Home » Posts tagged 'france' (Page 5)
Tag Archives: france
Yellow Vest Movement Not Yet Changing Its Color to Green
Yellow Vest Movement Not Yet Changing Its Color to Green
From Paris, Léa Bouchoucha reports for Consortium News on two sets of demonstrators, some of whom are mingling while others keep a distance.
Some had hoped the two marches in Paris last Saturday— one focused on global warming and the other representing the 18th straight weekend of Yellow Vest protests — would join forces and help unite environmental activism with social equity.
On March 8, Cyril Dion, a well-known documentary film maker and environmental writer, gave a joint interview to Le Parisian with Priscillia Ludosky, considered one of the founders of the Yellow Vest movement, in which they both encouraged protesters to march together.
To an extent that happened. Yellow vests were a common sight in the climate demonstrations on Saturday. And nongovernmental groups — Greenpeace France, the Nicolas Hulot Foundation, SOS Racisme, Friends of the Earth, 350.org and Alternatiba — voiced a fusion of environmental and economic demands. “Time to change industrial, political and economic systems, to protect the environment, society and individuals,” was a typical message expressed on one banner.
The climate march included a “Revolutionary Grandmother” at left. (Lea Bouchoucha)
The contrasts between the two demonstrations, however, wound up drawing the main press attention.Coverage by outlets such as Reuters and the Associated Press emphasized how the march on climate change — which drew around 45,000 in Paris, according to media estimates — was peaceful and included movie stars. The smaller Yellow Vest demonstration in the capital, estimated at around 10,000, was marked by rioting and vandalism.
Some Yellow Vests disagree with violence in demonstrations. But plenty of images have spread on social media that show a few protesters posing proudly in front of vandalized, expensive restaurants and luxury shops along the Champs-Elysées Avenue.
A strong majority of French — 84 percent of those polled — condemned the violence in a survey released March 20 by Elabe, an independent consultancy.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
France To Deploy Military Against Next Round Of Yellow Vest Protests
France To Deploy Military Against Next Round Of Yellow Vest Protests
If the black smoke over the Paris skyline and charred cars and buildings along the Champs-Elysees which have become characteristic of France’s increasingly violent Yellow Vest protests over the past months weren’t alarming enough, things look to get much worse as the government prepares to escalate.
In an effort to clamp down on the unraveling security situation, which has lately seen banks and residential buildings torched, and luxury stores and restaurants vandalized and destroyed, the French authorities have announced the deployment of anti-terrorism military forces in order to protect and secure public buildings. Protesters walk by burning cars during clashes with riot police on the sideline of a protest of Gilets jaunes against rising oil prices and living costs, via AFP
Following the worsening protest situation of the past weekend (after a brief lull at the end of President Macron’s failed ‘great debate’ initiative which pushed town halls to air grievances), which nearly turned deadly for random civilians caught in the mayhem of rioters clashing with police, the government will redirect counter-terror troops from Opération Sentinelle to focus on Yellow Vest related threats.
Opération Sentinelle began after the January 2015 Île-de-France attacks (the series of al-Qaeda linked terrorist acts that began with the Charlie Hebdo shooting) and resulted in some 10,000 soldiers and 4,700 police and gendarmes deployed at sensitive sites and public buildings across the country.
According to Bloomberg, French authorities have sought to calm the obvious and immediate fears raised that the move constitutes the government taking a full martial law approach of sending the military against its own people. Opération Sentinelle forces
Following a weekly cabinet meeting on Wednesday, government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux pointed to the “new forms of violence”Saturday which he said justifies deploying the counter-terror forces.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
France To Ban Yellow Vest Protests In Neighborhoods With “Ultra” Radicals
France To Ban Yellow Vest Protests In Neighborhoods With “Ultra” Radicals
France is cracking down on “yellow vest” protesters following a weekend of renewed violence – as the Macron administration announced on Monday that it would ban demonstration in several areas of france – including the Champs Elysees in Paris, if “ultra elements” are present, according to Interior Minister Edouard Philippe.
‘We will ban demonstrations if ultra elements’ are present, said Philippe, according to CNEWS.
The ban will apply to “neighborhoods that have been most affected as soon as we have knowledge of” the “ultras.”
