France

Update footage on you tube:

Ed. On 18 October 2010 I received a short email from Prof Francis Ronsin, in Paris, headed “Strikes”. He wrote: “Social war has broken out in France. It is a long time since I had reason to be proud to be French!” So I wrote back to ask for a few paragraphs about the strikes that are paralyzing business as usual and liberating French society, which I have translated here -- Sheila Newman See also "1.3-2.5m French demonstrate against raising retirement age" and "French General Strike on Retirement Age takes to highways of France 13 October"

A surprise for everyone

What is happening in France today comes as a surprise to everyone. A pleasant one for some, an unpleasant one for others.

For several months there have been calls to strike – often with little response – and big demonstrations – with totals of several million people involved, each time, throughout France. The government insisted continually that it would not give in and it seemed possible that the strikers and the demonstrators would finish up becoming discouraged.

Involvement of school children

The first change in these trends occurred last week. High school children (15-18 years old) then middle school children (12-15 years old) began barricading their school entrances and confronting the police in the streets. They were protesting: many young people are unemployed and if the elderly are made to work longer … It was also a game, a party.

Domestic Petrol supply blocked

Another change in trends occurred over the weekend. Protesters blocked access to petrol depots. Truck drivers were asked to form roadblocks. Police were running everywhere. As they unblocked roads in one place, roadblocks would go up somewhere else. Petrol has now run out in many towns and even throughout regions. Little demonstrations are occurring everywhere, involving a few dozen or a few hundred people.

Why in France and not elsewhere?

Today (Tuesday) is a day of strikes and demonstrations throughout France. It’s likely to be risky! Sheila Newman asks the question: “Why in France and not elsewhere?” Do the French have a more conflictual temperament? Is it because of historical tradition? Difficult to say. What is certain, is that there is a link between opposition to a law which most French people do not want and a very strong anger, even hatred, towards the government, above all, towards President Sarkozy.

Francis Ronsin
(Translated by Sheila Newman)

Francis Ronsin was Professor, Department of Contemporary History, at the Université de Bourgogne (Dijon). He has published several books and numerous articles that focus on the relationship between political struggles and private life: La Grève des ventres - Propagande néo-malthusienne et baisse de la natalité en France 19ème-20ème siècles (Aubier, Paris, 1980); Le Contrat sentimental - Débats sur le mariage, l'amour, le divorce, de l'Ancien Régime à la Restauration (Aubier, Paris, 1990) ; Les Divorciaires - Affrontements politiques et conceptions du mariage dans la France du XIXème siècle. (Aubier, Paris, 1992); Le Sexe apprivoisé -Jeanne Humbert et la lutte pour le contrôle des naissances (La Découverte, Paris, 1990) ; and La population de la France de 1789 à nos jours. Données démographiques et affrontements idéologiques (Le Seuil, Paris, 1997); La Guerre et l’oseille (Syllepse, Paris, 2003). He is also the principal organizer of the international research seminar Socialism and Sexuality.

Rights of partial or full reproduction of this article are forbidden without permission from Francis Ronsin.

"SMS and Facebook work really well. People discuss these matters all night. The next day they are organised."

Members of the massive French union confederation CGT (Confederation Generale du Travail) joined with other union confederations, taking from the streets to the freeways and regional highways in France. Members used slow driving to slow traffic and others distributed information to drivers and passengers all over France, and encouraged ordinary citizens to express their support. School students and young workers continue to participate.The striking had gone into a new organisational mode.

This article updates the French general strikes first described in this article describing events of 12 October 2010. 1.3-2.5m French demonstrate against raising retirement age

Update 13 October 2010: French Unions leaflet drivers in snail road campaign over retirement age

Source of pictureshttp://jt.france2.fr/20h/

Members of the massive French CGT (Confederation General de Travail) joined other unions, taking from the streets to the freeways and regional highways in France. Members used slow driving to slow traffic and others distributed information to drivers and passengers all over France, and encouraged ordinary citizens to express their support.

The striking had gone into a new organisational mode.

Young workers

Young workers expressed themselves in groups outside factories and marching in the streets.

"You only have to look at your parents when they come home from work half dead to know that working longer is a bad idea."

One said that you have only to look at the state their parents return home from work of an evening to know that it is a bad idea to extend working years. They return home half-dead.

High school children

High school children and young workers were also much in evidence again. 3 per cent of high schools were said to have participated, according to Actualites Francaises (http://jt.france2.fr/20h/

As one girl said, "SMS and Facebook work really well. People discussed issues all night." Obviously French youth are using electronic opportunities to organise, along with their parents and compatriots.

French Government worried at political awareness of young people

In what looks like a defensive rear-guard action by the government, which feels threatened by real political engagement of young people in France, Ségolène Royal, who, in 2008 contested leadership of the French Socialist Party was accused in parliament of having inadvisedly mobilised schoolchildren in the streets. She defended herself by saying that she had advised them to participate safely.

"Grève Générale" - Massive National Strike against raising retirement age in France

Between 1.5 and 3.5 million French people demonstrated in the streets against raising the retirement age on Tuesday.

The French can still really organise a democratic protest.

Where the populations of so many Anglo* countries have been politically fragmented by mass immigration and the consequent geographical restructuring of society with constant changes to streets, suburbs and buildings, big towns in France largely retain their original street plans and the French themselves retain the characteristics and the capacity to network of a big old tribe that shares the same history, in a land still largely controlled at local level, despite the sophisticated central government.

Between 1.23 m and 3.5 m march

On Tuesday 12 October, between 1,230,000 million and 3,500,000 million French protested in the streets of Paris and in hundreds of towns and cities in a National General Strike against Retirement 'Reform' policies that the government has been trying to bring in for some time. The unions estimated the number at 3.5m and the government estimated it at 1.23m. 250 marches took place in different parts of the country simultaneously.

High school students as young as 15 also marched

This was not the first strike against the raising of the retirement age, but for the first time many high school children were out in the streets, as well as university students and young people who had just begun to work. They were campaigning on their own behalf because they saw their futures as threatened by attempts to raise the number of years worked in order to qualify for a full retirement pension from 41 to 43 years.

It is hard to imagine such political engagement by youth on intergenerational issues of finance in Anglo countries. The solidarity is lacking.

Late retirement means no jobs for young people

They were protesting that, if the trend to raise the age of retirement continued, they would be working until they were extremely old. They also protested that if people retired later and later, there would be no jobs for young people.

Unlike the anglo-norm where people have been taught to endorse the work-ethic as the be-all and end-all, the French are more sensible and frank. As one elderly man said, "I don't want to work two more years. I'm tired. Give my job to a young person."

And a young woman, who said, "If I have to work for 43 years to put aside enough to qualify for retirement, what if I want to have children? When will I have time to do that?

Other young people said, "We don't want to work until we drop. And there won't be any jobs for us if people continue to work past the age of 60."

Entire families went out into the street, like this woman, who held up a sign, explaining that she was 43 years old and employers said she was too old to work, but if the government had its way she would have to work for 43 years to get a pension. She said the situation meant that for her family poverty will be permanent.

She would, of course, be worse off in the US or Australia, where rents and land and house-prices are far higher and there is almost no public housing, and where unemployment benefits are not guaranteed, as they are in France.

Vive la France! We can all learn from France.

