French “yellow vest” protesters mount pre-Christmas protest against Macron
[dropcap]O[/dropcap]n Saturday, tens of thousands of “yellow vest” protesters demonstrated in France, amid a growing strike wave in neighboring Spain and in Portugal, where protesters also donned yellow vests. Thousands of people joined protest marches in France’s major cities, or blockaded highway intersections and France’s borders with Spain, Italy or Germany, to express their opposition to Macron and the European Union (EU).
According to the Interior Ministry, there were 2,000 “yellow vest” demonstrators in Paris, where protesters divided themselves between the Champs-Élysées and Montmartre, after having tricked police into thinking they were marching on Versailles. The authorities had preemptively shut down the Versailles Palace, next to which they stationed water cannons. In the provinces, according to official figures, thousands demonstrated in Bordeaux, Toulouse and Lille, while hundreds protested in Nantes, Marseille and Lyon.
As usual, the security forces reacted with violent repression. In Paris they arrested Eric Drouet, a truck driver who helped launch the “yellow vest” protests on Facebook, alleging that he had a “sort of nightstick.” Another widely circulated video showed a policeman drawing his pistol and taking aim at protesters after throwing stun grenades unprovoked at the protesters.
VIDÉO - Un policier sort son arme à feu alors que des motards de la police sont attaqués sur les #ChampsElysées : nouvelles images de la scène. #GiletsJaunes #ActesVI pic.twitter.com/j8vpLuMbCK
— Clément Lanot (@ClementLanot) December 22, 2018
The mobilization was a rebuke to Interior Minister Christophe Castaner, who last week declared that on the “yellow vest” protests, “It’s enough,” and ordered police to smash highway blockades. After more than a month of protests and violent police repression of demonstrators, however, the movement is still very widely popular. It has 70 percent support in the French public, and various polls say that between 54 and 62 percent of French people want the movement to continue.
Citing Interior Ministry figures—showing 40,000 protesters Saturday, well less than the 125,000 it announced after the first protest on November 17—the French media are all predicting the imminent end of the movement and a return to order.
It remains to be seen whether the dip in participation figures reflects Interior Ministry manipulation, protesters taking a break for the Christmas holidays, or a more lasting move away from the “yellow vest” blockades and protest marches. What is clear, however, is that political opposition and social anger to the entire Macron government and French state machine are continuing to grow in the working class.
The political situation is becoming more explosive. The government has not satisfied a single one of the demands underlying the ‘yellow vest” protests: for social equality, large wage increases, raising taxes on the rich, Macron’s resignation and the end to police repression. From now on, moreover, everyone is aware of the yawning class gulf separating workers from the union bureaucracies and official “left” parties who were surprised and appalled by the protests.
Macron—who called workers hostile to his policies “lazy” and contemptuously told unemployed workers to “cross the street’ to get a job—now can only hold onto power hiding behind the armored vehicles and tear gas salvoes of the military police. A helicopter team now stands ready to snatch and rescue him from the Elysée palace, should protesters ever storm his official residence. And any excursion out from the Elysée is forbidden to him, even to the cinema or the bakery, according to Le Monde, because it is “too dangerous.”
As his approval ratings collapse further to around 20 percent, the daily added that “The Elysée is now ruled behind closed doors.”
It is ever clearer that if Macron saluted collaborationist dictator Philippe Pétain in November, after passers-by booed him during his “commemorative tour” of French battlefields of World War I, it is that he saw in Pétain a fellow head of state who also inspires mass anger and loathing. A few days later, just before the first “yellow vest” protest, Macron admitted publicly that he had “not succeeded in reconciling the French people with its elites.” This month, he reportedly told his political advisers that he was the target of the “hatred” of the French people.
The awareness that Macron is hated will not, however, change the policy of the capitalist ruling elite, save to make it more violent and repressive. Targeting Macron, protesters have launched a struggle against an entire European and international regime that imposes the diktat of the banks and the financial aristocracy on the workers. The only way to fight the austerity demands of European capitalism is to mobilize workers across the continent to expropriate the banks and transfer power to the working class.
Despite the manifest opposition of an overwhelming majority of French people, the ruling elite continues to demand austerity and militarism. The Macron government is planning drastic cuts to unemployment insurance, pensions and public sector wages. Pierre-Alexandre Anglade, of Macron’s Republic on the March (LRM) party, declared with a straight face: “This is what we were elected to do, and this must remain our compass.”
From Chad, where he was discussing NATO’s neocolonial war strategy, Macron threatened the protesters yesterday: “It is clear that the most severe judicial responses will be given. Now order must reign, calm and good harmony. That is what our country needs.”