“I am thinking of course the Champs-Elysees in Paris, the place Pey-Berland in Bordeaux, the Capitol Square in Toulouse”, Philippe added, where “we will proceed to the immediate dispersal of all groups.“
Philippe added that he has asked the State Judicial Agent to “systematically seek the financial responsibility of troublemakers.”
✔ · 19hReplying to @EPhilippePM
A Toulouse, à Bordeaux, à Montpellier, à Saint-Etienne, trop de commerçants depuis mi-novembre ont vu leur outil de travail saccagé. Un plan de soutien a été décidé et j’ai demandé à @BrunoLeMaire de le renforcer.
J’ai demandé à l’Agent Judiciaire de l’État de rechercher systématiquement la responsabilité financière des fauteurs de trouble.
Saturday marked a significant escalation in violence during the group’s 18th straight week of protests – which began as a revolt against a climate-change gas tax and expanded into a general anti-government movement.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Chaos Breaks Out As Yellow Vests Clash With French Police
Chaos Breaks Out As Yellow Vests Clash With French Police
Update: Saturday’s Yellow Vest protests have escalated in intensity as clashes with the police grew increasingly violent. Take a look:
Ready for a bit of the old ultraviolence?
***
After weeks of more moderate protests, France’s Yellow Vests are back in full swing following the end of President Macron’s unsuccessful ‘great debate’ – during which thousands of town halls were conducted over a two-month period in the hopes of solving national issues through citizen debates.
Up to half-a-million people participated in 10,000 meetings across the country to discuss social issues ranging from taxes – which the French pay the most of any OECD country in the world, to democracy and climate change.
“We have been patient but now we want results,” Yellow Vest Laurent Casanova told AFP.
And with no meaningful changes after nationwide cathartic venting, the Yellow Vests are back to angry demonstrations as the protests kick off their 18th week with an ‘ultimatum’ rally – marked by lootings, fires, and mayhem that organizers maintain are due to a radical minority.
LIVE FEED:
Violence broke out on the Champs-Elysees Paris, where Paris riot police clashed with protesters, using tear gas and water cannons to disperse the crowd.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Wheelchair-Bound Yellow-Vest Pepper-Sprayed By French Cops; Another Man Shot In Face
Wheelchair-Bound Yellow-Vest Pepper-Sprayed By French Cops; Another Man Shot In Face
As the Yellow Vest protests rage across France for the 16th straight week, shocking footage has emerged of police brutality. Apparently a Friday call for calm by President Emmanuel Macron doesn’t apply to police.
In one clip, a French policeman appears to blast a wheelchair-bound man in the face with pepper spray.
More and more crazy videos appearing on the internet after yesterday’s #GiletsJunes #YellowVests protest in #France.
In this one #Macron‘s policemen pepper spray a handicapped man.
In another video, reportedly captured with a mobile phone camera, a concussion can be heard – after which the camera shows a man on the ground who had been shot in the face as first responders rush to assist him.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
“New Economic or Financial Crisis” in the Eurozone Could Start in Italy: French Government Frets
“New Economic or Financial Crisis” in the Eurozone Could Start in Italy: French Government Frets
French banks are heavily exposed to Italy.
“Don’t underestimate the impact of the Italian recession.” This was the stark warning from French Economy Minister Bruno Le Marie in an interview with Bloomberg News. “We talk a lot about Brexit, but we don’t talk much about an Italian recession that will have a significant impact on growth in Europe and can impact France because it’s one of our most important trading partners.”
Italy’s economy as measured in real GDP shrank for two quarters in a row, which puts it into a “technical recession”:
It’s the second time in four months that France’s Economy Minister has expressed deep concern about the Italian economy in public. At the end of October he urged the commission to “reach out to Italy” after the EU’s executive had rejected the country’s draft 2019 budget for breaking EU rules on public spending. Le Maire also conceded at the time that while contagion in the Eurozone was definitely contained, the Eurozone “is not sufficiently armed to face a new economic or financial crisis.”
The French government is now openly worried that such a crisis could begin in Italy. The economies of both Italy and France are tightly interwoven, with annual trade flows of around €90 billion. More important still, French banks are, by a long shot, the biggest owners of Italian public and private debt, with total holdings of €311 billion as of the 3rd quarter of 2018, according to the Bank for International Settlements — up €34 billion from the 1st quarter of 2018.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
10 reasons the Gilets Jaunes are the real deal
10 reasons the Gilets Jaunes are the real deal
Image soiurce here.