For another article showing the tribal muscle of the French, see what happened when the government tried to privatise the post-offices.

Obviously the same pressures are being applied to France as have been successfully applied to the Anglo-countries, where privatisation and superannuation, instead of proper pensions, is rampant. The difference is that, even though the French Press, like the Anglo-press, tries to manufacture a reality and normalise the idea that 'most' people agree that privatisation and working longer are 'necessary', due to the relatively intact family and clan organisation of the French and the strength of local government, it is harder to put one over them, because neighbours and families still communicate.

Why don't Anglo populations have the same ability as the French to self-organise?

In countries like the USA, England, Canada and Australia, the artificial organisation of their populations, with people working far from their homes, and living in newly built estates where neighbours have no shared history, and where people are out of touch with their relatives and 'clans', the basic structure of social organisation has been fragmented and smashed. The growth lobby has been in control too long and the people are not really citizens, more clients of a corporate state which is in the business of land-speculation, financed by taxes and the selling off of national estate. In France, state property development and subsidisation of all housing have made it hard for the private growth lobby to pervert democracy and impose their own restructuring on the population. For more on this read the relevant sections on The Growth Lobby and its Absence".

French pension system

There are two levels of ordinary pension in France. To get a full pension you now need to have worked for at least 41 years. You may qualify for a pension at age 60 years, regardless of when you began to work, but 10% is taken off for every year less than 41. People who work 65 years get a better pension, although this is also subject to deductions if they have not worked for at least 41 years. There are also variations on the retirement age depending on occupation. For people who work in the liberal professions, it is 65, and for some other occupations, it is 50 or 55. In some cases people who have not been in paid work nonetheless are counted as if they had been, for example, mothers who have disabled children.

Special Retirement fund law of 1999

A law in 1999 created the Reserve Fund for retirees.
The left, which came into power in 1997, did not try to change the retirement age, but voted in a law on financing social security in 1999, through which a Reserve Fund for retirees (FRR) was created. This fund made it possible to put aside a surplus which originated during the years of strong economic growth, 1999, 2000 and 2001. The FRR aimed to protect low-waged workers against the possibility of harsh changes to retirement law which might accompany an economic crisis. The funds accumulated under the FRR were expected to reduce the pressure the government might feel to raise the retirement age or increase superannuation levies.

The French government decided after 2002, when economic growth had slowed, to stop putting money into the retirement reserve fund. Nonetheless, in June 2010, there were 34 billion euros in the FRR funds. (Source: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retraite_en_France#Confiscation_des_sommes_capitalis.C3.A9es_en_1941

Source of photos and major source of news was: JT France2

*"Anglo" - refers to countries which have inherited the British systems of land-use planning and inheritance, usually through colonisation, but also refers to the UK, even though it is now part of the EU and may now change.

Fair Water Use (Australia)

Media Release
6th September 2010

Italy has national referendum on water privatisation

Recent legislation to privatise water services in Italy has met with staunch public resistance and a well-organised national campaign, resulting in the tabling of a petition of around 1.5 million signatures from citizens opposed to this legislation - three times as many as are required to call a referendum on the issue.

Paris: Water back in public hands

Paolo Carsetti of the Forum Italiano dei Movimenti per l'Acqua has pointed out that even the City of Paris has removed control of water supply from the private sector, "when Paris had been the heart of the empire of water multinationals such as Suez and Veolia."

Australia: Privatisation by stealth is occurring

Citing the Australian activities of these and other off-shore companies such as Olam International, Summit Global, the Guinness-Peat Group and Water Asset Management, Ian Douglas, national coordinator of public water rights and environmental advocacy group, Fair Water Use, indicated today, "Unlike the Italian scenario, in Australia the process of water privatisation has been one of stealth; the vast majority of Australians are unaware that, as a direct result of the so-called 'water-reform' policies of successive state and federal governments, Australia is handing control of its water resources, and the uses to which our water is put, to private entities whose only interest is maximising the financial returns of their shareholders."

Vital to keep public spotlight on what is happening

"Having dragged the issue into the open, Fair Water Use will do all possible to ensure that it remains in the public arena and will continue its campaign to let the people of Australia decide their water future: not inept administrations or self-serving speculators", he continued.

Demand democracy

 Dr Douglas concluded, "The Italian public will now have the opportunity to voice its opinion on water privatisation via national plebiscite: Australians deserve the right to do the same".

Authorised by:

Ginny Brown

Media Coordinator
media [AT] fairwateruse.com.au

Fair Water Use (Australia)

+61 (0)8 8398 0812 / (0)4 1602 2178

PO Box 384, Balhannah, South Australia 5242

www.fairwateruse.com.au

Haiti: There's no such thing as a curse
by

First published, in French at Mondialisation.ca, 15 January 2010
Translated by Sheila Newman

How often do we hear the expression "cursed" in conjunction with Haiti's situation? As if, rather than consider the real political causes, we would rather trust in God. It's easier. Less dangerous.

God doesn't send accounts, after all. God cannot be reelected or not reelected after 4 years. The recent history of Haiti is largely that of a dispossessed country, broken, a country that liberal economics has demolished.

US abolished law stopping foreign-ownership

It wasn't God that landed on the island in 1915 and occupied it for 20 years; it was American marines that allowed Washington to abolish the clause in the Constitution that prevented foreigners from owning businesses in the country. Thousands of inhabitants were dispossessed. Giant plantations were created. Because of an army that was busier fighting its own people than anything else, it was permitted for 1% of the population to own 50% of the resources of the country.

It wasn't God either that supported Duvalier's terrible dictatorship for decades, Duvalier who was more interested in enriching himself than in building a country worthy of the name. It was France and the United States.

Political and Economic interference disastrous

And it wasn't God who overthrew Aristide, in 2004, after he had again abolished the army (as he had done in the 1990s, but was then overthrown by a coup d'Etat) and after he tried to oppose the privatisations and the external control of the country, but clearly and simply the United States, Canada and France, who replaced Aristide with the neo-liberal economist, Gérard Latortue.

It wasn't God who destroyed this country; it was Men of flesh and blood, Men who preferred to fill their pockets rather than to fight against poverty, to support a central government capable of applying stricter standards of housing or of fighting the deforestation that makes cyclones so much more dangerous.

Many other countries are hit by natural disasters. How many times has Cuba been touched by cyclones as strong as those that have hit Haiti? How many times has Japan been the victim of earthquakes just as violent as those which hit Haiti yesterday? It wasn't God that destroyed Haiti; it was Men. It wasn't God that protected the other countries; it was Men who decided it should be that way.

Sending a few dollars to Haiti is good, but that won't change the system. No-one is against charity, but you don't build a society on charity.

We could bury Haiti under thousands of millions of million billion dollars and the problem wouldn't be fixed. Haiti is the failure of a country without a strong central state, corrupted to the marrow, dispossessed of itself by ideological choices made by foreign countries.

Haiti is the result of a catastrophic history to which have been added the catastrophe of economic reforms that have diluted the power of the State, whilst creating a de facto libertarian paradise built on luck and make-do, where the lack of any social cohesion gives rise to the worst aberrations.

The best way to help the Haitians isn't to send them money. It is by demanding that each of our governments but out so that, finally, once and for all, the Haitians can be responsible for their bad luck and their good luck.

