France: the streets belong to the Butchers and Bakers while the UN argues over a meanginless word, by Joanne Nova.
The timing is a disaster for the UN annual junket. The Yellow Vest protest has also spread to the UK now. Politicians must be tip toeing in Katowice, Poland. The Western leaders can hardly offer prime symbolic gifts for carbon action for fear of triggering similar protests at home.
As the protests grew week after week, the “crumbs” thrown to appease the crowd only made them more resolute. The people are realizing how much power they have. The normal veneer of civility holds that the police and laws keep the peace, but the truth is that if the people feel exploited and act together, any free nation can grind to a halt in days.
Craig Rucker from CFACT took time off from the UN climate folly and walked the streets with the Gilets Jaunes. This is so interesting because he is not the usual journalist observer, and he is there, not opining from afar. He says the people have taken over the streets, but the movement is being smeared as violent, though the rioting is due to radical leftists not the core protesters of the movement. One thing is for sure, everyone with any agenda will be looking for a way to own the power in this protest. …
After interviewing many gilets jaunes (yellow vests), and observing their demonstrations, CFACT can report that the streets belong not to the government, nor to the police, but to the men, women and children in the yellow vests. Moreover, contrary to what you may have seen in the media, in their hearts, the police are with the protestors.
The demonstrators are in fact the friends, neighbors and families of the police arrayed against them. Except in extreme cases, the police are standing aside and leaving the gilet jaunes in charge.
The gilets jaunes … are butchers, bakers and automobile makers. They are the folks who drive the trucks, farm the food, build the buildings and fix what breaks. They are France. They have had enough.
The gilets jaunes took over a large toll station on the road to Marseilles. CFACT was there. They narrowed the lanes, but allowed traffic to pass. Toll collectors and police left them completely in charge. The protestors did not allow motorists to pay the toll. They are prepared to starve leviathan.
The real Gilets Jaunes are angry that the media and government are misrepresenting them. As Craig says, Just about everyone with an agenda is trying to horn in.
Contrast that with Adam Nossiter of The New York Times who tries (hopes) to argue that this is not a populist movement (code for right wing) saying it is a class war, not a nationalist thing. Jo Nova says, it may well be a class war rather than a climate change protest, but everybody knows which class wears the green pants. And right wing is by definition a movement against the overgrown size of government. What could be more right wing than a protest against a tax?
More from Craig Rucker:
France, like many European nations, has gone much further down the UN climate road than Americans have. They are already feeling the pain that Californians and so many others have in store.
Climate taxes on fuel to pay for inefficient, variable wind and solar power and other climate fantasies are a waste, and the folks in the yellow vests know it. They refuse to redistribute more of what they earn in the name of global warming. They realize that climate taxes are regressive, and resent the elites with the means to take confiscatory taxes in stride.
President Macron has vowed to suppress and outlast the protestors. He has no idea. He also has no friends among them.
hat-tip Chris
