What do France's Yellow Vests stand for?

What do the protesters in France want? Check out the 'official' Yellow Vest manifesto

SOTT,

8 December, 2018

The following list of demands has been circulating among French social media users in recent days. We do not know its exact origins or author(s), but it seems to have first appeared here on December 5th. You'll have to click on the image to enlarge it if you want to read it in French. We've translated it into English (in summary, not word-for-word) below... 

Gilets Jaunes' List of DemandsEconomy/Work

• A constitutional cap on taxes - at 25%
• 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

Politics

• Constitutional amendments to protect the people's interests, including binding referenda
• The barring of lobby groups and vested interests from political decision-making
• Frexit: Leave the EU to regain our economic, monetary and political sovereignty (In other words, respect the 2005 referendum result, when France voted against the EU Constitution Treaty, which was then renamed the Lisbon Treaty, and the French people ignored)
• Clampdown on tax evasion by the ultra-rich
• The immediate cessation of privatization, and the re-nationalization of public goods like motorways, airports, rail, etc
• Remove all ideology from the ministry of education, ending all destructive education techniques
• Quadruple the budget for law and order and put time-limits on judicial procedures. Make access to the justice system available for all
• Break up media monopolies and end their interference in politics. Make media accessible to citizens and guarantee a plurality of opinions. End editorial propaganda
• Guarantee citizens' liberty by including in the constitution a complete prohibition on state interference in their decisions concerning education, health and family matters

Health/Environment

• No more 'planned obsolescence' - 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
• Weaken the influence of big pharma on health in general and hospitals in particular
• Ban on GMO crops, carcinogenic pesticides, endocrine disruptors and monocrops
• Reindustrialize France (thereby reducing imports and thus pollution)

Foreign Affairs

• End France's participation in foreign wars of aggression, and exit from NATO
• Cease pillaging and interfering - politically and militarily - in 'Francafrique', which keeps Africa poor. Immediately repatriate all French soldiers. Establish relations with African states on an equal peer-to-peer basis
• Prevent migratory flows that cannot be accommodated or integrated, given the profound civilizational crisis we are experiencing
• Scrupulously respect international law and the treaties we have signed.

France’s Yellow Vest Protesters Want to Fight Climate Change

France’s violent protests are indeed a response to a climate policy—specifically, a planned increase of the country’s already steep taxes on fuel, which would have a huge impact on France’s working class. But the Yellow Vests aren’t protesting all climate policy, or even taxes on carbon dioxide. They’re protesting a tax hike that came on top of several other regressive economic policies.

So it’s wrong to claim that the protesters oppose climate action. In fact, they want the opposite—they say so themselves.

To read the article GO HERE

Les Déplorables Demand The Fall Of The Regime

Moon of Alabama,

8 December,2018

Today we will again (read the comments) see large, and mostly peaceful gilets jaunes gatherings all over France to protest the neo-liberal policies of the Macron regime. The biggest ones will naturally occur in the capital Paris. They are likely to later develop into riots. The regime ordered 89,000 policemen onto the streets to counter any potential violence. 8,000 of them will be in Paris alone.

A problem is that police are often the cause of riots. Dressed like storm troopers and angry after way too many hours on the street they tend to attack with much brutality even when calm defense would be more appropriate.

After last week protest the Macron regime first delayed and then abolished the planned fuel tax hike that was the immediate cause of the yellow vest protests. That was too little too late and made his regime look weak. The people are now demanding more measures like a reintroduction of the wealth tax which Macron had abolished in one of his first acts in power.

Over the last week fireman, ambulance drivers, students and the administrative police union have joined the protests.

Luxury shops have been boarded up, museums and landmarks were closed. (An English language livestream can be watched here. Please point to others in the comments.) The police are an running early interdiction tactic, closing off roads and applying tear gas to kettle the people and to prevent larger gatherings at the Champs-Élysées. Hundreds have already been arrested. Meanwhile the protesters sing la Marseillaise. It is way too early for the police to use such force and it is not going to work. This only increases the anger of the protestors and will cause more conflagrations.

In a France24 report from a small town in the country side shows extraordinary solidarity between the people. Police passing through an occupied toll road entry sign the protesters petition, other pass by and gift food to the middle-aged protestors.

One woman makes an good point. Yes, the violence as seen in Paris last weekend was not nice. But only after last weeks protest went violent were the yellow vests really noted by the media and by the otherwise tone deaf politicians.

If the protestors today try to storm the Bastille, the Elyssée palace or whatever, if there are more casualties, more people will join protests and strikes during the next week. Macron will come under even more pressure. He will have to dismiss his prime minister and government. More pressure and he will have to dissolve the parliament and call for new elections. That would likely mean the end of his policies of further enriching the very rich while impoverishing the lower middle class and the poor.