Paris on lockdown as police clash with 'Yellow Jackets' and protests sweep France
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
PARIS — The sound of sirens, angry chants and the crack of stun grenades echoed throughout the French capital Saturday as Parisians braced themselves for what many feared would be the most violent protests in weeks of forceful anti-government demonstrations that have swept the country .
Protests that began last month against planned tax hikes on gas have since morphed into a wider rebuke of Emmanuel Macron’s presidency and an expression of anger at his attempts to reform France's long-ailing economy.
An estimated 10,000 yellow jacket protesters flooded Paris' otherwise largely deserted streets on Saturday, while 125,000 demonstrated around the country, according to Interior Minister Christophe Castaner. Police arrested 1,385 people on Saturday and expect that the number may increase. In addition, 135 were injured, including 17 police officers, he added.
The effects of the protest were felt beyond the France's borders as well, with protesters donning yellow jackets as a symbol of resistance in Belgium Saturday and Iraq earlier this week .
Almost eight in 10 people in France support the protests, according to a poll published las t month .
The Champs-Elysées — the scene of last week’s clashes with police — was a rallying point for protesters, with many there calling for Macron to resign. Meanwhile, Paris’ glittering museums and galleries, including the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower, did not open their doors to the usual troop of holiday season tourists. Soccer matches were also called off across the country.
'FED UP'
Protesters who spoke to NBC News on the Champs-Elysées Saturday said they were not there for violence but to send Macron a message .
"He is amplifying a phenomenon that has existed for years now," said Julian Alla, 31, a teacher from the rural Lozère region in the south of France. "That is that inequality is increasing, the rich are more and more rich and the poor are getting poorer."
"We're fed up and it makes me happy to see that everyone is here to say 'enough is enough,'" said Alla, who had traveled more than 385 miles to Paris to protest.
Antoine Gauthier, 47, who had come to the protest with his 17-year-old son said that while he was not struggling financially, he wanted to show his solidarity with those who were.
"It's fraternity," he said. "We understand that we need taxes but we can't be taxed to the point that we can't live."
Gauthier said that many people after paying rent and taxes find themselves with nothing. "It's those people who we need to help," he said.
John Schiltz, 36, a train-track worker from the Seine-et-Marne region to the east of Paris, said he would continue to protest until Macron resigned.
"He has to go," he said. "He's adding all these taxes without helping us at all — it's just tax, tax, tax."
Alexandre Bouchard who had travelled up from the rural Corrèze department in central France said he had come because he wanted to protest against increasing inequality.
"There is no longer a redistribution of wealth in France," the electrician, 28, said.
As darkness fell across the French capital, the atmosphere on the streets became more unpredictable with some taking advantage of the chaos to loot shops. Some protesters continued to play cat and mouse with riot police.
Meanwhile in Washington, President Donald Trump, who enjoyed an erstwhile bromance with the French leader , tweeted in apparent support of the protests.
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I think that Macron’s presidency is all but over, but what's to follow, is the bigger question.
The end result of Socialism
Macron is anything but a socialist. His government has been of the rich , by the rich, for the rich.
You have this 180° wrong.
Woosh. The rioters are against Macron...
Big C,
We get that. But saying that this is the net result of socialism is wrong. It is the net cause of telling the people "Let them eat cake".
France has very complex issues at hand, from economic to social. Right now the biggest is taxation and quality of life issues.
Yep.
I thought you opposed taxes Vic. That puts you on the side of the yellow jackets.
I have no idea what you mean.
It sure does! It's too bad you didn't get it.
In Macron's speech today he admitted that many companies have left France due to high taxes. France is now facing a Populist revolt!
I admit that I don't quite get all that's going on over there.
In one passage a guy describes it as the middle and upper classes being squeezed and then another passage someone describes it as being against education reform, which would make it harder and more expensive for students.
It almost seems they are just pissed at everything across the board.
And the Guy looting is protesting the fact he doesn't have a TV with 70" screen.
I'm surprised at the quality of international reporting on this. It has been fairly accurate!
Violent protest has been part of the French political process since the Revolution of 1789 - Fall of the Bastille, and all that.
Politics is inherently conservative, with the bourgeois gradually amassing wore wealth and power. The "social contract" in France (and I think much of Europe) has been to recognize the ever-growing wealth of the bourgeoisie, on the condition that everyone else gat a fair cut of the pie.
When the bourgeoisie gets too greedy, the people go to the barricades.
Macron does NOT have any kind of mandate. He was elected to avoid Le Pen. He has been blatantly pro-1%... so... BARRICADES!!
This was all about Socialism and the 99% being taxed to death
No. It has nothing whatsoever to do with socialism.
This was all about Capitalism and the 99% being taxed to death
If this turns around and Le Penn gets in, lord help France.
Yeah...
It would be kinda like having Trump...