So that, finally, we stop blaming God and instead we look at what we Men can do for this destroyed land.

And perhaps, also, remembering that our governments have Haitian blood on their hands and that they are directly responsible for that unspeakable catastrope because of their persistent interference to stop Haiti developing.

We can add these tens of thousands of deaths to the tragic total of savage capitalism; they are less visible than the victims of 'communism', but just as dead!

Maybe that's another advantage of having God at your sides ...

Source: Louis Préfontaine's blog.

http://louisprefontaine.com/

Articles de Louis Préfontaine publiés par Mondialisation.ca

How the tragic situation of Haiti's overpopulation and poverty came about? There were not always 9m hungry people there. When this once rich and beautiful island was discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492, it was inhabited by a population of about 100,000 Amerindians, living in a steady state economy. The Amerindians refused to mine gold for the Spanish, so the Spanish imported many thousands of slaves from Africa. The French took the whole island over in 1697 and it remained their most lucrative possession until 1825, despite the inhabitants claiming independence and freedom from slavery under the French Revolution of 1789. At that time there were few Amerindians but about 400,000 African slaves and 100,000 colonists. Added on 17 Jan 2010. Slavery is ongoing in Haiti.

We should never forget that the wealth of the developed world was originally built on the slave trade, until coal and oil became cheaper than slaves. And slaving is still going on in Haiti, as A Crime so Monstrous shows.

The Island of Hispaniola, which Haiti, on the western end, shares with the Dominican Republic to the east, was discovered by Christopher Columbus. In colonial times Haiti was known as Saint-Domingue. The west was rich in minerals, notably gold, but the east lacked minerals. The Amerindian population refused to be slaves, so the Spanish imported slaves from Africa to dig up the minerals and farm crops of sugar and coffee for export. On the east side French buccaneers set up camp and, in 1697, the whole island became a French possession. After vicious trade-wars with Britain and other countries lasting on and off for a century, Saint-Domingue was the only French colony left. At the time though, Haiti was the jewel that every country craved. One in eight French people derived their income directly or indirectly from that slave colony and picked it clean. Its GNP was around a third the size of the French mainland economy in 1789.

In 1789 the people of Saint-Domingue, being French, successfully claimed representation in the French revolutionary parliament, which banned slavery. But the French elite would not let go of their cash-cow so easily. The slaves fought courageously for freedom against colonial soldiers from Spain, England and France.

Slavery was formally re-established by Napoleon in 1802 after many battles.

It was not until 1833 that the French State recognised the independence of Saint-Domingue, which took the name Haiti. Incredibly Charles X extorted massive reparations from the Haitians, although so many Europeans had lived off their backs and their land for well over two centuries. The island was impoverished through the payment of the 'debt' which was paid by 1833. Whereas, at the end of the 15th century, shortly after discovery by Christopher Columbus, the population was about 100,000 indigenous Amerindians, following the discovery of gold, by the time of the French Revolution and its own revolutions, it had been unsustainably bloated by continuous importation of massive volumes of slaves from Africa, to a total around 400,000, plus 100,000 Europeans. In 2010, with a population estimated at around 9 million, it is among the poorest states in the world.

Yet, just before the French Revolution, Saint-Domingue was the biggest producer of sugar in the world and produced more than half the coffee in the world. Its external trade was more than one third of metropolitan France’s. One in eight French people lived directly or indirectly from its product, which depended on enslavement of the inhabitants.

This is what happens when a population is deracinated and disorganised in an economy where the only way of getting a living is by your hands. Remember how the original Amerindians had a small and steady population? So did the Africans in the countries from which they were taken. Artificial stimulation of population growth has disastrous consequences, even when it is not done by elites for outright slavery. Haitians have little money for food, let alone contraception, and little access to either.

Poor Haiti. And now this terrible earthquake.

It makes me really angry when all you hear in the news is that the Haitians were the first slaves to get independence and then of how they squabbled. I think that we can safely assume that they may have independence but that the old slave economy has remained, with wages very hard to come by, and that this overt poverty has permitted the classic slave trade to continue, as the book, A Crime so Monstrous, by Benjamin Skinner, shows.

"Chavannes says today’s “dramatic situation” has deeper roots. Delayed agricultural reform is partly to blame, he says, with no proper sharing out of land since independence in 1804, when division of the land of poor slaves amongst the generals merely produced what he refers to as “neo-slavery”. “Agrarian reform is pressing”, says Chavannes, pointing out that 80% of local court cases involve haggles over who has jurisdiction over which parcel of land.

Up to the 1960s however, Haiti was self-sufficient in food. After which the neo-liberalist regime began to bite and gradually destroyed local production, rice, poultry and eggs industry being examples. Since then, the country has suffered from a lack of political commitment to the sector, he argues." Source: Serge Gilles (Leader of the Fusion des Sociaux Democrates Haitienne - Haitian Social Democratic Fusion Party)

NOTES

Editor's note: Additional information about the slave trade in Haiti was included on 17 January 2010.

(Scroll down for information from writers in Australia, Canada, USA to date. More input welcome)

Solar Power - photovoltaics - in France

In France, as in Australia, many people have installed solar panels in order to benefit from selling electricity they generate but do not use back to the grid. In France they sell it back to Electricité de France (EDF). The number of professionals who supply electricity back to the grid in France is increasing.[1]

In the photograph of a rural landscape we can see the equivalent of 300 football fields has been dedicated to photovoltaic surfaces.
Workers add 4,500 daily.

The photovoltaic-center is huge, on a non-human scale.

When it is finished it will be the biggest site in Europe. It is 300 hectares (ha) in area and is expected to produce 76 megawats (MW) once completed, which would supply the consumption of something around 40,000 citizens.

(Ed. We are not told by France2 whether this is average French per capita, or average French private household. Obviously, by taking such factors as industry and food transport into account, consumption per capita would far exceed consumption per capita per household. Also, in Australia electricity and fuel consumption per capita or per capita per household are greater than in France. Per capita, this is because Australian food and other goods travel further than in France and, per capita per household, it is because we have very poor building insulation and design (deterioriating as we speak and many new suburbs replace vegetated areas with eaveless, tarmack-surrounded, uninsulated boxes.)

This year part of this new photovoltaic center will use 'tracking' technology whereby the panels can turn themselves to follow the sun. This is expected to increase electricity production by between 20 and 30 per cent.

France has 30 times less photovoltaic stock than Germany

France's 175 MW of public stock of photovoltaic panels was multiplied by three in one year, but remains 30 times less than the German stock.

Yves Bruno Civel, General Director of the Observatory of Renewable Energyies, commented, "If France tried to catch up with Germany by making giant photovoltaic installations, it would run into limitations eventually due to competition for ground space, which is already intense, between those who want more land to expand cities and roads [2]and those who want it for biofuels and food."

Tariffs for grid-feed

Photovoltaic panels are not only found in vast fields. More and more are found on house roofs. Individuals sell all their production to EDF. They get 60c per kilowatt and can buy back electricity for only 10c a kilowatt.

Erwan Tesson, Director of Arkensol Society says this isn't the only benefit. You get money back on income tax, which, for the average family in France, would amount to 8000 Euros.

Retirement income

Frederic Borrot, a farmer in Gironde says, "It's better than life insurance. The return over 20 years is 10-12 per cent."