We live in a world where democracy is a threat and freedom is a punishment, where you can’t tell a turd from a diamond, where 5G is trumpeted even as it threatens to kill us, where the prevailing ethos is buyer-beware and where anyone against warmongering and eternal war is smeared and painted as a monster.
Who do you believe? All the things you felt certain about Democracy, liberty, the right to free speech, television news, all these things are not only being undermined, in reality, they are being thrown in your face. Democracy in the Nazi-controlled Ukraine, moderate jihadi rebels, no democracy in Russia or Venezuela, despite the fingerprint tests on voters and the voting booth cameras, and this voice saying they’re fair elections and a dozen saying what about France isn’t that democracy and twenty other voices say they’re not and right-wing groups going off in the streets and chemicals in your food and forgetting to turn your wi-fi laden house on before you rush to another meeting or charge your phone, and, and…well…I got lost just writing it.
Keeping you busy, that’s what Neo-Liberalist empire does, and amidst it all, you’re meant to be an active citizen stuffed with social capital, capable of an opinion on any topic at the drop of the hat.
Ontological security, everybody needs it, but right now it’s in short supply especially in big metropolitan cities. No wonder people are confused and afraid, walking backwards into the future, stuck knee-deep in mud dreaming that somehow, through some miracle, everything will, “Please!”, return to normal.
So amidst this Tower of Babble, let’s resolve one conundrum for you.
Here are ten reasons the Gilets Jaunes (unlike US sponsored colour revolutions) are the real deal, by which I mean the direct expression of the people of France.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
So When Will the Yellow Vest Movement Take Hold in the USA?
So When Will the Yellow Vest Movement Take Hold in the USA?
The Yellow Vest anti-government movement (#YellowVests, #GiletsJaunes) began in France on November 17, 2018, when over 300,000 people across France protested a carbon tax on fuel. President Emmanuel Macron claimed the French were leading the world in the battle against climate change. The Yellow Vest protests evolved rapidly into an all-out general anti-government movement that was supported by 70% of the French population. When Macron was forced to back out of the tax, the first thing he did was look for something else to tax to make up the difference. Then the French government had to ask Brussels for an exemption from austerity. This all proved one thing — the fuel tax was really about just raising taxes.
Now, the Yellow Vest Movement has gone worldwide, spreading at first to Belgium, where Brussels riot cops had to deal with them for week after week of protests blocking an oil depot. Then on December 8, 2018, the Belgians attempted to breach a riot barricade while calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Charles Michel, resulting in around 100 arrests. So in both France and in Belgium there are demands for the heads of government to resign.
What is conspicuously absent from the list below is the United States. Trump has rejected the climate taxes and lowered tax rates, moving directly opposite of all the other countries on the list. Nevertheless, the future for the United States is looking very bleak. The budget will force a rise in taxation as more and more government workers retire, thereby dramatically increasing the cost of government.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
France Recalls Ambassador From Italy After “Unprecedented” Verbal Attacks
France Recalls Ambassador From Italy After “Unprecedented” Verbal Attacks
The diplomatic row between France and Italy is escalating. More than half a year after Italy summoned the French ambassador over Europe’s migrant row, on Thursday France one-upped Italy when it announced it would recall its ambassador to Italy, citing “outrageous” verbal attacks, repeated “meddling” in its domestic affairs and “unacceptable” provocations.
La France rappelle son ambassadeur en Italie “après des attaques” “sans précédent” (Quai d’Orsay) #AFP
The French foreign ministry said the decision was taken following a meeting between Italy’s deputy prime minister Luigi Di Maio and leaders of the French Yellow Vest protester movement, trumpeting his support for the grassroots protests in defiance of President Emmanuel Macron.
“This is unprecedented since the war,” the foreign ministry said in an emailed statement on Thursday. “Having disagreements is one thing, but using the relationship for electoral purposes is quite another.”
