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Clashes Break Out as French Protests Hit Streets
Meanwhile flights were disrupted, public transport thrown into chaos and there was growing alarm among motorists over fuel shortages with hundreds of filling stations running dry.
Protesters clash with police in Lyon. (Photograph: Robert Pratta/Reuters) President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has staked his reputation on bringing in tough economic measures, including raising the retirement age from 60 to 62, pledged to crack down on "troublemakers" and said he would ensure that "public order is guaranteed."
More than 200 protests and one-day strikes by workers in sectors across the French economy were held around the country.
Initial estimates from the SNCF national railway operator and the Education Ministry suggested the number of public sector strikers was diminishing after week of disruptions.
In many cities, protesters were being joined by youths who appeared to be seizing an opportunity to lash out at police.
At a school in the Paris suburb of Nanterre, closed because of earlier violence, a few hundred youths started throwing stones from a bridge at police, who responded with tear gas.
Nanterre has often seen student protests in past years and the latest clashes were reminiscent of 2005 riots that spread through poor housing projects nationwide with large, disenfranchised immigrant populations.
At the Place de la Republique in Paris, youths pelted riot police with projectiles and started fires. Similar skirmishes broke out in other cities.
It was the sixth national day of demonstrations over the planned pension reform since early September. Union leaders have vowed to keep up the pressure until the government scraps the unpopular plan, saying retirement at 60 is a fundamental social right.
Mr Sarkozy called the reform his "duty" as a head of state and said it must go through to save France's generous but money-losing pension system.
He has stressed that 62 is among the lowest retirement ages in Europe, the French are living much longer and the pension system is losing money.
The measure is expected to pass a vote in the Senate this week. Originally due to tomorrow, it has been pushed back until later in the week so MPs have the time to examine hundreds of amendments brought by opposition Socialists and others.
The protests in France come as countries across Europe are cutting spending and raising taxes to bring down record deficits and debts from the worst recession in 70 years.
The DGAC civil aviation authority said up to half of flights today out of Paris' Orly airport would be scrapped, and a third of flights out of other French airports, including the country's largest, Charles de Gaulle, serving Paris, would be cancelled.
Most were short- and medium-haul domestic and inter-European flights. The walkout by air traffic controllers was expected to last one day, with flights expected to return to normal tomorrow.
Strikes by oil refinery workers have sparked fuel shortages that forced at least 1,000 filling stations to close. Others saw large crowds.
At one on the south of Paris today the queue snaked for hundreds of yards and some drivers carried petrol cans to stock up with.
Mr Sarkozy said such shortages "cannot exist in a democracy."
"There are people who want to work, the immense majority, and they cannot be deprived of petrol," he insisted.
Police in the north-western town of Grand-Quevilly moved protesters blocking a fuel depot which had been completely sealed off.
Truckers have joined the protest, creating huge tailbacks by driving at a snail's pace on roads.
About 20 truckers blocked an oil depot in Nanterre west of Paris operated by Total, turning away fellow truckers coming to fill up.
Students entered the fray last week, blockading high schools and staging protests that have occasionally degenerated into clashes with police.
With disruptions on the national railway entering their eighth consecutive day, many commuters' patience was beginning to wear thin. Only about one in two trains were running on some of the Paris Metro lines.
Caroline Mesnard, a 29-year-old teacher said she expected her commute to take about twice as long as usual - as it has since last Tuesday's start of the open-ended strike on France's trains.
"All I can say is that after eight days, it's beginning to get a bit tiresome," she said. "I'm really tired, but there's nothing to be done but hang on and wait for this to end."
In Marseille, strikes by binmen have left heaps of rubbish piled along pavements.
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92 Comments so far
Show AllThis is probably why the Bush crowd demonized the French. At least someone still stands up for themselves.
Good to see that French students understand what their American counterparts either don't understand or deny...that pseudo austerity actions being crafted by corporations and enabled by Obama, Sarkozy and other elected fascists will negatively impact college students more than any other demographic.
Right on, they can...here in the USA the local police can't wait to put on their riot gear and will even instigate the riot if it's not happening. Myself, though I've never done it I've never more wanted to throw a molotov cocktail or two!
Viva la Revolution!
I have no respect for the French, who will protest to the last man any policy that effects their personal lazy, unwashed asses, but will allow and even support discriminatory laws that single out muslims and other non-pure white minorities.
Liberté, Equalité, Fraternité...my ass.
Is it time for gringos to change the name to freedom fries again?
Remember the last time the US did that was when the French questioned Dubya's Iraq invasion?
Tell me who ended up being right, mujeriego.
Polls show upwards of 60% of French support the ban.
