy worrying about keeping their jobs or finding new (yet pointless) ways to make more money. But as the laws continue to favor the already-wealthy at our expense, never mind more patent insanity, it's increasingly obvious those in power are culling the fat from the milk; using wealth as their catalyst.

Yes it's increasingly obvious to more and more people.

It's so obvious that I'm increasingly afraid that there will be a reaction. Newton was right. for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The difference in the US is that we are an armed population. More so than any in history. And many are not only armed but also trained by the very gov't that is now oppressing them.

And I believe that a large proportion are now seeing the corporation as evil, not only to them as individuals, but as planet destroyers. I can see the day when to be known as a corporate manager is to where a target on your back.

And when you have a weapon like the 50 caliber rifle that can reach out what, three miles?!!?! there is no possible cordon of security that can keep anyone safe, corporate manager or governament lacky.

Change will come.

Or, like we used to say in the 60s, The answer is blowing in the wind.

And it's downrange.

And you know what?

They equate money with success...

They equate success with talent....

They equate talent with intelligence....

Ergo, money equals intelligence....

And so they truly believe, because they have earned money, that they are talented beyond belief and that they are smarted and therefore more qualified as an rich person to pontificate....

Rant, I know....

But what I have discovered is that are very few true entrepreneurs...


That most people who are in business for themselves are good at one thing or lucky....

And that when they try to branch out from that one thing they are good at, they loose....

That is why more than three quarters of the businesses in this country fail....

So money does corrupt people, in many ways....

And if you let the gap between rich and poor grow so large that the rich become frightened by what the poor might do, you have problems that only end in trouble for all concerned.....

but I disagree w/ you about France.

I was just there, and the sense I got was that while Chirac's pretty universally detested at this point, there's also still considerable will among those across a broad political spectrum to unite around any alternative to the nationalist right, as they did for Chirac in the last Presidential election (giving him something like 70% of the vote).

The vote against the EU constitution was not so much that as a referendum on the current economic state of the country. At least that's what my French friends and relatives tell me.

-Al

..party. He is from Chirac's party. Sarkozy is just much more rightwing. He is very pro-business and considers America a good economic model. He thinks Tony Blair's argument for further liberalization of Europe's economies is a good idea.

Sarkozy is not a National Front radical like Le Pen.

Germany is a lost cause. Angela Merkel and her CDU/CSU coalition will win and virtually everyone already knows it.

Imajika

His recent England flap shows exactly what a duplicitous asshat he is. He's toast.

I hope the French people have the wherewhithal to find thier own solutions to thier problems that preserve thier freedoms rather than turning to the same old reactionary bullshit.

desobeir est un devoir
agis est necessaire!