La Une in English: March 2007

Editorial --Anna Cumbie, editor Hail in Toulouse: surprise! Airbus experiencing turbulence Tuesday March 6th, I had class as normal at the University of Political Science. After a long fight with my alarm clock, I finally gave up the idea of sleeping in and got up to go. I left at 7:30 and the day was a little foggy, but otherwise quite normal. The city was already on its feet, pushing its inhabitants towards their destinations. Still a little tired, I crossed the St. Pierre Bridge and watched the sleeping Garonne River. My class started at 8:00 and ended at 10:00, and I headed towards the Capitole bus stop, where I waited in vain for a few minutes. No buses. After a few minutes I noticed a poster nearby announcing that all of the bus routes had been changed because of a demonstration. “Another one? But for what?” I asked myself. I must have been deaf. I left the Capitol and headed towards Esquirol, then the Musée des Augustins, then the St. Etienne Monument and even the Quartier Général bus stops, trying with each one to get a bus, but in vain. Everything was blocked. I had to walk all the way to Dickinson Center, which was a challenge for me, having never made the trip on foot. After a little bit of trial and error, I finally made it. First, I glanced at the news and then sat down in front of a computer screen to figure out what had caused my walk. Of course! It was a demonstration put on by the employees of Airbus, between 12,000 and 15,000 of them showing their anger at the Power 8 plan. The giant of European aviation, Airbus, is going through a crisis. The company has announced that in 2006, it lost 572 million euros due to many diverse reasons but centering around two main causes. First, there’s the value of the dollar compared to that of the euro, which has reached record levels in the past few years. Such a change, which would seem harmless to a normal citizen, has had serious consequences for large corporations such as Airbus, whose spending is almost entirely in euros, while its revenues are almost entirely in dollars. Let’s look at an example to better understand the problem. The euro was introduced in 1999 with a value of one euro for every dollar and seventeen cents. Then, it reached its lowest level in 2001 with an exchange rate of 1€ for every 86 cents. Today, we’re at a rate of 1€ for every dollar and thirty-one cents. Let’s say that one of Airbus’ planes, the A320 for example, costs 10€ million. In 2001, this plane would have gone for 8.6 million dollars. Today, you’d need 13 million dollars to buy the same plane, which makes a noticeable difference of 4.5 million dollars. This fact means that Airbus loses a lot in the aeronautical market. Among other reasons for difficulty, the company is facing delays in the production of its super jumbo A380, whose illustrious clients, like the United Arab Emirates, are drumming their fingers in impatience on the table. In order to better handle these difficulties, Airbus launched Power 8, a plan which envisions the layoff of about 10,000 employees, 4,300 of which (out of 22,000 total employees) are in France. The plan also looks to move the production of the A320 from Toulouse to Germany, and to close the Méaulte site in la Somme. Along with these draconian actions, the company is planning to accelerate the production of its military plane, the A400M, which costs about 20 billion euros. The A400M is looking to replace the aging fleet of C130 Hercules and Transall C160s. With 180 A400Ms already ordered by countries such as France, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, England, Turkey and South Africa, this new invention should certainly be a breath of fresh air for Airbus. For some, on the other hand, Airbus needs to do more than that. The Ricardian exchange (developed by the English economist David Ricardo), which functions on the you sell me some wine, I’ll sell you some bread method, is no longer effective. What’s actually necessary for a company like Airbus is a strategy of disintegration of all the links in the value chain—more concretely, the production of different parts of the plane in different parts of the world to get an optimal overall value. Overall, as a young business student in a city that I’ve just begun to discover, the shock is enormous. Should I take the side of the city, that wants to be greedy with it’s one big business, or should I follow my logical business thinking, which reminds me that in business, one must always separate feelings and interests? --Moustapha Minte Birthdays in April 2 : Maggie 16 : Sara Cliquez ici pour retourner à la version française.

