Paris:- Saturday, 16. November 1996:- All I can say about the various strikes yesterday, is that the La Défense-Château de Vincennes métro line 1 seemed to running about 30 percent of normal - and I did not see any of the new trains that began operating on this line this past week.

The airline people did not change their day of strike from Thursday to Friday, but the pilots pulled a surprise strike at Air Inter and a lot of flights were canceled. Otherwise, the radio reported a lackluster turnout by protesters in Paris and around France.

When the line 1 of the métro is only running at 30 percent of normal, this is exactly one step away from total strike. I saw bank employees marching through the place des Victories, but because of the narrow streets it was impossible to estimate the size of the demo.

With unemployment up by 27,000 in a month, the government has every reason to try and keep a tight lid on information - so the papers talk about the disunity of the unions, and TV has another major crises to show viewers, elsewhere in the world.

So far, this may seem like non-news to readers. However, there are abundant signs of a major ground-swell - rather than a sudden squall - and I am just putting these comments in as a reminder that any spark could act as a detonator, anytime.

Le Parisien asked several researchers and wise men for their opinions and observations. One that seems to have a plausible reason for the present situation, was Jean-Pierre Le Goff, sociologist at the CNAM. He said that the present anxiety is the result of the push towards an ever more liberal economic climate - with a consequent reduction of the social state - but without any description of the future, let alone a positive one.

It is all very well to tell young people that they will have to change their jobs three times in a lifetime - but to provide no assurance that they'll ever get a job in the first place is not confidence-building.

Rap Lyrics Get Bad Rap

The judgement was based on the pretext that the lyrics of one of their songs were 'outrages' against the police. This could mean several things: such as an affront to public decency, or contempt, or indecent behavior. You have to go back to 1881, according to Libération, to the time before the law guaranteeing 'freedom of expression' in France to find a similar judgement.

There is a context to this: the offending lyrics were sung at 'Le Concert des Libertés' on 14. July 1995 (Bastille Day) at an anti-racist concert organised by SOS-Racisme at Seyne-sur-Mer. The purpose of the concert was to protest the election of the Front National mayor of Toulon, Jean-Marie Le Chevallier.

Police who were at the concert, keeping order, lodged the original complaint. The judge, an ex-police inspector, sitting alone on the bench, according to a new fast-track measure, pronounced the sentence in a hour - while the defense lawyers were expecting the customary two weeks for examination the issues involved.

Nobody disputes the bad taste of the group's lyrics. The law apparently says that the offense must be directed at a person, an individual - but this was not the case at the concert, because no particular policeman was singled out - the lyrics were directed to the entire audience.

Most of the local politicians are expressing satisfaction with the judgement, as are the various unions of the police. Defenders of freedom of expression are apparently few and not terribly vocal.