The wealthy should leave and take their businesses elsewhere. NPR interviewed a guy that owned a BMW motorcycle dealership and the goons destroyed the place. Listening to him had me wishing he could have protected everything he spent his life building with a machine gun.
The wealthy should leave... and leave behind the wealth they extracted from everyone else.
(This would be a great recipe for a lot of countries, above all the US.)
A worker generates X added value. She is paid 0.5 X. The already-wealthy owner (who has done nothing at all), also takes 0.5 X.
It's called "capitalism".
Socialism
Clearly French Socialism...
Yeah that has a great record of success...
In what country has socialism been successful?
"The trouble with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money." - Margaret Thatcher
France is not a socialist country, and never has been. So when you say "French Socialism", what are you talking about?
That is a very foolish question. [Deleted]
[Removed]
Rather than making deflecting comments laced with ridicule of others, why won't you answer my very simple question, Bob? (Please see comment 4.1.8 )
[deleted]
No nation has implemented an economic system wherein the productive resources are collectively controlled by the demos. This will likely not happen in our lifetimes, if ever.
Quite a few nations have created economic systems controlled by an authoritarian State which self-labeled its initiatives as socialism and/or communism. Mere labels. SINO.
By 'socialism' Thatcher was referring to European social democracy - a form of capitalism. She was referring to statist methods where the government tried to control things and/or be benevolent:
Yeah, well Bob when in your presence, EVERYONE is ignorant.......
So I see nothing has changed with you..... Still the same old bob...
Are unicorns green?
Answer the question!
[Removed]
yes which is capitalism with a layer/template of socialism laid over the top to control it....
Problem is in capitalism, someone has to pay for things, and under capitalism overlaid with a socialist control program the money comes from taxation as juxtaposed with an authoritarian regime like communism that plain takes ownership of all production, (nationalization) since the government owns everything and possesses all the money no taxation is needed the government doles out just what it thinks everyone needs.... (except for the few at the very top who magically and socially get very very wealthy far beyond the dreams of avarice)
The more socialist control overlaid, the more taxation required....
And since we both understand that true socialism will probably never exist in a real world context, (I recognize your ideal that man has to evolve a bit more for it to work) All we can talk about is what we have had real world experience with.....
And so far socialism is a massive failure everywhere it has been forced upon people, everywhere it has been eliminated, are the wealthiest and highest standard of living places in the world....
People want to come here for the politics? no.
People want to come here for the standard of living and the freedom that brings..... Being poor in America is living the lap of luxury anywhere else in the world....
People want socialism, or socialist overlaid capitalism, (as practiced in the world today) like they want a case of herpes....
Exactly.
I'll submit about as real as a any "pure socialist country". That is a unicorn, a thing that has never existed.
You insist on discussing the color of unicorns.
Actually... I feel fairly comfortable with my intellectual processes.
In particular, I deal in reality, not in unicorns.
I would phrase it as a capitalist economic engine funding statist social welfare programs. Capitalism feeding a 'benevolent' but incompetent government. Also known as social democracy.
Taxing businesses (and the people) to fund government provided services is simply good old fashioned redistribution of wealth. All governments necessarily do this to a degree, but some take this to excess and typically with poor results (as Thatcher appropriately observed).
Socialism in name only - SINO. Often these were (are) authoritarian rule, state controlled economies, etc. They have been massive failures; no surprise why. Calling this socialism ignores the meaning of the concept and simply accepts the labels that the authoritarian leaders historically hid behind while implementing their regimes.
Rule of thumb: if a minority is controlling the productive resources of an economy (minority = government or minority = aristocracy or a combination) then the system aint socialism. I am not aware of a single system in which the productive resources were NOT controlled by a minority.
Anyone know of a nation wherein the demos (the people) collectively controlled their productive resources?
That was true in the 1970s. It isn’t today.
The median French family income, after redistribution, is higher than the American. The "land of opportunity" isn't America, any more. (Thirty years of stagnant wages will do that!)
Nicaraguans still come... but I doubt you meant them.
I know this, YOU know this, I suspect most know this. BUT it is what is known about socialism, as far as any practical attempts to create one.... Why do they use force, cause it certainly will not be voted into power...
No, such a critter does not exist, not in the modern world at least, and every socialist commune I've ever seen or heard of has at least several who are "more equal" than the others generally delegated as leaders.... The entire "Brotherhood of Man" utopian social ideal is completely in-opposite of mans makeup....
Equality is a fairy tale, a nice cute dream of a perfect world. The failing is we live in a world where science dictates that only the strong survive (we cannot get away from natural selection) and equality in the world is anti-science.....
Trouble is that what is known about socialism is not socialism. Socialism to most people is simply a label for authoritarian rule, redistribution of wealth, command economies, expropriation of private resources, and / or combinations thereof. That is the problem - 'socialism' the label is used not per its meaning but rather as a pejorative. It, to most, simply means 'a system that is undesirable'. Accordingly, the label 'socialism' has lost all relevant meaning. In this thread, the challengers of Bob each have a set of negative attributes in mind that they consider to be 'socialism'. I do not blame Bob for not wasting his time to explain the concepts. None of the challengers will listen .. they will simply argue that socialism is whatever they think it means. IMO, of course.
