#GiletsJaunes #Acte 18 (and vid)
https://twitter.com/Amreen_Rizvi/status/1106957017711702017
"Why are our corrupt mainstream media not reporting on this huge revolution? What are they scared of? If this footage was from Russia, Syria or even Venezuela, rather than France today, wouldn't they be broadcasting this non-stop?"
Macron Sends The French Army Against Anti-Austerity Protests
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/03/22/pers-m22.html
"On Wednesday, French government spokesperson Benjamin Griveaux announced that President Emmanuel Macron would mobilize army units during this weekend's 'yellow-vest' protests against austerity and inequality. Interior ministry sources told Le Parisien that everyone should 'get used' to the idea of the security forces wounding people or worse,' even if there 'end up being some quadriplegics'. Such statements recall Macron's stated admiration for fascist dictator Philippe Petain and George Clemenceau..."
Which must be why anti-brexiteers wish to 'Remain' in this supranational EU police-state monstrosity where democracies go to die.
Macron’s military reaction to the gilets jaunes is a sign his government has lost control
On Saturday the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) movement will march across France for the nineteenth consecutive week. Since its inception, the police have met the movement with tear gas and weaponry. But this time will be different: France’s anti-terrorist military will be out in force, guarding official buildings and other designated sites.
Yes, you heard that correctly: the French president is bringing in the military to deal with a protest.
The gilets jaunes have been marching for more than four months, come rain or shine, through winter and in fluctuating numbers – but with impressive regularity. They are the most serious social movement in France since 1968 and likely the longest-running insurgency since the French Revolution.
President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to retreat behind the restoration of law and order is the latest in a series of tepid answers to the movement. Rather than confront protesters’ demands for social change, his policies – including the recent decision to mobilise the army – have instead categorised the protestors as an angry mob from which society must be defended.....
But this time will be different: France’s anti-terrorist military will be out in force, guarding official buildings and other designated sites.
Didn't protesters set fire to an occupied building last week? Could that be why?
But this time will be different: France’s anti-terrorist military will be out in force, guarding official buildings and other designated sites.Didn't protesters set fire to an occupied building last week? Could that be why?
..your thinking scares me sometimes magoo. if that happened as you say that's a domestic police matter not a military one.
But this time will be different: France’s anti-terrorist military will be out in force, guarding official buildings and other designated sites.Didn't protesters set fire to an occupied building last week? Could that be why?
..your thinking scares me sometimes magoo. if that happened as you say that's a domestic police matter not a military one.
Someone with more knowledge of France can correct me on this, but the impression I get is that, in that country, things that would in many other places be handled by the police are, as a matter of standard procedure, considered the domain of the military. Hence, you see the gendarmes(or however you spell it) at political demonstrations and whatnot.
..i'd rather stick to what i posted. people are rising up due to the policies of the government and capital. the government is unable to control it and they label them mobs and want to send in the military in order to crush them.
..i'd rather stick to what i posted. people are rising up due to the policies of the government and capital. the government is unable to control it and they label them mobs and want to send in the military in order to crush them.
Yes, but Magoo said that maybe the military was being called in because of the burning of the monument, and then you posted that the burning of the monument was a police issue, not a military one. I'm saying that in France, it might be the case that something like that would just automatically be a military issue. IOW using local police wasn't really an option.
But again, I'm open to correction on this.
..you provide no evidence that this is in fact what is happening. you want to debate based on speculation that it might be a country thing. i'm not interested in that. what magoo suggested that the burning was terrorism. the burning of a building with people in it.
I was referring to a building with people in it, not a monument.
One arson fire targeted a bank near the Champs-Elysees on the ground floor of a seven-story residential building. A mother and her child had to be rescued just as the fire threatened to engulf their floor, Paris' fire service told The Associated Press. Eleven people in the building, including two firefighters, sustained light injuries.
This is from Quora, so it's crowdsourced, but still seems like an objective description...
