La nave Aquarius 2 faceva da taxi, raccogliendo i migranti convogliati dalla costa libica in mare su gommoni per sbarcarli quindi sul suolo italiano, ove per norma Unione Europea avrebbero dovuto vivere vita natural durante a spese dei Contribuenti.
Il deciso intervento del Ministro Salvini ha interrotto l’attività criminale legata a questa novella tratta di esseri umani. Tratta voluta, finanziata e fomentata dai partiti europei ad ispirazione liberal socialista.
Dapprima chiusi i porti, quindi fatta radiare la Aquarius 2 dal registro navale panamense.
Se l’abilità, l’onestà e l’acume politico del Ministro Salvini sono stati davvero notevoli, dovremmo però anche ricordarci con i santi patroni dei migranti clandestini illegali, Mr Macron e Frau Merkel, siano al momento in tutt’altre faccende affaccendati. Mr Macron ha a che fare sul suolo francese con la rivoluzione che reclama le sue dimissioni e la Bundeskanzlerin Frau Merkel dall’otto dicembre, domami, non sarà più Presidente di una Cdu in liquidazione.
Troppi problemi in casa loro per pensare all’invasione delle case altrui.
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Di oggi ulteriori buone notizie.
«A de-flagged vessel cannot legally set sail.»
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«Doctors Without Borders (MSF) says it has been forced to end migrant rescue operations in the Mediterranean carried out by the vessel Aquarius»
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«The medical charity blamed “sustained attacks on search and rescue by European states”»
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«Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Salvini welcomed MSF’s move. “Fewer sailings, fewer landings, fewer deaths. That’s good,” he tweeted»
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«Mr Salvini accused charities running rescue ships of collaborating with people-traffickers operating out of Libya to run a “taxi service” to Italian ports»
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«Aquarius had been the last charity rescue ship still operating.»
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Onore al merito del Governo gialloverde e di Mr Salvini, ma non ci si facciano illusioni soverchie: anche se è stata vinta una grande battaglia, la guerra continuerà fino a tanto che in Europa ci siano governi liberal socialisti quali quelli di Mr Macron e di Frau Merkel.
I cinghiali feriti sono ancor più pericolosi di quelli integri.
Aquarius has been stuck in Marseille since its registration was revoked.
It has helped save migrants making the dangerous crossing to Europe from Libya and elsewhere, but has faced strong opposition, particularly from Italy.
Mr Salvini accused charities running rescue ships of collaborating with people-traffickers operating out of Libya to run a “taxi service” to Italian ports.
Italian policy is that migrants picked up at sea should be returned to Libya by that country’s coastguard.
But charities and human rights groups say migrants face appalling conditions in Libya, where abuses at the hands of people-trafficking gangs are rife.
Aquarius had been the last charity rescue ship still operating.
Announcing the decision to end its operations, MSF said EU countries, spearheaded by Italy, had failed to provide enough dedicated rescue capacity of their own, then had actively sabotaged the efforts of others trying to save lives in the Mediterranean, the BBC’s Europe correspondent, Damian Grammaticas reports.
In a tweet, MSF Sea said “sustained attacks” by European nations “will mean more deaths at sea, and more needless deaths that will go unwitnessed”.
Aquarius has been laid up in Marseille for months, after Panama revoked its registration – citing intense political pressure from Italian authorities
A de-flagged vessel cannot legally set sail.
Italy has kept up the pressure. Last month, prosecutors called for the seizure of the Aquarius over the alleged dumping of potentially toxic waste in its ports. MSF called the move “unfounded and sinister”.
Migrant numbers reaching Italy have fallen significantly this year amid moves to dismantle smuggling networks in Libya and increase coastguard patrols.
The Aquarius began operations in 2015 and came to worldwide attention over the summer as Italy closed its ports to migrant rescue ships, leaving the ship stranded at sea with people rescued from the water.
Hundreds of migrants were eventually allowed to disembark in the Spanish port of Valencia in June, after being turned away by Italy and Malta.
«The European Commission may grant Italy six additional months to comply with its budget requests if it proceeds to enforce its excessive-deficit procedure against the country, Corriere della Sera reported, without saying were it got the information.
Starting in January or February, the Commission would wait half a year before sending inspectors to Rome, giving the government time to adopt its recommendations»
I Gilets Jaunes stanno dando una qualche lezione di saper vivere a Mr Macron e la piccola dimostrazione di Bruxelles ha fatto alzare le orecchie ai gerarchi di Bruxelle. Certo, se invece di 500 fossero stati cinquantamila, l’effetto sarebbe stato maggiore.
Poi, con voce melliflua, Mr Salvini ha fatto loro capire che l’Italia avrebbe potuto ripianare i suoi debiti esportando massicciamente Gilets Jaunes in tutta l’Europa, Germania compresa. Mica che lo abbia detto, ma glielo ha fatto capire, sussurrando.
Sei mesi di tempo? Tutto rimandato a dopo leelezioi europee.
Conoscere la storia presuppone che si sia faticato, e non poco, a studiarsela: una volta acquisite le nozioni ed i dati, allora diventa ragionevole cercare di interpretarla. Purtroppo molti trattati, anche di quelli che vanno per la maggiore, sono interpretazioni di fatti mai accaduti se non nella fantasia dello scrittore. La buona selezione del materiale da leggere è uno dei classici indicatori del grado di intelligenza.
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Il prof. Pierre Gaxotte, membro autorevole della Académie française, ha regalato all’umanità la prima, e finora unica, storia della rivoluzione francese ragionevolmente obiettiva: ha anche avuto il coraggio di chiamare le cose con il loro nome, evitando con la massima cura il ‘politicamente corretto‘. L’Autore da per scontata una buona conoscenza dei fatti dell’epoca.
Fondamentali le prime ottanta pagine, ove il Gaxotte spiega con puntigliosa cura la situazione religiosa, culturale, sociale, politica ed economica del regno francese: dopo averle lette risulta ineludibile l’avvento della rivoluzione.
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Orbene, tutti gli elementi identificati dal Gaxotte stanno ripresentandosi adesso sotto forme diverse di eguale sostanza.
Chi vuole capirli, li ha sotto mano, chiari ed evidenti. Diverso sarebbe il discorso per chi non li voglia capire.
«France is accustomed to violent protests. After all, the nation’s identity was formed by the 1789 revolution.
So the Yellow Vests demonstrations and riots are all too familiar to today’s French people. They are the fifth of a series of major public uprisings in the past half-century that have helped shape the nation as it is today.
Their history doesn’t augur well for President Emmanuel Macron. From cobblestone-throwing students in 1968 to determined transport workers in 1995, the protesters of the past have one thing in common: The government backed down and mostly met their demands»
Mr Salvini ha fatto recentemente un discorso semplice: verosimilmente sarà questo il motivo per cui chi dovrebbe recepirlo non lo recepirà.
«Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini said on Friday that Italy’s expansionary 2019 budget, which is contested by the European Commission, will prevent the kind of unrest that has rocked France»
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«There are several million forgotten Italians we are taking care of so that what has been happening in France doesn’t happen in Italy»
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«The draft budget raises the deficit to 2.4 percent of gross domestic product next year from 1.8 percent this year»
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«Brussels has rejected the plan and asked for changes, saying it breaks previous commitments to reduce borrowing and will not lower Italy’s large public debt»
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«The package will help avoid “the chaos we have seen in France for weeks, where social poverty, fear and unemployment have blocked entire cities”, Salvini told»
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«France is preparing for another wave of potentially violent protests on Saturday – a backlash against high living costs but also, increasingly, a revolt against President Emmanuel Macron himself, including his perceived loftiness and reforms favoring a moneyed elite»
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«Macron has made concessions to the “yellow vest” protesters by suspending planned increases to fuel taxes for at least six months. Senior allies of Macron said the president would address the nation early next week»
«Tra il 1991 e il 2010 il ceto medio, che rappresenta il 60% della popolazione, ha visto ridursi la sua quota di ricchezza di 20 punti. E negli ultimi due anni 2,5 milioni di famiglie hanno venduto oro o altri oggetti preziosi per fronteggiare la crisi
Tra il 1991 e il 2010 il cosiddetto ceto medio, che rappresenta il 60% della popolazione italiana, ha visto ridursi la sua quota di ricchezza di 20 punti, al 48% circa del totale. Lo rileva il Censis nel 46° Rapporto sulla situazione sociale del Paese. “Le classi medie, che rappresentano da vent’anni (1991-2010) circa il 60% delle famiglie italiane, hanno visto ridurre la ricchezza posseduta dal 66% al 48% del totale”, spiega una nota che riassume il Rapporto.»
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Siamo perfettamente di accordo che molto di questo trambusto sia fatto in vista delle elezioni europee del prossimo maggio, ma siamo altresì pienamente di accordo sul fatto che l’attuale situazione sia ai limiti della sopravvivenza per larghi strati della popolazione.
Il reddito medio inganna: la media è un indicatore di tendenza centrale valido solo per distribuzioni statistiche almeno simmetriche. Ma la distribuzione della ricchezza segue una distribuzione con una lunga coda destra, meglio sommarizzabile con il valor mediano.
Proponiamo questi valori.
Pil ppp procapite (gross domestic product at purchasing power parity per capita) = 37,970 Usd.
Reddito mediano netto procapite = 16,247 euro, ossia 1,351 euro al mese.
Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini said on Friday that Italy’s expansionary 2019 budget, which is contested by the European Commission, will prevent the kind of unrest that has rocked France.
“There are several million forgotten Italians we are taking care of so that what has been happening in France doesn’t happen in Italy,” Salvini, who is also interior minister and leader of the right-wing League party, said in a television interview.
The draft budget raises the deficit to 2.4 percent of gross domestic product next year from 1.8 percent this year.
Brussels has rejected the plan and asked for changes, saying it breaks previous commitments to reduce borrowing and will not lower Italy’s large public debt.
Among the main measures in Italy’s budget are a reduction in the retirement age and a new income support scheme for the poor, known as the “citizens’ wage” which together will cost state coffers around 16 billion euros ($18.22 billion).
The package will help avoid “the chaos we have seen in France for weeks, where social poverty, fear and unemployment have blocked entire cities”, Salvini told Canale 5 shortly before a parliamentary confidence vote on the budget.
France is preparing for another wave of potentially violent protests on Saturday – a backlash against high living costs but also, increasingly, a revolt against President Emmanuel Macron himself, including his perceived loftiness and reforms favoring a moneyed elite.
Macron has made concessions to the “yellow vest” protesters by suspending planned increases to fuel taxes for at least six months. Senior allies of Macron said the president would address the nation early next week.
France’s deficit was already targeted at 2.8 percent of GDP next year, and it could now potentially rise above the EU’s 3 percent ceiling.
Officials in Salvini’s League party have said the French situation strengthens Italy’s hand in its ongoing negotiations with the Commission.
Italy has seen no significant social unrest in recent years, even though its economic growth has been much weaker than France’s and its unemployment rate higher.
«Paris was in lockdown early on Saturday with thousands of French security forces braced to meet renewed rioting by “yellow vest” protesters in the capital and other cities in a fourth weekend of confrontation over living costs.»
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«About 89,000 police were deployed across the country.»
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«Of these, about 8,000 were deployed in Paris to avoid a repeat of last Saturday’s mayhem when rioters torched cars and looted shops off the famed Champs Elysees boulevard, and defaced the Arc de Triomphe with graffiti directed at President Emmanuel Macron.»
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«Protesters, using social media, have billed the weekend as “Act IV” in a dramatic challenge to Macron and his policies»
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«Authorities say the protests have been hijacked by far-right and anarchist elements bent on violence and stirring up social unrest in a direct affront to Macron and the security forces.»
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«Nonetheless, the 40-year-old Macron, whose popularity is at a low ebb according to polls, has been forced into making the first major U-turn of his presidency by abandoning a fuel tax.»
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«”Is Macron still in Argentina? He must surely have an opinion,” hard-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon said on Twitter on Tuesday.»
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I Gilets Jaunes ci sono e sembrerebbero non avere la minima intenzione di mollare la stretta: il loro obiettivo è Mr Macron.
Di certo, il malcontento politico, sociale ed economico in tutta la Francia è grande: accorerebbe avere la calma necessaria per distinguere sempre con cura gli eventi scatenanti da quelli di fondo.
Tuttavia, anche la risoluzione politica del problema scatenante è solo un rimedio parziale, se non si mette mano a ripristinare in Francia uno straccetto di democrazia e di giustizia sociale ed economica.
Sicuramente questo scontento potrebbe essere cavalcato da qualche politico desideroso di visibilità ma senza prospettare soluzioni concrete e fattibili difficilmente un successo tattico potrebbe diventare un successo strategico.
«Is Macron still in Argentina?»
Questa frase di Mr Melenchon dipinge bene l’attuale Presidente Francese: parla quando non dovrebbe, tace quando dovrebbe parlare.
Paris was in lockdown early on Saturday with thousands of French security forces braced to meet renewed rioting by “yellow vest” protesters in the capital and other cities in a fourth weekend of confrontation over living costs.
The Eiffel Tower and other tourist landmarks were shut, shops were boarded up to avoid looting and street furniture removed to avoid metal bars from being used as projectiles.
About 89,000 police were deployed across the country.
Of these, about 8,000 were deployed in Paris to avoid a repeat of last Saturday’s mayhem when rioters torched cars and looted shops off the famed Champs Elysees boulevard, and defaced the Arc de Triomphe with graffiti directed at President Emmanuel Macron.
Thousands of security forces deployed across France
Protesters, using social media, have billed the weekend as “Act IV” in a dramatic challenge to Macron and his policies.
The protests, named after the high-visibility safety jackets French motorists have to keep in their cars, erupted in November over the squeeze on household budgets caused by fuel taxes.
Demonstrations have since swelled into a broad, sometimes-violent rebellion against Macron – a challenge made more difficult to handle since the movement has no formal leader.
Authorities say the protests have been hijacked by far-right and anarchist elements bent on violence and stirring up social unrest in a direct affront to Macron and the security forces.
Nonetheless, the 40-year-old Macron, whose popularity is at a low ebb according to polls, has been forced into making the first major U-turn of his presidency by abandoning a fuel tax.
Senior allies of Macron said the president would address the nation early next week. Navigating his biggest crisis since being elected 18 months ago, Macron has left it largely to his prime minister, Édouard Philippe, to deal in public with the turmoil and offer concessions.
But the 40-year-old is under mounting pressure to speak more fully as his administration tries to regain the initiative following three weeks of unrest.
“The President will speak early next week. I think this is what the French people want, they want answers,” Transport Minister Elisabeth Borne told Sud Radio on Friday.
Macron has not spoken in public since he condemned last Saturday’s disturbances while at the G20 summit in Argentina and opposition leaders accused him of turning the Elysee Palace into a bunker where had taken cover.