The utopian view is of course unrealistic. But even the basics of democratic, decentralized control over productive resources (i.e. the economy) have never existed as the economic system for a contemporary nation. People label truly horrible systems as socialism simply because the dictators behind these systems self-labeled as such. Then they decree that socialism failed wherever it is tried.
Socialism is not about equality. Equality is impossible. Further, equality is counter-productive. Any system that goes pure egalitarian would necessarily do that by force - literally making everyone work the same job, have the same type of home, car, clothing, etc. It is a truly insane concept that nobody wants and would never work. Socialism is about equal opportunity - not equality.
So (considering the above regarding equality) if there were instead equal opportunity then what would result is a natural disparity. There will always be the leaders, doers, risk-takers, alpha personalities and the followers, mediocre, beta personalities. That is indeed human nature. And a system that tries to oppress the hard-working, energetic, imaginative people who have ambition and are not afraid to take risks will almost certainly fail. People seem to think that this is the essence of capitalism and that socialism would seek to suppress the drivers so that in spite of efforts they are 'equal to' the followers. This is what comes from merely accepting labels without engaging in research.
The essence of capitalism is building capital...... the long and the short of it.
And I submit that the capitalists views on socialism are very similar to the socialists views on capitalism, Mistaken identity so to speak or in essence failure to recognize the true nature of each. Socialism, as described by the theorists, is a pipe dream of unrealistic expectations. Capitalism on the other hand is an oppressive expression of one of mans true failings.... Greed.
The system needs to be a balance of the two which is what free market economies seem to be the best at creating.... You can attain whatever level of economic comfort your willing to work for.....
And everyone helps the others attain such..... equality of opportunity is one of the precepts this nation was founded upon. And is why a lot of people throughout the history of this country have desired to come here..... but then that also give rise to another of man's failings, ambition.
The real culprit is organized capital, the stock market, credit economies, moving money. The wealthiest people don't actually do anything, they manipulate the system so when money moves, (changes hands) they get paid...
The whole argument that they "Earned It" is bogus in the context of organized capital, they continue their wealth building on the basis of a system organized for the benefit of a few.... organized on the backs of those who have little but gamble it all on trying to break into the wealth game.
And the rest of us just go on making ourselves as comfortable as possible with what we earn.....
So your vision of socialism is capitalism without the organized capital aspects.... everyone earns just what he needs no more no less. Problem is....
Once a person has earned what he needs, he stops earning anymore... he doesn't need it so there is no incentive to work any further.... socialism is the ideal that he will continue to work the same as he did for his needs except with a focus on the community needs.....
But what's the point? who is going to control the extra produced from the extra work above his needs....
Once that stage is reached your right back into that control issue, who's has control and what are they going to do with that control.... the person that gets to decide what to do with the extra has more power than those that don't.... He has a bigger influence over the society than those that simply work and earn.... right back into that societal imbalance that everyone complains about with the current version capitalism....
I don't see socialism ever working until they solve the excess earned production problem..... the only current logical resolution is to sell off the excess and the moment the exchange takes place, your back into a capitalist system...... produce more for profit......
This is why I believe socialism will never be a viable economic system..... You will never be able to solve the excess production / profit problem.....
We all love fantastical creatures! Some love green unicorns, some love pure socialist countries...
No, actually... You did not.
So there are two possibilities. Either you do not know what you yourself said... or you are intentionally deforming what you said.
Interesting.......
OMG...
Still looking for unicorns.
Sure. The essence of capitalism is ownership of productive resources, employment of workers to produce goods/services, generation of profit.
From what I have observed, socialists tend to fully understand capitalism.
Why? To what end would one seek this? Capitalism and socialism are polar opposites. A system will either be predominantly socialism (with classical entrepreneural capitalists) or predominantly capitalism. The so call mixed-economies are all capitalist economies.
The capital C capitalism is properly distinguished from small c capitalism where the latter represents small businesses and the former represent profit generation machines. While there is plenty of good in generating value (evidenced by profits) there is plenty of bad in the gorp that hangs from that. Hedge fund managers are a fine example of capitalism gone awry. A family owned furniture store providing local employment and satisfying a community need, for example, is an example of capitalism working as most envision it.
Socialism, when I describe it, is not my vision nor it is my idea. And what you just described is not socialism. Everyone earns what they deserve based on their contribution. If a socialist enterprise has an engineer who is kicking butt with popular, practical innovations that engineer will naturally (and necessarily) be better net compensated than others. Having people earn what they need makes zero sense and is not a tenant of socialism. Marx' comment on "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" is referring to a utopic state where society has evolved to the point where people do not want for resources (they are in abundance in this utopia) and contribute their skills (people freely do what they are good at) for the betterment of society. It is living to work rather than working to live taken to the extreme. This is Marx day dreaming yet people totally misrepresent his meaning.