In peace time, the Gendarmerie Mobile, will do anti riot intervention in parallel with the C.R.S. (Compagnie Republicaine de Securite belonging to the Police). These two units will share some lifeguard duties on the national shores during the summer. The Mobile will hep the territorial whenever necessary for search and rescue in criminal cases.
The Gendarmerie Nationale will also patrol the mountains (Alps and Pyrennees), doing search and rescue in parallel with the “Protection Civile”.
The Government buildings are under the protection of the Gendarmerie and its “Garde Republicaine”, some of them will be mounted on horses for special occasions.
So, anti-riot and protecting government buildings might mean that gendarmes get sent to a lot of places where demos are taking place. But again, I'm open to correction or augmentation on this.
I was referring to a building with people in it, not a monument.
One arson fire targeted a bank near the Champs-Elysees on the ground floor of a seven-story residential building. A mother and her child had to be rescued just as the fire threatened to engulf their floor, Paris' fire service told The Associated Press. Eleven people in the building, including two firefighters, sustained light injuries.
Sorry, I thought I saw someone mention a monument in the exchange. Maybe because a few days ago I read an article that mentioned the Arc De Triomph getting vandalized in a recent protest.
In Canada the Stanley Cup rioters were all dealt with through the police and court system. Even G8 and Olympic demos that included some violence did not lead to the military being deployed to guard government buildings.
VOTD's correct. For complex historical reasons, there are two national French police forces, one of which is administratively a sub-unit of the armed forces. That doesn't mean tanks are being deployed. The GN looks like this, and people who join it go to a police academy, not through military boot camp. More problematic is that the state of emergency declared after the Charlie Hebdo attack is still in effect.
Acte 19, France Arise! (LIVE)
https://francais.rt.com/france/60292-acte-19-gilets-jaunes-manifestation...
#GiletsJaunes
https://twitter.com/hashtag/GiletsJaunes?src=hash
"Macronism is fracturing France."
"Look how much money the Establishment has to protect property while essential workers can't make ends meet."
"Changing the status quo not trying to preserve it."
"71 year old woman attacked by police in Nice raid."
"As I recall, Bourbon, Louis XVI, king of France banned demonstrations back in 1789. We know what happened next. The French people are not to be excluded from their own streets."
"All Power To Them!"
Spectacular Violence As A Weapon of War Against the Yellow Vests
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/03/22/spectacular-violence-as-a-weapon...
"Violence is a spectacular weapon deployed by the ruling class to discredit movements from below and justify their repression. It is spectacular in the sense of being a great and powerful political tool for governing the masses and keeping them in their place. In order to do this, however, the weapon of violence is spectacular in a second sense: it creates a carefully orchestrated mise en scene that seeks to render ruling class violence invisible, while simultaneously transforming acts of resistance into prodigious spectacles of criminal violence.
One of the protest signs that goes to the heart of the matter simply states: 'Violence Is Poverty!'
And so it is. And so it should be responded to.
Four in Ten French Say Revolution the Solution to Country’s Problems
663
AFP
CHRIS TOMLINSON
24 Mar 2019835
2:17
A newly released survey has claimed that nearly four out of every ten French believe that a full-on revolution is the best way to solve the country’s political problems.
The poll, which was taken by polling firm IFOP, shows that 39 percent of French surveyed said that a revolution was needed to effect real change in the country, a figure much higher than elsewhere in Europe, Atlantico reports.
Four in Ten French Say Revolution the Solution to Country’s Problems
663
AFP
CHRIS TOMLINSON
24 Mar 2019835
2:17
A newly released survey has claimed that nearly four out of every ten French believe that a full-on revolution is the best way to solve the country’s political problems.
The poll, which was taken by polling firm IFOP, shows that 39 percent of French surveyed said that a revolution was needed to effect real change in the country, a figure much higher than elsewhere in Europe, Atlantico reports.
From which direction?