With 200 square meters of photovoltaic panels on his outbuildings a farmer can pay back his loan. Borrot's aim is to prepare for the future.

"To have additional revenue and for my retirement, because today farmers haven't got much of a retirement income - far from it. With this one can expect a monthly return of 1,500 Euros.

But future profits may not be guaranteed

The possibility that the rates the EDF currently pays may be revised downwards is causing some anxiety - especially for professionals.

In France 34,000 projects are in a queue for connection.

Australia

From Bill Parker, Editor of Australian Solar Energy Society's on-line magazine

The PV industry in OZ is dominated by installers. There is no longer any pull through that builds a real industry with the departure of BP Solar. Their factory is now in the hands of a nuclear company and the only other organisation is Spark Solar in Canberra.

The "industry" is hardly stable and has to react to the mismanagement in Canberra - the investment is not there and the
players are scratching at the edges. Australia has failed and failed to get to grips with an industrial development policy that creates stability and certainty. The knee jerk operates. There is no sound thinking, and any of the sound thinkers who were left are now gone.

The country needs a uniform GROSS fee in tariff, like France, to create the proper settings for a sunrise industry. It MUST be enshrined in legislation nationally otherwise we are just talking greenwash and hot air. On a bigger scale, there is a simple mechanism that would assist - a bit like the completion guarantee for a film. Indemnify the companies that would build bigger solar plants. The money is out there.

Frankly, Australia is not even in the race anymore and to even contemplate that K. Rudd would change that is wishful thinking only.

Bill Parker

Ontario, Canada

Don Chisholm writes:

In Ontario Canada, our provincial gov has take a lead in promoting "green" energy. Last May they passed the Ontario Energy Act.

Its Feed In Tarrif (FIT) program provides easier access to the grid by large produces, and long term contracts for wind and solar developers, with prices significantly higher than current fossil fuel costs, today.

I live in an island county on the eastern end of Lake Ontario, with excellent wind potential. However, a very strong well-financed NIMBY lobby has, to date, prevented wind-farm developers from becoming established here. I'm co-chair of a local group called, the County Sustainability Group, and we have written an essay to rebut the NIMBYists, and to elaborate on why their disinformation holds appeals to many in the general public. You can see this essay
here.

At the home owner level, the FIT provides great incentive for rooftop or backyard wind or solar, up to 10 kw. For example, it gives a 20 year contract for solar energy paying about 6 times the home owners cost from energy from the grid. Buy low, sell high – it should work! ROInvestment should be over 10%/year, significantly better than money invested anywhere else these days. I have recently had a contract proposal accepted and am currently working on getting a 10kw system system in place.

Of interest might be the Ontario hourly energy that provides our grid.
Details here
The CANDO reactor chug along providing almost half of our energy with the other large contributor hydro, especially the Beck generators at Niagara Falls.

Don Chisholm (watching the snow fall at -15c,)

New York, USA

Sir Edmund the Green writes:

I just had a 2.08 KW solar PV system installed on a shed i built for the purpose in New York State.
We qualified for a New York State rebate of $4. per watt (this has since been lowered to $2.50 per watt.)

We were required to use a "professional" installer approved by NYSERDA (NY Energy Authority) to receive the rebate.

Between a labor charge of $2,000 for about 40 hours of work, and hidden mark-ups of about $5 - 6 K, the entire rebate went to the installer, who made out like a bandit. We could have purchased the materials, (10 Sharp panels, 216's rather than the 208's we got , a Sunnyboy SMA3000 US inverter, and a rail mounting system) in the competitive marketplace from a supplier like Solar Electric Supply in California, for LESS than we paid after the rebate!

The rebate system as it currently exists in NY is a rip off, basically a welfare program for approved installers, and does little or nothing to encourage more people to go Solar.

Most of the work of installing a PV system involves knowing how to operate a ladder, and basic electricity. The rebate system needs to be re-oriented towards allowing the do it yourselfer to take advantage of it, and the greed of professional installers needs to be capped. Of course, as in any electrical project, there must be rigorous safety inspection.

But as marginal as the financial payback is for photovoltaic, the current rebate system is a killer for anyone but the true solar fanatic.

sir edmund the green

In general, cut down

From Dave Kimble, North Queensland, Australia
[Referring to report on France]:

76 MW is the peak power of the installed panels under full summer midday sun.
Most of the time the panels will produce a lot less than that.
Customers actually consume energy, not power.
In Queensland the average household uses at an average rate of 21 KW.h per day.
But they don't use it at a continuous rate of ( 21 / 24 ) KW, nor at the rate at which the solar panels supply it (mostly around midday).
So the solar farm must be connected into an electrical grid that has sufficient generating capacity of other kinds to be able to match supply to demand.

While it is important to know the peak power, so that electrical equipment can be sized to cater for full load, what is also important is the KW.h produced each hour over the day and over days at different times of year.

In France an average day for a 1 KW panel might produce 4.5 KW.h ( that's a guess - search for "insolation" ).
If each household uses 21 KW.h per day then 76 MW is equivalent to 3,619 households, so that 40,000 citizens looks wrong - more like 14,000 .

As well as being weaker in winter, when the sun is lower in the sky, and the days are shorter, there is also the interruption of clouds. As solar becomes a larger proportion of the national energy mix, the "matching" capacity must get larger to cover for the cloudy days and cloudy hours.

Coal and nuclear cannot do this matching capacity job because they are very slow to change their output.
Wind can't do it either, because it also is variable.
Hydro is good, but good locations are few and far between.
Gas is OK, but it is wasteful to keep it "ready to go" - it might be economically OK because the grid controller will pay highly for matching capacity, but it is poor from the GW viewpoint to have gas running at night and gas spinning in reserve during the day.

And the solution is ...
there is no good solution.
Cut down.

Dave Kimble

Candobetter invites people to describe their experiences in different places.

Articles are also welcome.

NOTES

[1] Source of pictures and much of report: France2, (tv news) 1 Jan 2010

[2] Note that France is not intentionally growing its population, which is projected to fall after the deaths of the 'baby-boomer' bubble, over a period extending between around 2010 and 2060. Only the English-speaking polities are currently afflicted by their property development magnates with a populate and perish democratic opposition mentality. See more on The Growth Lobby

Madame the Mayor of Ambazac delivers her vote against privatisation of the French Post Office

In Australia we are watching the erosion of public services by changes to their statute ('authorities', 'corporations') turn into an avalanche of privatisation. The unions, who, by organising a general strike, could stop this rot almost immediately, bluster ever so quietly and shuffle symbolically.

We have seen outrageously undemocratic proceedings in the NSW parliament and in the Queensland elections.

In the first, Morris Iemma was finally toppled when the Labor Party which had placed him in power sacked him due to his perseverative campaign to privatise State Electricity despite the obvious disagreement of his party and the public and his own earlier promises. The unions and the ALP were remarkably slow and weak to resist this. The NSW Greens showed more leadership. In the end, the ALP did resist, but the person they replaced Iemma with - Rees - has persisted with privatisation moves and has gone ahead with other policies (here, for example) and here and here, quite shocking in nature and alien to Australian values.

In the second, the recent Queensland election (2009) the government consistently masked its policy and denied its intention to privatise more public assets. See "Queensland Elections". This democratic aberration met with almost no reporting from the mainstream media or resistance from other political parties. Even the Queensland Greens have been very weak on the privatisation of public assets in Queensland.

