The New York Times reports Police Crack Down on ‘Yellow Vests’ in France With Tear Gas and Hundreds of Arrests.
A fourth weekend of antigovernment protests turned violent on Saturday, with demonstrators in Paris ripping down barricades from store fronts and setting vehicles on fire, while riot police fired tear gas and water cannons to control the crowds.
The so-called Yellow Vests descended on the capital by the thousands, even as the police turned out in force, blocking off roads and monuments and arresting more than 700 people, many before they could even reach the main site of the demonstrations along Paris’s main artery, the Champs-Élysées.
Around the country, some 31,000 people took to the streets mostly peacefully, according to the authorities, including in cities like Marseille, Nice and Nantes. But in Paris, more hard-core elements hijacked the demonstrations, turning them violent, though short of last weekend’s levels, the country’s worst urban unrest in decades.
As protesters were smashing in windows with golf clubs on Avenue Marceau, an ambulance driver and Yellow Vest from the Dordogne who gave her name only as Stephanie and was watching the violence said: “Sure it’s sad. But if it hadn’t come to this, nothing would change.”
Elsewhere in the city, on the Boulevard de Courcelles, a car burned out of control as police moved in to disperse the vandals.
Axelle Cavalheiro, who works with disabled people, came from the Ain, near Lyon. “We are overtaxed; there are taxes on everything, gas,” he complained. “At the Élysée,” he said referring to the presidential palace, “they spend 300,000 euros on carpeting, 10,000 a month for the hairdresser.”
Images Clipped from NYT Video
Storefronts Burn
Police Repel Paris Protesters
The Chicago Tribune reports Police Repel Paris Protesters Attempting to Converge on Presidential Palace
Some stores along the Champs-Elysee had boarded up their windows with plywood, making the neighborhood appear like it was bracing for a hurricane. Angry protesters on Saturday tried to rip the boards off.
Protesters threw flares and other projectiles and set fires but were repeatedly pushed back by tear gas and water cannon. By mid-afternoon, more than 700 people had been stopped and questioned, and more than 400 were being held in custody, according to a Paris police spokeswoman.
The Eiffel Tower and Louvre Museum were among the many tourist attractions that closed for the day, fearing damages amid a new round of protests. Subway stations in the center of town were shut down.
Trump Blames Climate Control Measures
Very sad day & night in Paris. Maybe it’s time to end the ridiculous and extremely expensive Paris Agreement and return money back to the people in the form of lower taxes? The U.S. was way ahead of the curve on that and the only major country where emissions went down last year!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 8, 2018
We Want Trump
The Paris Agreement isn’t working out so well for Paris. Protests and riots all over France. People do not want to pay large sums of money, much to third world countries (that are questionably run), in order to maybe protect the environment. Chanting “We Want Trump!” Love France.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 8, 2018
Axios Moans
Axios complains Trump inaccurately blames Paris Agreement as riots continue in France.
Reality check: The protests in Paris are not about the Paris Agreement, and the agreement didn’t impose additional taxes.
Trump’s Tweet is as close to reality as Axios. The Paris accord did not stipulate taxes, but that is precisely how Macron chose to implement the accord.
It was Macron’s idiotic diesel tax to “save the world” that was the trigger for long-building tax resentment.
Some Blame Facebook
The Intelligencer asks Did Facebook Cause Riots in France?
In Bloomberg, Leonid Bershidsky writes that “Street riots in Paris are less about a tiny fuel tax hike than the power of social networks to radicalize their users”; on Medium, Frederic Filloux argues that Facebook is “fueling the French populist rage.” Most widely circulated is a lengthy and detailed Buzzfeed article headlined “The ‘Yellow Jackets’ Riots In France Are What Happens When Facebook Gets Involved With Local News.”
It’s a compellingly dystopian way of thinking about the riots, in which hundreds of people have been injured, especially if you’re a Facebook critic or skeptic. Look at what Facebook brings to stable democracies! Look at how Facebook leads good citizens astray! The problem is that there’s very little evidence being provided for this particular narrative.
That’s not to say that Facebook was irrelevant to the protests. There seems to be consensus that the social network is the organizational platform of choice for the gilets jaunes. But the idea that popular outrage is more about “the power of social networks” than actual French politics, as Bershidsky argues, seems very wrong, and more than a little irresponsible.
At one barricade Christafis spoke with a wide range of citizens “united in fury at Macron’s way of running France – what they called his top-down approach cut off from ordinary people’s experiences. Everyone could angrily quote examples of Macron’s ‘arrogance.’” This sounds like real grievance, not inauthentically promoted “fake news.”