Macron has called for months of “coordination” of policies with the protesters for 2019. Like his promises of a minimum wage increase or his canceling of the initial fuel tax hike, this offer is utterly worthless. Macron has given only crumbs, and in bad faith as well, as it is clear that he intends to take back these crumbs as soon as possible.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe announced he was suspending all Macron’s concessions to the “yellow vests,” claiming they were too expensive. He flip-flopped a few hours later amid a wave of anger on social media. But these two 180-degree turns in the course of a few hours showed that the government’s promises deserve no confidence whatsoever.
The government is cultivating the “free yellow vest” faction led by Jacline Mouraud, who want to set up dialog with Macron, echoing the “social dialog” between the union bureaucracies, the bosses’ groups and the state, or Francis Lalanne, who is proposing a “yellow vest” list for the European elections. Pollsters are already calculating whether Lalanne’s list might increase the influence of Macron and LRM in the European parliament.
For the “yellow vest” demonstrators, like for the entire working class, there is nothing to negotiate with Macron or with the European Union. Rising class struggles in Europe and internationally, as well as the increasingly bitter political contradictions inside France itself, point rather to the rapid emergence and escalation of a political confrontation between radicalized workers and the reactionary Macron regime.
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Revolutionary wisdom
Words from an Irish patriot—
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[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he MacDonaldization of words forces many to lay that reason asleep which disturbs their gayety. Among recent new entries is ‘Brexit’, a word suitable to a speaking-club made of millions, where most half-hear what, if they heard the whole, they would but half-understand. Furthermore, some words in time are debased by repetition, and can no longer be heard without an involuntary sense of annoyance. Hence I will spare my twenty-five readers further comments on how England will work-out her separation from the European Union. Official news suggests that about half of the citizenry is filled with all that sparkles in the eye of hope, while the other sees but penury ahead and thickens the gloom of one another. Being a matter of contest, the success of one party implies the defeat of the other, and at least half the transaction will terminate in misery. Instead I will deal with two separate events in another European country, a historic Italian chocolate factory being moved to Turkey, and the saga of an Italian truck driver – both edifying examples of the benefits of the European Union and of globalization at large. To start, while being conscious that dainty bits make rich the ribs but bankrupt quite the wits (1), I confess to liking chocolate. On mountain-walks or bike-rides I rate it well above any ‘energy-bar’, another recent entry in the MacDonaldized English dictionary. As a brief aside, in his essay “In Praise of Idleness”, Bertrand Russell presents an argument in support of useless knowledge and says that he enjoyed peaches and apricots more since he learned that they were first cultivated in China in the early days of Han Dynasty, and that the word ‘apricot’ is derived from the same Latin source as the word ‘precocious’, because the apricot ripens early; and that the A at the beginning was added by mistake, owing to a false etymology. In the same spirit… the chocolate factory in question is (was) dear to my heart for being old, historic and located in a small town not far from where I was born – besides being famous worldwide for a special brand of chocolates. The town is Novi Ligure, mostly unknown outside Italy. Its ancient Latin name was Curtis Nova (New Court) and in 970 AD Emperor Otto 1st donated it to a monastery. In time it became an Independent Township, then it changed hands among various neighboring feudal rulers. When Napoleon invaded Italy in 1798 he annexed it to the French Empire. After Waterloo and the Congress of Vienna, Novi became part of Piedmont and the Kingdom of Savoy. In 1860 – one year before Italy became a country as the Kingdom of Italy – Stefano Pernigotti set up a shop in the market square selling his home-made ‘torrone’ (an Italian hard candy of Arabic origins) and ‘mostarda’ (an Italian chutney). In 1882 King Humbert I allowed the Pernigottis to use the royal emblem on the cover of their products – then Pernigotti started experimenting with chocolate. Their actual chocolate industrial production began in 1927 with the ‘Gianduiotto,’ a now world-famous and classy dessert chocolate. During the 1980s, Reaganomics, Thatcherism, their continental followers and globalization created a crisis. Heinz acquired the company, but management and manufacturing remained in the hands of the last Pernigottis. Followed a sequence of different ownerships and management transfers, until the Turkish group Toksoz acquired it two years ago. Now Toksoz announced the closure of the Italian plant for good and the 200 employees will be laid off. There have been demonstrations by workers and their families, but very likely nothing will come of it. Turkey is not part of the European Union, but, as far as workers’ rights, there is no difference, as the next recounted saga of an Italian truck driver will illustrate. I translate here the actual recordings of an interview that the truck driver gave to a journalist. The translation cannot fully convey the spirit and nuances of a truck driver’s rendition of his state of mind and view of life, but the reader can easily imagine. “I’m 52 years old and have always been a truck driver. I started at 20, driving a small truck, delivering drinks in my area, which is a valley in Northern Italy where the “white-asses” (read