Wow, check out the pictures below. I am not seeing any of this in the main stream media. France is literally on fire…
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French strikes ablaze: Britons warned to stay away as violence spirals
A car explodes in flames and policemen clash with rioting youths as spiralling violence grips France.
This was one of many flashpoints across the country yesterday amid growing public anger against raising the retirement age to 62.
In the town of Nanterre, north-west of Paris, officers also fired rubber bullets and tear gas at youths protesting outside their secondary schools.
Battle: The police officers clash with rioters in Nanterre, north-west of Paris. They fired rubber bullets and tear gas at youths protesting outside their secondary schools
Troublemakers – not students – were accused of starting a riot, pelting firemen with rocks as dozens of vehicles were smashed and set ablaze.
Meanwhile, British travellers were warned to stay away as trains, planes and motorways were brought to a halt ahead of today’s national strike.
More than 1,000 petrol stations ran dry as panic buying exacerbated a blockade of oil refineries ahead of a crucial parliamentary vote to approve the pension overhaul.
Chaos: Rubbish mounts up in the streets of Marseille
However President Nicolas Sarkozy has refused to back down in the face of growing opposition, with more than 70 per cent of people backing the strikers, according to yesterday’s Parisien newspaper.
‘If we must face a long strike, we’ll do it,’ he said. ‘A part of the country will be thankful that we brought the extremists to their knees.’
But union leaders remain equally intransigent. One at Total’s refineries said: ‘As long as the government won’t budge, we won’t budge.’
Yesterday, lorry drivers joined the anti-government action, organising 10mph ‘snail convoys’ to block major roads.
High school students damage a car during a demonstration in Lyon, France
A traffic police spokesman said: ‘The situation cannot get worse. These roads are leading to the northern coast, so anyone travelling to and from Britain by car can expect chaos.
‘The lorry drivers are leaving one lane open, and then travelling at very low speed.
‘The knock-on effect on public transport is enormous.’
Bus and train drivers joined the growing unrest on Sunday night, causing half of the country’s high speed TGV trains to stop running.
Police detain students during a demonstration in Lyon. There is growing public anger across France against raising the retirement age to 62
Eurostar services between London and Paris have so far been unaffected but trains between Belgium and the French capital were cancelled.
France’s civil aviation authority yesterday appealed to airlines to cut flights into French airports by 50 per cent as reserves of aviation fuel run dangerously low.
And wildcat strikes by aircraft refuelling workers caused other services to be cancelled or delayed.
But at least two long-haul flights from Paris – to Seattle in the U.S., and Mumbai in India – were forced to take off without enough fuel.
Strikers block fuel storage depots in Caen, northwestern France, yesterday
They were both forced to stop en route to refuel.
And last night the European air traffic agency Eurocontrol called on airlines flying into France to carry sufficient fuel reserves for their return journey.
Militant oil refinery workers yesterday defied a government order to return to work with pickets forming a human chain to prevent strike-breakers from entering a plant at Grandpuits, east of Paris.
Jean-Louis Schilansky, president of the Petrol Industries Association, warned that the alliance of refinery workers and truckers would cause ‘a very big problem’.
The protests are in response to President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plan to raise the retirement age to from 60 to 62
France has less than 100 days of oil stocks, according to International Energy Agency, and the government is already drawing the 30-day emergency reserves.
Millions of public sector workers are expected to march through Paris today at the climax of the anti-pension reform campaign.
The pensions reform, which includes raising the retirement age from 60 to 62, has already been approved by the National Assembly, France’s lower house.
But last night the crucial vote by France’s upper house, the Senate, to enshrine the bill into law, scheduled for Wednesday –was postponed until Thursday.
Many fear a re-run of the May 1968 riots in Paris when thousands took to the streets to try to bring down the government of President Charles de Gaulle.
Workers block traffic in Toulouse, southern France
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French strike to save ‘birthright’ of privileges
MARSEILLE, France (AP) — Battling for benefits is a tradition in the Gilly family, passed from generation to generation — as it is for families across the country. And that goes some way toward explaining why the protests against plans to raise France’s retirement age have shown such determination and ferocity.
