Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Over 100 people injured this weekend, including 17 police.
Hundreds of arrests in Paris as ‘gilets jaunes’ protest turns violent
At least 100 people injured in street battles, with cars being torched and shops raided
Angelique Chrisafis in Paris
Sun 2 Dec 2018 07.56 AEDT First published on Sun 2 Dec 2018 00.35 AEDTThe French president, Emmanuel Macron, has insisted he will “never accept violence” after central Paris saw its worst unrest in a decade on Saturday when thousands of masked protesters fought running battles with police, torched cars, set fires to banks and houses, and burned makeshift barricades on the edges of demonstrations against fuel tax.
Near the Arc de Triomphe, one of Paris’s best-known monuments, masked men burned barricades, set fire to buildings, smashed fences and torched luxury cars on some of the most expensive streets in the city as riot police fired teargas and water cannon.
Then, by early evening, rioters spread around Paris in a game of cat and mouse with police. Luxury department stores on Boulevard Haussmann were evacuated as cars were set alight and windows smashed. Near the Louvre, metal grilles were ripped down at the Tuileries Garden where fires were started. On the Place Vendôme, a hub of luxury jewellery shops and designer stores, rioters smashed windows and built barricades.
Anti-Macron graffiti was scrawled over the Arc de Triomphe near the tomb of the unknown soldier and protesters burst into the monument smashing up its lower floors before climbing on to the roof.
More than 250 people were arrested and at least 100 injured – including one protester who was in a serious condition on Saturday night – after the violence erupted on the margins of anti-fuel tax demonstrations held by the citizens’ protest movement known as the gilets jaunes (yellow vests).
Macron, who was attending the G20 summit in Buenos Aires, said he would lead an emergency meeting of senior government ministers after returning to Paris on Sunday morning. He said: “No cause justifies that security forces are attacked, shops pillaged, public or private buildings set on fire, pedestrians or journalists threatened or that the Arc de Triomphe is sullied.”
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Life in France can be very hard. Costs of living are high, and the economy has been stagnant for a long time, thanks to chronic French political disdain for ideas promoted by English speaking countries, like free markets and Capitalism.
Public transport in many parts of Paris is insanely dangerous – train drivers refuse to stop in some areas at night because of the risk of violent attack.
Pricing people out of their cars exposes ordinary working people, especially women, to seriously increased risk of violent attack.
President Macron is breathtakingly out of touch, in a country which has seen many out of touch politicians – President Macron once boasted that he intended to rule like a roman god.
The protests will most likely die down, or be brutally crushed by French security. But its just barely possible that the new tax increases have pushed the French people over the brink. If this is the case, how long will French security forces continue to oppose the rioters? President Macron’s new tax hike affects the extended families of poorly paid police and army personnel as much as it affects everyone else. Their children and womenfolk and aunties and cousins are also exposed to new risks, if they are forced to ditch their cars and travel on France’s unacceptably dangerous metro system.
Macron said he will never accept violence. Strange, as he seems to accept violence in the no go areas of Paris by allowing crowd gathering and an almost ritual burning of someone’s motor vehicle.
I do hope this green over reach episode is burned into the hide of the elitists politicos as a third rail event. Hold the rail longer Macron so others learn the cost.
It was France who started the EU, mainly as a fear of Germany again becoming the most powerful country. It was to be a economic union only, so no one country could by itself prepare for war as did Germany from 1935.
It was this economic union that Britain finally joined, but as time has passed the EU became a Empire building exercise. Today Brussels its HQ is almost a dictatorship.
That is why the UK finally decided to leave it.
MJE
Yes. Note that recent Russian reactions are to EU attempts to have more influence in the East. The Commissars in Brussels are trying to expand the Empire and the people of the EU cannot even vote them out.
Wasn’t there a study which went into details regarding all of the deep changes which would need to take place in order to reduce global temperatures? If the French riot over an increase in gas taxes who knows what they will do if they ever found out about all of the additional changes the alarmist were planning on making.
From a blog I write — https://luysii.wordpress.com/2018/12/02/3858/
The current dustup in France brought on by elites raising the price of gas to demonstrate their climatological virtue at little cost to themselves warrants the republication of an earlier post in which I endeavor to show how they can put some of their own skin in the game and actually do something other than posture.
A modest proposal (with apologies to Jonathan Swift)
The New York Times magazine of 5 August 2018 was entirely devoted to global warming and our lack of response to it. Doubtless it was read with great approval by the denizens of the upper East and Est Sides as they sat in their million dollar apartments, vowing to fight until the last coal miner and oli field roughneck was out of work. This will cost them nothing.