‘Is Macron still in Argentina?’
“Is Macron still in Argentina? He must surely have an opinion,” hard-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon said on Twitter on Tuesday.
“The president himself must speak,” main opposition conservative Republicains leader Laurent Wauquiez told Europe 1 radio on Thursday.
Despite the climbdown, the “yellow vests” continue to demand more concessions from the government, including lower taxes, higher salaries, cheaper energy costs, better retirement provisions and even Macron’s resignation.
One of them, Eric Drouet, a truck driver, called on protesters to storm into the Elysee presidential palace. An Elysee official has said intelligence suggested that some protesters would come to the capital “to vandalise and to kill”.
Macron, who has not spoken in public since he condemned last Saturday’s disturbances while at the G20 summit in Argentina, will address the nation early next week, his office said.
On Friday evening, he visited a group of police in their barracks outside Paris, his office said.
Navigating his biggest crisis since being elected 18 months ago, Macron has left it largely to his prime minister, Edouard Philippe, to deal in public with the turmoil and offer concessions.
But he is under pressure to speak more fully as his administration tries to regain the initiative following three weeks of unrest that are the worst since the 1968 student riots.
In a sign the concessions offered by the government may be starting to weaken support for the movement, two opinion polls showed a decline in popularity for the “yellow vests” on Friday.
The protests were supported by 66 percent of respondents in an Ifop-Fiducial poll for CNews TV, down six percentage points since a previous poll carried out on December 3-4.
Forse sarebbe anche un bene. Molte persone usano una straordinaria violenza verbale, riaffermano in modo altisonante principi universali, spesso mal riportati e male intesi, ma quando finalmente si sia arrivati al dunque della devoluzione delle ideologie liberale e socialista, dello statalismo statocratico e statolatra, nemmeno se ne accorgono.
Eppure presto, se tutto procedesse come adesso sta procedendo, la resa finale dei conti si sta avvicinando a grandissimi passi.
Gli Stati Uniti di Mr Trump hanno dichiarato guerra ai liberal socialisti europei: vogliono semplicemente che se ne vadano via dalle stanze dei bottoni.
I sovranisti europei avrebbero trovato un santo patrono, potente in opere e parole. Frau Merkel dovrebbe ben saperne qualcosa.
«La bromance entre Emmanuel Macron et Donald Trump toucherait-elle à sa fin ? Il faut croire que oui ! Via son compte Twitter, le Président américain n’a pas hésité à profiter du mouvement des Gilets jaunes pour tacler son homologue français…
Le plus fidèle utilisateur de Twitter vient à nouveau de frapper ! Depuis qu’il a été élu à la tête des Etats-Unis, Donald Trump a fait du réseau social une arme de destruction massive. A coups de messages de 280 caractères, le père d’Ivanka, Donald Trump Jr., Barron, Tiffany et Eric, n’hésite pas à étriller ses opposants politiques.»
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«The political vultures are circling around the French president and there’s much at stake for the world order»
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«Less than a month ago, French President Emmanuel Macron staked his claim as the flag-bearer for globalism»
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«In a speech to 60 world leaders at the Arc de Triomphe, he eulogized the United Nations and declared nationalism the “betrayal” of patriotism.»
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«Last Saturday, tear gas and cobblestones flew in the same part of Paris as protesters trashed the iconic monument and demanded Macron’s embattled government withdraw a proposed fuel-tax increase»
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«For the first time in his presidency, he backed down. It was a humbling moment for opponents of the populist revolts that spawned Donald Trump»
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«Poland is flirting with the far right and nationalist parties cajoled by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban are plotting a rebellion at European Parliamentary elections in May. Meanwhile, Italy has collided with the European Union by taking a defiant stand on its budget spending»
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«But Merkel’s power on the world stage was underpinned by a political fortress at home, and the French leader looks anything but solid»
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«You can’t make speeches about defending the international order when your popularity is at 20 percent and there are protesters in the street, …. It’s very difficult to get your credibility back»
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«The images televised around the world last weekend were of burning cars in the French capital. The retreat by the 40-year-old French leader was mocked by Trump»
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«No tax merits putting our nation’s unity in danger»
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«Trump ignored him and withdrew from the Iran nuclear accord and the Paris climate agreement. Trump tweeted that Macron’s climb down over a carbon tax that would raise fuel prices was proof that he’d been right all al»
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«French opposition parties will file a joint no-confidence motion against the government on Monday. It’s unlikely to make much difference»
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«But European elections and a series of municipal and regional votes over the next two years could shape up as referendums on his policies, according to Antonio Barroso, an analyst at Teneo Intelligence, which looks at political risk.»
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«Even after Macron climbed down on the fuel taxes, the Yellow Vests have said they won’t dismantle their roadblocks and blockades. While they don’t have the formal organization of populist groups Italy’s Five Star Movement, the momentum is with them. Copycat protests have spread to Belgium and the Netherlands»
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Già.
I Gilet Jaunes in Francia non stanno lottando per una mera riduzione delle tasse. vogliono la testa di Mr Macron e quelle dei suoi Ministri.
Ma la loro protesta è destinata ad estendersi in tutti i paesi retti da governi liberal socialisti, Germania inclusa.
Ci saranno degli alti e dei bassi, sicuramente, ma alla fine il Popolo Sovrano si riapproprierà di ciò che gli compete: il governo politico della nazione.
Ed intanto, il 23 maggio si voterà perle elezioni europee.
The political vultures are circling around the French president and there’s much at stake for the world order.
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Less than a month ago, French President Emmanuel Macron staked his claim as the flag-bearer for globalism. In a speech to 60 world leaders at the Arc de Triomphe, he eulogized the United Nations and declared nationalism the “betrayal” of patriotism.
Last Saturday, tear gas and cobblestones flew in the same part of Paris as protesters trashed the iconic monument and demanded Macron’s embattled government withdraw a proposed fuel-tax increase. For the first time in his presidency, he backed down. It was a humbling moment for opponents of the populist revolts that spawned Donald Trump.
Europe has seen many a critical juncture in recent years, from the Greek debt crisis to the anti-immigrant backlash against refugees and Britain’s Brexit vote. Rarely, though, have so many political vultures been circling around one leader with so much at stake for the world order.
Poland is flirting with the far right and nationalist parties cajoled by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban are plotting a rebellion at European Parliamentary elections in May. Meanwhile, Italy has collided with the European Union by taking a defiant stand on its budget spending.
With the EU’s erstwhile firefighter, Angela Merkel, planning to step down as German chancellor, the baton was supposed to pass to Macron to uphold liberal democracy. But Merkel’s power on the world stage was underpinned by a political fortress at home, and the French leader looks anything but solid.
“You can’t make speeches about defending the international order when your popularity is at 20 percent and there are protesters in the street,” said Nicholas Dungan, a Paris-based senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. “It’s very difficult to get your credibility back.”
It’s a stark contrast to the weekend of Nov. 11 as leaders marked a century since the end of World War I. Macron championed the need for global cooperation while Trump cut an isolated figure. Europe’s divisions were laid bare that day as Polish government officials marched through Warsaw with far-right groups to mark the country’s Independence Day. Macron, though, stood firm as Europe’s statesman.
The images televised around the world last weekend were of burning cars in the French capital. The retreat by the 40-year-old French leader was mocked by Trump. Macron admitted, via his prime minister, that he’s not been able to connect with the French people. “No tax merits putting our nation’s unity in danger,” Edouard Philippe said in a televised address.
