Gilets Jaunes SITREP. ACT 19 and 20.

by the Francophone Saker for the Saker blog

The Gj Saturdays

To try to hamper Acts 19 and 20, the government banned the demonstrators from entire neighbourhoods and perimeters. The Champs Elysées for Paris and the city centre for large cities. Any offender will receive a fine of 135 euros to be paid immediately or 190 euros to be paid later. For instance, a couple has been fined for simply wearing a sweater that says “Yes to the RIC”.

As the government cannot totally ban demonstrations, it will try everything it can to limit their scope. Intimidations through body and bags searches, custody and fines at the slightest suspicious object, physical violence… In Paris, “8,545 preventive controls have been carried out,” the minister said. The Gj will no longer be considered as demonstrators but as rioters. The government also calls on the army by using anti-terrorist forces to back the police. As a result, some journalists will no longer hesitate to compare the Gj to terrorists.

But all these intimidations will not cool down the Gj who kept on coming numerous those two last Saturdays.

The police officers will be ordered to go hard, and that is what they will do, as shown by the long list of videos showing these charges, shots, bludgeons and humiliations against not only the demonstrators but also the street medics and journalists. Everyone is considered as a livestock to be led by the whip. A 71-year-old woman waving a rainbow flag marked “Peace” is being pushed by a CRS charge, injured to the head when she falls and will end up in hospital. Faced with this problem for the image of the police, it will try again to distort the facts: “Mrs Legay received a visit from police officers at the hospital to ask her to say that she had not been injured by the police officers’ charge but in other circumstances,” said her children’s lawyer. It is the subordination of a victim. Her lawyer will file a complaint for “voluntary violence against vulnerable persons, by persons with authority and the army”. As for Macron, always full of empathy, he wishes this lady, who is twice her age, “to be wiser”.

There have been thousands of arrests, police custody and immediate trials. Minutes are often rigged, prisoners intimidated, lawyers prevented from seeing their clients. But as, in France, justice is not as blind as we would like to think, “On the one hand 8500 Gj arrested in 4 months, including 1800 already tried and sentenced to prison sentences, on the other hand 174 cases of police violence still awaiting trial”. Not to mention Benalla, always free as a bird.

To speed up judicial repression, lawyers supporting the Gj, who call themselves the Black Dresses, are prevented from doing their job. A lawyer testifies that the police did not allow her to enter the police station to assist detainees. Another testimony from a lawyer on the conditions of police custody of the Gj. A third testimony, this time from the president of the lawyers’ union in Rouen who denounces the police’s tactics to prevent the arrested Gj from seeing their lawyer.

Another technique used by the government police is to let the breakers break, or break themselves, in order to degrade the image of the Gj among the rest of the population. Even some parliament members are wondering about it.

Seeing all this, it is clear that France is becoming a police state. This reminds to the eldest the “Pétain’s police”, the French equivalent of the German Gestapo during WW2.

The Macron’s regime

While Macron had bragged, after being elected, about surrounding himself with “irreproachable” people, we are gradually discovering that in reality many are dealing with justice.

First, Benalla, whom we have already mentioned in previous SITREPs. Fortunately, the Senate is here to prevent the case from being buried. The Prime Minister was summoned to testify but refused to come. Out of fear or cowardice? Macron also takes it badly, would that be a sign of guilt?

At the end of March, Macron fired the Paris police prefect, the one who had not protected Benalla enough to his liking, to put a close mate in his place, Lallement. Then the newspaper Mediapart informed us that Lallement is under investigation for suspicions of favoritism when the Société du Grand Paris has been auctioned. The investigation is conducted by the Brigade de répression de la délinquance économique (BRDE), a brigade under the direction of the Prefect of Police of Paris. Then it is now Lallement who will lead the investigation on himself. There’s a good chance it will end up in a drawer.

Then, for a LREM deputy[Macron’s party], the same one who calls the Gj rioters on many TV sets, “The Court of Appeal confirmed the Bobigny Commercial Court’s judgment of 2 November 2016. Claire O’Petit was sentenced to “a prohibition to manage, administer or control directly or indirectly any commercial or craft enterprise […] for a period of five years”. However, she still can play politics.