Luigi di Maio, Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement hailed the “winds of change across the Alps” yesterday on Twitter after meeting with Yellow Vest activists Cristophe Chalencon and Ingrid Levavasseur.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
A Survival Guide For 2019
A Survival Guide For 2019
How to safely navigate the ‘Year Of Instability’
As the first month of the year concludes, it’s becoming clear that 2019 will be a very different kind of year.
The near-decade of ‘recovery’ following the Great Financial Crisis enjoyed a stability and tranquility that suddenly evaporated at the end of 2018.
Here in 2019, instability reigns.
The world’s central banks are absolutely panicking. After last year’s bursting of the Everything Bubble, their coordinated plans for Quantitative Tightening have been summarily thrown out the window. Suddenly, no chairman can prove himself too dovish.
Jerome Powell, the supposed hardliner among them, completely capitulated in the wake of the recent -15% tantrum in stocks, which, as Sven Henrich colorfully quipped, proved what we suspected all along:
The global tsunami of liquidity (i.e. thin-air money printing) released by the central banking cartel has been the defining trend of the past decade. It has driven, directly or indirectly, more world events than any other factor.
And one of its more notorious legacies is the massive disparity and wealth and income resulting from its favoring of the top 0.1% over everyone else. The mega-rich have seen their assets skyrocket in value, while the masses have been mercilessly squeezed between similarly rising costs of living and stagnant wages.
How have the tone-deaf politicians responded? With tax breaks for their Establishment masters and new taxes imposed on the public. As a result, populist ire is catching fire in an accelerating number of countries, which the authorities are anxious to suppress by all means to prevent it from conflagrating further — most visibly demonstrated right now by the French government’s increasingly jack-booted attempts to quash the Yellow Vest protests:
Meanwhile, two other principal drivers of the past decade’s ‘prosperity’ are also suddenly in jeopardy.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
France’s Yellow Vest Movement Comes of Age
France’s Yellow Vest Movement Comes of Age
At its first “Assembly of Assemblies” in late January, this grassroots democratic revolt brought together many people who had never participated in politics.
Yellow Vest protesters take part in a demonstration holding a banner that reads “Angry but not fascist” in Paris on January 26, 2019. (Reuters / Benoit Tessier)
“The danger,” Yanis warned, “is that the constant stream of information becomes its own type of ignorance. It’s very easy to forget the human need to educate oneself, and to forge one’s own opinion. What we need is for speech and debate to free themselves everywhere, that they fill every part of daily life, that everyone express themselves, respectfully of course.”
What Yanis was recalling was his own initial reaction to the eruption of France’s Yellow Vest revolt in late November 2018. “At the beginning, there was this fear,” he continued. “The movement had been covered in media as a ploy of the far right and the fascist movement. I hesitated to go at first just because of that. But I finally decided that it was all the more important to go if that was actually the case, in order to not abandon the battle to them.”
When people in his hometown of Montceau-les-Mines, in central France, began to organize town meetings at the beginning of December, Yanis decided to go and scope things out. Yanis was amazed to see that more than 1,000 attended the earliest assemblies in late November and early December. People were thinking and talking about politics in ways they had never done before. For too long, democratic life was little more than the habitual cycle of elections, with citizenship reduced to the occasional vote.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Venezuelan Coup and Gilets Jaunes: Great-Power Politics In a Multipolar World Order
The Venezuelan Coup and Gilets Jaunes: Great-Power Politics In a Multipolar World Order
The protests seen in France and the interference in the domestic politics of Venezuela highlight Western double standards, which stand in contrast to the respect for international law maintained by China, India and Russia.
In France on November 17, 2018, hundreds of thousands of citizens, angered by the diminishing quality of their lives, the social iniquity in the country, and the widening gap between rich and poor, took to the streets in protest. The protests can easily be encapsulated in the following slogan: “We the people against you the elite.”
This slogan has been a recurring theme throughout the West over the last three years, shaking up the British establishment with the pro-Brexit vote, discombobulating the United States with Trump’s victory, overturning Italy with the Lega/Five-Star government, and bringing Merkel’s star crashing down in Germany. Now it is the turn of Macron and France, one of the least popular leaders in the world, leading his country into chaos, with peaceful protests drawing a bloody response from the authorities following ten weeks of unceasing demonstrations.