The trouble for opponents of Trump-style nativism and protectionism is that there’s no one else to take up his mantle, Dungan said.
After Macron was elected in May 2017, he sought to work with Merkel and a friendly government in Rome to deepen European integration. He reached out to Trump to convince the American president to stick to international agreements.
Trump ignored him and withdrew from the Iran nuclear accord and the Paris climate agreement. Trump tweeted that Macron’s climb down over a carbon tax that would raise fuel prices was proof that he’d been right all along.
Prevailing Wind
Merkel, meanwhile, was wounded in German elections in September 2017 and is about to be replaced as the head of her party, almost certainly by someone less keen on European integration. Italy elected a Euroskeptic government in March.
“His ambitions for a strong Europe had already taken a hit from events in Germany and elsewhere,” said Philippe Moreau Defarges, an adviser at the Paris-based French Institute for International Affairs. “But he emerges seriously weakened from the recent events. He’s just not appeared up to the level, and France’s image has taken a terrible blow.”
At home, his popularity has been sinking, hurt by the failure of his early unpopular changes to labor and tax law to revive the French economy. Macron’s policies are seen to favor the wealthy, and poll after poll have shown the French electorate thinks the former banker is aloof and arrogant. His approval rating is at 28 percent, according to an average of seven polling institutes.
Then came the “Yellow Vests.” The grassroots protest movement was sparked by opposition to his environmental policy of hiking taxes on diesel and gasoline to fund incentives to buy cleaner cars and home housing systems. But it’s evolved into widespread anger about the rising cost of living and declining services in rural and small-town France.
The protesters’ demands have expanded accordingly. Some want to restore the wealth tax, increasing pensions, raising the minimum wage, cutting the salaries of politicians, and even to Macron resigning and replacing the National Assembly with a “people’s council.” Polls show three-quarters of the French support their demands, even if they also disapprove of the violence that’s accompanied many of the protests.
Macron doesn’t face national elections until 2022, and he’s always said he doesn’t care about popularity polls. French opposition parties will file a joint no-confidence motion against the government on Monday. It’s unlikely to make much difference.
But European elections and a series of municipal and regional votes over the next two years could shape up as referendums on his policies, according to Antonio Barroso, an analyst at Teneo Intelligence, which looks at political risk.
“Whether Macron will have enough political space to implement more economic reforms will probably be determined by the European Parliament elections, which will likely be interpreted as a ‘midterm vote’ on the presidency,” Barroso said.
Isolated
Even after Macron climbed down on the fuel taxes, the Yellow Vests have said they won’t dismantle their roadblocks and blockades. While they don’t have the formal organization of populist groups Italy’s Five Star Movement, the momentum is with them. Copycat protests have spread to Belgium and the Netherlands.
Most of its members will vote for either Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigrant National Rally or Jean-Luc Melenchon’s far-left France Unbowed, said Marc Lazar, a professor at Sciences Po in Paris. Both party leaders were defeated by Macron last year and eye another shot at power. The worry for the EU is that neither of them are defenders of the bloc’s integrity.
Any breakthroughs by those parties in May’s European elections will make it difficult for Macron to push on with his agenda — for France and beyond. “Macron emerges from this extremely weakened and isolated,” said Lazar. “Both at home and in Europe.”
«Germany’s ruling Christian Democrat Union has chosen Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer as their new party leader, but Angela Merkel plans to serve out her term as chancellor until 2021»
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«The CDU general secretary won 517 of the 999 votes cast»
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Si resta davvero molto supiti che avendo Frau Merkel scelto di persona i 1,001 delegati al congresso della Cdu, Frau
Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer abbia conseguito solo 517 / 999 voti, ossia il 51.75%.
Ha conseguito la maggioranza, e quindi è stata legalmente eletta, nulla da dire.
Ma si potrebbero avere davvero molti dubbi che il partito la segua in modo compatto.
Non si trova una minoranza, ma solo 17 voti di maggioranza: un margine di manovra ben ristretto.
Tranne clamorosi colpi di scena, AKK dovrebbe proseguire nel solco di Frau Merkel, suo mentore politico.
Se si è alieni dal dare giudizi prima di aver valutato le opere fatte, sembrerebbero esserci validi motivi per prognosticare un’agonia lenta ed irreversibile della Cdu.
AKK dovrà vedersela con l’opposizione interna sicuramente, ma anche con la Csu e con la spd, per non parlare dei Grüne in costante crescita.
Infine si dovrebbe tener conto di un altro dato di fatto:
Più che fare i complimenti da Frau Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer si dovrebbe farli a Mr Trump ed a Mr Putin, che saputa la notizia avranno brindato con ottimo champagne.
Germany’s ruling Christian Democrat Union has chosen Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer as their new party leader, but Angela Merkel plans to serve out her term as chancellor until 2021.
The CDU general secretary won 517 of the 999 votes cast.
She narrowly defeated Friedrich Merz, a millionaire lawyer, who received 482 votes at the party conference.
As the head of Germany’s largest party, Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer could become the next German chancellor.
The 56-year-old former prime minister of the state of Saarland was a party favourite and Ms Merkel’s choice for succession.
Earlier during her farewell speech as party leader, Mrs Merkel praised Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer – who is known as AKK – for her 2017 electoral success in Saarland, in a clear hint of the chancellor’s personal preference in the leadership race.
Quando gli amici greci gli chiesero per quale motivo i romani erano così lassi con gli schiavi e così rigidi con i loro propri figli, Seneca rispose tra lo stupito ed il quasi seccato che i romani avrebbero dovuto governare il dominio del mondo. Semplice, ne vero?
Bloomberg dedica un lunghissimo articolo alla situazione svedese.
Significativi i titoli dei capitoli.
«The Reality of the Situation
Media Vs. Reality
The Sources of Gang Violence
Trapped by Decades of Bad Policy»
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L’articolista prende atto che la situazione reale della Svezia odierna è totalmente differente da quella che è usualmente dipinta dai media liberal socialisti. Gli svedesi sono infelici, vivono male e non sanno cosa poter fare per uscire dalla crisi.
Stockholm non è la Svezia, e la Svezia non è Stockholm. C’è anche tutto il resto, ed è un resto che vota.
Televisioni e giornali raccontano cose immaginarie come se fossero reali: veri e propri deliri. Lo stupefacente è piuttosto l’enorme numero di persone che da ancora loro credito.
Ma la gente ha paura ad uscire per strada, e se esce gli va fin di lusso se non si piglia qualche bastonata sulla testa.
I migranti non solo non sono per nulla integrati, ma alimentano anche violente gang. Poi, quando la polizia riuscisse a prenderli, ci sarebbe sempre un magistrato liberal socialista che li rimetterebbe in circolazione con tante scuse. Ma se un padre desse un sano ceffone educativo al figlio, ebbene, costui languirebbe per anni nelle patrie galere.
Anche la persona più ottusa alla terza rapina inizia a darsela.
Questa non è solo una crisi economica: il dissesto economico è solo l’epifenomeno, è solo un sintomo, non è la causa. Eurostat riporta come il reddito netto mediano in Svezia sia 1,732 euro al mese: ciò significa che la metà degli svedesi vive con cifre minori. L’indigenza schiarisce le idee. La fame poi fa vedere molto chiaro.
È in crisi la Weltanschauung svedese, varietà radicale dell’ideologia liberal socialista.
