"French official puts strike bill at $557m a day" by Associated Press / October 26, 2010
PARIS — France’s massive strikes are costing the national economy up to $557 million each day, the country’s finance minister said yesterday as workers continued to block trash incinerators to protest a plan to raise the retirement age to 62.
Bad strikers!
I mean, they are the people you know, your neighbors, and darn near the whole country, but....
Piles of garbage — now at nearly 9,000 tons — are becoming a health hazard in the Mediterranean city of Marseille, which has been hit hard on land and at sea. Striking dockers at France’s largest port are intermittently blocking ships that try to unload fuel there.
Twelve striking refineries have been shut down for nearly two weeks, but the protest movement appeared to weaken yesterday after workers at three refineries voted to end their walkout. The French oil refineries’ body said all the country’s oil depots had also been unblocked.
Well, corporate media can always hope.
The oil workers’ return to work could ease the ongoing gasoline shortages, which yesterday still had about one in four gas stations in France shuttered.
That would be a problem.
President Nicolas Sarkozy has stood firm throughout the weeks-long protest movement, insisting the change is necessary to save the money-losing retirement system and ensure funds for future generations as life expectancy increases and the nation’s debt soars....
And making sure bankers get their cut first.
Garbage and gas are critical weapons for the strikers....
Amazing terminology.
Yup, now the protesters are ATTACKING!!
Have they KILLED ANYONE like the MASS-MURDERING FRENCH FORCES of NATO?
--more--"
Yeah, you can pretty quickly see whose side the corporate AmeriKan media is taking in this fight:
"Strikes in France losing momentum" by Angela Doland, Associated Press / October 27, 2010
PARIS — French garbage collectors waded through mounds of reeking trash as they headed back to work yesterday and some oil workers deserted their picket lines — signs of fading momentum in the battle against raising the retirement age.
France’s finance minister declared that the massive protest movement had finally reached a “turning point,’’ and the Senate gave its final 177-to-151 vote approval to President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plan to increase the retirement age from 60 to 62.
The bill now goes before the lower house today, where it is almost certain to pass. It then will face challenges by the opposition Socialists before the country’s Constitutional Court. Sarkozy is not expected to sign it until mid-November at the earliest.
For two weeks, nationwide protests and strikes over the pension reform have disrupted French life and the country’s economy, canceling trains, closing schools, and shutting gas stations. Yesterday, students with megaphones chanted outside the 17th-century Senate building on the edge of Paris’s Luxembourg Gardens as riot police stood by.
Are you LEARNING ANYTHING, America?
Unions have called for another nationwide day of protests tomorrow....
But they are losing momentum.
In Marseille, workers tackled some 9,000 tons of garbage that has piled up in the streets over the last two weeks of strikes. Authorities said it would take up to five days before France’s second-largest city starts smelling like itself again.
“The uncollected rubbish is bringing rats,’’ said Melika Benslimane, a secretary. “We can no longer walk on the pavement because it’s full of trash.’’
Marseille has another big problem: Its port has been blocked by striking dock workers, and oil tankers were lined up in the Mediterranean as far as the eye can see, awaiting entry.
Yeah, I'll bet the OIL is more of a concern to the corporate press.
Workers at five of the country’s 12 oil refineries were back on the job yesterday, Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux said.
But that did not mean an end to fuel shortages. Strikes continued at all six of oil giant Total SA’s French refineries, and the plants going back to work will need a few days to fully resume operations. Crude oil coming in for processing was stuck on dozens of anchored ships, waiting to be unloaded.
--more--"
And about those protests:
"France OKs rise in age of retirement; Unions plan more protests over new minimum of 62" by Helene Fouquet and Gregory Viscusi, Bloomberg News / October 28, 2010
PARIS — France’s Parliament yesterday passed President Nicolas Sarkozy’s pension bill to raise the minimum retirement age as labor unions prepared for a new day of strikes and protests....
Labor unions said protests and strikes over the bill, which have left the country crippled with fuel shortages and public transport disruptions, are far from over.
They have called for strikes and marches today and more demonstrations on Nov. 6. Unions at French airlines and air traffic controllers have called for separate strike on Nov. 4.
French power plant workers were scheduled to strike last night and may cut production of electricity.
Strikes at oil terminals have left refineries without the necessary crude to process into fuels such as gasoline and diesel....
--more--"
So which is it, AmeriKan media?
"French protests appear to taper off" by Associated Press / October 29, 2010
PARIS — Strikes caused hassles for air travelers in France yesterday, but nationwide street protests over a plan to raise the retirement age to 62 failed to draw the massive crowds of weeks past....
In Paris, demonstrators waved union flags and set off flares, while in southern Marseille, they beat drums and blew whistles. Past demonstrations have drawn more than a million protesters into the streets: This time, the Interior Ministry put the figure at 560,000 nationwide. The hard-line CGT union contested that number, putting turnout at 2 million....
Guess whose word I am taking.
--more--"
And look who shows up in the middle of it all:
"Alleged bin Laden tape threatens French; Militant rails against veil ban, support for war" by Maamoun Youssef, Associated Press / October 28, 2010
CAIRO — Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden threatens in a new audiotape to kill French citizens to avenge their country’s support for the US-led war in Afghanistan and a new law that will ban Muslim veils.
Uh-huh!
Yeah, ANYONE WHO DISAGREES with ANY ASPECT of the AGENDA is a TERRORIST!
Also see: No Longer Digging Up Dead Men
You are welcome to pick up a shovel and start digging, readers.
And those Muslim women under the cloth are responsible for all the world's troubles.
In the tape obtained by satellite television station Al-Jazeera and then posted on its website yesterday, bin Laden said France was aiding the Americans in the killing of Muslim women and children in an apparent reference to the war in Afghanistan. He said the kidnapping of five French citizens in the African nation of Niger last month was a reaction to what he called France’s oppression of Muslims....
The authenticity of the tape could not be immediately verified, but the voice resembled that of the terror group leader on previous tapes determined to be genuine....
It "resembled" his?
Related: When Seeing and Hearing Isn't Believing
Say again?
Tapes by bin Laden and his top lieutenant, Egyptian-born Ayman al-Zawahri, have recently been posted on Al-Jazeera’s website rather than on sites run by militant Muslims, as has been done for years. The shift appears to reflect the unexplained technical difficulties or closures the militant sites have experienced in recent months....
Or it explains the fact that WE ALL KNOW the "CIA-DUH" WEBSITES are GOVERNMENT CREATED!
--more--"
And look who the French are doing business with:
"France, China in $22.8b trade deal" by Angela Doland, Associated Press / November 5, 2010
PARIS — France announced $22.8 billion in deals yesterday to sell uranium, technology, and more than 100 Airbus planes to China, and the two countries also agreed to a sweeping strategic partnership on nuclear power.
Apparently only Iran can not have that stuff.
Chinese President Hu Jintao’s three-day state visit to France opened with a red carpet welcome, as well as a flurry of deals that made clear how much the countries’ ties have improved.
It was a turnaround from the tense relations of two years ago, when French President Nicolas Sarkozy threatened to boycott the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics out of anger about China’s treatment of Tibet.
Which ju$t goe$ to $how that none of that $tuff matter$ when money i$ involved!
The deal expands on 30 years of nuclear cooperation between China and France, which gets about three-quarters of its electricity from nuclear power....
Imagine if you told the French they couldn't have nuclear power.
They would go to war with you!
--more--"
Also see: U.S. Two-Faced Towards China
Don't take it personally; we do it to everybody.