French democracy healthier than English-speaking countries' democracy

In France, democracy is doing much better. We bring this news to you to show you that the whole of the industrialised so-called "developed world" is not as enthralled by savage capitalism as Australia, America and Canada. The French (and most Western Europeans, except of course the down-trodden English) also don't suffer from politically engineered overpopulation and high immigration. [1] Yes, the French Revolution actually accomplished something useful and long-lasting between 1789 and 1846.

French Citizens organise nationally against road to Privatisation of the French Post Office

[Source: French News on France2 4 October 2009, 2000hrs]

In France the Government gave its assurance that, despite a mooted change of legal status, the French Postal Service (La Poste) will remain 100% public.

The Left doubted this and, at the beginning of October 2009, organised, with citizens, townhalls and unions, a national citizens vote via a National Committee against the Privatisation of the Post Office - ""Comité nationale contre la Privatisation de la Poste." See below for the signatories to the committee organising the citizens' vote.[2] Many or all of these votes were conducted in the local post offices themselves.

In the tiny village of Ambazac (Haute-Vienne) near Limoges, the 88 villagers voted 85 to 3 against privatisation of the Poste. The mayor delivered her own vote against privatisation publicly. She also said, "It would be unreasonable for a President of the Republic and a government to ignore the People's voice. In the rural region there are so many people who rely utterly on the public postal services."

The local postie took heart at the concerned and conscientious public reaction, which he could see taking place, since the ballot box was on the counter of the local post office.

All over France citizens voted in villages, towns and cities in this way.

French New Anti-Capitalist Party calls for Referendum on Privatisation

Responding to the news that already more than 2 million people had voted on the night of 4 October, Olivier Besancecot, spokesperson for the Anti-Capitalism Party (Le Nouveau Parti Anti-Capitaliste) in France called for a referendum based on the enormous participation in the activist-organised citizens' vote: "If there are many more than a million people who have shown the way on that issue then we have a right to a referendum as to whether people want to change the status of the post or not."

The dominant political party in a multi-party government, the UNP, said, via its spokesperson, Frederique LeFebvre, that it was all a beat-up and that the UNP was never going to privatise and that if there were a referendum, no-one in France would vote for privatisation.

The French socialist alliance mobilised against privatisation where Oz left weak and ambiguous

Unlike the left in Australia, the Socialist Party in France, along with the Unions and other political parties and presences of the Left has gone solidly to bat against privatisation of French assets.

If you can understand French, the
Video interview with Alexandre Canet, spokesperson for Rouen Socialist Party tells you that the Socialist Party (Parti Socialiste) has worked with other parties on the Left, with unions, and with local town halls to organise a citizens' vote on this matter.

The spokesman states (along with French subtitles) that "The change of statute represents a move towards privatisation, which would cause a deterioration in services."

Change of statute represents move towards privatisation: History of Privatisation process in Australia

The Hon Justice Michael Kirby AC CMG*, went to the trouble in 2006 to warn Australians about the dangers of privatization removing important government functions to a position beyond the laws made to administer them fairly.

Kirby said “The ‘commercialisation’ of the public sector means that isolating the activities and decisions of government from those of the private sector is becoming a more complicated, and sometimes, seemingly, an impossible exercise.”(p.3)

“The exercise of public power is fundamentally different in character to the making of a decision in a purely private context. Decisions are then being made on behalf of the people, typically involving the use of money raised from, and power derived from, the people. Higher standards of accountability and responsibility are therefore attached to the decisionmaker. Public power imports public accountability, including before the courts.” (p.4)

“This reduction in accountability is a result of removing control over day-to-day actions and decisions from the relevant Minister and government departments to private sector bodies whose ultimate legal responsibility is to their shareholders, rather than to the public interest more generally.” (p.6)

He goes on to describe the outcome of a series of cases involving the High Court where the law encountered problems in getting public accountability. This problem arose in NEAT Domestic Trading Pty Ltd v AWB Ltd (2003) 216 CLR 277. It involved officials of the Wheat Board who had refused six applications from another trader(NEAT) to export bulk wheat. The AWB had acquired through its creation by government, the power to prevent by veto bulk wheat exports from Australia. It could do this by withholding approval. The power to approve or veto exports normally belongs to a government body because it is a legal power. As such it is normally reviewable and controllable through the courts. That is, the judicial representatives of “we the public” can ensure that Australian trade is conducted fairly.

The outcome of this case was that Australians had lost the power to control the nation’s wheat exports by giving that power to this private body.

Source.

NOTES

[1]Note that, in Australia where there is another extraordinarily far-reaching undemocratic policy to politically engineer population growth on behalf of the corporate commercial sector, one man has stood up to this fatal policy - Kelvin Thomson.

[12] CFTC Postes et Télécommunications • Confédération CFTC • Fédération des Activités Postales et des Télécommunications CGT • CGT Finances • CGT Banque de France • Confédération CGT • Confédération Nationale du Travail CNT- PTT • Confédération Paysanne • FO Communication • FNEM FO Fédération nationale de l’énergie et des mines Force Ouvrière • Confédération FO • SUD Crédit Foncier • Fédération SUD PTT • FSU Fédération Syndicale Unitaire • SUD Caisses d’Epargne • Union Syndicale SOLIDAIRES • Fédération CNT-PTT • ACU (Association des communistes unitaires) • Alter Ecolo • Alternative Libertaire • ANECR Association Nationale des Elus Communistes et Républicains • CAP 21 Citoyenneté, Action, Participation pour le 21ème siècle • Club Gauche Avenir • CNCU Coordination Nationale des Collectifs Unitaires pour une Alternative au Libéralisme • Debout la République • Fédération des élu/es Verts et Ecologistes • La Fédération pour une alternative sociale et écologique • Fédération Nationale des Elus Socialistes Républicains • Gauche Unitaire • GUE/NGL Composante française du groupe de la Gauche Unie européenne/Gauche verte Nordique • Les Alternatifs • Les Objecteurs de Croissance • Les Verts • Mouvement de la Jeunesse Communiste • Mouvement des Jeunes Socialistes • MRC Mouvement Républicain et Citoyen • NPA Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste • PCF Parti Communiste Français • Parti Communiste Ouvrier Français • Parti de Gauche • PRG Parti Radical de Gauche • PS Parti Socialiste • République et Socialisme • Action Consommation • AFOC Association Force Ouvrière des Consommateurs • AITEC Association Internationale de Techniciens, Experts et Chercheurs • Amis de la Confédération paysanne • Confédération Paysanne • AC Agir contre le Chômage • APEIS Association Pour l’Emploi, l’Information, et la Solidarité • ATTAC • CNR Conseil National de la Résistance • Convergence des Collectifs de Défense et de Développement des Services Publics • DAL Droit au Logement • Fondation Copernic • INDECOSA CGT • IPAM Initiatives pour un Autre Monde • Jeunes Laïques et Solidaires • Jeunes Radicaux de Gauche • Marches Européennes • M’PEP Mouvement politique d’éducation populaire • Réseau Européen des Missions Publiques • Résistance Sociale • UFAL Union des Familles Laïques • UNEF Union nationale des Etudiants de France • UNRPA Union Nationale des Retraités et Personnes Agées

(Photograph, "Rêve Générale" by Francis Ronsin, taken during the demonstration of 29 January in Paris.)