A productive enterprise under socialism would produce goods and services, earn a profit, expand, etc. The 'profit' as it were is determined by the owners (the workers are the owners) to be distributed (profit sharing) or invested in growth. Not unlike what we are used to except that the enterprise is 100% internally owned and controlled. There is great incentive to do well because the success of the enterprise translates into success for the workers (and vice-versa).
I think the biggest challenge for socialism would be achieving the cooperation and discipline by all to be informed and engaged. Seems to me, most human beings pretend to be leaders but actually rely upon others more than they will ever admit. Most seem to be okay with others doing much of their thinking for them. That would be a critical failure under a system of socialism. And given the way people operate today, I think societies would need to evolve a more cooperative, engaged demos for anything like socialism to work.
It might happen, but not in our lifetimes.
Everyone has to do some form of work to live, that is a given especially in the modern world....
What your describing here isn't socialism as I understand it, small "c" capitalism maybe is a decent term to name it. You said that Capitalism and socialism are polar opposites. If this is the case and they are actually polar opposites how can running a business on a profit basis be socialist, it is the very definition of a capitalist enterprise irrespective of the ownership status..... So I guess what your saying is that socialism is solely determined not by what they do, but by the way it is owned.... The man running the business should receive more than those not running the business. I mean each should be paid by how much he contributes correct? the man sweeping the floor gets the minimum and the guy cutting the diamond (so to speak) gets the most...... And who makes the determination of who is worth what?
I think the biggest challenge for socialism would be achieving an understanding of socialism as not a utopia but as a world in which no one has any power over anyone else. But then that is anarchy.
Well thank you for explaining what your vision of socialism is and yeah I'll stick to calling it your vision. Cause not all who call themselves socialists hold to the same ideal, particularly those that think profit is bad and that fair government is the true calling of socialism.... (we have one of those on the Seattle City Counsel now)
I agree with your view somewhat and absolutely with the idea we have a long way to go to get there...
Good conversation..... a rarity around here these days...
Why? Why do people "have to" work? Wikipedia :
So... roughly $1500 per month per person. Including children.
It isn't hard to imagine a world where no one has to "work" (in the sense of undesired drudgery).
Let the market do its thing! Let people decide how much they want (and are capable) to work, and what they're willing to do. The fun stuff - from acting to financial wheeling and dealing - probably shouldn't be paid a lot... after all, it's fun! Skilled labor - plumbing and so on - should be able to command pretty good pay. And of course... being an heir shouldn't get paid at all.
Agreed, but Marx was describing a utopia. Imagine the world of Star Trek where everything that one needs in terms of resources can be replicated. That gets you closer to what a utopia might be (albeit Marx no doubt would not be thinking in those exact terms ... but you get the ideal). In this future world (not today) people would not need to work to live.
I know. Interesting, eh?
They are not polar opposites relative to earning a profit (by any other name). They are polar opposites in terms of who controls the productive resources. The difference is minority control over collective productive resources vs. collective (everyone) control over same.
Just because Marx dreamed of a utopia does not mean that people are thinking instant utopia (or even 'ever' utopia). The focus with socialists at the moment is how to enable economic freedom (distributed control).
You should not because that presumes I am just making this up. I assure you, I am simply reporting. It is easy enough to read up on theories such as Economic Democracy and get into this topic but in substantial detail.
They live a mediocre existence.
They do not find opportunities to advance. In theory, if a group of people are all owners working for their collective good, the unproductive will have a hard time remaining part of the fold. Imagine a local furniture making business in which everyone is part owner. If everyone is in it together the slacking off is not as easy. But with larger enterprises this dynamic gets more complicated ... just as we experience today in capitalism.
Anyway, given you appear to agree with the notion of advancement based on merit (contribution to the enterprise), then that aspect of contemporary theories of socialism is something with which you have no problem.
Ok I'll bite, it's been about a decade since I've researched the current status of the Socialist movement and it's relevant theories....
Unfortunately, there are a lot of politicians (Kashama Sawant in particular) that still believe in the old theories of bad capital profit....
But I will take a look....
How about, they are in the Bible. Could the Bible be mistaken?
The Greeks? The Indus?
and we now apparently have fossils...fossils of what we commonly call unicorns.
One looks at France and wonders if the English who voted remain have a suicide wish.
Good point. Thus is just another example in favor of brexit...
Applications by Brits for EU citizenship are at an all-time high.....
Taxes on things like gasoline really hammer the ordinary working stiff. No wonder people are pissed off. But then I live in Pacific Coast France (i.e. California) where my fellow citizens just voted not to repeal a gas tax, so what do I know?