the Christian Democrats) were always predominant. Then came Bossi, (leader of the Northern League – more on him and the League later) who began to pick up more votes than the white-asses ever did. But with the League, things, as I’m about to tell you, instead of improving worsened. At the age of 23, I began driving a large truck for a young entrepreneur of the town (near Milan). I carried iron rods. The truck was always overloaded by up to 100 tons. In those conditions, to stop the truck you need tens and tens of extra meters: if you are a car or a cyclist or a pedestrian at less than that distance braking is useless. The truck does not stop and mangles everything. It happened to some of my colleagues, but even after that no one ever checked. That overload was a weapon: one unexpected occurrence and all is gone, cargo, bodies and all. One day I said to the boss: – Boss, do we need to overload the truck in this manner? – I am forced to do it – he replied – because to win the contract with the foundry, I had to lower the rates. If I respect the load limits I have to make more trips and I will be in the red. If you don’t feel like driving on overload, I can find someone else. To make all of the trips our owner was committed to do, we also had to reduce loading and unloading times. Which meant that the load was not secured to the floor – a real problem during transport because materials can slip. One day, a friend and colleague who was carrying cold-drawn steel tubes, had to brake suddenly to avoid a tractor coming out of a field. My friend was driving like crazy, because another risk factor was speed: to respect the scheduled deliveries, you were forced to routinely exceed the legal limits. When my friend saw the tractor he immediately realized he had no chance of stopping in time, precisely because it was overloaded and going too fast. But, instinctively, he pushed on the brake, partly due to conditioned reflex and partly to the fear of killing the poor fellow driving the tractor. The tractor, on seeing the truck in the mirror approaching at crazy speed, swerved into a field, tipped over but the driver was not seriously hurt. But the braking of the truck caused the mountain of steel tubes to slide against the cabin, killing my friend. His body was so mangled that his wife identified him from a shoe. “I bought him these shoes the day before yesterday at the market,” she said. The rest of her husband was literally mush, “Martha, it’s better you don’t look,” said a firefighter who knew her. Then the steel tube manufacturers transferred their ironworks in Eastern Europe and I was unemployed for a few months. Until the owner of a company who contracted for a larger company in another province hired me. It was, in fact, a detached department of the same larger company, with about 200 employees. But in this detached department employees were split-up into many small sub-companies, each with less than 15 employees. The 200 employees worked essentially elbow-to-elbow, but the payroll had the stamp of 14 different companies. This enabled the employer to bypass the workers’ statute and trade-union rights that apply to companies with over 15 employees. Therefore the boss was free to fire anyone at any time and without reason. Yet no one complained. They thought that, in a ‘valley of hunger’ like ours, it was already a sign of grace having a boss and a shitty job, because both are still better than no boss and no job. I was on the TIR truck (TIR= acronym of International Road Transport) from Monday to Friday and often on Saturday and even Sunday, if there were urgent deliveries. Yet I was considered as having a privileged position. I climbed in the cabin at six in the morning and left it at six in the evening, with an hour stop for lunch, later reduced to twenty minutes because the intensity of the traffic forced you to make up for lost time. More and more often I happened to leave after eight in the evening. A couple of years ago the owner calls me, invites me to sit down, and shows me a letter with a header consisting of a yellow and red truck, and asks: – Camillo, you know Willi Betz? Basically, the boss explains to me that this German set-up a transportation company with hundreds of trucks in an Eastern European country. Now, thanks to the European Union, which has knocked down the borders, they can transport goods anywhere without any problems, no bureaucracies, no duties, nor loss of time. At the wheel of all those trucks the German has put East European drivers, whose wages are one-third of ours. – In short, Camillo – my master comes to the point – you understand that if I sell my truck and have Bets transport my goods I save a lot of money. Look here – and he shows me a letter by Betz hammering it with his finger – have you seen those prices? Calculating your contributions and the cost of the truck, you cost me 60% more than a driver of Betz… – Boss, you don’t mean to lower my pay by 60%? My blood went to my head, I wanted to punch the bastard. But I checked myself. My wife lost her job in the garment industry many years ago and I still have one son at school. The other works but earns so little that each month he asks me to help… So I accepted. Six months ago, the boss calls me in again. With him there is a guy I don’t know, greasy haired and badly dressed. – Camillo – says the boss– this is Vilic… his name would be a bit complicated to learn, but let’s call him Vilic. He comes from Poland and for a while he will give you a hand. I’m worried. Each time the boss announces a novelty it turns out to be a rip-off. – Vilic, continues the boss, will make a few journeys with you, to learn the way. Then he will take your place, but you don’t have to worry, because you will drive a new truck and make deliveries elsewhere, even abroad. You know, the bosses of the mother company are moving operations to the East and I need someone I can trust, like you, for deliveries to their new factory, and you will see advantages from