Canal du Midi For those of you who are bored doing the same thing everyday, going to the same movie theater and the same stores to shop, or for those of you who are just sick of taking the same route between home and class and want a change of scenery, allow me to suggest a great way to spend an afternoon off: go on a walk, work out, or take a bike ride along the Canal du Midi. Believe it or not, the Canal du Midi, which lies about five steps away from the Dickinson Center, is 241 kilometers long, leading from Marseillan all the way to Sète. It links the Garonne river to the Mediterranean and counts 63 locks, 126 bridges, 55 aqueducts, 7 ponts-canaux and 6 dams. The canal offers two paths: one for those who prefer to walk along the water, and a higher one for cyclists. Each side of the canal is lined with plantain trees; it’s an especially beautiful route in the springtime, when there’s a little wind and the sun is shining. The chance to breathe the fresh air on the canal instead of the pollution from exhaust pipes will make almost anyone want to throw on some sneakers and go running. Equally pleasing is the view from along the canal—fields of grass, old houses, and fewer cars. If you’re feeling adventurous, why not take the Canal all the way out of Toulouse? Of course, you’ll have to make the return trip, but at least you’ll be able to impress your friends by telling them that you’ve been to Carcassonne…by bike. --Heidi Kim A Writer in our midst Moustapha Minte, a student in the Dickinson in France program, has just put out a novel called Me, Child Soldier, Pregnant and HIV-positive. The result of 18 months of work, “this work recounts the experience of a young girl separated from her mother in the middle of the civil war in Liberia,” says its author. This poignant tale, filled with drama, adventure and love, brings us to the heart of Liberia through the encounters of a young girl caught in the middle of a violent tribal war. You’ll soon be able to find it in the Dickinson Center library, but the book is already available online and can be downloaded in an electronic version if you can’t stand to wait. For more information, please visit: http://www.manuscrit.com/catalogue/textes/fiche_texte.asp?idOuvrage=8285 A Day in Carcassonne --Meredith Ship Alienating an Audience Using texts from A Season in Hell and letters written to the poet Arthur Rimbaud during a period of crisis and genius, Didier Carette’s staging at the Theater Sorano distract and detract from the words’ inherent pain and depth. The double expression of Rimbaud’s being, via a traditional image of the tortured romantic and the other an angelically demonic harlequin came off as ridiculous rather than serious. The frenetic leaping between text, singing and leaping around the stage spastically forbids fully entering Rimbaud’s world, despite the cast’s unfaltering intensity and commitment. Charlotte Castellat’s original accompaniment on cello and violin stayed more faithful to the intensity of the verses’ pure emotion. All in all, the idea to creatively interpret one of Rimbaud’s most intense works fell short of its potential due to a zealous excess of avant-garde. Despite the technical precision and skill, Rimbaud Enragé (“Rimbaud Enraged”) from Toulouse’s Theater Sorano falls short of fully engaging the audience. --Written and translated by Joanna Freudenheim French, an authoritative language I wanted to include you in something I’ve noticed about spoken French. In English, in order to express a command, we use—grammatically speaking—the imperative, “help me,” for example, or “eat,” or “clean up your stuff.” This grammatical structure exists, of course, in French, but in their spoken language, the French have a tendency to use the declarative tense instead, something that is not done in English. For example, a mother will say to her child “Anne, you clean your room right now!” or “Florent, you get up on time tomorrow and you help Dad in the garage.” Using a pronoun before the verb gives a feeling of an order, with a little bit of guilt thrown in; the order is direct, clean and authoritative. In English, on the other hand, we only use “you” before the verb if we’re giving directions or an actual order. This difference between spoken French and spoken English has the ability to make an American likely to miss the delicacies of a day-to-day exchange. No surprise, then, that an American would be shocked by these “commands,’ which to him or her, seem too “strong.” What’s more, he or she hasn’t done anything to deserve this treatment, and will feel the need to defend him or herself against such an “order,” responding, “Who do you take me for? I’m not stupid!” In any case, it’s important to remember that the French don’t intend to punish anyone; it’s just the French language that can seem dictatorial when compared to English. --Heidi Kim