Tag: yellow vest

Is France Showing Us What America’s Next Civil War Will Look Like?

“Everything I’ve seen so far out of France is singing loudly that, yes, it’s a small world, after all – and that what’s happening on the barricades is both a reflection of what’s going on in much of the developed world and a screaming alarm for what could come next.”

It’s October 2021. America is in a state of turmoil – so much so that the ongoing felony trial of disgraced former president Donald Trump seems only a footnote. The chaos of the 2020 election has meant no honeymoon for Beto O’Rourke, the 47th president, whose narrow win over the GOP’s Nikki Haley (the Republican convention in Charlotte having rejected President Pence) had only enraged both the right and an increasingly angry left, which was still insisting that Democrats had cheated Bernie Sanders out of the nomination at their divided, brokered convention.

Still, President O’Rourke had small Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, and – after a summer of record heat waves had left more than 250 dead in the Los Angeles wildfires and seen Hurricane Gigi swamp many of the same New Orleans neighborhoods that had been inundated by Katrina – the charismatic, Kennedyesque chief executive had convinced Congress to pass, by exactly one vote in each chamber, a 40-cent-a-gallon gas tax to promote solar and wind power and subsidize electric cars.

Within hours, angry truckers had parked their rigs across the entrance to every tunnel on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. In small towns across America, protesters – encouraged by Sean Hannity on Fox News and by fake stories on Facebook that the O’Rourke administration planned to reopen Trump’s Texas detention camps for immigrants and use them to imprison tax resisters – gathered at gas stations. Many of their rallies were infiltrated by the political fringes – neo-Nazis of the right and Black Bloc anarchists of the left – and there were scattered reports of violence. In Charleston, S.C., a CNN reporter was reporting from a full-blown riot when gunfire was heard in the distance, just a cannonball shot away from historic Fort Sumter.

Paris is burning.

You’d think the rapid decline of Western civilization would get more news coverage in America – normally, flaming barricades in the shadow of the iconic Arc de Triomphe and hundreds fleeing tear gas in the heart of the French capital might be considered must-see TV, especially when the other option is a panel of aging Watergate prosecutors – but the latest chess moves in the Trump-Russia scandal and the embattled White House continue to trump most other headlines [ . . . ]

Continue at COMMON DREAMS: Is France Showing Us What America’s Next Civil War Will Look Like?

What’s Really Behind France’s Yellow Vest Protest?


It’s not just about the fuel tax; it’s about anger at ever-increasing burdens on the working class.

If the movement has managed to win such broad support thus far, it’s because it has clearly tapped into a deeper sense of social injustice. While that sentiment is shared nationwide to varying degrees, the protests themselves sprung up largely in rural areas and in what’s known as le périurbain: the sparsely populated outer bands of suburbs and metropolitan areas. These are parts of the country that suffer from high joblessness and rely heavily on state investment to keep their communities afloat, from unemployment benefits to the public rail network that connects them to larger cities.

Read full story at THE NATION: What’s Really Behind France’s Yellow Vest Protest? | The Nation

Fêter Noël ?

Sunday December 2, 2018, early morning, I found! says Jacques Noyer, former bishop of Amiens. I have found what the Church of France should say about this month-end insurrection we know.

She should announce that we will not celebrate Christmas this year. December 25 will be a day like any other. Nothing in the churches: no office, no nursery, no children. We will return to ordinary Sundays because Advent will not take place.

She will say that our people are not in a state of mind that allows them to celebrate Christmas. The cry of despair that runs through it is incompatible with the mystery of Christmas, with the hope of Advent, with the welcome of a foreign child.

I may be old-fashioned but I remember the Christmas of my childhood. It was not just the end of the month that was difficult. But at Christmas we forgot everything to rejoice in what we had. The most modest families were left with the little they had. In the night, the poor felt rich from the roof over their heads, the improved meal of their plate, the extra log that heated the house and especially the chance to have a dad, a mom, brothers and sisters who loved him. [ . . . ]

Continue at SAINT MERRY: Fêter Noël ?

‘Yellow Vest’ protests: Nearly 1,400 detained in new day of unrest in France

  • Businesses, museums and other attractions in the French capital had shuttered on Saturday in anticipation of the violent new clashes during the critical Christmas shopping season.
  • French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said 125,000 demonstrators had taken to the streets across the country, including 10,000 in Paris.
  • Paris and other French cities including Bordeaux, Lyon and Toulouse saw significant clashes between protesters and police.
  • About 120 protesters and 20 law enforcement officials were injured nationwide, the interior minister said.
  • Nearly 1,400 people were arrested.French PM Edouard Philippe called for dialogue and said President Emmanuel Macron would soon be proposing measures to “nourish” that dialogue and rebuild national unity.

Source: ‘Yellow Vest’ protests: Nearly 1,400 detained in new day of unrest in France