Perrie,
I'm sorry your seed was derailed. The problem, it seems to me, is that NT members have become accustomed to ignoring the seed, to derail onto whatever topic amuses them in this case, "socialism".
The fact that (as I stated, and then you stated) neither the seed nor the events in France have anything to do with "socialism" is of no importance. Your seed is just another "open message board", where members will post whatever they wish, regardless of pertinence.
I would prefer to not participate in this kind of operation. What should I do? I was called out. Challenged. Should I just ignore them?
Perrie, I hope you don't mind if i re-post this from your prior discussion:
=============================================================
From the peoples perspective, Macron may as well have stated "LET THEM EAT CAKE!!!"
(NOTE: The articles use of the words "gasoline and in some instances gas" should be understood as diesel.)
‘Yellow Vests’ Riot in Paris, but Their Anger Is Rooted Deep in France
“Yellow Vest” protesters at a roundabout in St.-Vaury, France. They wait in the rain and cold and mud under makeshift tarpaulin shelters and tents. CreditCreditAndrea Mantovani for The New York Times
By Adam Nossiter
GUÉRET, France — At the bare bottom of Florian Dou’s shopping cart at the discount supermarket, there was a packet of $6 sausages and not much else. It was the end of last week, and the end of last month. At that point, “my salary and my wife’s have been gone for 10 days,” he lamented.
How to survive those days between when the money runs out and when his paycheck arrives for his work as a warehouse handler has become a monthly challenge. The same is true for so many others in Guéret, a grim provincial town in south-central France. And it has made Mr. Dou angry.
So he used what money he had left and drove 250 miles to join the fiery protests on Saturday in Paris , where the police moved in with tear gas, water cannon and rubber bullets.
“We knew they were sent in to get rid of us,” he said the day after, “and believe me, they were not into Mr. Nice Guy.” But he vows the protesters are not going anywhere.
The “Yellow Vest” protests he is a part of present an extraordinary venting of rage and resentment by ordinary working people, aimed at the mounting inequalities that have eroded their lives. The unrest began in response to rising gas taxes and has been building in intensity over the past three weeks, peaking on Saturday.
With little organization and relying mostly on social media, they have moved spontaneously from France’s poor rural regions over the last month to the banks of the Seine, where they have now become impossible to ignore.
On Sunday, President Emmanuel Macron toured the graffiti-scrawled monuments of the capital and the damage along some of the richest shopping streets in Europe. All around France, the protests left three dead and more than 260 wounded, with more than 400 arrested. Mr. Macron convened a crisis cabinet meeting, weighing whether to impose a state of emergency.
Mr. Macron has previously insisted that, unlike past French governments, he will not back down in the face of popular resistance to reforms like a loosening of labor laws. It’s a harder line than many other western European countries have taken.
The protesters ridicule him as a president of the rich and say he is trying to balance his budgets on their backs as he remains deaf to their concerns.
But if it was the shattered glass and burned cars along Rue de Rivoli or Boulevard Haussmann in Paris that finally got Mr. Macron’s attention, the movement — named for the roadside safety vests worn by demonstrators — has in fact welled up from silent towns like Guéret, an administrative center of 13,000 people, lost in the small valleys of central France.
Far from any big city, it sits in one of the poorest departments of France, where the public hospital is the biggest employer. The cafe in the main square is empty by midafternoon. The hulks of burned-out cars dot the moribund train station’s tiny parking lot, abandoned by citizens too poor to maintain them.
In places like these, a quiet fear gnaws at households: What happens when the money runs out around the 20th? What do I put in the refrigerator with nothing left in the account and the electricity bill to pay? Which meal should I skip today? How do I tell my wife again there is no going out this weekend?
Florian Dou checking his shopping list at a grocery store in Guéret, France. CreditAndrea Mantovani for The New York Times
The stories of Mr. Dou’s neighbors who also joined the protests were much like his own. Inside Laetitia Depourtoux’s freezer were hunks of frozen meat, a twice-a-year gift from her farmer-father, and the six-member family’s meat ration.
On these cold nights, Joel Decoux’s oven burned the wood he chopped himself because he can’t afford gas for heating.
It is not deep poverty, but ever-present unease in the small cities, towns and villages over what is becoming known as “the other France,” away from the glitzy Parisian boulevards that were the scene of rioting this weekend.
“We live with stress,” said Fabrice Girardin, 46, a former carpet-layer who now looks after other people’s pets to get by. “Every month, at the end of the month, we say, ‘Will there be enough to eat?’ ”
Since the acidic portrait of Guéret in novels by a famous native son, the anti-Semitic 20th-century writer Marcel Jouhandeau, the town is used to being mocked as the epitome of provincial backwardness.
The Yellow Vest protesters, the descendants of those who inspired Jouhandeau’s characters, can now be found waiting at the road blocks as you come into town — truck and school-bus drivers, nurses, out-of-work electricians, housewives, warehouse handlers, part-time civil servants and construction workers on disability aid.
