Macron's man promises 'gestures' to placate France's yellow vest revolt
In the annals of the idiocy of France's ruling elites, how is this for a doozy?
Via ABC News:
Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said Monday the government could delay some payroll taxes, but expressed resistance to restoring the wealth tax or lowering taxes for retirees, among protesters' demands. He stressed that the measures should focus on helping the working classes.
"We are ready to make any gesture" that works, he said on RTL radio. "What is important now is to put an end to the crisis and find peace and unity in the country again."
Did I just read "gesture"?
Gestures. Seriously, he really said "gestures." Even accounting for nuances of language, he chose to say that, and it most certainly can mean "gesture" as we know it. Like, you know, a Gallic shrug.
Given what is going on in France right now, the remark is so stupidly insulting it's likely to inflame more riots, not fewer. By his remarks, Le Maire comes off as having us think there's no crisis here, and the spot of bother in the streets can be fixed through a few mannerly things, some "gesture" pellets thrown to les déplorables to calm them down.
Listen up, pal: the time for gestures came and went. When you've got 136,000 yellow-vested shopkeepers, truck drivers, housewives, teachers, and farmers rioting across the entire country, wheeling out model guillotines with the president's name on them, singing Le Marseillaise as if it were 1792, and demanding President Macron's resignation, you can pretty well bet that these people aren't looking for "gestures." What this guy needs to be thinking about now is keeping heads on pikes out of the picture.
Cripes, that would drag me to the streets to protest, and I'm not even French.
As if gestures would be enough to stop four weeks of sustained, not-stopping, just-growing riots that have already driven the tourists out, have put France at the center of global headlines and not in a good way, and are expected to shave off 0.1% of GDP.
What it demonstrates is the Mr. Magoo-like opacity of France's ruling classes – and their utter unwillingness to change. This guy should be talking about a serious course change, such as dumping every tax hike permanently, scrapping every bureaucratic regulation, apologizing to the voters, and ending the green regime. Does he really think a few 'gestes' will stop this fiasco? What France needs to be doing right now, what howls for decisive action, is pulling out of the Paris climate accord and following the example of the U.S., which has stepped up oil drilling while simultaneously cutting emissions to green-happy levels, all through the beauty of free markets. No such sign that sort of thing is going to happen so long as the French ruling elites think that all that's needed are gestures.
The French ruling class clearly doesn't have a
clue, and like Louis XVI, this sort remark is of
the same character as his writing "nothing" in
his diary on the day the Bastille was taken.
Get ready for some surprises, pal.
In the annals of the idiocy of France's ruling elites, how is this for a doozy?
Via ABC News:
Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said Monday the government could delay some payroll taxes, but expressed resistance to restoring the wealth tax or lowering taxes for retirees, among protesters' demands. He stressed that the measures should focus on helping the working classes."We are ready to make any gesture" that works, he said on RTL radio. "What is important now is to put an end to the crisis and find peace and unity in the country again."
Did I just read "gesture"?
Gestures. Seriously, he really said "gestures." Even accounting for nuances of language, he chose to say that, and it most certainly can mean "gesture" as we know it. Like, you know, a Gallic shrug.
Given what is going on in France right now, the remark is so stupidly insulting it's likely to inflame more riots, not fewer. By his remarks, Le Maire comes off as having us think there's no crisis here, and the spot of bother in the streets can be fixed through a few mannerly things, some "gesture" pellets thrown to les déplorables to calm them down.
Listen up, pal: the time for gestures came and went. When you've got 136,000 yellow-vested shopkeepers, truck drivers, housewives, teachers, and farmers rioting across the entire country, wheeling out model guillotines with the president's name on them, singing Le Marseillaise as if it were 1792, and demanding President Macron's resignation, you can pretty well bet that these people aren't looking for "gestures." What this guy needs to be thinking about now is keeping heads on pikes out of the picture.
Cripes, that would drag me to the streets to protest, and I'm not even French.
As if gestures would be enough to stop four weeks of sustained, not-stopping, just-growing riots that have already driven the tourists out, have put France at the center of global headlines and not in a good way, and are expected to shave off 0.1% of GDP.
What it demonstrates is the Mr. Magoo-like opacity of France's ruling classes – and their utter unwillingness to change. This guy should be talking about a serious course change, such as dumping every tax hike permanently, scrapping every bureaucratic regulation, apologizing to the voters, and ending the green regime. Does he really think a few 'gestes' will stop this fiasco? What France needs to be doing right now, what howls for decisive action, is pulling out of the Paris climate accord and following the example of the U.S., which has stepped up oil drilling while simultaneously cutting emissions to green-happy levels, all through the beauty of free markets. No such sign that sort of thing is going to happen so long as the French ruling elites think that all that's needed are gestures.
The French ruling class clearly doesn't have a
clue, and like Louis XVI, this sort remark is of
the same character as his writing "nothing" in
his diary on the day the Bastille was taken.
Get ready for some surprises, pal.
Which way forward for France’s “yellow vest” protests?
