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| • Corrida, basta! |
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| • Solidarity as a crime |
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| • Industrial poultry farm |
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| • Racket on National Insurance contributions |
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| Corrida, basta! |
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It is the title of a book that the author, a long-standing friend of mine, had sent to me. Corrida, basta! is a powerful anti-corrida satirical paper. The author makes a charge against bull races with a severe indictment! What insolence! What disrespect! The author blames the political men and women who protect them and is worried about the sexuality of the aficionados.
I took great pleasure in reading these pages. Being a member of the « Anti-corrida Alliance » and the « Committee radically anti-corrida », I could do nothing but applaud. |
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In the corrida, the bulls are subjected to violence and suffering, in an unequal fight, all for our pleasure. Cruelty is paraded in front of us and the crowds applaud. |
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We should question the violence used towards animals. Animals have rights. If the rights of the animals are not respected then how will we respect the human rights? Both are related.
I appreciated the words from the French academician, Marguerite Yourcenar:
« What could I say about animal rights that I have not already said? They are, of course, as equally sacred as we are. And if human cruelty was so much exerted against man, it is because too often, it had been practiced on animals. It would have been more difficult to accept the locked train wagons going to the concentration camps, if we had not accepted without even thinking the sufferings of animals in cattle trucks going to the slaughterhouse. »
Corrida, basta ! |
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| Solidarity as a crime |
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A collective of associations organized a demonstration in more than 80 cities to protest against the solidarity considered as a crime. Almost a thousand people gathered at place St. Michel in Paris. On the banners held by the demonstrators, it was written: « I help people with no official documents, proceedings could be taken against me. » « If an act of solidarity becomes a crime, we demand that proceedings be taken against us.» « We are solidarity offenders.» |
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The article of the law says: « Any person, by direct or indirect aid, who has made easy or has tried to make easy the irregular entrance, circulation or stay of a foreigner in France, will be punished with a five year imprisonment sentence and a fine of 30,000 Euros. »
These days, there is a multiplication of police harassment, house searches with seizure of laptop computers, police custody for people with no legal documents. It is intolerable. People with no legal documents are human beings who live in very precarious situations. Many survive. It is urgent to be on their side. Luckily, men and women are engaged in humanitarian actions defying the threats of the law. |
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| They are present there on place St. Michel. They take no pride for themselves they are not looking for any profit. Their sense of humanity makes them simply act out of solidarity. They are ready to make acts of rebelliousness in front of laws that they find inhuman. |
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| What will future generations say about this period of our history? |
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| Industrial poultry farm |
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I went to Québec to participate in television programs. I left Montreal by car for another meeting. Along the way, the driver stopped in a village to buy fresh eggs. Just a small surprise during the trip...We were not the only ones to make the same type of purchase. There was a line-up of cars in front of us.
Fresh eggs are sold by the dozen. The director of the company insisted that I made a quick visit of his poultry farm, a sign of his success. |
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He led me behind the building and took me to a huge shack that had low lighting and was well heated. I saw an ocean of chicks. The director told me with satisfaction: « There are nine thousands. Everything has been calculated: the ventilation, the heating, the lighting and the feeding. » He bent down towards the ground to take with difficulty a chick that he put with pride into my hand. |
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| This poor yellow chick stood calmly in the palm of my hand and seemed to look at me. He seemed to be saying to me: « I live in this hell. I will never see the light of the day or have the liberty of coming or going in the hen house, the pleasure of searching for my food...soon they will stuff me with Soya so that I become cheap meat and easy to consume. » |
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| From hatching to slaughtering, there are 8 weeks. Everything has been programmed. Every day counts. The small yellow chick would have liked to come with me but his destiny was tied to those of the nine thousands. It is an industrial poultry farm. A hell for poultry and « junk food » for us. |
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| Racket on National Insurance contributions |
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It is about the National Insurance contributions (health care and retirement, note of the translator) paid by people with no legal documents. Some 40 organizations have denounced the racket organized for more than ten years by the French government and the French employers on the National Insurance contributions that are never reimbursed to people with no legal documents. |
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These contributions have a yield to the French state of around 2 billion of Euros per year, while these workers with no legal documents are not able to benefit from their contributions.
This racket is particularly unacceptable when these workers are expelled from the territory and find themselves in Bamako, Dakar, Tunisia, and Algeria...humiliated and without resources. |
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This is why we call out the consulates that are in collusion with this racket in order that they do not deliver to the French police the authorizations to expel their compatriots with no official papers. |
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Solidarity movements have been organized in Mali, Algeria, Senegal, Guinea, Madagascar, and Burkina Faso...but the decoration to the worst student goes to the consulate of Tunisia where the signature of the authorizations cause no problem. It has to be said that the Tunisian government is the only Maghreb government to have signed with France in 2008 an agreement of « selected immigration ».
A delegation of which I took part was received by the Algerian embassy. It was a favorable moment because it was at the time of the presidential elections in Algeria. The embassy is well aware of this racket. We have demanded that the Algerian government intervenes with the French government for the regularization of Algerians workers with no official papers. |
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