On cold nights the oven of Joel Decoux, left, and his wife Roselyne, center, burned the wood he chopped himself because he can’t afford gas for heating. CreditAndrea Mantovani for The New York Times
Mr. Dou — who says his 9-year-old son has never been on vacation and his gross salary of 1,300 euros a month, about $1,475, “disappears immediately in the bills” — was among them. There is little left after high taxes and costly utilities such as electricity.
To protest, he and the other protesters wait at night in the middle of the roundabouts, in the rain and cold and mud under makeshift tarpaulin shelters and tents in the darkness of early morning. “The People’s Élysée” is scrawled on one, mocking Mr. Macron’s Élysée Palace, seat of the presidency. “Macron, he’s with the bosses, Macron, he’s against the people,” a singer intoned in a reggaelike jingle from the radio.
Mr. Dou said he had joined the movement from the beginning, and he was an assiduous presence over several days last week on the traffic circles at Guéret. He was there at 11 p.m. on a rainy Thursday, after putting in several hours that morning, and he was there the next day as well.
“We don’t even need the social networks anymore,” he said.
His motivation, he said, was to “recover the country’s priorities. The values of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.” The gas tax “was what set it all off.”
Now, he felt that the Yellow Vest protesters really have the government on the run.
“They don’t know what to do. They’re really in a panic.”
Virtually every car that passes honks in sympathy. But the protesters know that their shouts grow faint over the long distance to real power in Paris, and that is what has propelled them to move their demonstrations there.
By Friday, Mr. Dou was preparing to make the drive in a shared car up to Paris: checking in with his comrades at the traffic circle and buying last-minute supplies — including solution to protect his eyes from tear gas.
Yoann Decoux, an out-of-work electrical lineman in his 30s who was presented by Guéret’s Yellow Vest protesters as their spokesman, had been arrested in Paris the week before.
“I’ve never been in political demonstrations before,” he said. “But we said, enough’s enough.”
“They don’t even know how we get by with our tiny little salaries,” he said. “But we are humans too, for God’s sake!” He was getting by with vegetables and help from his part-time farmer-father.
None of the Guéret protesters expressed allegiance to any politician: Most said politics disgusted them.
“They are all the same,” Mr. Dou said.
When Guéret’s mayor, Michel Vergnier, a veteran Socialist with decades of connections in Paris, went to see the protesters, they were not welcoming.
“There’s a rejection of politicians,” Mr. Vergnier said. “They are outside all political and union organizations.”
Inside Laetitia Depourtoux’s freezer were hunks of frozen meat, a twice-a-year gift from her farmer-father, and the six-member family’s meat ration. CreditAndrea Mantovani for The New York Times
It was the end of the month. To a man and woman the Yellow Vest protesters of Guéret said their accounts were tapped out.
“Right now, I’m at zero,” Mr. Girardin said. His wife had done the shopping with 40 euros the day before, a Wednesday. Now there was nothing left to get them through the weekend.
“You get to the end of the month, there’s nothing,” he said.
That is why Mr. Macron’s plans to raise the gasoline tax, modest an increment as it may seem, was the final straw for so many, the spark that finally set off a seething rage that has been building for years.
There was no gas in his car, said Mr. Girardin, a carpet-layer who quit a job with a stagnant 1,200-euro a month salary to strike out on his own. But he was no better off now.
“Once we’ve finished paying all of our bills, there’s no money left.”
Tonight’s meal: noodles, with maybe a little ground beef. “I’d like to be able to take my wife to the restaurant from time to time, but I can’t,” Mr. Girardin said. Weighed down by financial stress, she had gone into a depression. “She’s totally closed in on herself,” he said.
Up the road the next morning, Ms. Depourtoux, a night-shift nurse at the hospital, was up at 6:30 a.m. with her husband, Olivier, an optician, to see their three daughters off to school in the darkness. Their modest house at a country intersection at the edge of town was pleasant but not spacious.
Guéret is located in the Creuse, the second poorest department in France. CreditAndrea Mantovani for The New York Times
She gently mocked him because “there is never any gas in your car.” With four children and many bills, their money — 1,800 euros a month for her, 1,500 for him — was “very quickly gone,” Mr. Depourtoux said.
The bank refused to lend them any more money. Both had joined the Yellow Vests, and both had gone to Paris the preceding weekend to demonstrate. “As long as it continues, we are with it,” he said.
“We live, but we’ve got to be careful. We can’t go to the restaurant. All the little pleasures of life are gone,” Mr. Depourtoux said. His parents, after a lifetime of work, were reduced to penury: his father in a nursing home and his mother forced to accept meals from charity.
She fills the freezer with deep-discount frozen food from the hard discounter Lidl. They wait to get paid to fill up the car and to do the shopping.