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I sovranisti, gli Swedish Democrats, hanno conquistato alle recenti elezioni oltre il 17% dei voti, e sono in continua salita, lenta ma costante. È stato quanto bastava per mandare in crisi il sistema svedese, incapace di darsi un qualche governo: tutti i vecchi partiti vedono i problemi, ma prospettano di risolverli usando tutti quei provvedimenti che li hanno causati. Come curare un coma etilico somministrando ulteriori superalcolici: alla fine il paziente decede.
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Come peraltro anche in Germania, il costo degli affitti è salito a dismisura e l’idea di comprare una casa è fuori dalle possibilità della maggior parte della gente, che farebbe carte false per farsi passare da migrante, fatto questo che garantisce ottimi alloggi gratuiti.
Ma dove arrivano i migranti, lì gli svedesi nicchiano ad andare ad abitare: diciamo che non lo reputano un bell’ambientino.
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Potremmo proseguire a lungo.
«They are angry about the criminality, Yildiz said of the nationalists’ local voters. They think where every other party has failed, the Swedish Democrats will manage to kick those who don’t respect the law out of the country».
Già.
Rispetto delle leggi, non di quanto impone l’ideologia liberal socialista.
Rising nationalists are wrong to blame the recent wave of migrants. But the rest of Sweden must own up to an even harder problem.
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Burhan Yildiz, a leader of more than 4,000 Kurds living in the Stockholm suburbs of Tensta and Rinkeby, claims he knows people who voted this year for the Sweden Democrats, the nationalist party whose improving electoral performance has thrown Swedish politics into disarray.
“They are angry about the criminality,” Yildiz said of the nationalists’ local voters. “They think where every other party has failed, the Swedish Democrats will manage to kick those who don’t respect the law out of the country.”
Yildiz has lived in the area for 29 of his 55 years and knows everyone, but a search for those who backed the Sweden Democrats in the September parliamentary election would be a tall order even for him. In the two electoral districts in Tensta, where Yildiz and I spent part of an afternoon drinking Turkish-style tea, 53 people out of the 1,557 who cast their votes supported the nationalists. More than 19,000 people live in Tensta, but most of them aren’t entitled to vote: Almost everyone here is an immigrant or a child of immigrants.
Tensta and Rinkeby, neighborhoods next to each other in the northwest of Stockholm, constitute one of the 23 areas in Sweden the police designate as “particularly disadvantaged” or “particularly vulnerable.” They’ve been variously called “ghettos” and “no-go zones,” and what’s going on in them has been driving Sweden’s political shift from unquestioning tolerance toward hostility to immigration.
The Sweden Democrats won 17.5 percent of the vote in September, making them the country’s third strongest party and leaving the political landscape so fragmented that the country has been without a government for the longest time in its history. None of the mainstream parties want to build a coalition with the Sweden Democrats because of the party’s white nationalist roots, and though there has been some progress recently in cabinet formation talks that may return Stefan Lofven to the prime ministership, the nationalists’ rise assures that business-as-usual is over. Sweden has finally been forced to tackle the immigration-related failures that have been accumulating for decades.
The Reality of the Situation
In an interview in Stockholm on Wednesday, a Sweden Democrats legislator named Paula Bieler told me that a sense of danger emanating from the “vulnerable areas” was a major driver of the party’s support.
“The number of these areas is growing,” Bieler said. “In Uppsala, which I represent, there used to be one or two areas that weren’t safe, but now it’s all over the city: shootings, gangs, murder, serious crime. It’s coming closer. Suddenly, women don’t feel secure going home from work.”
These claims don’t all hold up under scrutiny. Police started identifying “disadvantaged areas” — those with high unemployment, low school performance, strong gangs and parallel societies — in 2014, and it named a total of 55 such problematic neighborhoods then. By 2017, the number had increased to 61, but largely because police had broadened their criteria not because tensions had worsened. According to a report published earlier this year by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, a government-run research center for the criminal justice system, perceptions of personal safety in areas that are not listed as “vulnerable” have actually improved. In 2006 through 2011, 18.3 percent of Swedes in “normal” neighborhoods reported feeling unsafe, but in 2012 through 2017, the proportion was down to 17.2 percent.
Public perceptions, however, aren’t necessarily shaped by personal experience. In recent years, Sweden has seen a sharp increase in shootings: The number of lethal incidents in which firearms were involved has increased from 17 in 2011, when statisticians began tracking the deadly use of guns, to 40 in 2017. That may seem laughably low by the standards of the U.S., where 15,549 people (excluding suicides) were killed by guns in 2017; that’s about 1 for every 21,000 Americans as against 1 for every 250,000 Swedes. But these incidents, most of them caused by turf competition among gangs consisting primarily of first- and second-generation immigrants, are widely covered by the media. And an increasing number of homicides go unsolved. Amir Rostami, who researches organized crime at Stockholm University, told me that while about 80 percent of murders in Sweden were solved in 1990 through 1994, the rate has gone down to 21 percent in 2015-2016.
Swedes are also increasingly frustrated by the quality of services provided by their country’s vaunted welfare state. Though, objectively speaking, waiting times for health care haven’t increased in recent years, they are often painfully long. “We do appreciate the welfare state in Sweden,” Bieler says, “but people have been feeling more and more that they aren’t getting basic things for the high taxes they pay.”
Her party has done an effective job linking the frustration to the influx of asylum seekers in 2015 and 2016. In 2016, Sweden, a country of about 10 million, granted 151,031 residence permits, the most in its history in a single year. For the first time, Swedes were seeing new immigrants everywhere. The segregated suburbs, which had absorbed newcomers for decades and hid them from sight, suddenly couldn’t immediately vacuum up everyone who’d arrived. If one felt there was less of everything to go around — less security, less quality of life — it was easy to identify the culprits if one was so inclined.
But Sweden’s problem goes deeper than perceptions, and it does have to do with immigration. The country with the most welcoming asylum policy in the world — perhaps out of guilt for keeping out of both world wars, Bieler told me — has failed at integration, creating segregated ghettos with a culture of violence that isn’t any political party’s propaganda invention. If the latest wave of immigrants disperses into the “vulnerable areas,” where between 500,000 and 600,000 people live today, and if the government can’t get a grip on the situation there, Sweden’s current problems will be nothing compared to what comes next.
Media Vs. Reality
Having walked around Tensta after dark, I must admit it’s far nicer than any other bad neighborhood I’ve ever seen (I grew up in a concrete wasteland on the edge of Moscow). There’s no trash on footpaths between the boxy but well-maintained three- and six-story apartment blocks, built in the 1960s as part of Sweden’s “Million Homes Program” to provide affordable housing to workers. Socialist urban planning is often an underlying reason for the emergence of problem neighborhoods, but Tensta is fetchingly human-scale with a lot of small parks and footbridges spanning lanes of traffic. The absence of graffiti gave this Berlin resident an eerie feeling, and the lack of bars on ground-floor windows made me recall the complex gridwork necessary to keep out burglars in my country of birth.
From what I’d read in media accounts, I’d expected to see drug deals in progress, a common sight in some areas of Berlin. But no one lounged around Tensta looking like a dealer or offering illicit substances for sale. The area around the subway station used to have a lively scene, I’m told, but surveillance cameras, which are generally rare in privacy-minded Sweden, drove it to someplace I couldn’t find.
This isn’t just my impression or a situation unique to Tensta. The 176-page report of the National Council for Crime Prevention is based on a door-to-door survey of two “particularly disadvantaged” areas that yielded 1,176 completed questionnaires, a massive exercise conducted by young female field researchers. Johanna Skinnari, the project manager, told me that team members received strict instructions not to walk alone and not to knock on doors in the late evening, but learned to ignore these precautions because they never felt threatened. “These places are a long way from the banlieues,” Skinnari said, referring to the notorious Paris suburbs.
