Hey -- be glad we don't live in France
Rennes for instance.
From
The Distributed Republic:
Think things are bad in the US?
Economically they may be... the market is tanking, the FED is printing like crazy, entire parts of the country are being nationalized. I do however remain optimistic because the people are still not totally corrupt, they still have a decent moral compass and some remain of respect for property rights. The following story happened in Rennes, in the Bretagne region of France. Should the following happen in the US, I think hardly anyone would support it, and emphatically not the democratic party. In France, this was quite popular...
A few days ago, the AFP published this (my crappy translation cannot even begin to describe the socialist newspeak used here. The substantive "pr�caires" essentially means someone who can be fired).According to the police, around 25 people, belonging to a collective of "ch�meurs et pr�caires" - unemployed and people with short-term jobs - grabbed food today, and left without paying for it at the Galeries Lafayette, a French department store, in Rennes.
The activists stuffed their carts with food around noon then blocked the checkout counters, unfurling a banner: "ch�meurs et pr�caires en lutte", indicating their social struggle. After negotiating with the management of the store, which was crowded with Christmas shoppers, they managed to leave with their provisions without paying. No complaint was filed with the police, who went on site but did not arrest anyone.
The AFP contacted the store management who declined to comment.
A bit more -- from the 'groups' website:
After 40 minutes, a member of our collective takes his walky-talky to discuss with the manager. He becomes more reasonable and agrees to come down, but he does not seem ready yet to give in to our demands. He comes down and gives conditions which we seem unacceptable to us : for example, he wants us to take a value brand foie-gras instead of Fauchon foie-gras (N.B one of the most expensive brand), that we free the counters and go settle this discretely in a small room, away from the clients. We jettison ballast by offering to take only 10 baskets out of twenty. The talks are moving fast, we feel the situation is going to unlock.
In this country (in our store) -- lock the doors, get the security people to guard them and call 911 to report a robbery in progress.
Same thing as in Somalia with the ocean-going pirates. You give in to them one time and it's all over. There is zero negotiation with idiots like this -- they have no moral ground, no cultural equivalence, no repressed voice. These stupid children are not speaking truth to power, they are acting very self-centered and very spoiled and very out-of-touch with reality.
Europe used to be a gorgeous place. I traveled there 40 years ago with my parents and have been back about ten times. The last was ten years ago and that was to Ireland, England and Switzerland.
I would visit the British Isles and Ireland again -- maybe Italy for the food and definitely Turkey, Iceland and Greece (skipping the big cities as much as possible) but have zero desire to visit any part of mainland EU. They are mired in their own sepsis and demonstrate no desire to reclaim their cultural heritage.
And as one commenter noted, it's the Treasury and not the FED who print money.
Posted by DaveH at December 30, 2008 8:54 PM