“We just don’t make it to the end of the month,” said Elodie Marton, a mother of four who had joined the protesters at the demonstration outside town. “I’ve got 10 euros left,” she said, as a dozen others tried to get themselves warm around an iron-barrel fire.
“Luckily we’ve got some animals at the house” — chickens, ducks — “and we keep them for the end of the month,” she said. “It sounds brutal, but my priority is the children,” she said. “We’re fed up and we’re angry!’ shouted her husband, Thomas Schwint, a cement hauler on a temporary 1,200-euro contract.
To a man and woman the Guéret protesters expressed fury at the government, and determination to keep going.
“Their response has poisoned the situation even more,” Mr. Depourtoux said. “The citizens have asked for lower taxes, and they’re saying, ‘Ecology,’” he said in a reference to Mr. Macron’s speech of last week where he outlined France’s plans to transition from fossil-based fuels to renewable energy.
At the roundabout, Laurent Aufrere, a truck driver, was deciding which of that day’s meals to skip.
“If I stop rolling, I die. This is not nothing,” Mr. Aufrere said. “What’s happening right now is a citizen uprising.”
This as well, though I understand the tax imposition was delayed after the last round. Not sure of the status right now.
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Why tax fuel? Or, today's easy target for a troubled Europe and France today. Let's put other reasons for added tax revenue in the EU for now.
So how do "we" "fix" a problem that we knew was running straight at us for years now and failed to act? Failed to mitigate? Just basically sat on our asses.
What do we do? Well, of course we TAX it. Ta Da!
You mean we are running out of diesel? Yep and here's why.
For Whom is Peak Oil Coming? If You Own a Diesel Car, it is Coming for You!
By Antonio Turiel , Ugo Bardi , originally published by Cassandra's legacyAt the beginning, the idea of “peak oil” seemed to be relatively uncomplicated: we would climb from one side and then go down the other side. But no, the story turned out to be devilishly complex. For one thing, there is no such a thing as “oil” intended as a combustible liquid — there are tens, perhaps hundreds, of varieties of the stuff: light, heavy, sour, sweet, shale, tight, dumbbell, and more. And each variety has its story, its peculiarities, its trajectory over time. Eventually, all the oil curves have to end to zero but, in the meantime, there is a lot of wiggling up and down that continues to take us by surprise. Mostly, we didn’t realize how rabidly the system would deny the physical reality of depletion, much preferring to “legislate scarcity” on the basis of pollution.
Here, Antonio Turiel writes a fascinating post telling us how the peak is coming “from below,” affecting first the heavy fraction of crude oil: diesel and fuel oil. That’s already causing enormous problems for the world’s transportation system, as well as for the owners of diesel cars, and the situation will become much more difficult in the near future. The light fraction, the one that produces gasoline, seems to be still immune from peaking, but that will come, too.(U.B.)
The Peak of Diesel Fuel: 2018 edition.
As in the previous two posts, we will use the database of the Joint Oil Data Initiative ( JODI ). This database provides information about most of the world’s oil and refined products, but not all of them. The countries not included are countries with serious internal problems and a great lack of transparency, either because of wars or because they are very tight dictatorships. For this reason, the figures that I will show are around 10% lower than they should be if they were representing the whole world. However, given the characteristics of the excluded countries, it is most likely that their data did not change the observed trends, only the total amounts.
As seen in the graph, the year 2015 marked the maximum so far. There had not been such a marked drop in production since the crisis of 2008-2009, but in the case of the fall of 2015 we find that 1) there has not been a serious global economic recession;2) the descent is lasting longer and 3) the levels of diesel production show no sign of recovery. Although it is still a little early to ensure that the peak of diesel has occurred, stagnation – even falling – is starting to drag on for too long to be ignored.
Looking at the data of JODI, two other very interesting things are observed. On the one hand, if one analyzes the production of all the fuel oil that is not diesel (fuel oil) it is found that its production has been in decline for years.
As the graph shows, since 2007 (and therefore before the official start of the economic crisis) the production of fuel oils is in decline and it seems to be a perfectly consolidated trend. The diehard economicist interpretation is to consider that there is simply no demand for these fuels (which, although of the same family, are heavier than diesel). When oil is refined, it is subjected to a process called cracking, in which the long molecular chains present in the oil are broken (by means of heat and other processes) and then the molecules are separated by their different properties of fluidity and density. The fact is that if you have made changes in the refineries to crack more oil molecules and get other lighter products (and that is why less heavy fuel oil is produced), those molecules that used to go to heavy fuel oil now go to other products. By logic, taking into account the added value of fuels with longer molecules, it is normal that these heavy fuel oils are undergoing cracking, especially to generate diesel and possibly more kerosene for airplanes and eventually more gasoline. We must not forget that from 2010 the fracking in the USA began to take off, flooding the market with light oil, which is not easy to refine to make diesel. It is therefore quite likely that the refineries have adapted to convert an increasing amount of heavy fuel oil into light fuel oil (diesel). It reinforces this idea that, if we add the volumes of the two previous graphs we have, there is a certain compensation for the trends of diesel production, increasing until 2015, and the long-term trend of decrease of the rest of the fuel oils.