The “vulnerable areas” aren’t no-go zones in the sense that police and other emergency services avoid going there. “I’d have no problem going to Tensta with my daughter,” said Erik Akerlund, chief police superintendent for the Botkyrka municipality outside Stockholm, which includes a “particularly vulnerable” area of its own. The neighborhoods are, however, no-go zones in a different sense. Locals in Tensta complain of a shortage of government services and doctors’ offices. The neighborhood of 19,000 people doesn’t have a police station of its own, the nearest one is about four kilometers away in Sollentuna. The shopping center at the center of the area was nearly deserted at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, and the few shops open there looked like they were hanging by a thread. The area’s reputation doesn’t make it a desirable place of business or posting for a civil servant or, say, a tax-funded dentist.
The violence and insecurity are real, too. Skinnari’s survey showed that a greater share of people in the vulnerable areas are exposed to crimes, especially property ones, than the residents of other Swedish neighborhoods. Protection rackets are common, and teachers often face the threat of violence at school. Street gangs can be visible and abusive. As a result, 55 percent of the women and 24 percent of men in the disadvantaged areas reported feeling unsafe going outside, compared with 27 percent of women and 8 percent of men in other neighborhoods. After 7 p.m., there are barely any women on the streets of Tensta.
The oppressive atmosphere can be easily linked to the neighborhoods’ economic profile. The employment level in the ghettos was 47 percent last year compared with 67 percent nationwide; between 40 and 67 percent, depending on the neighborhood, make less than 100,000 kronor ($11,000) a year.
That’s an integration failure. According to official data, 50 to 60 percent of residents in vulnerable areas are immigrants or children of immigrants, compared with 17 percent nationwide. In hours of wandering around Tensta, I didn’t meet a single person who looked like a Swede.
The Swedish government has tried to get more ghetto residents into the labor market, even subsidizing employers who gave newcomers their first job. But the program backfired as the foreigners lost the jobs as soon as the subsidy period ran out.
“The government has often just thrown money at the problems — with good intentions, but now there’s a degree of project fatigue,” Skinnari said.
There are constant attempts to improve schooling in the vulnerable neighborhoods, but official statistics say that 40 percent of young people in the disadvantaged areas leave school before graduating.
The Sources of Gang Violence
No wonder the ghetto kids end up in gangs. Though Tensta is visibly segregated — you won’t see any Kurds sitting in the Somali cafe, and vice versa — researchers, locals and police officers told me that the modern Swedish gang is surprisingly multiethnic.
Earlier this month, Rostami published a report for the Stockholm-based Institute for Futures Studies in which he attempted to quantify Swedish organized crime and extremism by combining information from several government databases. He found “business” links spanning seemingly vast cultural divides, including between Islamic extremists and the Swedish nationalist far right. Of the 15,244 people who are part of the gang scene, according to Rostami’s data, 67 percent were born in Sweden. But many of them are second generation immigrant kids who grew up together in disadvantaged areas. They went into the drug business together, too.
This new generation is more violent than its predecessors. Rostami, an Iranian refugee who lived in a ghetto-like area in Gothenburg and worked as a cop before he became a researcher, told me that in recent years, competition from the new generation of gangsters has wreaked havoc with the self-policing of the traditional mafias — the Russians, the Italians, the Bosnians.
“They didn’t see the new generation coming up,” Rostami said. “There’s a cultural shift: For the new kids, violence is the language they speak. They don’t dream of becoming godfather, they want to be king for one day. They don’t care if they’re killed tomorrow, next week or next month.”
Akerlund, the police superintendent, has noticed the shift, too. “When I talk to older criminals,” he said, “I see they’re sometimes afraid of the younger members of their own gangs. They have a different mindset, more violent.”
This change has been brewing for years. Akerlund remembers how he started as an officer patrolling a difficult neighborhood in 2005; almost the first thing he remembers is a riot. The police made an arrest and stones were soon flying at the officers. Car burnings and rock-throwing, often in retaliation for a drug bust, were a frequent occurrence until the middle of the current decade. Now, they’re relatively rare: Akerlund says the police have a better idea of how to counteract rumors and inform the neighborhood what’s really going on.
But violence hasn’t gone away; it’s made a comeback in the shootings. The cutthroat gangland competition is a new phenomenon and researchers and police officials struggle to explain its roots or figure out why firearm use is growing despite restrictive gun laws. They all say, however, that the recent wave of immigration has nothing to do with it: The newcomers haven’t had time to integrate into the gang culture.
Trapped by Decades of Bad Policy
Although Skinnari’s report indicates some statistical improvement in the vulnerable areas — slightly less exposure to crime, more feeling of safety compared with a few years back —the prospects for residents may actually be getting worse. For decades, the bad neighborhoods were gateways for immigrants into the rest of Sweden. People settled in them for the ethnic support networks, learned the language, got better jobs and moved out in a few years, always replaced by more immigrants.
Now, people get stuck. Everyone I talked to named the Swedish real estate market as the reason. It’s almost impossible to rent an apartment in Stockholm or other big urban centers, and few can afford to buy one. Swedish housing prices were up 44 percent last year compared with 2012, and they’ve almost tripled since 2000.
“I remember, 20 years ago one could save, borrow and move out,” said Rostami, who’s done just that. “Now that’s a challenge: You need a very stable job and a high income.”
Fixing the housing market requires investment, political will and planning so skillful that I doubt it exists anywhere. Last year in the Netherlands, often touted as a model when it comes to creating neighborhoods for people with different income levels, residents of these mixed neighborhoods told me of powerful class and ethnic tensions. Sweden has even less experience with such projects.
Inadequate policing is at the core of the problem. Despite safety gains made in the past four years, Rostami said there aren’t enough officers to “shrink the space that organized crime occupies.” According to him, Germany has twice Sweden’s number of police officers per 100,000 residents.
Skinnari’s survey showed that in the vulnerable areas, the police and the court system often are mistrusted because they’re perceived as too soft: Known gang members are let out quickly and prisons lack space to accommodate everyone who’s sentenced, giving convicted gangsters a chance to keep terrorizing neighborhoods.
More prison cells — and, yes, a tougher deportation policy, as the Sweden Democrats suggest, could help.
Not even the nationalists propose going as far as neighboring Denmark with its infamous ghetto laws aimed at assimilating the immigrant population. The Sweden Democrat Bieler said she’d balk at the Danish idea of increasing punishment for crimes committed in problem areas. But it’s not unreasonable for a country to deport foreign nationals who have committed serious offenses. Though it offends liberal sensibilities, it’s also reasonable for a receiving country to try to instill some unifying values in newcomers, especially children. Not doing that has led to the emergence of parallel societies in the vulnerable areas, in which it’s normal to collect funds to refurbish a school in Baghdad but local schools are left to the Swedish government to worry about.
Interestingly, some of the younger immigrants, who yearn to become Swedes, don’t mind adopting a new identity as much as the previous generations of immigrants have done.
Ahmed Abdirahman, a 32-year-old integration policy expert at the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce and the founder of a non-governmental organization called the Global Village, was born in Somalia and lives in Tensta. He believes the immigrant areas, with a much higher proportion of children and young people, “are producing the future of Sweden,” a country with a low fertility rate. So the civil society in these areas shouldn’t aim simply to maintain the culture of the old home country, as has often been the case.
“We are the next generation, and for us it’s about being Swedes: we want to be part of the political conversation,” Abdirahman says.