France is currently going through an acute social and political crisis. And an economic crisis too, it is said, like everywhere else. For me, however, this is only the consequence of the first two kinds of crisis.

Towards a Modern France

Until the end of the 20th century the French still enjoyed public services of a standard equaled almost nowhere else in the world. Education: free government school from the age of 3 years right up to baccalaureat [university entrance examinations]; free and compulsory from 6 to 16 years of age. Almost free university courses. A health system which guaranteed access to care: public heath insurance, hospitals and pharmacies for even the poorest people. The trains ran fast (TGV) and arrived in one piece on time. Mail was delivered in 24 hours no matter where it came from or where it went. The postman came by my place up to three times a day (in Paris). Many unemployed people suffered – especially the youngest ones – as did people with salaries that were too low even then – but they were still protected from absolute poverty.

Revolting inequalities and injustices persisted and many of us protested. At the same time, however, it seemed natural to benefit from basic social welfare. Yes, it was beginning to erode, but it was not fundamentally in question.

France had always been careful to preserve independence with regard to the United States. For this reason the impact of the US world capitalism project and ultraliberal ideology wave was delayed here. The progress of ultraliberal ideas accelerated with the collapse of the Soviet Union and with the decline of the French Communist Party which followed. Up until 1980 the Communist party had received more than 20% of votes; in the last elections it only received 3%. Rid of this ally/competitor, the other big political party of the Left – the Socialist Party – followed the example of European Social Democrats and labour parties by coming to believe that freedom and prosperity of private enterprise were the basis of general well-being and that the only real form of democracy was the one defended – which meant imposed – by the Western block under the natural direction of the United States.

Their mainstream media being either government controlled, or having fallen largely into the hands of the big finance groups, the French were subjected to intensive propaganda. This propaganda caricatured the country as divided between creators of wealth: financiers, industrialists, heads of enterprise, dynamic executives … and “dependents”, “protected”, “parasites”, who took advantage of the system and created an unbearable load on the nation’s useful people. To enable French enterprise to become competitive at the highest world level a vast construction-site of radical reforms was indispensable.

Public services dismantled

The people responsible for France’s anaemia having been clearly identified : public servants, lazy people, too numerous and too well paid, unemployed people, more interested in accumulating benefits and payments than in looking for work, people with real and imaginary illnesses, carelessly overspending on treatment reimbursed by the state, old people, of which the proportion relative to the total population constantly increases because of demography, whose pensions are too heavy a burden now and will be an impossible one in the future, and illegal immigrants … Their evil deeds had to be stopped!

Since the President of the Republic, Jaques Chirac, was deemed not capable of urgently taking the necessary drastic measures, the Right found a replacement for him, who would hit quickly and hard. In 2007 Nicolas Sarkosy was elected, having promised to bring the ruinous social policies to an end. Effectively, he announced and immediately put to work, two series of ‘reforms’ the Right wanted, but which his predecessors had never dared to apply with such vigor.

A ‘package’ of fiscal measures allowed companies and the richest people to significantly reduce their taxes. In the same spirit, a number of high salaries – including his own – were strongly increased.

Simultaneously, other ‘reforms’ aimed to reduce the budget deficit and growth in public debt by going into battle against the perpetrators of the above-mentioned ‘abuses’.

Since laws protected public servants from being sacked, only one new public servant would be employed for every two that retired. Hospitals were already too under-staffed to function properly. A number will close to accommodate the programmed reduction in public servant numbers. Medical expenses are less and less well-reimbursed by [public] medical insurance. The number of years of saving required to qualify for full retirement benefits regularly goes up, just when enterprises want to get rid of workers more than fifty years old. The future for tomorrow’s retirees is very dark. The whole school system, from kindergarten to university, is being reorganized to adapt to a reduction in the number of teachers. A series of other decisions go in the same direction, in the direction of Margaret Thatcher or George Bush-type politics.

Is this leading to a major confrontation ?

The Right and most of the mainstream media applauded the president’s acts as he undertook a class war without hesitation or scrupule, indispensable for turning France into a modern nation. The political opposition, paralysed by internal quarrels of a Socialist Party widely affected by liberalist ideas itself, was incapable of proposing a radically different direction. Meanwhile, the most affected sectors protested, to the point of going on strike and demonstrating (public servants, high school students…) but always in an isolated manner. This changed after the global financial crisis and – perhaps – with the election of Obama.

Reacting to the global crisis, the government, which had claimed to be constrained to considerably reduce the social advantages and public services the French benefited from, immediately found billions of Euros to give or to lend to banks and to industrial enterprises, especially in the automobile sector. These same sectors stated themselves obliged to make many of their workers partly or fully redundant, all the while continuing to make considerable profits and to pay large sums out to their shareholders and directors. Anger and anxiety about the future spread widely, permitting the unions – united for once – to initiate a vast protest movement, culminating, the first time, on 29 January with a general strike and big demonstrations in all big cities (2.5 million demonstrators, including 300,000 in Paris.)

Forced to react, Nicolas Sarkosy appeared on three television stations to say that he understood how anxious the French were and would take this into account. He refused, however, to change his politics, despite the need to do so today, to combat the crisis, and tomorrow, to help re-launch the economy. His politics are those that the United States (his model) massively condemned at the last elections.

New demonstrations on the 19th of March were attended by even greater numbers.

Since then numerous universities have gone on strike. Guadaloupe and Martinique have also gone on general and indefinite strike.

In the face of a president whose only response to criticism is contemptuous and insulting, some people have begun to dream of a movement like the 1968 clashes. This is what the many demonstrators of 29 January 2009 were expressing with stickers on their jackets bearing words in the spirit of 1968: “Grève Générale” -- General Strike -- translated into “Rêve Générale” --General Dream.

The unions continue to follow due process and negotiate, they have scheduled their next demonstration of strength for the first of May – a symbolic day - but also a holiday. In the mean time, workers, condemned to lose their jobs, are developing more radical battle strategies: notably the detention in their workplaces of upper echelon executives to make them more respectful of workers’ rights. At the same time, some people are even making another historic comparison - with 1789 – the beginning of the great French Revolution, which swept away an equally powerful and contemptuous aristocracy, and established a Republic styled on democracy and equality.

(Translated by Sheila Newman)

Francis Ronsin was Professor, Department of Contemporary History, at the Université de Bourgogne (Dijon). He has published several books and numerous articles that focus on the relationship between political struggles and private life: La Grève des ventres - Propagande néo-malthusienne et baisse de la natalité en France 19ème-20ème siècles (Aubier, Paris, 1980); Le Contrat sentimental - Débats sur le mariage, l'amour, le divorce, de l'Ancien Régime à la Restauration (Aubier, Paris, 1990) ; Les Divorciaires - Affrontements politiques et conceptions du mariage dans la France du XIXème siècle. (Aubier, Paris, 1992); Le Sexe apprivoisé -Jeanne Humbert et la lutte pour le contrôle des naissances (La Découverte, Paris, 1990) ; and La population de la France de 1789 à nos jours. Données démographiques et affrontements idéologiques (Le Seuil, Paris, 1997); La Guerre et l’oseille (Syllepse, Paris, 2003). He is also the principal organizer of the international research seminar Socialism and Sexuality.