Also there were only 2 votes against. 1 in the National Assemby, and 1 in the Senate. Clearly secular discrimination by the majority.
And all this protest against raising the retirment age from 60 to 62? Add to that the across the board 37 days of vacation a year....
These people give progressives a BAD NAME, and make us all easy marks for right wing reactionarys to call us pampered and over privileged leftists.
Mujeriego, I'm afraid that your delicious sarcasm is wasted on those with no sense of humor. Time and time again. You surely won't see the Yes Men recruiting candidates from Common Dreams any time soon.
Hey, if I had the benefits that the French have, their medical care, their child care, their retirement packages and their vacation time, I'd be out there chucking rocks at the cops too. We can only dream of what the French have.It's worth fighting for n'est pas? BBC says this morning: 71% of those polled support the strikes, and Sarkozy's numbers have gone down (from a very low level) since the strikes began.This could get really interesting.Fuck les Anglo-Saxons!
They have those benefits only because of their organization in the past, including demonstrations.
Joe
The target of the ultra-rightests , the disenfranchised immigrant population, appear to be joining the "manifestations". Thus shaping the movement into something more than a simple response to cuts in social programs and into a movement that is asking for changes in social and economic relations.
Which discriminatory laws (plural in the post)? Do you mean the law about not being allowed to wear a burka or full face covering in public places and offices?
"lazy, unwashed asses": Hard to believe that you managed to retrieve and post that old (and false) cliche about the French. Oh, well...
Of course, I am sure if we sit on our racist lazy complacent ignorant asses we can expect things to get better. The French Left is not the ones passing the laws, do you know anything about French politics? It appears not.
Painting all French with the same brush is not only inaccurate, unhelpful, lazy and absurd, it is HYPOCRISY.
Are all merkans fat, lazy, warmongering, bloodthirsty, apathetic, ignorant racist hypocrites?
--'Are all merkans fat, lazy, warmongering, bloodthirsty, apathetic, ignorant racist hypocrites?'
Not just merikkans but most europeans. It really depends on who's glasses you put on.
From France;
Wow, Good for you dude, i don't need your respect to retain my dignity, i'll keep on striking and demonstrating along with my friends from all walks of life and probably with more colours that you'll ever see in your life time wherever you might live. You might not respect me and my poeple but i pity you and your likes.
veenanaos - We here in the US are not questioning your dignity. Your struggle is the same as ours so spare me/us your condescending pity. It helps nothing.
Hey Randolf, how is your comment helping anything, i understand anger, i'm full of it, i brought it with me this afternoon facing the riot police, i didn't direct it in any way against any of you and i don't see anything condescending about pitying somebody who would rather insult indiscriminantly a whole people than try to direct his rightful anger against the real target. And frankly i can care less if anybody questions my dignity, USAns, French whatever...
Mujeriego,
Any port in the storm. my friend. Their present actions discomfit our capitalist slave drivers.
I think we shouldn't split hairs on this one.
In point of fact, I think the French in many cases actually DO wash their asses where as we use (generally) toilet paper.
I suppose it depends on where your focus is. It takes all kinds to make a world.
The bidet is used in the USA by 99% of the rich. They don't use it because they like to tickle their rears and vaginas with water. They use it because it is far more hygienic than using paper alone. And by the way. After they use the bidet, they dry off with paper (not a towel). So we both use about the same amount of toilet paper.
mujeriego .... i totally agree.
One other point rarely mentioned (of course) in the talk of raising the retirement age is that the well-off class who do their work mostly at a desk (if not by the pool) are far better equipped to work longer than people like (just a few examples) coalminers, North Atlantic fishermen, line-men, stoop farm laborers and women who scrub the houses of the guys sitting around the pool barking orders into their cellphones. For such workers 65 is too long and far fewer of them live to see it than do of that happy class that keeps suggesting we make people who NEED Social Security (not them!) work longer to earn it.
? Violence ? the corporate empire be it French or amerikan commits social, environmental, and military/ imperialistic, violence daily against the World and the people ! The above AP propaganda is just the msm being a mouthpiece for empire.
If only Amerikkkans could generate such rage at their criminal, corrupt and inept government, the slide into totalitarian fascism might cease.
Exactly right!
Amerikkans will first have to -
stop allowing theirselves to be so distracted with technological toys -
stop idolizing the capitalist entrepenuer -
Yes, Europeans love their cars, clothes and gadgets but, from what I have personally observed, they have way more self-discipline.
To change Amererikkans' mindste, you will first need to find a cure for delusion/denial syndrome that afflicts most Amerikkans, ArtasLife.
How did Sarkozy get elected at any rate?
