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Why Some Riot and Some Do Not
canadafreepress.com ^ | November 4, 2005 | Paul Belien

Posted on 11/06/2005 12:51:07 PM PST by lizol

Why Some Riot and Some Do Not

by Paul Belien, The Brussels Journal Friday, November 4, 2005

While Paris burns, Poland does not. Isn’t that strange? The Poles have an unemployment rate which is as high as the unemployment rates in French suburbs. Yet while “angry French youths” burn down their neighbourhoods, including their public transport buses and schools, Polish plumbers, construction workers and nurses are too busy to be angry. They travel abroad for several weeks at a time to work in foreign lands. One of the places they go to is France, where they work harder, often delivering better quality and at lower wages than French workers. Can’t the “French youths” do the same? Do not tell me that there are no plumbers, construction workers and nurses in places like Clichy-sous-Bois?

Mark Brands is a clever young Dutch entrepreneur. Last year he founded Eurostar25, a company which negotiates temporary contracts between Dutch employers and Polish workers. Four months ago Brands also opened offices in Belgium. He explained yesterday in a Flemish newspaper (De Tijd, Nov. 3) how his system works: the Polish workers remain in Belgium for eight consecutive weeks, and then have a one week holiday in Poland before returning to Western Europe. Eurostar25 guarantees its Belgian clients “well-motivated temporary workers.” Brands pays them the normal (high) Belgian wages. This allows the Poles to earn in four months what they would earn in Poland in a whole year.

Brands’ Belgian clients like the deal for two reasons. The first reason is that despite all the talk about unemployment, there are many low-skilled jobs that hardly get filled. The Poles are prepared to do jobs which many Belgians spurn. The second reason is that the Poles work harder than Belgian employees. Brands takes great care to ensure that his workforce remains “flexible.” The Poles never work too long in the same place: “If they work too long with the same group of Belgian employees, they adopt the slower working pace of the Belgians,” says Brands.

Eurostar25 is a booming business. Last month Brands opened his first offices in Denmark and Switzerland. There is a demand for well-motivated flexible and temporary workers in Western Europe. Brands now offers not only Poles, but also workers from the Czech Republic and Greece.

Anti-immigration parties take it out on the so-called “youths” in Clichy because they do not work, while the West European socialists take it out on the Poles because they do work. Two weeks ago Belgian employees of Struik Foods, a meat processing factory near Antwerp, went on strike because the management had employed a dozen temporary Polish workers through a Dutch company similar to that of Mark Brands. The trade unions crippled the plant with strikes until the management complied with the demand that no Poles would be allowed to work at Struik Foods. This was a setback, acknowledges Brands, “but the invasion of Polish workers will be impossible to stop.” The unemployed from Eastern Europe will keep coming to the West.

An obvious solution to the “anger” of the unemployed “youths” in Clichy-sous-Bois and the other burning suburbs of Paris would be to send in an entrepreneur like Mark Brands to offer them the same kind of jobs that he is offering to Poles, Czechs and Greeks. Why doesn’t that happen? Why is there no “invasion” of unemployed workers from Clichy-sous-Bois and similar places? Why do they prefer to burn down schools rather than to follow the Polish example?

Perhaps because despite the so-called poverty and destitution of which they are victims (at least according to the media), the Islamic “youths” of Clichy are the spoiled brats of the West European welfare state. Despite the media talk of “discrimination” (if there is any discrimination of immigrants in Western Europe, it is “positive” discrimination), they get the same generous welfare benefits as other Frenchmen. The West European government handouts are so high that none of the allegedly “frustrated and angry unemployed” are willing to do the kind of jobs that the Poles gladly take. The moral perversion which accompanies socialism has affected Muslims to a larger extent than it has affected people raised in the traditional Christian culture of the West with its stronger sense of individual responsibility – and even among the latter social welfarism has had devastating effects on traditional morality, which has almost disappeared.

The Poles on the other hand have lived under almost half a century of communist dictatorship, but socialism did not affect them to the same extent as it has affected the peoples of Western Europe. They remained faithful to their Catholic religion. The Western media maintain that they voted in favour of social welfarism in the last elections. But did they really?

In last Saturday’s The Wall Street Journal Daniel Schwammenthal reminds us that three things – free markets, family values and patriotism – have been the hallmarks of every successful conservative movement. When the Poles had to choose which party to make the biggest in the country they chose Law and Justice (PiS), a conservative party emphasing family values and patriotism rather than free markets, above Civic Platform (PO), a conservative party emphasing free markets rather than family values and patriotism.

Last week Alex Chafuen of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation pointed out that many of the voters who prefered PO’s economic proposals ended up voting for PiS because they disliked PO’s commitment to the European Union. “Both parties need each other and they will need to find a consensus,” Alex wrote. Unfortunately, the Polish party leaders started quarrelling over personal and personnel issues, forcing PiS to form a minority government. The new government, however, has many convinced freemarketeers in its ranks and is proposing an economic policy that is economically more sound than what many right wing parties in Western Europe propose. Unfortunately, the Poles will not get the flat tax that PO suggested, but they will at least get a simplification of the tax code of which West Europeans can only dream.

The spectacle of politics in Warsaw is as disheartening as the political spectacle in Paris, where some are trying to use the ongoing riots in Paris and elsewhere as an excuse to bring down Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s Interior Minister. But as long as the Poles are not losing their willingness to work, to create wealth, to improve their lot, as long as they realise that their future is their own responsibility rather than the state’s and the politicians’, Poland’s prospects are bright, while those of Western Europe grow bleaker day by day.


