Comments on: Spring Fever

By: beautifulcynic

beautifulcynic — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 07:52:12 +0000

As for the rest of the photographs, for those who dont’ know: the street protest in Los Angeles was against recently proposed legislation regarding illegal immigrants in the States; Congress voted to make it a felony offence to even associate with illegals (this includes church groups offering shelter, NGOs offering aid, etc.) and includes harsher penalties for illegals themselves. The protest in Minsk is of course against President Lukashenko, who was recently “re-elected” in the Belarus “elections”. And the protest in Washington was a combo anti-war rally as well as against the immigration reforms. It was a busy weekend in the world this past weekend/week! And frankly, it warms my heart…

By: beautifulcynic

beautifulcynic — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 07:46:34 +0000

For what it’s worth (which probably isn’t much, coming from a Canadian!) I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiments behind the protests. (Though I completely disagree with the use of violence, which unfortunately too often happens in large street protests.) I cannot fathom legislation that permits firing without just cause for up to 2 years – that’s positively archaic. The claim that restrictions on termination must be eased to counteract the ease on restrictions on hiring is absurd. With a youth unemployment rate as high as it is in France (which I frankly find amazing), obviously something needs to change, but all that will come out of this legislation will be a whole host of young people with minimal work experience, spotty work histories and little or no job security… Evidently, reforms are needed, but this seems to be an unduly harsh route. In some ways it reminds me of the Canadian health care system. It’s something we’re very proud of, but it’s really a bloated, inefficient, bureaucratic mess that eats up more and more of the budget every year. Unfortunately the only changes proposed have been to abandon universal health care and move to a user-pay, private system – the mirror opposite of what we have now. So many groups (and governments) seem to embrace an all-or-nothing philosophy, which generally gets society nowhere, in my opinion. Whatever happened to moderate reforms?!

By: Rayon de Lune

Rayon de Lune — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 07:10:55 +0000

Nope, Larissa, we merely want fair reforms !