And can they topple him?
.
"According to all myth, the female - not the male -- gives life"
"How is he elected?"
He got the most votes in a national election.
He took advantage of latent French nationalism, Islamophobia and xenophobia. Racism and chauvinism are always useful tools in getting people to vote against their own interests. Look at Germany now as well. Immigrants and "terrorists" are blamed for unemployment and other real distresses of the people despite the fact that the scapegoats have little influence in shaping policy and are not the ones getting rich.
This should sound familiar
Joe
yes, and France has a very disproportionate "double ballot" system for the pres. election where a minority can determine outcomes. In my opinion is very un-democratic.
He got 53% of the vote and Royal got 46% of the vote. He won fair and square. That's how he won.
Now they can proceed to get rid of him. Fair and square.
"How did Sarkozy get elected at any rate?"
Sarcoma is a Hungarian Jew* and his opponent was a socialist. As my Quebecois friend observed, there's more than one way to rig an election. For a lively polemic on how he fits into American foreign policy, see "Operation Sarkozy: How the CIA planted one of its agents as President of the French Republic" (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/shamireaders/message/1155).
"And can they topple him?"
I don't know if French law allows the French to excise this tumor, but the people are doing their level best to suppress its growth.
*He may not be Jewish by religion, but his mother, Andrée Mallah, was a Jewess from Salonica. Under Jewish law, that makes him Jewish -- and therefore attractive to "the Lobby".
(Wow, two more comments on this thread while I was composing this one!)
"Sarcoma is a Hungarian Jew*" and "but his mother, Andrée Mallah, was a Jewess from Salonica"
Exactly the words i would expect from an "Angry Kraut". You Krauts still obsess about these things? Remember what happened last time?
Wow, coming from someone who thinks that Gypsies and Roma are nothing but thieves and pickpockets, I'm afraid your moral authority on these issues is a bit tarnished.
By your logic then, Jews were guilty of all the things Hitler said, because they were subject to deportation and extermination because of them, right?
"They" didn´t "manage to piss off the French". No. Not at all. Sarkozy knows how to use wedge issues as his popularity declines daily and this time he used the gypsy (non)issue to further inflame the already present and vocal 10-15% who are racist anyway. It is absolutely true that there are a number of racists in France--as there are in the US-- and when economic times are harsh, those numbers swell with demagogic rhetoric and prompting. It is occurring in the US as we speak. But overall the French are doing well and doing the right thing--marching with each other, side by side, and stopping everything.
When you do the same, you will win.
In a UK Guardian photo, a sober faced high school student stands with others in front of the blocked entrance to their school. She holds a handmade sign reading, "Carla (Sarkozy's wife) just like you we are being screwed by the head of state." That says it well in summary. So will we ever see signs here, starting "Michelle . . ."?
They should topple the entire government now that they have started and have the impetus.
Yes, the "The Coming Insurrection" has come!
For those who may not know, "The Coming Insurrection" is the title of a French radical pamphlet published in 2007 and authored by a group calling itself Le Comité invisible (Invisible Committee). It is also available in English translation.
"Similar skirmishes broke out in other cities."
That is all they are, "skirmishes." An indication that these mosquito bites have progressed beyond bottle throwing, would be concerted attacks on both institutional and private bourgeois property on a scale that could not be easily contained–where galvanic participatory energies could be spontaneously mobilized. Where the de facto social enervation could somehow be catalytically convulsed.
If there is one thing here–that which remains unspoken–and something both parties to this 'conflict' can agree on– is that things can only get worse. As in America, there is no way back. Capital recedes no ground once it has been claimed. There can only be more public immiseration.
In France, it is still too early to tell if state power will be challenged, and there will be a serious legitimation crisis where the facade of stability is breached by the necessity implicit in events. Obama will send in imperial troops to abet the restoration of international capitalist hegemony and the dictates of fascism. At that point the dice will have been rolled; the cards will be on the table.
"Revolutionary progress determines its directions when it rouses a powerful self centered counterrevolution by engendering an adversary that can only cause the insurgent party to evolve in its battle against the counterrevolutionaries into a veritable revolutionary party."
–(Karl Marx, as cited by Ulrike Meinhoff.)
Modern capitalist governments are in a constant state of permanent, ever percolating, 'modified' counterrevolution against even the merest possibility of insurrectional events. America is counter revolution incarnate, as a function of itself. It has no options. It has resolved itself into itself; has become what it is.
Perhaps the French penchant and understanding for the complexities of the 'hierarchical,' has the possibility to articulate organizational structures resembling a party, which could coalesce in a time of crisis. That time has not arrived, but dress rehearsals are welcome premonitory 'tremors'.
