Corsica.... let them have it!

This story which makes the headlines in France will baffle anybody who is not French, and it is making me absolutelyn furious.

Here it is in a few words:

• the state-owned ferry company SNCM (connecting the continent with Corsica) which has been losing money for years was to be privatized. The government did such a bad job at negociating that they got all the unions against them.. and...
• the striking sailors on Tuesday commandered a vessel from the French port of Marseille and steered it into the Mediterranean, off the French island of Corsica.
• There, on Wednesday, elite French commandos rappeling from helicopters recaptured the ferry.
• That action sparked protests on Corsica. Demonstrators threw projectiles and fireworks onto the streets of the port city of Bastia overnight Wednesday. Police responded with tear gas to disperse the crowd. The protests began after union leaders met with police Wednesday night and announced that 36 of the striking sailors detained in the commando raid were being released, but that four others were being kept in custody.Around 500 protesters, shouting "all or no one," marched down the streets of Bastia, overturning and setting fire to a van in their path.

It should be noted that the company is ridden by Corsican 'Nationalists' who want Corsica to be independent. They claim that the ships belong to "the people of Corsica" (but they conveniently forget that the company has been kept afloat by French taxes!). Their mob-like actions are indeed very much in the line of the so-called nationalists, and it's sickening to see them get away with so much for the sake of 'social peace'. Corsica is a land of corruption where the rule of law is non-existent as the law is actually in the hands of a few powerful families who blackmail and threaten whomever disagree with them. The French Republic is stepped upon on an everyday basis.
To put it in a nutshell Corsica is a French version of Sicily in its heyday.

The solution though is quite simple - let them have it. All of it. Both Corsica and the shipping company. What the heck... They keep rioting and bombing symbols of France, and we keep fueling money into their local economy. Hell No!

Their continuing blackmail is outrageaous. Let them become independent indeed. The only problem is that it would take a government with guts to make that decision and I don't see that in a foreseeable future.

Incidently, one happy result of Corsica's independence would be to make vacationing there much cheaper as it is one of the most beautiful but most expensive islands in the Mediterranean sea.