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: culture; europe; france; french; immigration; islam; parisriots; poland; poles; polish; riots; unemployment; welfarestate
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1 posted on 11/06/2005 12:51:08 PM PST by lizol
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To: DTwistedSisterS; tortoise; Gosh I love this neighborhood; zencat; Tailgunner Joe; ...
Eastern European ping list


FRmail me to be added or removed from this Eastern European ping list

2 posted on 11/06/2005 12:54:17 PM PST by lizol
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To: lizol

Thanks for the post.


3 posted on 11/06/2005 12:55:49 PM PST by Rosemont
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To: lizol

The Poles never work too long in the same place: “If they work too long with the same group of Belgian employees, they adopt the slower working pace of the Belgians,” says Brands.

That is too funny...


4 posted on 11/06/2005 12:56:43 PM PST by wvobiwan (Proud Minuteman Project Volunteer - Secure borders, illegals OUT, no 'guest workers'!)
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To: lizol

A good post. Thanks.


5 posted on 11/06/2005 1:00:27 PM PST by GSlob
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To: lizol

“If they work too long with the same group of Belgian employees, they adopt the slower working pace of the Belgians,” says Brands.

Sounds like the company I work at here in the US!

Plus we got a union to defend our rights!

Oh, oh, looks like it's break time, gotta go....


6 posted on 11/06/2005 1:02:03 PM PST by Left2Right ("Democracy isn't perfect, but other governments are so much worse")
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To: lizol

I think "Al Qaeda" has just opened a second front... in France.


7 posted on 11/06/2005 1:02:46 PM PST by Tax Government (Tax "democrats". Contribute to FR.)
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To: wvobiwan

That's the line that jumped out at me, too.


8 posted on 11/06/2005 1:03:57 PM PST by Tax-chick (I'm not being paid enough to worry about all this stuff ... so I don't.)
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To: lizol
While Paris burns, Poland does not. Isn’t that strange? The Poles have an unemployment rate which is as high as the unemployment rates in French suburbs. Yet while “angry French youths” burn down their neighbourhoods, including their public transport buses and schools, Polish plumbers, construction workers and nurses are too busy to be angry.

Maybe its because unemployment has nothing to do the terrorism being committed by the "ANGRY FRENCH YOUTH".


9 posted on 11/06/2005 1:07:21 PM PST by etradervic (Able Danger, Peter Paul Campaign Fraud, Travelgate, Whitewater, Sandy Berger...demand answers!)
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To: Rosemont

Sounds like Poland is the Mexico of Europe, with guest workers contracted for day/week labor. But in their case the labors go home, not to bad actually.


10 posted on 11/06/2005 1:07:40 PM PST by txroadhawg ("Stuck on stupid? I invented stupid! " Al Gore)
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To: lizol

The french rioters are low class products of a welfare state who have little motivation to advance.


11 posted on 11/06/2005 1:11:10 PM PST by spanalot
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To: lizol

Great post. The welfare state breeds discontent.


12 posted on 11/06/2005 1:11:11 PM PST by Pajamajan (The Democrat party proudly brings you the new and improved Soviet Union.)
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To: etradervic
>>>Maybe its because unemployment has nothing to do the terrorism being committed by the "ANGRY FRENCH YOUTH".<<<

Bingo!

13 posted on 11/06/2005 1:11:52 PM PST by HardStarboard (Read Stephen Hayes "Spooked White House" - Weekly Standard. It explains a an awful lot.)
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To: wvobiwan

To put it in an American context, a friend of ours who owns a company says he avoids hiring anyone who has been employed by the state government. He contends their work ethics have been ruined by their employment with the state. This is not my observation as we employ teenagers and college students who usually do not have any previous work experience.


14 posted on 11/06/2005 1:14:37 PM PST by MRobert (MRobert)
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To: lizol
Perhaps because despite the so-called poverty and destitution of which they are victims (at least according to the media), the Islamic “youths” of Clichy are the spoiled brats of the West European welfare state.

Yep. The consequences of being an unemployed "youth" in France are hardly starvation. They are a well-funded boredom and a well-nurtured resentment.

15 posted on 11/06/2005 1:14:55 PM PST by Billthedrill
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To: wvobiwan
That is too funny...

Kind of like the big surge of white boyz mimicking the black culture of baggy droop assed half pants, ball caps askew and talkin' da hood lingo and downloadin' da rap songs back a few years ago...... BWAHAHAHAHA!

My stepson did that for awhile. Then he got a job. Total change in the young man.

FMCDH(BITS)

16 posted on 11/06/2005 1:17:05 PM PST by nothingnew (I fear for my Republic due to marxist influence in our government. Open eyes/see)
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To: spanalot
"The french rioters are low class products of a welfare state who have little motivation to advance."

I have to disagree. I'm sure several of them, as we speak, are planning on being Sultan of France someday.

17 posted on 11/06/2005 1:17:49 PM PST by Joe 6-pack (Que me amat, amet et canem meum.)
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To: lizol
[ Why Some Riot and Some Do Not ]

The ones that do not riot have Scaredy Cat'iosis, a french disease..
France is presently being mugged for their lunch money..

Its like an Ape attacking another Ape for a banana, and the deprived Ape goes and beats the snot out of a smaller Ape to take out his frustrations.. The ones that do not riot are like the smallest ape.. which are French politicians..

18 posted on 11/06/2005 1:18:23 PM PST by hosepipe (CAUTION: This propaganda is laced with hyperbole..)
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To: lizol

Great article, but what about the fact that the youths in France are Muslims that want to turn France into another Muslim Middle Eastern country?


19 posted on 11/06/2005 1:20:16 PM PST by MassachusettsGOP (Massachusetts Republican....A rare breed indeed)
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To: MassachusettsGOP

That too, probably


20 posted on 11/06/2005 1:27:53 PM PST by lizol
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