Looked like these guys had a good reason not to add Iraq to their list of "things to do".

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In the face of an eroding French education system, The French Minister of Education, Luc Ferry, announced a plan to decentralize the department, and give local districts more empowerment to handle problems they are closer to. In addition, France has been hiring public school teachers at an increasing rate for years, even while the number of pupils has gone down. So Ferry is threatening to do the common sense thing and halt the hiring glut of teachers.

However, the leftist teachers' union is protesting this tooth and nail, and just created the 4th work stoppage in a year. (Just an aside, but I heard that French workers have the most vacation-time in Europe, but also strike the most). The socialist band have no fiscal sense whatsoever. Ferry's good ideas will likely be lost.

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In case you didn't know, Germany's economy makes ours look robust by comparison. The country just experienced its 13th consecutive month of increasing unemployment. It is now over 11%. So Chancellor Schroeder proposed the idea of slicing out a bit of the welfare fat and introducing new (gasp!) business-friendly initiatives.

As a result, worker unions and professional slogan-chanters used May Day (a day where slackers, malcontents, Marxists, and hooligans celebrate socialism worldwide) to vent their frustrations at this plan. Shouts of "Yes to reform, no to cutting the Welfare State!" echoed through the street. You can see why. When locked into a dependency of German welfare goodies and handouts without working for it, it's awfully difficult to give up.


All the above can be found on the BBC (Europe News) website. And, of course, I've added my own biased commentary and slant here. :D

The main point here is that socialism does not work.Every where its been tested its failed.Its like a cancer that creeps in and takes you over.Once it makes it to the brain the body will fall.