Yellow Vests Struggle to Reinvent Democracy
After five months of constant presence at traffic circles, toll-booths, and hazardous Saturday marches, the massive, self-organized social movement known as the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) has just held its second nationwide “Assembly of Assemblies.” Hundreds of autonomous Yellow Vest activist groups from all over France each chose two delegates (one woman, one man) to gather in the port city of St. Nazaire for a weekend of deliberation (April 5-7; Video April 6th).
After weeks of skirmishing with the municipal authorities, the local Yellow Vests were able to host 700 delegates at the St. Nazaire “House of the People,” and the three-day series of general meetings and working groups went off without a hitch in an atmosphere of good-fellowship. A sign on the wall proclaimed, “No one has the solution, but everybody has a piece of it.”
Their project: mobilize their “collective intelligence” to reorganize, strategize, and prolong their struggle. Their aim: to achieve the immediate goals of livable wages and retirements; restoration of social benefits and public services like schools, transportation, post offices, and hospitals; taxing the rich; ending fiscal fraud in order to pay for preserving the environment; and, most ambitious of all, reinventing democracy in the process. Their Declaration ends with the phrase “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” I wonder if they know who coined it.
Yellow and Green Unite and Fight
Particular attention was paid to the issue of the environment, reaffirming the popular slogan “End of the week. End of the world. Same logic, same struggle” (it rhymes in French). The Assembly went further and called on “[a]ll persons who wish to put an end to the expropriation of the living to take up a conflictual stance against the present system in order to create, together, a new ecological, popular social movement.”
This shows growth from the original Yellow Vest uprising that began as a protest against a hike in taxes on diesel fuel imposed in the name of “saving the environment.” (Less well-known is the fact that only 17% of that tax was actually earmarked for the environment. In any case, President Emmanuel Macron rescinded it in an early attempt to pacify the movement.) Since then, the Yellow Vests have tentatively converged with environmental groups, whom many poor and working-class Yellow Vests can’t help seeing as bourgeois on bicycles wanting to be nice but unwilling to struggle directly against the establishment.
So their call for unity is also, in part, a challenge to the environmental movement: “Join us in the struggle for social equality and be ready to fight the whole system.” Brilliant! Who said an unstructured, autonomous movement of ordinary, not well-educated people could not come up with strategies and tactics? Psychologists explain that this “wisdom of crowds” emerges whenever people are on an equal footing and free of constraint.1 It grows through experience. And discussion. A dialectical process leading to its emergence. “No one has the solution, but everybody has a piece of it.” This was the basis of direct democracy in Athens, from which the Yellow Vests have also borrowed the idea of choosing representatives by lot.
Autonomy
The Assembly of Assemblies reaffirmed the Yellow Vest founding principle of keeping clear of political parties. And clear of leaders. To my mind, this is a genius stroke. Every popular mass movement I have participated in over the past 60 years has been co-opted (or crushed) by the establishment. Leaders set up an office, they try to raise money and gain access to power, and end up compromising; they treat the rank and file activists like a mailing list, and the power and dynamic of the mass movement melts away, like the Nuclear Freeze that once mobilized millions. For example, in the U.S., the Democratic Party lured them in. Here, in France, the Socialist Party swallowed SOS Racisme, the embryo of a much-needed French Civil Rights movement.....
Yellow Vest Fever !(Doco)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIA7sKcFN44
"The movement's unofficial leaders explain why the protests are just the beginning..."
"Macron le grand flop!"
https://twitter.com/serge_ndestroy/status/1121434107551059968
Macron Expected to Negotiate With Yellow Vests
"EU elections get underway. Macron is expected to address the Yellow Vest movement. Former UK MP George Galloway joins In Question to discuss the EU latest.."