This figure shows that, after the 2008-2009 slump, it has been very hard to raise the total production of fuel oils, which peaked in 2014 and have remained there for almost a year; and at the moment it is suffering a resounding fall (about 2,5 Mb/d from the levels of 2014).
This last observation is quite relevant because if, as you can guess, the industry is cracking less heavy fuel oil to ensure that the production of diesel does not go down too much, the rapid fall of heavy fuel oil will quickly drag down the diesel production. In fact, the graph shows that, after falling in 2015 and 2016, in 2017, it was possible to stabilize the production of all fuel oils, but it is also seen that in recent months there was a quite rapid fall.
Surely, in this shortage, we can start noting the absence of some 2.5 Mb/d of conventional oil (more versatile for refining and therefore more suitable for the production of fuel oil), as we were told by the International Energy Agency in his last annual report . This explains the urgency to get rid of the diesel that has lately shaken the chancelleries of Europe: they hide behind real environmental problems (which have always troubled diesel, but which were always given less than a hoot) to try to make a quick adaptation to a situation of scarcity. A shortage that can be brutal, since no prevention was performed for a situation that has long been seen coming.
The followers of that religion called economic liberalism will insist with all their strength that what is being observed here is a peak of demand, that old argumentative fallacy that does not agree with the data (who can think that people are stopping to consume oil because they want? Maybe because they have better alternatives? Which ones?). They will argue that there is a lower demand for diesel and that this is why production stagnates and that the production of fuel oils drops because, as they are more polluting fuels, the new environmental regulations do not allow their use. It’s a bit of the old problem of who came first, the chicken or the egg. With regard to the fact that the demand for diesel does not increase, prices have a considerable influence: this is how shortages are regulated in a market economy. And, as for the environmental reasons, the production of heavy gas oil has been dropping from 2007, when there was not as much regulatory interest as there seems to be now. There is one aspect of the new regulations that I think is interesting to highlight here: from 2020 onwards, all ships will have to use fuel with a lower sulfur content. Since, typically, the large freighters use very heavy fuel oils, that requirement, they say, makes one fear that a shortage of diesel will occur . In fact, from what we have discussed in this post, what seems to be happening is that heavy fuel oils are declining very fast and ships will have no choice but to switch to diesel. That this is going to cause problems of diesel shortage is more than evident. It is an imminent problem, even more than the peaks in oil prices that, according to what the IEA announces, will appear by 2025.
The second of the interesting things that the JODI data shows us is how the volume produced of all petroleum products has evolved.
he volume produced has been able to continue increasing during these years thanks to the energy subsidy that the US is giving to the world by means of fracking. However, fracking oil only serves to make gasoline and that is why the diesel problem remains. But you can also note how the end of the graph above shows the same trend in the production of diesel, with a drop of more than 2 Mb/d. What does that mean? That the contribution of fracking to the whole volume is also hitting the ceiling, it does not get any higher. It is a further indication that we are already reaching the peak oil of all petroleum liquids.
That is why, dear reader, when you are told that the taxes on your diesel car will be raised in a brutal way, now you know why. Because it is preferred to adjust these imbalances with a mechanism that seems to be a market (although this is actually less free and more adjusted) rather than telling the truth. The fact is that, from now on, what can be expected is a real persecution against cars with an internal combustion engine (gasoline will be next, a few years after diesel). Do not say that you were not notified (and I was not even the first to do it in this blog). And if it does not seem right, maybe what you should do is to demand that your representatives explain the truth.
Regards
AMT
Note: this post was translated from Spanish using Google Translate, which did a pretty good job, necessitating only some retouches — although the result is still somewhat “Spanish-sounding” even in English! One problem is the use of the Spanish terms “gasoil” and “diésel” which may not mean the same thing as they do in English (in Italy, btw, diesel fuel is always termed “gasolio”). But these two terms indicate a very similar entity, even though maybe not identical. So, I reworked Turiel’s text a little in order to use only the term “diesel”.
Good posts, both.
I've read lots of articles about "the real price of fuel".
Obviously, it depends on what you count. If you include clean-up costs (ha-ha), gas would be somewhere around $15. Without those costs, but also without the subsidies that Big Oil receives throughout its processes, gas would be about $10.
We pay taxes that go to subsidizing Big Oil, for much more than the difference, of course. Big Oil takes a hefty cut. It's not for nothing that it's the most profitable industry in the history of the world.
Look, MUVA...
I don't want to be rude, but I really don't think we can converse, you and I. We live in different universes. We have radically different ways of apprehending our worlds.
There's no chance of our understanding each other
So let's not waste our time. You can Reply to me, if you really wish... but I won't answer you.
I think that is what a lot of folks are sensing over there.