Gilets jaunes protests continue despite Macron concessions

Protests and road barricades at roundabouts and toll-booths across France have continued, as many gilets jaunes demonstrators said concessions made by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, were not enough to calm their anger and sense of social injustice.

Anti-government demonstrators have called for further demonstrations in Paris on Saturday, after four weekends of protests saw rioting in the French capital and other cities and plunged France’s centrist president into his worst crisis in office.

Macron gave a prerecorded televised speech on Monday watched by more than 23 million people in which he announced major steps to address concerns that people in France could not make ends meet.

The minimum wage will increase by €100 a month from January, he said, and a planned tax on pensions under €2,000 a month would be cancelled.

But crucially, the president did not announce a U-turn on his pro-business policies. He stood firm by his decision to slash France’s wealth tax for the very rich. Many protesters had wanted a full wealth tax to be reintroduced.

Macron’s speech was never expected to stop the road barricades overnight.

The gilets jaunes protest movement – named after French motorists’ fluorescent high-visibility vests – began on 17 November as a sporadic tax revolt against what was seen as an unfair eco-tax on fuel but has grown into an anti-government movement against what people see as the pro-business Macron giving tax breaks to the rich and making life harder for the working poor.

It was difficult to assess the full reaction of the gilets jaunes, a grassroots citizens’ movement with no leader or fixed structure.

Jacline Mouraud, a self-employed Breton woman who had been among the first demonstrators, called for a truce and said she felt gains had been made and a “door had opened” for discussion.

But many gilets jaunes on the barricades said the distrust of Macron was now so high that the protests would not stop.

At a roundabout in the southern town of Le Boulou, a car mechanic who was protesting said: “We can see that he isn’t sincere, that it’s all smoke and mirrors.”

Another gilet jaune in the north, who asked not to be named, told AFP it was too, little too late and Macron was “putting plasters on a third-degree burn”.

Many said nothing was being offered to people on slightly higher than the minimum wage or for public sector salaries, which remain low. Many taking part in demonstrations are public sector workers, from nurses and hospital staff to school support staff or fire officers.

Blockades continued on roads from Brittany to the south of France on Monday night and Tuesday morning. One group even bricked up the entrance of the local government office in Mont-de-Marsan in south-west France shortly after Macron’s speech.

High-school and university students also continued their blockades and strikes over school and university reforms on Tuesday.

Macron’s speech and concessions on Monday night were above all aimed at the general public, which has massively supported the gilets jaunes – with a majority of French people agreeing with the feeling of injustice and an unfair tax system in France.

Macron sought to try to win back the general public and lessen support for the protesters. A poll for LCI taken after Macron’s speech found 64% of the public still supported the gilets jaunes, but 54% thought the street protests should stop. The poll found that just under half of French people were won over by Macron’s speech.

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Opposition parties criticised Macron. Ecologists said that despite the fact the president already promising to scrap a green fuel-tax for next year, he had said nothing about how he now intended to deal with environmental and climate change issues. The socialist Valérie Rabault said there had been no detail on how the promises would be funded and that taxpayers were likely to have to foot the bill.

“There will be tax rises elsewhere or cuts to public services, mainly in rural areas,” she said.

The far-right politician Marine Le Pen, whom Macron beat in last year’s presidential election, said Macron still failed to protect citizens in the face of “savage” globalisation.

The leftwing Jean-Luc Mélenchon said Macron was mistaken if he thought “a distribution of money” would calm “the insurrection”.

Some on the left attacked Macron for what were deemed dog-whistle tactics by referring to immigration and French secularism in his speech. Macron had said in his speech that “the question of immigration” must be dealt with.

Laurent Berger, the head of the CFDT union, said he was concerned by what he called Macron’s incongruous reference to immigration in a speech aimed at addressing French people’s difficulty in making ends meet.

The gilets jaunes movement is made up of people from all political backgrounds – some on the far right have mentioned immigration on the barricades while those on the left do not consider it a pressing issue.

The European commission, which monitors EU members’ finances, said it would study the budgetary impact of Macron’s measures, which are expected to cost billions of euros and will push up France’s deficit.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/11/gilets-jaunes-protests-continue-despite-macron-concessions#img-2

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Are these surveillance planes (C17 and C-130)?

It is still unbelievable to me that our senior level government officials were considered enemy combatants. Just unreal. How in the world will the public swallow that?

Pretty easy if real history was taught. Criminal actors in government is the norm, not the exception throughout history. This is why the founders told us the price of freedom would be eternal vigilance.

The job of the criminals is to lie to the people and convince them that "OUR government would NEVER……"

They took over the schools and the main media corporations globally, because they are the enemy of all of the people, and, if you know anything about battle, the first thing you want to do is destroy or take over enemy communications.

Think… book burning in the low tech days. This has been going on forever.

Of course the globalist enemies paid to take over the government. They actually got to the point where nearly every elected official was able to be blackmailed, by making sure no one ran unless they COULD be blackmailed. Just look at the record number of sudden resignations by elected members of congress this year? A record number. They are being let off the hook.

Americans will have to be shown all of this evidence of crime, and we need to burn the globalist lying history books. All of the primary sources dug up here by patriotic Americans need to make up the pages of those high school history books now, not the lies of the enemies of the US.

MSM will straighten up if they want to live.

How will the people swallow it? Trust me, the things we have uncovered here will have normal everyday Americans trying to hang the criminals without a tribunal, especially when they find out what the corrupt governments around the states have been doing to the "missing children" and the children who have been "taken" without due process, by the so called "children's services".

Like Q said. Someday it will not be safe for them to walk down the street.

This is not going to be fun, but the public needs to wake up. All of the criminal activity has been documented due to the tracking of everything people do by the surveillance system on our computers, phone, email, and text. It was built by the bad guys and originally intended to be used on we the people.

All tyrannical forms of government must have a surveillance system so they can spot and eliminate their enemy freedom fighters early. That is what they have been building with all this "Artificial intelligence".

Americans might not have privacy right now, but, the criminal acting is being recorded just the same.

Too bad for the evil ones. Evidence is evidence.

We only have one chance to rip up their control systems, try them, and hang every one of them. We only have one chance to get back everything they have stolen from the people of the world with their crimes, and give it back to the world.

If they get back in power, it will be WWIII. THAT is what they need to stop the all of us around the world.

We are using their own weapons of tyranny against them. This will be great, not just for America, but for the people of the world who have been abused for far too long by these globalist criminals who have financed both sides of every war since Napoleon, on the record, and farther back off record most likely.

This also shows why people of the world should put a "global government" out of their minds forever.

Right now, we can come to the aid of other nations, and they can come to our aid.

When tyranny hits under a global scale, there is no one who can come to help.