this change. The prospect of international travel and of being away for a whole week scares me a little, but I think of the gain. I have driver friends who commute between Milan and Poland, and bring home a salary that is the double of mine. I begin my journey with Vilic at the side. He brought a bag with him, from which drifts out an unpleasant smell of food. He wears the same clothes when I first met him in the office of the boss, and smells a bit. He speaks little, in a broken Italian. At any road deviation I point to a reference that will help him remember. Here, you see that big sign? Careful, here you must stay on the left and turn… He points with his finger at the sign, tells the names of the towns we go through, and takes notes in a notebook. We stop at a rest station. He tells me that he brought food with him. He pulls from the bag an oily paper bag, and begins to eat a kind of meatballs that exude an unpleasant smell of garlic. When I go to the toilet, I find him drinking from the faucet. This continues for a week, he’s always dirty and smelly, always munching on meatballs. One day I offered to buy him lunch, but he refused. I thought that he had no money and felt uncomfortable for not being able to reciprocate. So the next day, I made up that the owner had offered lunch to us both. He devoured everything like a very hungry creature. With the beer he opened up for the first time with a few confidences. He said he had a wife and a daughter, who, however, left him. He told me that at night he sleeps in a kind of closet that the boss found for him, and that, with the first pay-check, he will move into digs that a Polish shopkeeper has promised him in exchange of an advance. He told me his wages: less than half of mine, and no contributions. The boss convinced him to register as a business owner and independent contractor. I look at this poor soul with the unpronounceable name and I feel great pity for him. Yet, according to European Union statistics, he is an industrialist, a businessman, a sole proprietor, the founder of a start-up company! One Saturday evening I speak with my wife about these filthy tricks, and she says: – Camillo, according to me, your boss cannot get away with this business! Do you remember what Bossi said at Ponte di Legno? [Bossi was the notorious boss of the Lega Nord – I will get back to this later. Ponte di Legno is the resort where Bossi went on vacation, near Camillo’s town]. Bossi said that we have everything to gain with the European Union. Why don’t you go to talk about your situation with Congressman Magrelli? [name altered]. So I go to see Congressman Magrelli, whom I have known for many years, we use the ‘thou’ when talking to each other. – Dear Magrelli – I say at the end of a meeting in the headquarters of the League Section in the Valley – do you think it’s right that they reduce my pay by 40% while they hire a Pole to do the driving, treating him as an independent contractor and with a pay at the level of hunger? At this point, Magrelli moves away to greet someone else, and we are no longer able to talk. Every time I get closer to him, and try to restart our conversation, he ignores me until he leaves. Last week the owner calls me again. He keeps his gaze low and his features are drawn. With a wave of the hand, he invites me to sit down without even looking at me. Minutes go by while he shifts sheets on his desk, reads or glances at them, as if I were not there. Then he says: – Unfortunately, things are not good, we need to cut costs, and you are a burden that we can no longer afford… tomorrow Vilic takes your place, as he has learned roads and ways. I never felt so humiliated. I was shown the door because a slave imported from Poland costs much less than me, who had already given up 40% of the salary. [dropcap]A[/dropcap]s for the Northern League, here is a related personal but short chapter from my extended chronicles of wasted time (2). The N League had originally acquired notoriety, among other things, for having introduced the language of the toilet in the main stream of Italian politics. Though tasteless, I rated the matter as an act of sincerity, given the notoriously pharisaical nature of politicians at large. Still, it never dawned on me to participate in the N League or in any other party. Then a friend of mine called me to say that the Politbureau of the N League had decided to establish a foreign chapter. The goal, my friend said, was to soften the tone and modify the coarse impression of the party abroad – as well as, indirectly, projecting an alternative image of the party at home. That is, the objectives of the Foreign League were cultural. One of which was a broadcast, on the League’s Radio Network, of call-in shows. Another was to establish links with political or educational groups in various countries interested in preserving their own local languages. Though generally skeptical, I decided to believe my friend and accepted the invitation. It was a voluntary operation – no salaries or compensation involved. For some time I broadcast a live monthly radio program titled “Window on America,” which was well followed, at least judging by the number of phone calls and messages. Then some inexplicable events converted a developing suspicion into a conviction – namely that the objectives of the Foreign N League were not as stated – therefore I resigned. A few short months later, the bubble burst. It turned out that Bossi and a restricted conniving crew, were crassly and personally appropriating the funds that flowed into the coffers of the League, thanks to the quizzical Italian system of funding political parties. Unofficially included in the bubble were 3 million Euros assigned to the Foreign N League. In time Bossi was condemned to over 2-year imprisonment. But, via continued and extended appeals, it is expected that the sentence will exceed the statute of limitations, hence it will not be served. Something similar happened with Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister who vied with Bill Clinton to get the Nobel Prize for porno-lies and porno-politics. Sentenced to 7 years of imprisonment for a fiscal fraud of gargantuan dimensions, his sentence was converted into a few sessions of community service in a retirement home. These people represent the simple, squalid and frightening concretion of personal interest with the arrogance of power. In the end, the only good thing that can be said of them is that they are not worse than what they could be. But what connects the tortuous Brexit, a closed chocolate factory, the depressing story of a truck driver, the corruption of politicians and the European Union? Most readers will know already. They are examples and consequences of an ideology imposed from above under different disguises. All men are agreed concerning the truth, when demonstrated; but they are too much divided about latent truths, or when truth conflicts with prejudice. Brexit is/was about immigration from within and from without of the European Union. The saga of the truck driver made redundant, thanks to the European Union, is both an example and an archetype. An aristocratic idealist, Coudenhove-Kalergi was the first recipient of the Charlemagne Prize in 1950. The 1972–1973 academic year at the College of Europe was named in his honour. Coudenhove-Kalergi proposed Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” as the music for the European Anthem. [dropcap]A[/dropcap]s many by now know, the founder of the European Union was Graf Richard von Coudenehove-Kalergi in the 1920s. When his book , “Praktischer Idealismus” came out, it caught the attention of wealthy (Jewish) bankers who offered massive financial backing for the program. A “Coudenhove-Kalergi” prize is conferred yearly to the best among the deserving “European-Unionizers.” Two years ago the current Pope got the prize. However “anti-semitic” it may sound, it is not my or anyone else’s invention. Kalergi envisioned a mongrelized Europe led and controlled by the best of the Jews. They would retain their racial-ethnic identity, though the genetic stock of their upper echelon was to be strengthened by intermarriage with the best of the European nobility. WW2 disrupted the plan. After the war, the Allies (Roosevelt and Churchill) first signed off on the Morgenthau Plan for the actual physical elimination of the German race. Morgenthau was Roosevelt’s Jewish Secretary for the Economy. And only the fear of Germany’s assimilation by the Soviet Union caused the Morgenthau plan to be scrapped. Nevertheless, the Kalergi plan restarted with a vengeance in the early 70s, following three events that I do not think unconnected. 1. The 1968 ‘student’ revolution, a product of Cultural Marxism – whose end result was trading the workers’ struggle for sexual liberation and degeneracy. 2. The 1967 Israeli aggression and annexation of Arab and Palestinian lands, aiming at the goal of a “Greater Israel” (from the Nile to the Euphrates). It turned out to be a test to see if the world would react to the utter disregard by Israel of the UN resolutions, calling for the return of lands stolen through aggression in 1967. As we know the world did nothing. 3. The launching of the “Holocaust” in 1972, a program whose strength increases in proportion to the distance in time from the alleged historical occurrence of the event. {This is also referred to by critics of Israel such as Norman Finkelstein as the “weaponization of anti-semitism.”] Add to this a parallel phenomenon in the US, with massive Jewish congressional and senate pressure to first eliminate quotas on immigration and now to eliminate borders altogether. For the saga affecting the truck driver in Italy is repeated in America on a scale comparable or greater than in Europe. The human tsunami that reached California from the South essentially eliminated jobs for those Americans who cannot survive on radically lower wages. But unlike Americans, immigrants can accept jobs at essentially any compensation, because they automatically join the welfare system, which includes various supplementary benefits and health-care. Of course it would be inhuman to deny treatment to a person who needs it. At which point the endlessly intractable issue of health-care meets with the equally intractable issue of the hyper-medicalization of America. Prompted and encouraged through massive advertising to seek treatment for any ailment, the migrant patient could not possibly pay for insurance, medicines and costs. Whereupon the government becomes the payer, and the consequences are easy to envision and calculate. In the meantime, the human tsunami in California initially caused Americans looking for a job to move North. But now the same tsunami is moving North. Trump promised to put America First, but at least so far, it turned out to be mostly a euphemism for “Israel First.” One factor, certainly ignored by the Zionist controlled media, but even overlooked by the social media, has to do with the nature of current Zionism. And I realize that the subject would need a better treatment than the simple following references. There have been different currents (religious and political) among Jews. Through history, the strain that most antagonized the goy is referred to as ‘Classical Judaism.’ Exemplified by the case of the ultra-religious Jew who refused to allow his phone to be used on the Sabbath to call an ambulance for a non-Jew who collapsed in a street of Jerusalem. Or by the declared contempt for the goy at large by high-ranking rabbi(s), who said and say that that the goy will hopefully live long, because they are like donkeys, alive only to serve the Jews. Furthermore, it is generally unknown, that at the historical peak of Classical Judaism, Jews always succeeded in allying themselves with the upper echelons of goy society, kings, lords, even some Popes. For, setting National Socialism aside, resentment and pogroms against the Jews came from below, not from above. Today, the same symbiotic relationship of old seems to bind the American Congress with the neo-cons and their own current-day version of Classical Judaism. Which goes some way to explain the fathomless hypocrisy inspiring the present (nominally American) foreign policy. Including ignoring the ongoing murders of Palestinians, waging disastrous wars in the Middle East for the benefit of Israel, declaring unending friendship with the retrograde state of Saudi Arabia, (with Trump literally dancing with the Saudis,) piling beyond-ridiculous accusations and threats against Russia, subjecting to racketeering, via the international payment system, countries that do not pay homage to Israel, and so on. There is no viable explanation as to why more reasonable currents of the Jewish community are unheard or ignored. Because there is no plumb line long enough to fathom the depth of hypocrisy, contained in some pronouncements of the Talmud, on which Classical Judaism was founded. And the current neo-conservative practitioners of Classical Judaism seem to have preserved with steadiness a doctrine which their ancestors have accepted with docility. To conclude, this was but a quick sketch, traced by the pencil of concern for the patience of the readers. And I realize that in detailing, however cursorily, what I learned, I fear I may be accused of exaggeration. All I can do is cautiously to avoid deserving it. The intent is always to motivate readers to inform themselves independently. The subject is highly interesting, let alone critical, and it would be a fault of no trifling nature to treat it with levity. References Image Source: https://cartoonmovement.typepad.com/.a/6a014e5f5d3c7c970c01bb0988157c970d-750wi [premium_newsticker id=”218306″] While the American media downplay or completely bury the news and truth about the Gilet Jaunes, insinuating that the protests are diminishing, the situation remains tense and volatile, especially in Paris. [dropcap]T[/dropcap]
#Paris Le policier revient tout de même récupérer sa moto. #GiletsJaunes #ActeVI #Acte6 #ChampsElysees #22Decembre2018 #22Decembre pic.twitter.com/nSI0fv5p0q — Stéphanie Roy (@Steph_Roy_) December 22, 2018 “La situation était tendue à Paris. En fin d’après-midi, samedi 22 décembre, des manifestants s’en sont violemment pris à des policiers sur les Champs-Elysées, en marge du mouvement des “gilets jaunes”. Sur les images des journalistes présents sur place, on voit notamment un policier jeté à terre, avec sa moto. D’autres policiers sont ensuite visés par des projectiles. L’un d’entre eux pointe alors son arme en direction des manifestants pour les faire reculer. Source: FranceInfo Revolutionary wisdom
The French flag carrier is not only practicing class-based discrimination, as the author notes, but erratic management may also be pushing it toward financial collapse, as is happening with other European-based carriers. [dropcap]O[/dropcap]n an Air France flight from Paris to Latin America, the plane is full, mostly with working class Latinos, going home for Christmas to spend a few festive days with their families and friends. They have worked hard to save their money for the trip. The plane is old and decrepit. Has no properly working entertainment system and that on a trajectory of over 12 hours without interruption. Who cares. Management knows that the humble passengers won’t complain. Anyway, they are under-people. Let’s reserve the better and newer planes for classier people. They pay better, are better clients. Isn’t that the thinking behind such decisions? Of course, it is. It’s the greed-driven maximizing profit scheme to the detriment of the population. It’s not just AF, it’s everywhere. Everywhere you look and are touched by a corporate giant. We, the people, are not even sheeple anymore; we are silenced. We are not asked, not consulted, whether we agree to be photographed and face-read at every corner. It’s just the way it is. It’s intimidation by control, by over-control, and by cattle treatment. In this, the French and the US TSA (Transportation Security Administration) are not far apart. For airport security, you are pushed through what I call a “naked-machine” Though they tell you that it’s not true, that nobody sees anything other than potential drugs or weapons hidden in human crevices. Well, if they see crevices, they must see you naked. Behind the scene hidden away in some dark room are the machine operators, they see every human passing through it naked, balls, vagina, breasts and all. Imagine, the absurdly obscene, pathological imagination of those operators and those who command them! A machine, a robot of sort, disposes over you. If you don’t conform, you are just left behind, or harassed no end, you may literally lose your plane or connection. Cases of the US TSA abound – some of them are violent and are brought before a court – but in most cases to no avail. The ‘system’ is always right. And mind you the system is a private system. It’s not even state owned. It’s outsourcing and privatization “Über Alles”. But no protests à la Yellow Vests. We are conveniently silenced. It’s Macron “Über Alles” – sounds like déjà vu? Well, yes. It is. Neofascism is undeniable. [dropcap]Y[/dropcap]es, that’s the way the ordeal begins. Actually, it begins earlier – at the check-in, for example. AF weighs your luggage by the kilo, and while some agents are a bit more lenient than others, if you are unlucky it hits you having a kilo in excess. Either you somehow dispose of it or reshuffle it to hand luggage which also has a limitation of weight, you are charged the fee for an extra luggage. What to do? You are at the airport. They have a captive “market”, because this money-profit centered “market” system has the power over you. You are at the airport, you have to fly, you charge this horrendous extra fee to your credit card, or else you are left behind; no scruples. That’s Macron 101. No concessions. And the French employees are well trained, lest they