Where is Macron Now?
The Tribune explains As protests rage in France, President Macron remains invisible.
Who’s to Blame
The Bloomberg, Medium, and Buzzfeed writers all got it wrong. The Intelligencer got it correct.
If Macron wants someone to blame, he should look in the mirror. After paying his €10,000 haircut bill of course.
It’s very important to look nice when placing the blame.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
“On the 4th weekend of riots in France triggered by a diesel tax…”
KTLA News said it was due to rising fuel prices. The MSM is propaganda, not news.
The diesel tax and Macron are only symbols. Cancelling the tax did not end the protest. Much of the underlying discontent predates Macron and would still be there even if Macron resigned as demanded. Macron won with a new party that displaced the traditional parties, claiming a new path that didn’t answer to the old left/right divides. Macron turns out to be just another Rothschild banker technocrat.
People are upset with 30 years of neo-liberal policies (“there is no alternative”) and seeing stagnant wages, increasing costs, unresponsive policy-making by perceived “elites”, and constantly increasing polarization in income, but especially in wealth. Many of the trends are systematic (that is, not political, but due to changing markets, workplace, laws of capital enhancements, global competition and wage arbitrage, migration, etc.). Nevertheless, people feel they are on a tread mill to nowhere good, and that their concerns are being discarded.
Hint: This discontent is not native to France, and (extra hint), Trump does not bear the solution.
Ever feel like a serf? Not much to lose?
A society of Yeoman may well be better and I’m thinking that is the way for governments to head, as fast as possible.
The more that have a stake in societal order, stability, peace, the more likely they are to occur.
I doubt Macron is the one to help achieve that in France, nor the current UK leaders nor those in waiting.
The so-called “Leader” disappears from sight at the first sign of serious trouble.
What a joke.
I do not know which straw will be the last straw on the camel’s back.
But if the politicians, government, regulators including the central banks and corporate (any country-if you have seen one you have seen them all) continue to be in the same bed, implementing systems that destroy the very fabric of society (like outsourcing that eviscerated the middle class in the US, debt serfdom a way of life, coddling stock markets and cutting interest rates whenever the market sneezes, giving money hand-over-fist to banksters who should have been in jail etc.) giving law a go-by and not only not bringing criminals to book but also helping them enrich themselves, and screw ordinary citizens as they have done last decade, especially savers, retirees and prudent people, faking demand by pulling forward demand with low interest rates and thereby increasing prices and making it unaffordable for most, there will come a time when citizens in enough numbers will say enough is enough and take law into their hands. Then all this screaming of violence etc. will not help.
If you do not want people to take to violence then you need to ensure law is same whether you are a bankster, politician or central banker or common man and do the right things and not exploit the citizens, not to mention that just because you can screw people you screw them as hard as you can. Punish anyone who is delinquent in doing their duty including central bankers who failed in 2008 (instead this class not only got away but expanded their powers and ended up preening, a decade later, all over the world, as if they have saved the world and the temerity to say but for them it would have been worse).
If not, as you sow so you reap. Only thing is it will take time to boil over and when it does there will be some unimaginable consequences. That the present system of exploiting simple normal working people needs a significant change is without dispute. Soon many people may think the same and decide to do something about it. Calling them “thugs” or “deplorables” might not help. Anyway it also depends on your definition of these terms. In my case, I define “deplorables” as those who exploit citizens when they are ensconced in positions of power.
Blame it on stupid politicians who can’t or won’t get their houses in order. They need to learn to live within their means. That includes the United states.
Their means are whatever they can fleeze from defenseless productive citizens.
Government everywhere needs a 60% haircut.
Won’t happen without calamity first. Votes matter and especially when a majority feel aggrieved and can vote to take what they want from others.
Only staring into the abyss of societal chaos will sober up the system and people and encourage a clinging to order by voting in adults.
H.L. Mencken:
“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people.On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
H.L. Mencken:
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
H.L. Mencken:
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
H.L. Mencken:
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
The Élysée Palace in this case
Macron is an actor, no more than that. Not even a very good one, detached, aloof. His audience are not the ordinary but the Davos & Big Global Capital crowd that love his words. He’s a form of populist, but not of the people. A capitalist populist. The “secure” warm to his visions but forget the “insecure” have increasingly less to lose and are growing in number. It’s a recipe for insurrection and revolution.
It could happen in the UK too but with a different demographic and cause. There’s tension brewing in many places and this is before the global downturn really bites.
A great shame, not good for anyone.