84,000 Yellow Vest protesters take to the streets riot beside Napoleon's tomb in Paris [tr]

UK Daily Mail ^ | January 19, 2019 | Danyal Hussain and Peter Allen

[C19fan]

A bank was attacked, a government building was vandalised and rioting broke out next to Napoleon Bonaparte's tomb as 84,000 anti-government Yellow Vests demonstrated all over France for the 10th weekend in a row. Protesters threw firecrackers, bottles and stones at police who used tear gas, water cannon, flash ball guns and baton charges to push them back at Les Invalides, where the body of the former French emperor and military leader lies in a sarcophagus underneath a golden dome. According to official figures, the biggest demonstration on Saturday occurred in the southern city of Toulouse, where around 10,000 people took part. The demonstration turned violent as evening fell, as protesters vandalised a bank and other shops.

[C19fan]

Whiff of Grapeshot.

[dangus]

84,000 is an awfully precise number; here the National Park Service gave up crowd estimates because they couldn’t tell 10,000 from 1,000,000.

[pepsionice]

I would question the authenticity of 84,000. But if you go and view all of the video clips (YouTube), you tend to notice that the Yellow Vest crowd was joined by a number of young participants (I assume college students)...without the vests, and the cops were a bit overwhelmed.

Macron has about 120 days before the EU election. He really needs to resolve this before you get into April and the campaign build-up.

[be-baw]

I’ve known about this going on in France when it started, but I’m still unclear what the beef is. Is it just random discontent, or is there an issue upon which most of the demonstrators agree?

[2ndDivisionVet]

Let’s go children of the fatherland,
The day of glory has arrived!
Against us tyranny’s
Bloody flag is raised! (repeat)
In the countryside, do you hear
The roaring of these fierce soldiers?
They come right to our arms
To slit the throats of our sons, our friends!

Grab your weapons, citizens!
Form your battalions!
Let us march! Let us march!
May impure blood
Water our fields!

This horde of slaves, traitors, plotting kings,
What do they want?
For whom these vile shackles,
These long-prepared irons? (repeat)
Frenchmen, for us, oh! what an insult!
What emotions that must excite!
It is us that they dare to consider
Returning to ancient slavery!

What! These foreign troops
Would make laws in our home!
What! These mercenary phalanxes
Would bring down our proud warriors! (repeat)
Good Lord! By chained hands
Our brows would bend beneath the yoke!
Vile despots would become
The masters of our fate!

Tremble, tyrants! and you, traitors,
The disgrace of all groups,
Tremble! Your parricidal plans
Will finally pay the price! (repeat)
Everyone is a soldier to fight you,
If they fall, our young heros,
France will make more,
Ready to battle you!

Sacred love of France,
Lead, support our avenging arms!
Liberty, beloved Liberty,
Fight with your defenders! (repeat)
Under our flags, let victory
Hasten to your manly tones!
May your dying enemies
See your triumph and our glory!

We will enter the pit
When our elders are no longer there;
There, we will find their dust
And the traces of their virtues. (repeat)
Much less eager to outlive them
Than to share their casket,
We will have the sublime pride
Of avenging them or following them!

[Mark17]

Taxes, maybe?

[be-baw]

Yeah, seems like I heard high taxes was one of their gripes. What I’m really wondering is how much disruption is being caused by anarchists - people who just want to tear down government.

For the record, I will shed no tears if and when Macron gives it up. He’s an arrogant a-hole who just got too full of himself, but lacks the talent to be an effective leader.

[relictele]

I was assured by the smart fellers in the media that the yellow vesters were wnding down and would be gone by the end of December.

[preacher]

L8r

[oincobx]

These were among the French protestors demands:

-Increase of 40% in the basic pension and social welfare
- Increase hiring in public sector to re-establish public services
- Massive construction projects to house 5 million homeless, and severe penalties for mayors/prefectures that leave people on the streets
- Break up the ‘too-big-to-fail’ banks, re-separate regular banking from investment banking
- Cancel debts accrued through usurious rates of interest
- The immediate cessation of privatization, and the re-nationalization of public goods like motorways, airports, rail, etc
- Mandate guarantee from producers that their products will last 10 years, and that spare parts will be available during that period
- Ban plastic bottles and other polluting packaging
- Ban on GMO crops, carcinogenic pesticides

[sparklite2]

Back in the day, there was some sort of kerfuffle between management and union over one item. I commented to my boss that it should be easy to settle over just one issue.

Au contraire, he told me. It is much easier to give and take over a multitude of issues that have only one bone of contention.

That being said, the solution for France is no where in sight.

[canuck_conservative]

I was assured by the smart fellers in the media that the yellow vesters were wnding down and would be gone by the end of December.

That's why there's this media attempt to downplay the attendance numbers, they want to create the meme that the protests have stalled or run out of steam.

In fact, in real life the numbers seem to grow each weekend, which must be really ticking off Macron and his media buddies.

And I kinda doubt the YV's are causing the violence; they are, mostly, just ordinary working people. Who says Macron didn't direct some internal government agents to go in there and create violent situations that can be conveniently filmed, just to slander the Yellow Vests?

Let's be honest, Macron is desperate at this point.

[Retvet]

How do We get rid of spell checker! It creates more errors than it fixes.

[null and void]

How do We get rid of spell checker! It creates more errors than it fixes.

Put Otto Kor Wrecked on a Checker cab to nowhere?

[Scrambler Bob]

I’ve known about this going on in France when it started, but I’m still unclear what the beef is.
= = =

Interesting lack of coverage from World News Tonight (and other MSM).

[null and void]

Au contraire, he told me. It is much easier to give and take over a multitude of issues that have only one bone of contention.

Interesting point. Been mulling it over and have come to the conclusion your boss was right.

The Cuban Missile Crisis would have had a far deadlier end if it was only about Russian missiles in Cuber, there was simply no way Khrushchev could have gone crawling to the Duma and admit we chased him out of Cuba.

That our missiles in Turkey were in play allowed Khrushchev to declare victory to the Duma in that we were forced to pull our missiles from Turkey.

While Kennedy declared victory to Congress and the American people because Khrushchev blinked and pulled their missiles from Cuber.

Win-win. Everybody got to declare victory over their eeeevil neighbor across the North Pole, and a nuclear was was averted.

Smart guy, your old boss...

[Joe Boucher]

National Park Service is a federal gub mint agency.
Of course they be pathetic.

[null and void]

Despite the laundry list oincobx posted (source please? I don't doubt you, nor to I doubt those are all factors...), the triggering event was a planned huge increase in fuel taxes to fight global warming.

The American Revolution was, in essence, triggered by a 3% tax on tea. There were plenty of other grievances against The Crown, but that was the spark.

(Imagine us shooting at federal workers over a 3% tax on a single item today!)

The MSM simply can't report any crack in the monolithic global warming wall, so they seek to ignore and denigrate that facet, and clutter the reportage with every side issue that doesn't include global warming and a rape-you-gee invasion.

[sparklite2]

Cuba got close to being the big bang. I was on duty at a classified relay station handling radio traffic between the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the commander of the picket line.

When the Russian ship — I can’t remember what kind it was — kept getting closer and closer to breaking the quarantine, the picket commander asked the JCS what to do. There was a wait of a few minutes, then a ‘flash’ Zulu message, which is the highest possible priority, came through.

The message said in so many words, if he doesn’t stop, send him to the bottom of the ocean. Then things REALLY got tense and the Russian ship stopped.

[null and void]

Hmmmmmm, it's almost like they were reading our coded messages...