may lose their badly paid, but nevertheless vital jobs. You want to survive – bend over. No solidarity, no empathy, just hardball. Le Roi Macron says so. And you better obey — or else — but the ‘or else’ has now suddenly gotten a yellow face – the Yellow Vests. We can just hope that they will propel the finance-mafia dictator into his overdue abyss. Next, boarding the plane – an elderly passenger visibly with a hurting leg, kindly asked the flight assistant, alias the “cattle guard”, whether he could go through with the privileged ‘frequent flyers’, those who have given the company enough money to justify an extra discriminatory favor. She refuses. He insists, she refuses – until a man behind tells her, for human’s sake, please let him through. She hesitantly nods, then lets him go through. What does all that have to do with Macron? – Everything. The sort of de-humanized civil behavior is what he instills in people, in corporations. Greed first, everything else, like solidarity, is not even second, it’s of no value. The young who want so desperately to cling to their slave-paid jobs, have to obey, or else they may lose their employment. But now it’s gone too far. Enough is enough. The Yellow Vests represent every industry, every citizen, every abject Macron law; they want to reverse the wheel, à la French Revolution. Enough is enough. Enough privileges for the rich and powerful. Even on the planes. In ‘economy’, where the cattle is herded, those who saved hard to afford a trip to see their families, rows are getting narrower and narrower. Over time your legs get cramped; an increased risk of thromboses that can be deadly, especially when it happens on 10,000 meters altitude, far from an airport, above the sea. This, of course, is quite different for those on first, business or economy plus class. They have more space, sit comfortably, and their entertainment system works fine even on an old decrepit plane. Proper maintenance for the rich and beautiful, neglect for the “less beautiful” populace. When I complain about the inoperable entertainment system (ES), the chief of cabin arrives. He promises to see what he can do. After a while he returns with a tablet-screen full of my previous AF flights. I’m a good customer. So, he discretely offers me to be placed on an economy-plus seat, where the ES works. He whispers, you are a good customer, so we will do something for you. Amazing in an overcrowded plane he finds an unoccupied seat. I go and look at it – and as soon as they – the flight attendants for the better people – see me, they say, “Sir, the bathrooms are in the rear”. When I tell them that the cabin chief offered me a seat in their section, their tone changes: “Sir, can we offer you a glass of Champagne?” I’m disgusted, but politely decline, deciding to stay with my kind of ‘cattle’. I prefer reading and writing – like this little essay – among my same-sakes. And am happy about it. The cabin chief was admittedly nice. He fulfilled his duty, keeping a relatively ‘good customer’ happy, I have to admit. I’m fodder for the ‘maximizing profit’ doctrine. Yet, due to his friendly smile and body language, I give him the benefit of the doubt. Hopefully, not all those who have to make a living off the neoliberal Macron and greed driven money machine, have lost their innermost identity. That’s the cloud’s silver lining. That’s the remaining hope to build on. Hope is the last glow that dies. Food service used to be decent with AF. No longer. They don’t have you pay for it yet, but it is almost inedible. But then, I think of the millions of Yemenis, who thanks to the western and Macron-supported killing machine, are suffering and dying from famine. So, I eat my portion happily. As a parenthesis, according to the UN, about 85,000 children below age 5 perished through the satanical Saudi-US-UK-French led war of horror. Most of the children died from famine and cholera induced diseases. I was thinking of those big eyed and skeleton-like bodies, too weak to stand, let alone walk, destroyed for life from famine. What does that have to do with Macron? Everything, of course. Macron’s Air force helped the crime regime of the Saudis bombing Yemen, a poor but proud people, to bits and pieces; to kill possibly hundreds of thousands – nobody counts – mainly children and women. Macron, siding with the elite – he surely has no reason whatsoever to bomb Yemen – helped the ‘allies’ of crime destroy an entire nation. He, of course, is not alone, but accompanied by the best and the brightest of the western allies, even Germany – which, according to their non-aggression treaty (remnant of the WWII Armistice arrangement) is not allowed to participate in any conflict hostility emanating from her territory except, of course, if the Master of the treaty orders it. The Yellow Vests want Macron out. Macron has become the enemy of the people. Literally. He is probably proud of it, because that’s testimony enough that he works for the rich and powerful, that he accomplishes the tasks he has been slated and put in office for, with less the 25% of eligible votes. He lied, promising change, but change that benefited the people. Change to the detriment of the people is what he implemented. The result is an equation of dynamics, the right has not thought of. Well, thanks god for these dynamics; they brought about the storming of the Bastille in 1789, and a transformation of much of the world. Though, granted, not all that came out of the French Revolution has persevered. The rich and powerful have an unlimited and insatiable stock of wealth to draw upon. Never mind that it’s stolen wealth. As long as they dispose of it and are able to defend it with brute military and police power, they command. And so, the merry-go-round continues. Air France will play the game; they have to. They are bound into the system, along with French corporatism. The name of the game is intimidation. “Inconvenient”, not-playing-by-the-rules staff are being dismissed. Of the