Even if the Sweden Democrats ever become part of the establishment and succeed in restricting immigration, Sweden is stuck with a large, segregated immigrant population that both its high achievers and its criminals won’t let the rest of the country ignore.
Sweden has lived for decades with a blissful sense that a wealthy, tolerant society can iron out all its kinks. Now, there’s a widespread sense that the country’s social and law enforcement infrastructure is overburdened because too many immigrants are coming in, and time is needed to assimilate the earlier arrivals. But time isn’t the best doctor here: Problems with previous generations of immigrants and their kids were swept under the rug for too long.
What’s needed now is clearer awareness of where the problems really are. The police and researchers affiliated with them lead the way here with their attempts to pinpoint and study the problem neighborhoods and the gangs that operate in them. Superintendent Akerlund firmly believes that in 10 to 15 years, there won’t be any vulnerable areas in his district. But he understands that dream can only become reality with constant effort and learning.
The rest of Swedish society should concentrate on the real problem, too: It’s not the recent refugee wave, it’s decades of complacency and half-hearted integration policies. For Sweden, proud of its world-leading social policies, that’s a bitter pill to swallow, but better late than never.
L’obiettivo è costituito dalle dimissioni di Mr Macron e del suo governo.
Sabato questo l’appuntamento è a Parigi: scopo è metterla sotto sopra proprio nel periodo natalizio di massima affluenza dei turisti.
Ma non ci si illuda: siamo solo agli inizi di una azione che potrà avere alti e bassi ma che terminerà soltanto con l’uscita di scena di Mr Macron.
Quando il popolo sovrano è obbligato ad usare la violenza, sa bene come farlo. E fa più che bene ad usare la piazza per imporsi ai tiranni.
«The French presidency has revealed that it fears there will be “major violence” from an “extreme core of several thousand” coming to the French capital “to destroy and kill” at the ‘yellow vest’ protests set to take place across France, notably in Paris, on Saturday»
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«We have reason to fear a great violence»
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«French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday urged politicians and union officials to launch a “call for calm.”»
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«In a move they hoped would help appease protesters the government announced it was completely scrap the planned fuel tax hikes for 2019, yet it appears demonstrators are unsatisfied and are ready to push for more concessions that will help boost their spending power»
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«The anxiety of the French authorities is evident in view of the prospect of another day of violence in the heart of the capital which is still under the shock of last weekend’s riots»
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«Several thousand people have already said they are ready to take part in more demonstrations»
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«Protests planned for next weekend under the name Acte IV (Act 4) refer to the fact that this could be the fourth weekend of protests in France.»
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«In the discussion for the event, Acte 4 – Vous avez carte blanche à Paris (Act 4: You have free reign in Paris), over 1,000 people have confirmed they will be attending and 6,000 have said they are interested, suggesting that protesters are gearing up for more violent conflict with the authorities this weekend»
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«Stop telling us to be peaceful… why should we act like reasonable people when the government doesn’t?»
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«Many yellow vest organisers are invoking France’s revolutionary history as justification for more unrest in the streets this coming weekend»
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«Another Facebook event “Acte IV: Aux Armes Citoyens”, taking place at the Eiffel tower on Saturday morning, is named after the famous line from the national anthem encouraging citizens to take up arms.»
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Leggete con molta attenzione: alle parole seguono i fatti.
«Acte IV: Aux Armes Citoyens»
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«the national anthem encouraging citizens to take up arms»
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Mr Macron ha giocato con il fuoco: se si dimettesse non ne resterebbe ustionato.
The French presidency has revealed that it fears there will be “major violence” from an “extreme core of several thousand” coming to the French capital “to destroy and kill” at the ‘yellow vest’ protests set to take place across France, notably in Paris, on Saturday.
“We have reason to fear a great violence,” the presidential palace told AFP amid calls for renewed mobilization of ‘yellow vests’ across the country after last weekend’s ‘unprecedented violence’ on the streets of the French capital.
The presidency has said it fears an “extreme core of several thousand people” who would come to Paris “to destroy and kill”.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday urged politicians and union officials to launch a “call for calm.”
French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe echoed that call in parliament and urged politicians to be responsible.
“What is at stake is the safety of the French people and our institutions. I call here for responsibility, ” said Philippe.
“All the actors in this public debate, politicians, union leaders, editorialists and citizens, will be accountable for their statements in the coming days,” he added.
In a move they hoped would help appease protesters the government announced it was completely scrap the planned fuel tax hikes for 2019, yet it appears demonstrators are unsatisfied and are ready to push for more concessions that will help boost their spending power.
The anxiety of the French authorities is evident in view of the prospect of another day of violence in the heart of the capital which is still under the shock of last weekend’s riots.
There have been dozens of calls to demonstrate in Paris on social media on Saturday, with many naming the Champs-Elysees — the scene of riots on December 1st — as the meeting point.
Several thousand people have already said they are ready to take part in more demonstrations.
And perhaps most worryingly for the French president and government, many of these events and those who are interested in going are calling for more disorder in the capital.
Protests planned for next weekend under the name Acte IV (Act 4) refer to the fact that this could be the fourth weekend of protests in France.
A pinned post for one Facebook event planned for this Saturday, shows the yellow vest movement apparently “at the top of its game” in video footage of fights between protesters and police near the Arc du Triomphe filmed last weekend.
In the discussion for the event, Acte 4 – Vous avez carte blanche à Paris (Act 4: You have free reign in Paris), over 1,000 people have confirmed they will be attending and 6,000 have said they are interested, suggesting that protesters are gearing up for more violent conflict with the authorities this weekend.
“Stop telling us to be peaceful… why should we act like reasonable people when the government doesn’t?” one wrote.
Another added, “in the event of Act 4 the police will have the army and security companies with them. They want nothing more or less than a war.”
Many yellow vest organisers are invoking France’s revolutionary history as justification for more unrest in the streets this coming weekend.
Another Facebook event “Acte IV: Aux Armes Citoyens”, taking place at the Eiffel tower on Saturday morning, is named after the famous line from the national anthem encouraging citizens to take up arms. The event has more than 3,000 confirmed attendees and a further 21,000 interested in going.
Appropriately, one commenter plans “to bring Molotov cocktails to force the barricades!”
A total of 13,000 protesters have either confirmed or are thinking of attending the “Acte 4: Appel National” (Act 4: National Call) in the capital, with commenters in the event discussion drawing comparisons between today’s yellow vest protests and the infamous period of civil unrest in France during May 1968.
“In ’68 protesters weren’t called hooligans! Stop being sheep and have some balls!” one commenter wrote under an image showing chaos and destruction in the streets of Paris during demonstrations in the 60s.
Another commenter urged others to share an image of a demonstrator from May ’68 hurling objects at police barricades.
Printed on the image are list of changes the May ’68 protests brought about followed by the caveat “incredible violence was unfortunately necessary to achieve all this.”
While protests are being planned at famous landmarks like the Eiffel Tower and Place de la Bastille, some yellow vests are also calling for more targeted action.
They have suggested taking the protests to wealthy areas of Paris and the headquarters of news outlets BFM TV and TF1, who they feel have “discredited the movement” with news coverage biased against the yellow vests.
Non-violent protests are also being planned in the capital on December 8th, but even among this group it seems there is support for the “hooligans” and all the media coverage they have received.
One yellow vest posted, “it’s thanks to them that we are being heard.”
