By Leigh Phillips - Znet

As disparate but linked militant youth protests simultaneously erupt in a number of countries across the continent, French President Nicholas Sarkozy has retreated on two controversial pieces of domestic legislation out of fear that a spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of 1968...Sarkozy...has dropped plans for changes to high school curricula and Sunday retail opening hours in dread that the "Greek syndrome"...could spread to France, or even across the continent.

By Kumaran Ira - December 20, 2008

(19 December 2008) -- On December 15, French Education Minister Xavier Darcos announced the temporary withdrawal of a highly contested high school reform, in the face of student protests...The decision to temporarily postpone implementation of the law, which would cut teaching staff and rearrange high school curricula, is an embarrassing about-face for the government...Since then, however, there was the eruption of massive and violent anti-government protests in Greece...The basic economic conditions that provoked the Greek riots exist in all of Europe, and in particular in France.

By Derrick O'Keefe - July 19, 2008

I find it refreshing and hopeful that there can still be popular oppositional campaigns that actually call things by their right names. Faced with an in-your-face capitalist as president, the French people have picked an in-your-face anti-capitalist as their favourite politician from the opposition camp.

So yea want to do something for the suffering of Burma. Like I said, the most powerful tool we have is the all mighty dollar. This is only a small list but as you soon will see, it has many strange bedfellows. List provided by Burma: On line News and Analysis. Comentaries by moi.

In January, a vast majority of the delegates at the 17th national congress of the LCR (French section of the Fourth International) approved a new political perspective: the building of a broad anti-capitalist party. This decision is intimately related to the analysis of the political situation since the election of Nicolas Sarkozy as President.

Gangs of youths fought running battles with police Monday for a second consecutive night in a suburb north of Paris. It was an outburst many said was surprising in its intensity...Their faces hidden behind scarves and hoods, rioters used firearms and hurled Molotov cocktails, paving stones and firecrackers at cops...Cmdr. Mohamed Douhane of police union Synergie described the rioting...as "open rebellion," with youths operating like "urban guerrillas"... [Y]ouths built improvised barricades out of trash cans and rubble. Eyewitnesses described the rioters as organized and disciplined.

Nearly 80 French police officers have been injured, six seriously, during a second night of riots by youths in the suburbs of Paris...The youths said they were avenging the two teenagers killed when their motorcycle hit a police car on Sunday.

An overview of the situation in France after the end of the transport strikes.

As if his marital challenges were not enough cause for concern, "Sarco the Sayan" has suddenly emerged as the most infamous accolade of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The influential French daily Le Figaro last week revealed that the French leader once worked for -- and perhaps still does, it hinted -- Israeli intelligence as a sayan (Hebrew for helper), one of the thousands of Jewish citizens of countries other than Israel who cooperate with the katsas (Mossad case-officers).

A bill currently being debated in the French parliament would encourage potential immigrants wishing to join family members already in France to undergo a DNA test to prove they are related.

French trade unions have urged Air France to stop using its planes to deport illegal immigrants...The unions say some of their members have been traumatised by witnessing the handling of failed asylum seekers forcibly sent home on Air France jets.

Nicolas Sarkozy's strategy was not a new and magic formula. On the contrary, he studied keenly all the political skills used in the US for the past 40 years. His themes have been national decline and moral decadence, intended to prepare voters for liberal shock treatment and a break with the past; he proposed action against leftist dogma, which he claimed had paralysed the economy and stifled public debate...[T]he social question...is no longer about the division between rich and poor or capital and labor, but an internecine feud between two sections of the proletariat, those who won't work and those who will...

France celebrated the victory of its new right wing president Nicholas Sarkozy with 2 days of solid rioting that left several hundred cars burned, 600 arrested and 30 police injured. Sarkozy...inflamed an already tense situation in France’s ghettos during the last...round of rioting by saying that he would clean the ‘scum’ from the suburbs.

Since may 6, we know the face of our new enemy. He is not unknown to us, we “practiced” him as a minister the last five years. The policy he will implement will be in all aspects a program of social regression, of freedom restriction and brutality of the state apparatus against the population. Despite those who tied their hands in the “call to vote”, we reject the legitimacy of this power and are calling [for] resistance."

THE French electorate this week forwent an opportunity to pick a woman as the head of the state for the first time, opting instead, by a small but decisive margin, for a sharp turn to the right. It’s a decision quite a few of those who voted for Nicolas Sarkozy on Sunday may come to regret before long.