Update: Macron promised a national debate on multiple reforms, and stuck with one of his mini-reforms as PR-lite:
http://wilfday.blogspot.com/2019/04/france-after-three-tries-at-using.html
Update: Macron promised a national debate on multiple reforms, and stuck with one of his mini-reforms as PR-lite:
http://wilfday.blogspot.com/2019/04/france-after-three-tries-at-using.html
Thank you very much for this very informative piece on France's history of electoral change. I had no idea, so you made this political junkies day.
WATCH: George Galloway - "How come nobody is interested in the Yellow Vests in France? Is it because the crowds are too proletarian? Too Rough? Too working class? Too white? Too inchoate? Too disparate!"
https://twitter.com/talkRADIO/status/1121846193036890112
Because it's not covered by msm much here either. Mainly msm issues seem to see the light of day here and with their spin included and recycled. So good to see you treating it Wilf Day...
Yellow Vest Protesters Mark Labor Day in Paris: LIVE
France demonstrates how to celebrate May 1
Workers of the World Unite!
May 4, ACTE 25: Gilets Jaunes LIVE
https://francais.rt.com/france/61739-acte-24-suivez-direct-mobilisation
#GiletsJaunes
https://twitter.com/hashtag/giletsjaunes?lang=en
"Yet more footage emerges of French police assaulting peaceful anti-government protesters. Strange that this brutal crackdown has received so little media coverage..."
Week 6: Yellow Vests Call For New Protests in Paris
"Trudeau will be heading to France this May 15 to visit his friend and ally Macron. I look forward to his updated wardrobe." #MrDressup @JustinTrudeau
WATCH: "Western media is all over the protests happening in Russia and Hong Kong. But when it comes to huge anti-Macron Yellow Vest rallies in France going strong...it's nowhere to be found."
Here is a video update on the protests.
https://videos.telesurenglish.net/video/789620/39th-weekend-of-yellow-ve...
WATCH: "Western media is all over the protests happening in Russia and Hong Kong. But when it comes to huge anti-Macron Yellow Vest rallies in France going strong...it's nowhere to be found."
The imperialist corporate media is very happy now that they have something to save Macrons sorry ass with.
Viva la imperialism! Or something like that?
There are several online dictionaries and other tools that would enable you to write it correctly - you've mixed English with either Spanish or Italian. Vive l'impérialisme! not that I agree with the sentiment. But even the socialists and to some extent the communists also shored up French imperialism. Macron has changed nothing in that respect. However, he is much more openly neo-liberal and capitalist, and favours lessening social protections. Reverso context is relatively good, but alas weak on non-western languages. You are lucky to have a grounding in Chinese; I don't remember which oral Chinese language you are familiar with. If I were younger, I'd definitely learn a non-European language. https://context.reverso.net/translation/english-french/
Ok thanks lagatta. I knew in the back of my head I was writing in an ignorant manner, but since I was making a sarcastic comment not to be taken too seriously, I didn’t take the time as I sometimes do with other comments.
Mandarin is the dialect I’m familiar with by the way. I use simplified characters when writing/reading. Here’s an example
我们 we in simplified 我們 we in traditional. Both pronounced wo(3rd tone) men(neutral tone)
I can go on but this is thread drift.
Protesters 'Greet' G7 Leaders, French Police Fire Tear Gas (and vid)
"Thousands have protested near the southern French town of Biarritz, [to show] discontent with the politics of the G7 leaders who've gathered there for an annual summit. Some clashed with police, who responded with tear-gas and water cannon. Demonstrators carrying flags, banners and effigies of world leaders protested against their environmental and economic policies, claiming the leaders do not represent people. 'We are here to fight against this system (Capitalism) that leads to destruction on so many levels,' Maria, a protester told Ruptly..."
And you...?
G7 Descends Into Melania/Trudeau Intrigue
"Rick Sanchez discusses the G7 summit in France before RT's Charlotte Dubenskij reports the details..."
WATCH: "Western media is all over the protests happening in Russia and Hong Kong. But when it comes to huge anti-Macron Yellow Vest rallies in France going strong...it's nowhere to be found."