«The Socialist Party has ruled Andalusia for 36 years. It still won more than any other party – 33 seats – but not enough for a majority even with potential left-wing allies»
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«Tough on immigration, Vox could be a kingmaker in a coalition in Andalusia»
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A questo punto è davvero debito di giustizia ringraziare la fattiva opera di Mr Macron e di Frau Merkel.
Senza la loro perseverante dedizione all’ideologia liberal socialista il trionfo elettorale di ieri due dicembre sarebbe stato impossibile.
I ‘lebbrosi’ di Vox hanno conquistato dodici seggi alle elezioni regionali in Andalusia, da sempre roccaforte rossa e sono adesso ago della bilancia.
Eterna riconoscenza dovrebbe essere doverosamente estesa ai media liberal socialisti, che si confermano essere i migliori alleati dei sovranisti, populisti, o ‘lebbrosi’ che dir si voglia.
Se perseverassero imperterriti, alle prossime elezioni europee allora si fa cappotto.
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Consigliare i dubbiosi è opera di misericordia spirituale.
«Is Europe seeing a nationalist surge?»
Ebbene, sì, cari amici giornalisti della Bbc: i lebbrosi sono alle porte e vi stanno alitando sul collo.
A far-right party has won seats in a Spanish regional election for the first time in decades.
The Vox party took 12 parliamentary seats in Andalusia on Sunday, beating expectations that it would win five.
Tough on immigration, Vox could be a kingmaker in a coalition in Andalusia.
Its breakthrough is the latest in a nationalist surge that has swept across Europe. Many had thought Spain was immune because of memories of life under a fascist dictatorship.
The Socialist Party has ruled Andalusia for 36 years. It still won more than any other party – 33 seats – but not enough for a majority even with potential left-wing allies.
The conservative Popular Party (PP) came second, though it also lost ground.
Its national leader Pablo Casado said he hoped to put together a coalition in the region with Vox and the centre-right Ciudadanos (Citizens) party, which also made big gains in the election.
Between them, the three parties hold a majority of seats.
The southern region of Andalusia – Spain’s most populous – has high unemployment and is the main arrival point in Spain for migrants crossing the Mediterranean.
The regional result is a major setback for Spain’s new Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez. This is his first poll test since he came to power after the ruling PP were ousted by MPs in June over a corruption scandal.
Correspondents say there has been speculation for months that Mr Sanchez could call a snap early national election to coincide with regional and European polls next May, but the Andalusia result would seem to give him little incentive to do so now.
Who are Vox?
Founded in 2014, the party has struggled to make an impact on Spain’s political landscape.
Vox has been derided as far-right and populist, anti-immigrant and anti-Islam but its leader Santiago Abascal believes its recent surge of support is because it is “in step with what millions of Spaniards think”.
Its leaders reject the far-right label, insisting it is a party of “extreme necessity” rather than extremism. Its overall support for Spain’s membership of the EU, it says, differentiates it from many populist and far-right movements across Europe.
The party proposes to “make Spain great again” and critics have described its ideology as a nationalist throwback to the dictatorship of Francisco Franco.
Andiamo al sodo: i Gilets Jaunes vogliono solo la testa di Mr Macron.
Il Presidente Macron, degno erede dei fasti regali, non è comparso di persona in televisione.
L’annuncio è stato dato dal Primo Ministro Edouard Philippe.
«French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said on Tuesday that a fuel tax increase planned for January 1 had been suspended for six months»
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«The move to end violent “yellow vest” protests against the measure was announced during a televised address.»
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«Philippe called for an end to the violence, saying “no tax deserves to risk unity of the nation.”»
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«It’s a first step, but we will not settle for a crumb»
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«Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right party National Rally (formerly the National Front), tweeted: “A moratorium on taxes is being considered. But a moratorium is only a postponement.”»
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«Republican Senator Bruno Retailleau described the moratorium as a reprieve and “absolutely inadequate.” He said the French people called for “a cancellation.”»
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«Meanwhile, the Paris Public Prosecutors Office said it has started an investigation into “violence by persons holding public authority” after a video was broadcast on social networks showing a man apparently being beaten up by eight police officers on Saturday»
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È terminata una battaglia, ma la guerra continua.
Alcuni elementi dovrebbero essere adesso evidenti.
– Mr Macron resta formalmente il Presidente della Francia, ma conta veramente poco. Il vero potere è transitato in altre mani.
– Basta che quattro gatti spelacchiati scendano in piazza a dimostrare, e Mr Macron si rimangerebbe qualsiasi cosa prima detta con fare greve e solenne.
– Questa lezione dovrebbe essere ben tenuta presente. Quella odierna è al massimo una tregua.
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La sospensione della legge energetica pospone semplicemente il problema a dopo le elezioni europee, alle quali sembrerebbe lecito prevedere per Mr Macron un bagno di lacrime e sangue. A quell’epoca sarà ancora più vulnerabile.
Les Gilets Jaunes hanno sicuramente come obiettivo la riduzione delle tasse, ma il loro vero obiettivo sono le dimissioni di Mr. Macron ed il cambio di governo.
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A riprova di quanto detto, si rilegga con grande attenzione l’articolo del Deutsche Welle, da sempre covo di Alì Babà ed i suoi quaranta ladroni.
L’articolo cita Mrs Marine Le Pen ed il senatore repubblicano Mr Retailleau: non menziona per nulla i leader della sinistra, che pure ci sono, anche se con risultati elettorali scarni.
Poi, ciliegina sulla torta
«the Paris Public Prosecutors Office said it has started an investigation into “violence by persons holding public authority”»
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Signori, i tempi stanno cambiando alla velocità della luce.
France has suspended a planned fuel tax hike which has sparked violent protests. In a televised address, the prime minister called for an end to the demonstrations, saying “no tax deserves to risk unity of the nation.”
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French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said on Tuesday that a fuel tax increase planned for January 1 had been suspended for six months. The move to end violent “yellow vest” protests against the measure was announced during a televised address.
Philippe called for an end to the violence, saying “no tax deserves to risk unity of the nation.”
“It’s a first step, but we will not settle for a crumb,” said Benjamin Cauchy, one of the leaders of the protests.
Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right party National Rally (formerly the National Front), tweeted: “A moratorium on taxes is being considered. But a moratorium is only a postponement.”
Republican Senator Bruno Retailleau described the moratorium as a reprieve and “absolutely inadequate.” He said the French people called for “a cancellation.”
Police ‘violence’ probe opened
Meanwhile, the Paris Public Prosecutors Office said it has started an investigation into “violence by persons holding public authority” after a video was broadcast on social networks showing a man apparently being beaten up by eight police officers on Saturday.
Running urban battles
Over the weekend, protesters set fire to dozens of cars and several storefronts along the Champs Elysees. The Arc de Triomphe was sprayed with graffiti.
Talking tough
French President Emmanuel Macron had denounced the protests and vowed a tough response.
“I will never accept violence,” Macron said from the G20 summit in Argentina. “No cause justifies that authorities are attacked, that businesses are plundered, that passers-by or journalists are threatened or that the Arc de Triomphe is defiled.”
The protests descended into the worst urban violence France has seen in a decade. Police used water cannon to quash the unrest.
The proposed tax would have raised gasoline price by 4 euro cents per liter. Gasoline currently costs about 1.42 euros ($1.62) a liter in Paris, slightly more than diesel.
Planned rises in electricity and gas prices, and plans to tighten safety checks on vehicles were also suspended.
“These decisions, with immediate effect, should return calm to the country,” Philippe said, calling for a “real dialogue on all the concerns expressed in these last weeks.”