Rights of partial or full reproduction of this article are forbidden without permission from Francis Ronsin.

France will soon become President of the European Union.

The French Parliament is scheduled to vote on the first of a new set of environmental laws, springing from an environmental summit - La Grenelle - profoundly reviewing the state of the Environment, before mid July 2008.

During the French presidential elections, which Sarkozy won, he promised to hold an important environmental summit founded on an historic 1968 one, Les accords de la Grenelle. The 1968 Grenelle (Summit) is remembered for having led to a 25% increase in social security benefits, marking the beginning of the famous “social dialogue” in France.

On France2 Public News of Thursday June 5, Nicolas Hulot, film-maker, t.v. star, and ecological militant, head of the Nicolas Hulot Foundation for Nature and Man, was asked to comment on progress made since the recent French summit on environmental law, which his Foundation provided much of the impetus for. Hulot said that the proposed laws were, “too little and too slow,” and he commented on the amount of resistance and lobbying.

He said that he must be careful not to disrupt a good dynamic. “In France’s summit we got a sum of objectives and measures that we have never had before and we are in a position that no country has been in before ; the country has come together and is readying itself for action, so I have to be objective.” He added, however, that France still has to look at things as they are and not kid herself.

“At the moment every environmental indicator shows that the situation is accelerating, so that, whatever becomes of the summit objectives, anything we achieve will be a catch-up.”

“A number of things agreed to in the Summit have lost ground, for example carbon taxes have been delayed … And, renovation of old buildings - because new construction is only 9% of the building stock - the rest is all old - renovation of old buildings was supposed to become the standard. And green wedges; there were supposed to be connections between all the ecological zones; this was supposed to be put in place, but it hasn’t happened. These things could be brought up the list again by the members of Parliament (les deputés).”

Hulot said that he hoped that Members of Parliament would not descend into the depths they did over Genetically modified crops law, and instead will vote responsibly together by unanimously voting the Environment summit law (la loi Grenelle)… and perhaps bring some things forward, because so much has been scheduled too far ahead, to 2015, 2020 etc.

Hulot was asked by the announcer on the French News: “It’s true that the context of things has changed, the process has accelerated. Take for example, the cost of petroleum, would you accede to the demands of the occupations that are angry about this… by softening the taxes to reduce the amount they pay?”

Hulot: “Of course not, although that is easy to say if one is not specifically suffering. The point is that everyone needs to get real. We are now in food crisis, energy crisis, crisis of natural resources and primary resources, all combined with the economic crisis, bringing us to one of the greatest crises that the world has ever known. So, what do we do? Do we wait until we run into dead-ends everywhere, or do we take strong measures? France cannot all by herself be virtuous.”

She could, however, improve the situation by leading the European community.

“France could do it with La Grenelle… correcting and enriching a number of provisions. She could find legitimacy at the moment when she enters the Presidency of the European Union to lead our partners into still more structured measures…more radical…”

Asked to talk about petroleum in this context, Hulot, exclaimed, “Excuse me, but on Petrol, we still don’t have a Plan B. Petrol has still not hit bottom. We cannot take short term measures permanently. Petrol is going to become rarer and rarer and therefore more and more expensive. Therefore, for example, in a number of sectors regulation will become necessary, and probably reconversion.”

The announcer asked, “So there is no point in trying to soften the pain of high prices in petrol…?”

Using the French metaphor, ‘Reculer pour mieux sauter’, Hulot said that, “We have to step back in order to be able to advance all together. To move in a united way.”

He was then asked, “But what should we say to the occupations that are hardest hit?”

Hulot: “Well, in the first place you have to look at their problems case by case, for instance, in fishing, 3 or 4% of the sector is responsible for the greatest draw-down on oil … this can be discussed…For road transports, we need to look at the overall transport situation …We cannot only look at road transport alone. All cannot be as it was before. If people think that everything can go on as it has done, and we react constantly in crisis mode, we are going to finish up in a massive recession. We know that those who will be hit hardest are those who are already in difficulty. For example, the fishing industry, agriculturalists, and truckies..”

“Now we need a real Marshall Plan, at the level of France and Europe, to orientate massively our investments in our economies for this transition, and for solidarity (mutual cooperation).”

(re-edited 7 June for clarity.)
Source: France2 8pm television news of 5 June 2008; "Grenelle de l'Environnement: Nicolas Hulot veut que le projet de loi de programmation soit "amendé à la hausse"", AP, 05.06.2008, 12:57 and "Le Grenelle de l’environnement, mode d’emploi", http://www.biodiversite2012.org/spip.php?article228, 12 February, 2008
Journalist and Translator: Sheila Newman

This doesn't mean the same thing in France as it would in the US or Australia. France has no major dependency on the housing market. It is not an economy geared to growth in population and rapid turnover. Land speculation is severely taxed and so are inheritances outside direct family. In Paris there are unclaimed buildings because those who would inherit them do not want to pay accumulated taxes. This is a far better system than the one that the Anglophone countries share versions of.

Nonetheless, the news is that sales are down by 27.9% this year and that lots of new investors are unable to find renters. Prices are predicted to decline another 4% this year and then another 6% next year.

The first time there was a housing bubble in France was between about 1989 and 1999. Something like 12,000 realtors went out of business when it crashed.

Graph: "Index of price of dwelling in ratio to disposable Income, using 1965 francs."

Source: L'Observateur de l'Immobilier, No. 43, paris, 1999. The original data source is "Marché immobilier des notaires" (Notaries' property market) and INSEE Annuaire statistique de la France, ed. 2001

This graph was photocopied in black and white so the colour distinctions have disappeared. The top line, indicating higher prices, is always for Paris. The second line is for other French urban centres, and the lowest line, "Province" is for Other Areas, including non-urban.

The graph shows the ratio of disposable income to domestic property prices per square meter from 1979 to the year 2000. Affordability was highest in 1981. Between 1987 and 1996, however, France, mainly Paris, was affected by the same period of global property speculation that affected Australia.

In 2001 I wrote the following in Chapter 8 of my thesis (The Growth Lobby and its Absence) under the heading, "Dwelling Prices and Affordability in France":

"This was the first time France had undergone such a phenomenon [as a housing bubble]. In contrast to Australia, however, the prices returned to the level preceding the speculation bubble. We can observe here that dwelling prices in France, according to this measure of affordability, have risen and fallen quite steeply, but there appears to have been an overall stability, since 1965, when they stopped rising in real terms."

I am not surprised to see that, even though a second bubble followed quickly on the first, prices have come right down again.

Because professional property development speculators do not have much control over the French market, it is actually possible for ordinary citizens to simply hold off buying until prices fall. In contrast, in the US, Canada, Australia, England, where property moguls and their upstream and downstream dependents lobby successfully for high immigration, it doesn't matter if locals stop buying, because the governments will bring in more people. This is totally inimical for civil order and our governments should be covered in shame and thrown out for promoting this horror. Unfortunately, as we often mention on candobetter.org the media control information in the anglophone countries and they also control the global real-estate market to a large extent and they control perception of government and, I fear, government perception. So it is really hard for the public (a) to realise what is happening (b) to organise against it.

In France, although it is possible for foreigners to purchase property, they only obtain work permits if they are Europeans, except in very rare circumstances. So there is not much point in zillions of people jumping in planes and coming over to buy cheap houses and live in France. They would not survive.