In Venezuela, Western elites would like us to believe that the situation is worse than in France in terms of public order, but that is simply a lie. It is a media creation based on misinformation and censorship. In Europe, the mainstream media has stopped showing images of the protests in France, as if to smother information about it, preferring to portray an image of France that belies the chaos in which it has been immersed for every weekend over the last few months.
In Caracas, the right-wing, pro-American and anti-Communist opposition continues the same campaign based on lies and violence as it has customarily conducted following its electoral defeats at the hands of the Bolivarian revolution.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Unrest in France: No End in Sight
Unrest in France: No End in Sight
- The third group is extremely large: it is the rest of the population. The upper class treat them as regrettable dead weight and expect nothing from them except silence and submission. Its members often have a hard time making ends meet. They pay taxes but can see that a growing portion is being used to subsidize the very people who drove them out of their suburban homes.
- For the moment, Macron does not seem to want to recognize that these people even exist.
- When Macron lowered the taxes of the wealthiest but increased the taxes of these “peripherals” by means of a fuel tax, it was seen as the last straw — in addition to his arrogant condescension.
- “Today, most of those who protest do not attack the police. But instead of acting to bring down the violence, the police are receiving orders pushing them to be very violent. I do not blame the police. I blame those who give them orders”. — Xavier Lemoine, the mayor of Montfermeil, a city in the Eastern suburbs of Paris where the 2005 riots were extremely destructive,
Saturday, January 26th 2019. “Yellow vests” protests were being organized in the main cities of France. Mobilization was not weakening. Support from the population had decreased slightly but was still huge (60%-70%, according to polls). The main slogan has remained the same since November 17, 2018: “Macron must resign”. In December, another slogan was added: “Citizens’ initiative referendum“.
The government and French President Emmanuel Macron have been doing everything they can to crush the movement. They have tried insults, defamation and have said the demonstrators were both “seditious people” wishing to overthrow the institutions and fascist “brown shirts“. On December 31, Macron described them, as “hateful crowds“. The presence of some anti-Semites led a government spokesman (incorrectly) to describe the entire movement as “anti-Semitic“.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Three Reasons Macron is a Hypocrite when it Comes to Venezuela
Three Reasons Macron is a Hypocrite when it Comes to Venezuela
Paris (GPA) – Emmanuel Macron recently voiced support for opposition in Venezuela even as his own country is ground to a halt every weekend by protests.
There is an overused saying that “people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.” While these few words may be cliche there is definitely one man that they can be applied to after this weekend: Emmanuel Macron.
Even though the French President is into the third month of protests against his government, he has decided to weigh in on the legitimacy of another country’s government and his latest outrageous statements just highlight the hypocrisy of Macron and Western leaders in general.
Macron: Maduro is ‘illegitimate’
Emmanuel Macron is a very unpopular man. Yet, if the French President is to be believed, there is a man who is more unpopular than him that needs to be removed from office immediately. This man is, of course, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro whose approval rating is estimated somewhere around twenty percent by Western media outlets (many with no journalists or pollsters in Venezuela).
The irony of Emmanuel Macron saying these approval ratings make a President “illegitimate” is that his own aren’t looking much better. Following the eleventh weekend of the ‘Gilets Jaunes’ protests, Macron has seen a slight bump in approval ratings (according to pro-Macron media) to a paltry thirty percent.
Thirty percent isn’t much better than 20 but there were also polls during the earlier stages of the Gilets Jaunes protests where just over seventy percent of French citizens polled did not have faith in Macron’s government. This means that at one point during the protests that are still sweeping through Paris every weekend, Macron was just as “illegitimate” as he claims Nicolas Maduro is.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Watch Live: Yellow Vests Rage For 11th Straight Week; Organizers Plan Night Rallies, Human Chain Of 50,000
Watch Live: Yellow Vests Rage For 11th Straight Week; Organizers Plan Night Rallies, Human Chain Of 50,000
France’s Yellow Vests are out again en masse – taking to the streets of Paris and other cities across the country for the 11th straight week of anti-government protests despite rainy conditions.
#GiletsJaunes protest: #Toulon
– 11th Saturday of #YellowVests in France
– Protest against Rothschild Macron government, high climate change taxes, new labor laws
Once again, the tear gas flew as protesters clashed with police – as documented by journalist Sotiri Dimpinoudis.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
