The Galliano Affair: Fashion And Racism In 21st Century France

L’enfant terrible of fashion, John Galliano, received a suspended sentence on September 8th for anti-Semitic and racist remarks made at a bar within walking distance of his home in Paris. He might have been better off had he not left under his own power that night as his chauffeur was “trained” to contact a lawyer as soon as the Valium and booze kicked in.

He went to rehab (in America, of course) and expressed regret for “the sadness this whole affair has caused.”

Although incidents were down last year from the alarming peaks of 2009 — 466 incidents last year vs. 822 the year before — French anti-Semitism has been on the rise in recent years. Anti-Semitism in France has a long history and in some ways, Galliano’s comments were more of a sourcils haussés moment than full-on cul par terre. Shocking, but not surprising.

And yet, anti-Semitism in France is at an all time low among the French. French Catholic families now overwhelmingly view French Jews as French [pdf]; the new Others are seen as the Maghrebis, Arabs, and Berbers from the former North African colonies of Morocco, Algeria, Libya, and Tunisia. Even the far-right Front National has been toning down its anti-Jewish rhetoric lately, and Marinne Le Pen, their current leader, is actively courting French Jews to join the Front’s crusade against Arab and Berber immigrants. All of which is made more bizarre by the fact that Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie, is Godfather to Plume M’bala M’bala, the third daughter of activist Dieudonné M’bala M’bala who began his career fighting for the cause of the sans papiers, the undocumented Maghrebis.

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All Day At Once

Santa Fe by Beirut off of Rip Tide.

It’s Mine

The World Is Yours by Nas off of Illmatic.

The Oscillation Of Capitalism

The Article: Massive Unemployment: Proof That Global Capitalism Doesn’t Work – We may be witnessing the birth of a new permanent class of the marginalized by Steve Fraser and Joshua B. Freeman in AlterNet.

The Text: Not long ago, the city council of Ventura, California, passed an ordinance making it legal for the unemployed and homeless to sleep in their cars. At the height of the Great Recession of 2008, one third of the capital equipment of the American economy lay idle. Of the women and men idled along with that equipment, only 37% got a government unemployment check and that check, on average, represented only 35% of their weekly wages.

Meanwhile, there are now two million ”99ers” — those who have maxed out their supplemental unemployment benefits because they have been out of work for more than 99 weeks. Think of them as a full division in “the reserve army of labor.” That “army,” in turn, accounts for 17% of the American labor force, if one includes part-time workers who need and want full-time work and the millions of unemployed Americans who have grown so discouraged that they’ve given up looking for jobs and so aren’t counted in the official unemployment figures. As is its historic duty, that force of idle workers is once again driving down wages, lengthening working hours, eroding on-the-job conditions, and adding an element of raw fear to the lives of anyone still lucky enough to have a job.

No one volunteers to serve in this army. But anyone, from Silicon Valley engineers to Florida tomato pickers, is eligible to join what, in our time, might be thought of as the all-involuntary force. Its mission is to make the world safe for capitalism. Today, with the world spiraling into a second “Great Recession” (even if few, besides the banks, ever noticed that the first one had ended), its ranks are bound to grow.

The All-Involuntary Army (of Labor)

As has always been true, the coexistence of idling workplaces and cast-off workers remains the single most severe indictment of capitalism as a system for the reproduction of human society. The arrival of a new social category — “the 99ers” — punctuates that grim observation today.

After all, what made the Great Depression “great” was not only the staggering level of unemployment (no less true in various earlier periods of economic collapse), but its duration. Years went by, numbingly, totally demoralizingly, without work or hope. When it all refused to end, people began to question the fundamentals, to wonder if, as a system, capitalism hadn’t outlived its usefulness.

Nowadays, the 99ers notwithstanding, we don’t readily jump to such a conclusion. Along with the “business cycle,” including stock market bubbles and busts and other economic perturbations, unemployment has been normalized. No one thinks it’s a good thing, of course, but it’s certainly not something that should cause us to question the way the economy is organized.

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The Top Three Osama Bin Laden Hunters

3. The Ex-Con Ninja With A Home Shopping Network Knife

The sixth time he tried to capture Osama Bin Laden lasted all of three seconds. Gary’s hang-glider nose-dived and dragged him across jagged rocks. He broke his shoulder and several ribs. Gary tried it again the following year (Attempt #7) a little closer to the water this time. He tore up his shins skidding across the beach and just ditched the glider right there.

To be fair, Gary Faulkner is making progress. The first time he tried to find Osama he bought a boat—even though he had never sailed before—and set out from San Diego harbor without a lifejacket, flares, or food. His plan was to just head West until he hit land and eventually Pakistan. A hurricane had other plans, however, and lashed Faulkner’s boat against the Baja peninsula within days.

Gary Faulkner is our Don Quixote. He’s a 50-year old ex-con with failing kidneys who is probably certifiably insane. Faulkner knows bin Laden has a similar kidney ailment, so he plans to hook himself into Osama’s dialysis machine upon discovery and then escort the villain to Pakistan security forces.

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