And yet another Macron’s close mate having legal problems for “death threats on others”. Absolutely. It’s starting to sound a little gangly.

As a result, while thousands of Gj are sentenced to prison terms, the list of all French politicians who have dealt with justice and have never been in prison is circulating on social networks.

In fact, Macron’s new spokesperson sums it all up with the naivety of youth: “I totally assume to lie to protect the president.”

Not only did Macron surround himself with unfortunate people, but he also took advantage of the fact that the streets are already occupied by the Gj to sell off the French heritage to those who had put him in power. At that level it reminds us of Yeltsin’s Russia.

We have already seen in the previous SITREP that the National Assembly, where Macron’s party got the majority, had voted, by night, to privatize three very profitable national companies, Aéroport de Paris, La Française des Jeux and Engie, an electricity company.

We later learn that “to privatize Aéroport de Paris, it was Bank of America that was chosen as the sales manager. And who is at the head of the French branch of this bank? Bernard Mourad, former Drahi banker and advisor to the Macron presidential campaign.”

The looting of the nation’s assets does not stop there: “The government has announced its intention to privatize 150 hydroelectric dams in France, despite their highly strategic nature.”

And soon it will be the turn of the national roads. As incredible as it looks, those who put Macron in power are seriously thinking about it.

Not only does he sell the Nation’s family jewellery to the French oligarchs, he also allows them to benefit from “tax optimization” – a euphemism for “legal tax evasion, only for the rich”. Here is a video explaining, in figures, the extent of tax evasion in France and Europe. Fraud confirmed by this interview with a member of the opposition. These videos explain that the recovery of this fraud would be more than enough for France to continue to have a social policy. But Macron’s ultra-liberal government prefers to let the rich defraud so as not to share rather than using it for the sake of the people. It will therefore continue to close hospitals, crèches, schools and retirement homes in the name of budgetary discipline, but actually to allow the private ones to make more money. A l’américaine. But the Gj, and those who back them, do not want to live in such a system.

As a result, since this government is short of tax revenues because of “tax optimization”, the French motorist becomes the government’s cash cow.

So do the retirees. A retired Gj explains “62 years of fiscal imagination… and lies” about pensions, with date and figures to support it.

Finally, to finish this litany of “reforms to modernise France” and to make sure that the Liberals’ policy is more in favor of multinationals than that of the people, Monsanto finances the Liberal Party, to which LREM is joining, for the European elections. Here is a video explaining that this lobbying, officially forbidden in France, is quite normal in the European Parliament.

Les Gilets Jaunes

Despite this hellish police repression and pushed by the misdeeds of the Macron regime, the Gj do not give up, as they say. The motivation is still there, more than ever.

The Special Operations Group continues its actions against large companies (Société Génénrale, Apple, Starbucks…) that evade tax. it will even be received in the Senate to discuss the Pacte law. The details of the discussion will of course be made public.

In the face of permanent media defamation, they are working on a common charter.

Constituent assemblies are gradually being set up throughout the country.

The Gj from Toulouse organized a “Yellow Village” to meet and explain to the rest of the population what the movement is, its objectives… in order to thwart the media defamation they are suffering.

Citizen organizations are also beginning to support them. Intellectuals also began to support them. 350 academics support the Gjs, declaring themselves “accomplices” since Castaner said that the Gjs’ accomplices were also “rioters”.

Economist Éric Toussaint, from the Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debts, gives his advice and proposes economic measures to the Gj.

Even the army is beginning to speak out on the subject, through the voice of retired General Tauzin. He says that the movement is “the rise of France with a human face against France of managers; of deep France against centralized France; of united and patriotic France against the contempt and arrogance of those who believe they are elites.”

The movement will therefore not give up and actions will continue to follow each other at least until the RIC is put in place. It is just a matter of patience and will. And both are here.

See you then for the next Gilets Jaunes SITREP.

Le Saker Francophone

For those who can read french and wants more detailed SITREP, the Saker Francophone is publishing one every Sunday. Here are the two last ones.