With the fourth Saturday of “yellow vest” protests against President Emmanuel Macron, a mass movement is clearly emerging among workers against the capitalist system. Macron’s withdrawal of the regressive fuel tax hike that initially triggered the protest resolved nothing. Among the “yellow vests,” demands for social equality, large wage increases, Macron’s ouster, eliminating the privileges of the super rich, an end to militarism, and for general strikes and a revolution are coming to the fore.
Claims that the Stalinist bureaucracy’s dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 marked the end of the class struggle, the final triumph of capitalist democracy, or the End of History have been blown to pieces. As “yellow vest” protests spread from France to Belgium and the Netherlands, Bulgaria, and as far as Iraq—where workers in Basra donned yellow vests to protest NATO’s neocolonial regime—the international working class is emerging in struggle against the diktat of the banks.
Saturday’s massive crackdown was a searing lesson in the character of bourgeois democracy: as soon as there is any expression of genuine popular opposition, the guns come out. After riot police backed with military armored vehicles and water cannon kettled and assaulted peaceful protesters starting early in the day, violent clashes erupted in all France’s largest cities. A record 1,385 people were arrested.
The “yellow vest” protests are now at a critical stage. The movement has provoked a confrontation not just with the president of the rich, but the entire regime of the rich. Most leading figures in the “yellow vest” movement continue to turn down offers of talks from the political establishment: Macron’s token concessions, binding arbitration by the union bureaucracies, or proposals of an alliance from Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Unsubmissive France party. The demonstrators also remain overwhelmingly popular.
The danger, however, is that without a clear political perspective and orientation for a broader struggle against Macron, the movement can be frittered away in fruitless protest actions, or subordinated to the maneuvers of the ruling elite.
The question of political leadership is central. It is significant that some “yellow vest” groups like that in Commercy are calling for building popular committees to decide upon and coordinate the activities of the movement. What is developing, in a highly embryonic form, is dual power. Against the bankers’ government, protected by its hordes of riot police, the specter of separate and opposed institutions, representing and organizing the workers in struggle, is beginning to emerge.
These events underscore the contemporary significance of Leon Trotsky’s call to form committees of action, just before the 1936 French general strike. Such bodies can unify strike struggles and protests by different sections of workers and youth, keep them from being isolated and sold out by the union bureaucracies, and provide a rallying point for the vast opposition among broader masses of workers. This provides a basis for mobilizing the deep opposition within the working class to the austerity drive by Macron and the European Union.
Trotsky stressed that for workers, such committees were the “only means of breaking the anti-revolutionary opposition of the trade union and party apparatus.” This is critical today, as workers run straight into the vicious hostility of the unions and allied political parties of the affluent middle class. These forces are desperate to preserve their privileges, by blocking an independent struggle of the working class against Macron and his government of the rich.
Not a single established political tendency in France has responded to the “yellow vest” movement, which objectively raises the issue of a challenge to the capitalist system, in a progressive manner. Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the middle-class student leader in May 1968, shamelessly slandered it as fascistic, telling Germany’s taz newpaper that “the large majority of the yellow vest movement comes from the National Front, from the reservoir of the extreme right.”
Stalinist General Confederation of Labor (CGT) union leader Philippe Martinez insinuated the same thing, darkly hinting that the “yellow vests” are “people we can’t be seen with.” Now, after calling off a truckers’ strike, the CGT is calling a symbolic, one-day rail strike on December 14.
The middle-class New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) aims to use this cynical maneuver to drive the “yellow vests” into the grip of the unions. It called on “yellow vests” to ask Martinez to let them join a general strike controlled by the CGT: “Combative unions and yellow vests should ask or even impose this perspective on the national union leaderships, starting with a real general strike call for the ‘yellow vest’ protest on December 14.”
Under cover of such maneuvers, the ruling class hopes to subordinate the protesters to the unions and the state machine. “The entire political system is shaken,” the Journal du dimanche wrote, but Saturday’s police repression “has given the government maneuvering room, a breath of fresh air.” It hailed the fact that Prime Minister Edouard Philippe concluded his brief speech on Saturday night by saying: “And now for dialog!”
The “yellow vest” protesters are fully justified in their mistrust of all those who try to tie them to fruitless, reactionary deals with Macron. There is nothing to negotiate with Macron, the ruthless representative of the banks; begging the capitalist politicians sitting in the National Assembly to serve the people will likewise bring only disappointment.
The critical task is a political struggle against the Macron government and the power of the banks. In this era of globalized capitalism and international finance, trade and supply chains, this signifies an international struggle on the basis of a genuine socialist program: to expropriate the obscene fortunes of the financial aristocracy, and place the resources of world economy under the democratic control of working people.
This program flows from the objective tasks posed by the upsurge of the class struggle: across Europe, the mounting social anger and strike activity in every country tends towards the eruption of a general strike.
The task of organizing a general strike against the European Union, Macron and similar governments across Europe cannot be left to the unions, who are hostile to the movement and will not carry it out. The way forward is the formation of committees of action that can prepare and lay the basis in the working class for a real general strike, in France and across Europe, carried out in opposition to the maneuvers of the unions and the pseudo-left parties.