face reading / passport machines, only one out of three is operable, causing long queues. Out of about 20 customs booths, only two are occupied by an agent. Macron saves at the cost of stressed passengers, who have to spend precious time in long lines, risking literally missing their connection planes. But the Big Shots don’t care. The populace’s time is worth peanuts. It’s like slave time. In any case, you have to go through ‘the system’. If not, screw you. You remain stranded. Good riddance, Mr. Macron, very good riddance – to never appear again on the horizon. Vivent les “gilets verts”! [premium_newsticker id=”154171″] The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found Gilets Jaunes are now seen practically everywhere. [dropcap]S[/dropcap]ince last November, French gilets jaunes (“yellow vests”) have taken part in organized protests, manifestations, as the French call them, against their ruling elite. But these are no ordinary protests; these are genuine uprisings against the French state. For the first time since 1968, millions of French citizens from across the country, from all walks of life, are rising up against their corporate Neoliberal government, a ruling elite spewed from the grandes ecoles, or exclusive colleges that crank out meat puppets like Emmanuel Macron, a well-spoken half-wit whose previous job was as an investment banker at Rothschild & Cie Banque. These young, semi-bright people are convinced they are not just smarter than the peasantry, but also morally superior. In reality, they aren’t nearly as smart as they believe. Their wealth isolates them from the world occupied by the peasantry and they haven’t the slightest clue as to the challenges and struggles experienced by ordinary French citizens. This toxic mixture of arrogance and ignorance leads to a society governed by a small cadre of pampered, privileged elitists so tone deaf to the suffering of ordinary citizens that, for example, they attempt to make the peasants pay the costs of fighting climate change with diesel taxes rather than having the oligarchs who earn billions through the sale of petroleum products foot the bill. With the yellow-vest protests, ordinary French citizens are striking back against that isolated and arrogant ruling elite, holding them accountable for their incompetence. But the French are and have always been a revolutionary culture. In the U.S., not so much. Here people are freaking out about what amounts to basically nothing, such as Trump’s lawyer paying his mistress to remain silent about the president’s many sexual dysfunctions or spending a billion dollars on some farcical wall that Trump claims he wants to build. We ignore the fact that we spend many times that amount arming Israelis so they can commit genocide against the indigenous Palestinian population, helping the Saudis create the worst humanitarian crisis in history in Yemen, and fighting multiple wars of empire. We’d rather watch the Trump reality show than contemplate the death and destruction that our policies create around the world. In America: A Farewell Tour, Chris Hedges explains exactly why we’re unable to pry ourselves away from the theater of the absurd that is the Trump presidency, why we can’t focus on issues that actually matter: “William S. Burroughs in his novel Naked Lunch created predatory creatures he called ‘Mugwumps’… [that] secrete an addictive fluid through their erect penises which prolongs life by slowing metabolism… The addiction to… our own version of Mugwumps, has become our national pathology. We are entranced, even as the secretion of Trump’s Mugwump fluid repulses us.” When we comment on Trump’s latest scene in the theater of the absurd, we’re not being clever, even if we use some witty new pun based on Trump’s name. We’re just suckling the Mugwump secretions from Trump’s penis. We need to stop suckling Mugwump fluid. We need to take a lesson from the yellow vests and rise up against all of these repulsive, predatory oligarchs. Let’s quit wasting our time being outraged by Trump’s latest offensive tweet and let the ruling elite know that they have more to fear from us than we have to fear from them. The Mugwumps may feel safe hiding behind their hired thugs in the militarized police forces, but that’s not working out so well for Macron and his fellow Mugwumps from the grandes ecoles; all across France, police and fire fighters are removing their riot gear, donning yellow vests, and joining the manifestations. We need to follow suit in America. We need to kick our addiction to Mugwump fluid, take to the streets by the tens of millions and rise up against the ruling elite. In other words, we need to stop suckling and start eating the rich. Not literally, of course—there is no environmentally sound way to consume animal-based protein, which increases the risks for cancers (breast, lung, liver, gastrointestinal, colorectal, stomach), hypertension, coronary heart disease, stroke, weight gain, type two diabetes, eye diseases, dementia, osteoporosis, depression, asthma, pulmonary lung disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and numerous other illnesses. Besides, it’s safe to assume that the Mugwumps of the ruling elite are chromosomally close enough to humans that eating them constitutes cannibalism, and cannibalism can lead to the development of prion illnesses like Creutzfeldt-Jakob (mad cow) disease. For these reasons and many more, no environmentally conscious revolutionary should actually eat the rich, especially an environmentally conscious vegan revolutionary. We must compromise—rather than literally eating the rich, we must take a more ecologically sound route and compost them. In addition to ending the tyranny of the Mugwumps who comprise the ruling elite, composting the rich provides numerous benefits to the environment, such as keeping Mugwump carcasses from filling up overcrowded landfills and providing an environmentally sound source of fertilizer. Win-win. Revolutionary wisdom |