For Gilly and many other Frenchmen and women, social benefits such as long vacations, state-subsidized health care and early retirement are more than just luxuries: They’re seen as a birthright — an essential part of the identity of today’s France.
The protest against a government plan to raise the retirement age to 62 has special meaning for five members of the Eric Gilly clan who are demonstrating in the streets of Marseille.
“We want to stop working at 60 because it’s something our parents, our grandparents and even our great-grandparents fought for,” says Gilly, 50, a union representative at Saint-Pierre Cemetery, the largest in this bustling Mediterranean port city.
“And over the years … you can see that we’re losing everything they fought for. And that’s unacceptable.”
In Marseille, strikes to protest President Nicolas Sarkozy’s planned retirement reform have shut down docks, left tons of garbage putrefying on sidewalks and drawn tens of thousands into the streets for each of six protest marches since early September.
Gilly, with huge drums strapped over his shoulders, led the parade for the Workers’ Force union Monday. His sister, two daughters and a nephew weren’t far behind.
“Unionism, it’s in the skin,” Gilly said in an interview with Associated Press Television News. “It’s more than a passion. When something is wrong or things aren’t right, they have to be changed.”
The nation usually watches with care over its citizens, who for decades have used street power to help shape French policy, sometimes pulling the rug from under politicians’ feet.
Retirement benefits are coveted, by some, perhaps even more than a higher salary, making the issue particularly sensitive. Sarkozy’s plan to raise the retirement age hits a nerve deep in the French psyche.
“France is showing some of its old cultural reflexes,” said Etienne Schweisguth of the Center for European Studies at the Foundation for Political Science. “When there is something we aren’t pleased with we must protest.”
Trying to undo what the state wants dates back to an anarchist tradition of the 19th century, when unions first led a struggle against capitalism and a refusal to align with political parties, said Schweisguth. One wing of the hard-core CGT union, which is leading many of today’s protests, still looks to that tradition.
Despite the anti-government protests, it is the French state that has for centuries been charged with protecting individuals and their rights.
“The state is the guarantor of the moral good,” said Schweisguth, who studies changes in attitudes and values in society.
It was in 1982, under Socialist President Francois Mitterrand, that the minimum age to stop working was lowered from 65 to 60. The measure, emblematic of the 14-year Mitterrand presidency, was adopted by a special ordinance that bypassed parliament.
Sixty has since become a golden number — and the battle cry for entire families fearful of losing benefits bestowed on grandparents, parents or colleagues at work. Including the Gillys.
“This is a family affair because unionism is our big family,” said Stephanie, 22, who is among Marseille’s striking garbage collectors. “Our elders fought for retirement at 60.”
“We have all the generations represented,” she said. “There’s me, my little sister, Dad. There we go. And then there will be our children, too. We will teach them.”
Schweisguth said, that despite the ruckus, strikers represent a minority of the population and that, while polls show backing for such actions, they do not measure the fervor of the backing, which he called “flaccid.”
Sarkozy, a conservative, has made pushing the legal retirement age back up a priority.
“The French are moaners, sometimes grouches. But at the same time they’re lucid, intelligent and responsible,” the daily Le Figaro quoted him as saying in May, when he criticized Mitterrand’s 1982 decision. “They will be able to acknowledge that there is no alternative to our reforms.”
But Sarkozy is increasingly unpopular, and he may be off the mark.
Gilly, a burly man dressed in red from his baseball cap to his Workers’ force union bib, pounds the huge drum hanging from his neck at a street protest against the retirement reform, keeping time to the chorus of voices singing “The International,” the Communist anthem.
“You’re not really going to push up the age of people who retire with this reform,” says his nephew, Mathias Gilly, a retailer. “In reality, it’s going to mean a smaller pension for people when they do retire.”
Gilly packs up his drum for another day, vowing that he and his family will keep up protests — “for as long as it takes.”
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