In America, there is no hope whatsoever, because the people understand nothing, nor in truth, care to. It defaults precipitously to fascism as a direct function of the more advanced dehumanization and alienation exacerbated by technological fetishism, now all but regnant.
When in 1953, Zhou Enlai, The Chinese Prime Minister was in Geneva for the peace negotiations to end the Korean war, a French journalist asked him what he thought about the French Revolution; Zhou replied: "It is still too early to tell."
"America is counter revolution incarnate..."
I agree.
Question, though: Do you think that implies that in a very grave sense America has betrayed the lessons of the Enlightenment that informed people such as Madison?
Hmmm. The answer would require definitions of both "America" and "betrayal" and whether either actually relates to the popular will in any significant way.
Perhaps more like buried by massive heaps of the same corporatist dung that has inundated most fundamental precepts of individual liberty and societal defence against oppressive imperial tyranny that provided the conceptual foundation for the "greatest democracy on earth."
In Democracy in America (1835) Alexis De toqueville warned that the rise of a mercantile oligarchy was a major threat to the American republic.
That oligarchy is still around in an ever more cancerous form. It requires ever greater quantities of human sweat and blood as it runs its rapacious course. It rips apart nations, cultures, economies, families and the earth itself.
The people of the world are more politically awake then ever. Americans are still nominally free but actually most opposition is monitored, infiltrated, provoked, sabotaged, raided and busted. In practice there are numerous and effective government and corporate control mechanisms, including a huge part that is off the books, black and grey ops. Of course there is huge financial control of opposition movement funding often funneled through grant making foundations.
So in effect the People of the USA are being systematically denied their constitutional right of Assembly, which the founders recognized as an essential part of the People's right to representation. The founders saw that citizens needed civil organizations for the republic to function.
Of course there has always been tension on this. The Alien & Sedition Acts under John Adams were hardly enlightened. He happened to have been a Harvard lawyer who represented Yankee mercantile interests.
"When in 1953, Zhou Enlai, The Chinese Prime Minister was in Geneva for the peace negotiations to end the Korean war, a French journalist asked him what he thought about the French Revolution; Zhou replied: "It is still too early to tell.""
-------------------------
K. Marx pointed this out. The French (and English and American) Revolution didn't go far enough to include the liberation of the masses. Only the newly born capitalist class benefited from those revolutions. For Marx, the class struggle would continue until all classes were finally liberated and equality meant economic equality, not just the bourgeois idea of freedom.
The strikes in France are being lead by Communists, who understand what is ultimately required. In North America, the Communists were long ago purged from the Labor Movement, leaving only wish-washy liberals in charge, who aligned themselves with the corporate elites.
We have a LONG ways to go people, to overcome the shit thrown our way by a corrupt and moribund economic system (Capitalism). The first step is to understand what this system is all about and thankfully Marx gave us the beginnings to understanding.
This is the only way to get the attention of the oligarchs and kleptocrats. At least the French have class consciousness and a measure of worker solidarity.
Oil refinery workers, transportation workers, garbage collectors (binmen), teachers, students, public employees etc. when everyone joins in collective action there is NOTHING the govt. can do about it. The unified people simply heavily outnumber the forces of state coercion. When the capitalist state can no longer guarantee "law and order" (protection of capital and wealthy interests) then they begin to panic.
The overwhelming majority of the population supports the strikers and protesters. They know what is at stake.
ALthough you'd never know it in this shitty AP report that went out of its way to use all the code words in the book to both cover AND slight the protestors at the same time, handily finishing up the piece with that most stalwart of middle class sentiments: I can't wait til this is over so I can go back to focusing on me, me, me!"
My loathing of the AP has almost no limits.
I hear you drone, that is to be expected. The overwhelming majority of French citizens support the strike, even the BBC reported this yesterday.
that's great to hear, because the middle class needs to get it through their effing skulls that they're expendable now, too.
hey, s, do you know if indy media's covering this thing? I suppose I could go find out instead of being lazy....:)
Ditto. I can't understand why CD would use AP as a source in the first place, given its description of itself: "CommonDreams.org is an Internet-based progressive news and grassroots activism organization, founded in 1997. We are a nonprofit, progressive, independent and nonpartisan organization."
This miserable AP story reads like it was dictated by the CIA. For a non-power elite oriented story, see:
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2010/10/20101016161857806125.html
Good for you -- for calling the article what it is!
Vive la France!
This is how you do it. I have a feeling the reason why protests are dying down in North America is that they dont accomplish anything much anymore. You do your protest, government ignores you, everyone goes back to what they were doing a little more tired and dissillusioned.