Virtue signaling notwithstanding, it’s time they had some skin of their own in the game. Having practiced medicine in the People’s Republic of New York, I know the love of New York state government for regulations and mandates, and the approval with which they have been met by the above denizens.
So here is a modest proposal for fighting global warming. Mandate that governors be placed on air conditioners so that room temperatures can be no lower than 80 in the summer. Similar governors should be placed on heating, allowing room temperatures no warmer than 60 in the winter. Start in the upper East and West sides of Manhattan, and if met with general approval extend it further.
I think it will be accepted as well they accepted the wind farms proposed off Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket near their summer homes.
luysii
Love it! Nothing like conserving our energy. We had an argument at the dinner table tonight with my 17 year old. I proposed 68 in the winter and 80 in the summer for our thermostat.
Conserve.
Macusn
Macron will retrench and keep trying until he either forces what he wants on the people or is forced out. I vote for the people. I”m surprised demonstrations like this haven’t caused the people to question the theory behind AGW in an attempt to discredit it. Surely these people aren’t refusing to save the world. Non?
WOW, just wow, always thought it would have been a better place if Germany had won WWI
I would like to think that everything about climate change is an American plot to fool the world into abandoning fossil fuels so the remaining supply will all be ours. 1.99 a gallon over here(Ohio not Texas), so far so good…that was really easy.
$1.95 a gallon in Marble Falls, TX yesterday.
Mr Worrell/Mr Watts –
Could you please explain why my two attempts at posting a similar link to Alan Tomalty’s have both been swallowed up without trace. As I haven’t voiced any personal opinions, I doubt I’m being censored.
A revolt against the gas tax is only part of this. Wait until French citizens get wise to the UN Migration Pact which Macron and his pals are going to sign in Marrakech later in December. Au revior French culture and French sovereignty!!
I don’t see anywhere in the above article where it says or tells how much the tax is. 1%, 5%, !0%, 20% increase???
I think that would be and important addition to the above article…. what are they “protesting” about….
Just sayin…
The taxes are about $3.50 per gallon, with total price about $7.00 per gallon.
It seems a bit strange that Macron hasn’t backed off from his proposals yet.
Let’s implement a ‘Financial Transaction Sales Tax’; it would make more sense than what Macron and his masters would want. There is very little chance that Hedge Fund managers or Wall Street Bankers would go
into the streets and protest. Just an idea.
The minute the yellow vests started blocking roads and highways like storm-troopers, their legitimacy was lost. And this was right in the beginning. They are hoodlums and criminals, especially the violent ones, but in fact all the protesters do not follow civil and criminal law, they are more interested in raw power. Notice how this has evolved into anti-EU/Capitalism/Globalist, etc. This is the bastard of “freedom of speech” abusers such as Black Lives Matter, and ANTIFA.
Some posters have rightly corrected the author about the misleading safety issues for the Metro–not to deny there are bad areas which have been invaded.
aj, I think the difference here is that these protesters (or a lot of them anyway) have nothing to lose. With the new tax they won’t be able to go to work and provide for their families. Winter is coming, how will they pay the electricity bill?
If it was your family in danger of hunger or freezing, would you care about the rules?
Some of you still believe that RUMP is making oil cheaper. RUMP does not control oil production or price, the SAUDIS DO. The Saudi’s made sure that N. Dakota Shale industry was destroyed by lowering the price of oil to around 25-35/barrel to bankrupt them. That is the reason that US resource was diminished and that the US would remain dependent on oil from the insane Saudi Salafist Power base who grows richer by the day and has forced the USA into a ridiculous corner when it comes to energy. The alternative energy sources are real and must be accepted by the right as the future path to energy independence and global security.
Facts on the Science of Greenhouse gases affecting a rise in average global temperatures have been manipulated by Fossil Fuel Billionaire propaganda from the right wing. Exxon Mobil was exposed on funding 15 NFP’s to lie about the facts on how combustion of their products (coal, oil, methane) have led to AGW. Other factors include the industrialized cattle business where 1.2 BILLION cows farting has contributed a large proportion of the CH4 (methane) into the atmosphere. CH4 holds far more heat than CO2. Fracking has also contributed due to the leakage of CH4.
Vince, you do a really good parody of a green. Unless, of course, you actually believe that steaming pile of . . .
You you have any actual evidence of the negative impacts of global warming? Also do you have any idea of the number of acres of land required to replace significant percentage of the power supplied by fossil fuels?