The imperialist corporate media is very happy now that they have something to save Macrons sorry ass with.
Viva la imperialism! Or something like that?
How about "longo imperialismo vivo!"? You should have seen THAT version before.
Galloway: Macron Knows For Europeans the 'Problem' Country is Not Russia But US
"The End Times of Western Hegemony.' I wish this were written by Macron although it might as well have been said. He said exactly this after the G7 gathering which could be summed up in Shakespeare's words as 'much ado about nothing.'
Macron said the rise of China and Russia meant 'we are living at the end of Western hegemony.' Western leaders surely know that the end of hegemony is already here - it may be said to have died at the gates of Damascus when the Syrian Arab Army and its Russian, and other allies turned back the inexorable advance of the Western-backed Islamist fanatics and changed the course of the war. A series of failed 'regime change' operations from Yemen to Venezuela was further confirmation. The complete failure of attempts to 'punish' Russia over Crimea, the breakthrough of Nord-Stream 2, the continuing rise of China and its potential to hole the American economy by retaliation against US sanctions in an election year, were all obvious signs.
And so one part of what we have with Macron's speech is one of the emperor's admitting the empire is at least down to its under-garments and it is not a pretty sight. Fear of the increasing closeness between Russia and China is an0ther traditionally French preoccupation. But Macron has another motive too. He knows that for the vast majority of Europeans - perhaps especially in France - the 'problem' country is not Russia but the United States. Not Putin but Trump. The bull in the china-shop presidency of Donald Trump has brought to the surface an always latent hostility to US domination. And this anxiety, even fear over US recklessness is growing rapidly in all European countries..."
Tear Gas, Water Cannons, Injuries: Chaos Erupts in Nantes Amid Yellow Vests Rally (Video & Photos)
"Yellow Vest protests against President Emmanuel Macron's economic policy hit France for the 44th weekend in a row. It got especially heated in Nantes where clashes between police and protesters left several people injured..."
Keiser Report: A Black September (Ep 1436)
"In this episode of The Keiser Report, Max and Stacy discuss the odd similarities of protestors in Hong Kong and in France having their eyes targeted by 'sublethal' stun grenades. They review the article in GQ by Robert Chalmers exploring the 'real victims' of the 'yellow vest revolution' and note the connection between the dozens of protestors who have lost an eye while the online surveillance state seeks to control what we see and read. In the second half, Max interviews independent journalist Paul Moreira about the Yellow Vest movement in France."
Notice the continuing media suppression of this struggle. Notice how western liberals avoid linking it to the majority UK vote to leave the neoliberal EU.
"Let the world know 47 weeks of riots by GiletsJaunes protests in France and Emannuel Macron's response to them! Mainstream media won't show you these videos..."
https://twitter.com/EhsanBourbour/status/1180525938251108352
'But Hong Kong!' Why does this board seem to enjoy fighting for western imperialist projects so much more than opposing them?
"Huge crowds in Paris today as Gilets Jaunes march to protest for the 50th consecutive week. Chile flags can be seen. The anger against Neoliberalism which impoverishes the poor while enriching the wealthy, is growing around the world..."
A “BLACK VESTS” MOVEMENT EMERGES IN FRANCE TO PROTEST TREATMENT OF UNDOCUMENTED MIGRANTS
IN JULY, SOME 700 undocumented migrants, mostly men from Africa, ran into one of Paris’ most famous structures, the Panthéon, and sat down on its stone floor.
Tourists were ushered from the tombs of famous figures in French history — Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Marie Curie — and taken outside. For the next hours, under the building’s echoing dome, protesters took turns making speeches and chanting about their right to the famous French values of liberty, equality, and fraternity.
“Why not give us legal status? Why not try to do something for us? Why humiliate us? Why do you ignore us? We are not objects. We are people like you,” one undocumented man said through a microphone as protesters fanned out on the floor around him, waving slips of paper and cheering.
