Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Of course the usual patter of strikebreaking news continues, as if the press could will the French workers back to their appointed tasks in the great hyperconnected mechansim that is a national economy these days:

" France's massive strikes appear to be losing momentum as garbage collectors in the southern city of Marseille went back to work and workers at three oil refineries voted to end their protest.

Striking garbage collectors in Marseille on Tuesday started chipping away at the trash that has piled up in the streets during two weeks of protests over plans to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62.

The FO union has voted to end the protest out of concerns over 'hygiene and safety.' Nine oil refineries are still blocked by strikers, but workers at three plants voted to return to the job on Monday. It is expected to take a few days to return to normal operation.

About one in four gas stations in France has been shuttered, and trains and schools have also been affected."

I know the students playing Red Mardi Gras have captured most attention here; but what counts, what gives traction to it all, where the wheels meet the road, or in this case don't meet the road -- is in the parallel strike underway.

For two weeks now the transport and refinery unions are oh so elegantly constricting the windpipe of modern France.

No general strike this; no big stand-up of the job class; no mass sitdown. Nothing hyperbolic here in either sense of the word, no sharp rise only to fall: just a methodical clamping down, a one-hand-only strangulation, and to one end only: with the vanishing of all things combustible, the gradual disappearance of commercial motion itself.