Of EU countries, the United Kingdom has terribly costly housing and the English do tend to come and buy cheaper land and housing in France and other EU countries, driving the prices up there. So do some other countries with higher housing prices, such as the Dutch. However these migrants cannot have nearly the same impact as they have, for instance, in Australia. Foreign property buyers find that they also cannot leave their properties to anyone except their children unless they are prepared to be very heavily taxed, so spouses cannot gold-dig so successfully. And, after your first house, you have to wait years to purchase another if you want to avoid the speculative taxes.

Sheila Newman

"Jeunes agriculteurs" (Young Farmers) are demanding tax free petrol for agriculture and for the government to control distribution of petroleum in France.

Other Jeunes agriculteurs blockaded the petroleum depot in Frontignan, France, where about 100 farmers engaged with 50 riot police (la Compagnie républicaine de sécurité, CRS). One member of the CRS and one young farmer were injured. The blockaders had barricaded the road leading to the depot with burning tyres, palates and plastic rubbish. The farmers came from all over the Languedoc-Roussillon region and were responding to calls from the Regional Centre of Young Farmers (Centre regional des jeunes agriculteurs - CRJA)

"Fishermen, farmers, it's the same battle", said Xavier Fabre, Vice-President of the Launguedoc-Roussillon region of the CRJA. "We also use gasoline. One year ago we were paying 40 to 50 centimes a litre and today we pay one euro the litre. [That's about $2.00 Australian or US] It is costing us 50 euros a day to run a tractor.

(Fishermen protesting oil prices continue to be active in France. On Wednesday they were giving out pamphlets in Sète, France, to educate people about their problems. And fishermen from Grau-du-Roi in Gard caused traffic jams for 11 km on the A9 freeway near Monpellier.)

In Toulouse a large group of Young Farmers successfully blocked deliveries to and from the local petroleum depot. They have said that they will continue their blockade until tomorrow and that if the government fails to accede to their demands, they will go further in their actions.

The rise in petroleum prices, for farmers, also entails the costs of fertiliser, which is made mostly from petroleum gas.
In France, to fertilise 100,000 ha the costs have risen by 15,000 euros (approx 30,000AUD/USD).

In Britanny on the road to Bordeaux, there was an operation escargot - (operation snail), i.e. a slow drive to make the point about hardship and petroleum prices, with truckies joining farmers in a convoy of slowly driving vehicles, blowing their horns.

In Bulgaria there were similar protests. In Taiwan queues formed on the roads to gas stations after the government announced that the prices were going up. Thousands of drivers queued up all night to fill their tanks.

Without the cheap fertiliser that comes from plentiful petroleum, most of the enormous gains in production made in the last 50 years, which have permitted human economies to support enormous populations, will disappear. We can see signs of this whole economic structure fraying in the food riots in poor countries, the profiteering over state-subsidised 'biofuel' production in the US (fatal for soils, which are everyone's greatest wealth), the organised protests in France, and, most arcanely, the ridiculous and pathetic arguments over minor tax relief at the bowser in Australia. Question to all: Does Australia have even stupider politicians than the USA?

Sheila Newman

Sources: France2 Infos, 20hs, 28-5-08 and Romandie News, "Dépôt pétrolier de Frontignan: les CRS délogent agriculteurs et pêcheurs"

Test case in France finds new EU laws permit homeless citizens to sue state for failure to provide housing. (Report on France2 Television News, 22-5-08)

The administrative tribunal of Paris has found in favour of a family in sub-standard housing, whose application to the regional authorities (la prefecture) for better housing had been rejected.

Minister for Housing, Christine Boutin, commented that this legal decision demonstrated that the relevant new laws of 5 March 2007 were working.

"This is evidence that the law works, despite criticism that the right to sue for housing would turn out to be too complicated," she said on France2 television.

Calling the matter urgent, in an interim administrative tribunal the judge in chambers put aside an unfavourable decision made on 3 March by the Paris Mediation Commission, which had refused to consider a request for accommodation which had been made by a single woman who was raising two children alone.

This means that Namizata Fofana will be able to put her case again before the Mediation Commission.

If the Commission agrees that she has a case, the regional authorities (le prefet) will find her housing "within the next six months", Christine Boutin explained. And, if the applicant does not have accommodation by 1 December 2008, she will be able to sue the French state.

In all countries of the EU citizens are entitled to housing as a right, although this is a very new idea for Britain.
It is sad to realise how far from the provision of this most basic of rights have drifted Australia, Canada and the USA.

[English language acccount of case reported in France on 20/05/2008 - translation by Sheila Newman]

French State subsidizes French fishing fleet oil in harsh context of oil prices of $134US on 21-5-08

Industrialised fishing is not only no longer sustainable due to falling fish-stocks but now falling energy supply has priced it out of the free market.

This is a real loaves and fishes crisis. Where is a miracle when you need it?

The French and most Europeans realize that they must prepare their industries to sustain a self-sufficient Europe.
After days of strikes with roads to petrol stations barricaded so that bowsers could not be replenished, the minister in charge of the French fishing industry received permission from the EU to accede to some of their demands. 40 m euros will go to assist the industry to deal with higher petroleum prices. 22 m of that will go to cod fishermen who have been temporarily unable to work due to having exceeded their quotas.

The French Primeminister, Francois Fillon, said yesterday that marine fishing is the only profession in France where the cost of petrol is deducted from the crew’s wages. It is now costing more to fish than fishermen earn. Marine fishing is also the most dangerous profession in France, with the greatest numbers of accidents and fatalities. He stated that these factors meant that the industry is not comparable to the trucking industry, when asked if similar subsidies would be accorded to road transport.

French fishermen complain that the price of imported fish is too low to compete with. The French fishing catch has fallen by 60% whilst the French consume 40% more fish. One in nine fish consumed comes from aquaculture.

The French fishing fleet has been rationalized by law and through attrition from 43,000 to 17,000 over the past few years as the fish-stock falls and the EU tries to come to grips with ecological limits. There have been battles for fishing territory between French fishermen and other European fishermen, notably the Spanish, who, in 1994 boarded a French fishing boat, “La Gabrielle”, and surrounded it with 300 Spanish tuna-fishing vessels for seven days whilst negotiations proceeded at an international level to free the French boat.

The French fishing fleet is made up mostly of trawlers. Since the 1970s, line fishing was replaced by huge metal nets. Trawlers drag these heavy nets back and forth across the sea all day long. According to the Regional economic observatory in Britanny, petroleum made up 20% of costs for a trawler 16-20 meters long in 2006, compared with 10% for a lobster pot-boat of 12-20 meters and around 6% for a line-boat of 12-24 meters. ( Source :Laetitia Clavreul, « La crise du gazole révèle les failles de la pêche française, », Le Monde, Paris, )
The possibility, so cherished by growthism-economists, of increasing productivity to solve all resource problems, comes head on up against the reality of declining fish stocks and declining oil production in this case. Aquaculture is not a simple solution because it also relies heavily on fossil fuel to feed its fish, is highly polluting and disturbing to ecosystems, and cannot compete with the variety supplied by nature. There is currently research into using organic waste, including human waste, to feed aquacultures, but doing this safely on an industrial scale is problematic like so many processes which work on a small scale.