“Our grandparents fought for France. … We’re not hiding anymore,” said another.
The men were part of a new movement called the gilets noirs, or “black vests.” The group of around 1,500 activists began to coalesce early this year, naming themselves after the gilets jaunes, or yellow vests, whose protests against declining prospects for the French working class were rocking the country.
quote:
The gilets noirs, in other words, could not take off their vests if they wanted to. The gilets noirs speak specifically to the conditions faced by France’s migrant underclass, and they represent one of the most visible undocumented migrant movements France has seen in decades.
Between 300,000 and 400,000 undocumented migrants live in France. In Paris’ north, nearly 3,000 homeless migrants have set up camps alongside highways and in public spaces, enduring a crack epidemic, harassment from police, and extreme poverty. Many of these people were already traumatized by the experiences that caused them to flee their home countries and by the perilous journey to Europe.
The gilets noirs movement was founded, with the help of the activist collective La Chapelle Debout, in a network of communal residences for migrant workers, called foyers. They have staged major demonstrations at the Charles de Gaulle airport — from which people are sometimes deported — and at the headquarters of Elior, a French company that employs undocumented migrants and has contracted to provide food and cleaning services to detention centers in France.
But the occupation of the Panthéon was their most explosive action to date. Around 4:45 p.m. that July day, the gilets noirs were negotiating with police, who wanted them to leave the premises. According to people who participated in those negotiations, police told the gilets noirs that there would be no identity checks and no violence if they left peacefully.....
#Acte 51
https://twitter.com/Gerrity/status/1191041223143936006
WATCH: "Paris Yellow Vests out in force as first anniversary nears..."
Macron Warns Economist Magazine of World War, Collapse of NATO Alliance
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/11/09/macr-n09.html
"...Intractable divisions between the imperialist powers that twice in the 20th century exploded into world war are again undermining international alliances key to the affairs of world capitalism. This was the content of a long, deeply pessimistic interview French President Emmanuel Macron granted to Britain's Economist, declaring the NATO alliance between America and Europe to be dead. The interview contained statements virtually unprecedented for a French president in living memory..."
The only time undocumented African migrants are not villified is when they commit outstanding acts of heroism, such as the man who saved Jewish shoppers at Hyper Casher supermarket from a terrorist, and the other man (I believe both of these men happened to be from Mali) who scaled the balconies of a block of flats to save a dangling toddler. The everyday heroism of subsisting on what work they could find and sending remittances back home simply doesn't count.
I'd like to repeat that I deeply dislike threads that simply indicate the name of a country and indicate no political or social content. I answered this one now as I have long followed the Sans-papiers struggle in France and elsewhere. So much low-paid and physically exhausting work would simply not get done if the hypocrites didn't count on the efforts of the undocumented.
WSWS is a deeply sectarian rag that opposed the Québec student movement in 2012. One could find such information in far more credible leftwing media.
I'd like to repeat that I deeply dislike threads that simply indicate the name of a country and indicate no political or social content.
Agreed! The solution is to open your own thread dealing with a specific topic of interest to you. I plan to hijack this thread by talking about French cuisine.
WSWS is a deeply sectarian rag that opposed the Québec student movement in 2012. One could find such information in far more credible leftwing media.
Agreed. The only reason they didn't do more damage is that no one pays any attention to them. U.S. residents commenting on Québec simply showed the stupidity and arrogance of that country.
#GiletsJaunes #Acte 52
https://twitter.com/communicipalist/status/1193158023008661505
"Macron's violence against the Gilets Jaunes continues a year on as the French people stand up to EU totalitarianism undaunted and undefeated!"
Unionist, by French cuisine, do you mean couscous royal, chachouka or Vietnamese pho?
Unionist, by French cuisine, do you mean couscous royal, chachouka or Vietnamese pho?
There's also French fries and French toast, right? And "French Vanilla" ice cream and flavored coffee.
But aren't "French" fries actually Belgian?