Alex Lantier
EUROPE IN REVOLT!
AMERICA’S PROTECTED CRIMINAL BILLIONAIRE CLASS HEADS FOR
THEIR BUNKERS UNDER WALL STREET.
AMERICA FACES REVOLUTION, CIVIL WAR II OR REVOLUTION AGAINST THE
RULE BY BILLIONAIRES AND WALL STREET
"Vast popular hardship and suffering, on the one hand, and
almost indescribable wealth and social indifference, on the other.
Two parties of the corporate oligarchy, dedicated to war and
political reaction. The impossible economic and political conditions
must produce sooner rather than later the greatest social upheavals
in American history."
*
"A series of recent polls in the US and Europe
have shown a sharp growth of popular disgust with capitalism and
support for socialism. In May of
2017, in a survey conducted by the Union
of European Broadcasters of people aged 18 to 35, more than half said
they would participate in a
“large-scale uprising.” Nine out of 10 agreed
with the statement, “Banks and money rule the world.”
*
"A
defining expression of this crisis is the dominance of financial
speculation and parasitism, to the point where a arrow international
financial aristocracy plunders society’s resources in
order to further enrich itself."
REVOLUTION STIRS IN AMERICA
“It will more likely come on the heels of
economic dislocation and dwindling wealth to redistribute.”
*
"Between 2002 and 2015
annual earnings for the bottom 90 percent of Americans rose
by only 4.5 percent, while earnings for the top 1 percent grew by
22.7 percent, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Under the Obama administration,
more than 90 percent of income gains since the so-called
“recovery” began have gone to the top one percent."
*
“Our entire crony capitalist
system, Democrat and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy
approaching par with third-world hell-holes. This is the way a great
country is raided by its elite.” ---- Karen McQuillan THEAMERICAN
THINKER.com
"A defining expression of this crisis is
the dominance of financial speculation and parasitism, to the point
where a narrow international financial aristocracy plunders society’s
resources in order to further enrich itself."
THE BILLIONAIRES’S GLOBALIST DEMOCRAT PARTY FOR WIDER
OPEN BORDERS
the true cost of all that “cheap” labor is passed
along to the middle class.
"This doesn't include the costs
of illegal immigration to society, which provides health care, housing, education, child
care, and legal services to illegal aliens. Even though immigration
advocates claim that illegal aliens do indeed pay taxes, the dollar
amount pales
in comparison to
the cost of the many services they receive."
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-globalist-democrat-party-for-wider_29.html
Meanwhile, despite the
highest taxes in the nation, California is $1.3 trillion in debt – unemployment
is at a staggering 11%. California's wacko giveaways to illegals
include in-state tuition, amounting to $25 million of financial
aid. Nearly a million illegals have California driver's
licenses. L.A. County has
144% more registered voters than there are residents of legal voting
age. Clearly, illegals are illegally
voting.
WALL STREET AND THE SUPER RICH PREPARE BUNKERS FOR THE
REVOLUTION
BANKSTERS AND BILLIONAIRES
PREPARE FOR THE WORST.
REVOLUTION IS IN LOOMING AND
WILL MARCH RIGHT DOWN WALL STREET FIRST.
"A series of recent polls in the US and Europe have shown a sharp
growth of popular disgust with capitalism and support for socialism. In May of
2017, in a survey conducted by the Union of European Broadcasters of people
aged 18 to 35, more than half said they would participate in a “large-scale
uprising.” Nine out of 10 agreed with the statement, “Banks and money rule the
world.”
*
"The
ruling class was particularly terrified by the teachers’ walkouts earlier
this year because the biggest strikes were organized by rank-and-file
educators in a rebellion against the unions, reflecting the weakening grip
of the pro-corporate organizations that have suppressed the class struggle
for decades."
*
“The yearly income of a typical US household dropped by a massive 12 percent, or $6,400, in the six years between 2007 and 2013. This is just one of the findings of the 2013 Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances released Thursday, which documents a sharp decline in working class living standards and a further concentration of wealth in the hands of the rich and the super-rich.”
“The yearly income of a typical US household dropped by a massive 12 percent, or $6,400, in the six years between 2007 and 2013. This is just one of the findings of the 2013 Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances released Thursday, which documents a sharp decline in working class living standards and a further concentration of wealth in the hands of the rich and the super-rich.”
*
"The American
phenomenon of record stock values fueling an ever greater concentration of
wealth at the very top of society, while the economy is starved of
productive investment, the social infrastructure crumbles, and working
class living standards are driven down by entrenched
unemployment, wage-cutting and government austerity policies, is part of
a broader global process."
*
"A defining expression of this crisis is the dominance of financial speculation and parasitism, to the point where a narrow international financial aristocracy plunders society’s resources in order to further enrich itself."
"A defining expression of this crisis is the dominance of financial speculation and parasitism, to the point where a narrow international financial aristocracy plunders society’s resources in order to further enrich itself."
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