General Thread: France, Protests, Riots, Unrest: (Updates)

[Free Vulcan]

Sounds like the usual empty suit you'd expect from the globalist types.

[TomSea]

Some of this may be stoked by Russia:

https://twitter.com/alexandrelatsa/status/1071342577465593856

Honestly, one has to look at all angles.

[Right_in_Virginia]

Tear gas, mass arrests as new Yellow Vest protests hit Paris
France24, Dec 8, 2018

Paris police detained over 500 people Saturday as fresh anti-government Yellow Vest protests hit the capital, with similar protests taking place all over France. 

Shouts of "Macron, resign" mingled with the tear gas near the famous Champs-Élysées avenue, the scene last Saturday of the worst rioting in Paris for decades.

A forklift truck driver who gave his name as Denis said he was planning, like others, to march on Macron's presidential palace in anger against a leader who they say only looks out for the rich.

"I'm here for my son," said the 30-year-old, who had travelled down to Paris from the Normandy port of Caen. "I can't let him live in a country where the poor are exploited."

Prime Minister Édouard Philippe said 481 people had been detained in Paris as police carried out checks on people arriving at train stations and at protest hotspots such as the Champs-Élysées and the Bastille monument.

Among them were dozens arrested for carrying masks, hammers, slingshots and rocks that could be used to attack police.

Shops, museums, the Eiffel Tower and many metro stations were closed, while top-flight football matches and concerts have been cancelled.

Last weekend's violence, which saw some 200 cars torched and the Arc de Triomphe vandalised, shook France and plunged Macron's government into its deepest crisis so far.


More:  https://www.france24.com/en/20181208-paris-lockdown-france-yellow-vests-gilets-jaunes-anti-macron-riots-protests

[Right_in_Virginia]

Paris riots: VIOLENCE ERUPTS as protesters clash with police - TANKS and TEAR GAS deployed
Daily Express/UK, Dec 8, 2018

More than 500 French demonstrators were arrested after police found them with weapons including hammers and baseball bats.

Thousands of police were deployed across France ahead of the chaos, with 8,000 in Paris.

Furious protestors have billed the weekend as "Act IV" in a dramatic challenge to Mr Macron, despite the President's climbdown over the unpopular fuel tax reforms.


More:  https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1056082/paris-protests-riots-gilets-jaunes-emmanuel-macron-tax-reform

[IsailedawayfromFR]

I just read that the yellow vests are now at EU HQ in Brussels and some protests have spread to Holland.

That has the makings of a much bigger deal.  Think fall of Berlin Wall.

[dfwgator]

Is Paris Burning?

[TomSea]

Merging all French/Paris riots threads, taking a lesson from one of the Mods doing it about last weekend. Will sticky this as well.  Other threads will be merged on this.

Note sure if I should just generalize post #1 as "French Protests" perhaps would be proper.

[mountaineer]

More on how this isn't just simple French folk protesting high taxes:

... By midafternoon in Paris, more radical elements and professional vandals — known as “casseurs,” or “breakers” — had ripped down plywood barricades that had been placed over the windows of nearly every business in hopes of preventing smashing and looting.

The Champs-Élysées was quickly covered in tear gas, and hundreds of people beat a hasty retreat down the avenue.

In some areas, the casseurs — young men dressed in black — could easily be distinguished from the Yellow Vests, often middle-aged men from the countryside.

In at least two instances on the Champs-Élysées, Yellow Vests replaced protective boards ripped down from shop windows by the casseurs.

And Yellow Vests looked on in horror and bemusement as vandals smashed in the windows of a sporting-goods store and made off with boxes of sneakers on one chic avenue around the Arc de Triomphe.

“This is just madness,” said a middle-aged Yellow Vest, Franck Morlat, a train driver who had traveled from central France. “Totally unacceptable.”  ...

NYT via MSN
 

[TomSea]

Liveuamap
‏Verified account @Liveuamap
1h1 hour ago

Plate at Ukrainian Cultural center in Paris was damaged by Yellow Vests yesterday

https://twitter.com/Liveuamap/status/1071855772366241800

https://france.liveuamap.com/en/2018/9-december-plate-at-ukrainian-cultural-center-in-paris-was

[DB]

More on how this isn't just simple French folk protesting high taxes:NYT via MSN
 

Leftest hijacked their protest... The leftest want another French revolution where they destroy anyone too wealthy.

[mountaineer]

I think so. Never let the left co-opt your legitimate protest.

[TomSea]

I watched one of the yellow jackets interviewed. They are a conservative movement. They also are not violent and one of them said he was aghast when he saw some wearing the yellow jackets were committing acts of vandalism, even violence. I guess, that's a problem, you can't control everyone.

[mountaineer]

France, pounded by protests, seeks answers
Macron to address nation Monday
By Sean Philip Cotter | Boston Herald
December 9, 2018 at 10:03 pm

French President Emmanuel Macron is preparing to break nearly a month’s silence in the face of increasingly agitated and violent protests spurred by populist anger at what’s seen as a government that’s cast the working people aside.

Running battles between “yellow vest” protesters and police that left at least 71 injured in the French capital and caused widespread damage in cities around France raged Saturday for the fourth weekend in a row.

The list of grievances by the largely rural, lower-middle class protesters clad in yellow emergency vests is myriad and growing, but is largely based around measures to increase buying power.

“It’s working people and lower-middle-class people mostly because you have seen a wage stagnation in most of these European countries and unemployment across the board,” Celia Belin, a French-American foreign policy analyst at the Brookings Institute, told the Herald. “It becomes a question of social justice and dignity.”

Belin, who’s from Dijon, said Macron already had made some unpopular moves before the gas tax, including levies on pensioners and cuts to housing subsidies. ... More

[Wingnut]

[TomSea]

French police warn the government: ‘We’re at breaking point’

The protests began in France four weeks ago against the government’s planned fuel tax hikes and got off to a mainly peaceful start.

But since then they have grown increasingly violent and the list of grievances and gripes against President Emmanuel Macron and his government have ballooned.

While the anger and hatred of protesters is directed at the president, it is being take out on the country’s police forces. For the last three Saturday’s they have come under a hail of cobblestones and bottles, had fireworks aimed at them and at times simply been given the run around by rioters and looters.

Read more at: https://johnib.wordpress.com/2018/12/10/french-police-warn-the-government-were-at-breaking-point/

[Free Vulcan]

I don't want to laugh at anyone's misery, but it's fun to see hell breaking breaking loose and Macron being paralyzed, after being so smug just a few weeks ago.