So, in the honor of the barricade days, let me tell you a little bit about the riots of march 2023 in France and how it impacted me as someone living near Paris

As you may know, our dear french President Emmanuel Macron passed a law on retirement (pushing the age to 63 to 67) using a thing called "49.3" - meaning that the law will not be voted by the deputies in the National Assembly but only by the Prime Minister and the President.

We french people don't really liked that, so we rioted.

It was a historical movement, thousands of people were in the street everday for months, and I participated in two of the riots in Paris.

The first was the day after the 49.3 was used, and we were PISSED. Now there's two types of protests in France: the one where it's autorized by the Mayor and organized by the CGT or others, and, well, riots. We were at Concorde, in front of the National Assembly, and police were EVERYWHERE. All the streets were blocked by cops, we couldn't get out of the place.

We started a fire with the things laying around, and made a barricade in front of the police. A fire barricade. That was AWESOME.

We also burned a puppet of Macron. That was cool too.

But quickly, things started going wrong. The cops started to charge, they threw tear gas, and we run (i was with 3 friends of mine). But remember, they were everywhere, so we were always surrended by cops and gas, and ppl were panicking (some were teenagers, not even 15) They started arresting people, and with my friends we ran away, took the subway to Chatelet to go eat something, faaaar away from the police.

And then, protesters were there too. If you don't know, the 1832 rebellion actually took place in one of the street of Chatelet, the very street where I was eating with my friends - I PANICKED. There were trash barricades on fire everywhere, police ran after us, my eyes were burning bc of the tear gas, and the only thing i could think of was "ah, i'm going to get arrested and beat off by these pigs in the very same street where they died all those years ago. Great."

I GOT HOME SAFE THAT NIGHT. I WAS EXHAUSTED, MY EYES BURNED FOR 4 DAYS, BUT I WAS SAFE.

let me know if you wanna know the second time I participated in the riot !

(Take so photo and videos of that day too)

Here are some posts for people who don't know what the fuck's been going on in France the last few weeks - there has been a LOT of stuff, so I encourage you to do your own research too. I'm sick of people celebrating Bastille Day like France is something to be celebrated - especially today. Fascism is rampant here and seeing the army sing Resistance songs is deeply ironic and grotesque. Especially when protests about police violence have been forbidden for tomorrow.

These posters are available for free, to print, distribute in every way you want. Go and make protest signs out of them ! Print stickers ! Glue the posters in the streets ! Distribute them ! Do what you want as long as you don't modify the image and message. Have fun !

Justice for Nahel.

Top image:

A crowd is to the People what a cry is to a voice

Middle:

We don’t want the Capitol, we want you to capitulate

Bottom left:

Before Macron, I had feathers

Bottom right:

Thieving on the Poor, Values of the Rich!

Last image:

The bludgeon is to totalitarian states what manipulation is to democracy ❤️

Credit: Olivier Loisel, Bordeaux protest, Thursday 23d March 2023.

Before I see any more nonsense or confusion about the riots currently happening in France against the death of Nahel.

Yes, it started as a protest to denounce the unfair death of a young man shot by the cops and what looks like a hasty cover-up by the police. But it isn’t that anymore. Because the riots that are currently happening are not protests, but pure “riots”, pure waves of violence and nights of urban warfare. What do all those rioters do? They attack the police stations... but they also attack the town halls, and the prisons, and the supermarkets, and the schools, and frigging habitation buildings. They attack everything without reason, because clearly these are people not here to support the family of the kid or to really protest against the situation, they’re just here because this last in a long series of violence protests allows them a perfect “cover” and “justification” for just pillaging and destroying everything. Because this is one of the two things that are heavily insisted upon: these riots are an excuse to pillage. We have hundreds and hundreds of shops that are attacked and stolen from during these riots - supermakets, computer shops, video game shops, shoe shops, jewelry shops and even book shops... Tell me how stealing away from a supermarket or stealing hundreds of Nike is supposed to be an anti-police movement or a support to a dead teenager? Same thing with the burning of cars - because you know where they burned cars? In poor neighborhoods. These rioters, most of them the “youth of the banlieue” (because they are mostly teen and young adults, and come from the “banlieue” and those same poor neighborhood supposed to be the target of police “unfairness”), burn the cars of their neighboor, of other poor people around them, and they destroy the shops of their own neighborhoods, and destroy the local schools. This shows the incoherence and madness of those riots - they want to so-call “protest” to defend the poor neighborhood and “all but ghetto in name” from the “violence” of the French institutions... But they do that by literaly destroying themselves their own neighborhood and attacking the same people they claim to riot in the name of. 

Heck, this went one step further now as they have started blocking and attacking habitation buildings. We have the testimony of random families, with young kids, who didn’t have anything to do with all that, but that yesterday night almost got killed because they were stuck in their building by the rioters, with the toxic fumes and flames of the car burning underneath entering the flat, and without the firemen intervention they might have suffocated to death. These rioters just to loot pubs or cigaret-shops, put into danger and nearly kill kids, just because they want to attack any building in sight (including habitation buildings) and burn whatever they can find. 

This is actually the culmination of a long process and history which has been pointed out and talked about before, but up until now there was always nuance to bring “Yes they did that but” “No, it isn’t all like that”, “We can’t put it all in the same bag”... But this is the first time we have an unanimously bad thing where there is “finally” no possible excuse to invoke. Year after year protests lost the ability to be peaceful as they devolved more and more into riots - many people using them as simple excuses and occasions to let out a primal anger and a destructive violence, and thus attacking anything and anyone. Same thing with the pillage - more and more as time goes by, protests and riots result in pillage of shops (and always “interesting” shops like Apple or Nike, don’t get things wrong, when you go steal an Xbox, it is clear you’re not stealing food). Add to that the growth of a true hatred of police in France - not just police but also firemen, somehow. In France there is a wave of hysteria where a lot of people seem to have a burning hatred for any form of “men in uniform” (it was at first just against the police, but now it has extended to firemen too), to the point a regular “game” in difficult and criminal neighborhoods is to call the police, only to throw stones at them when they arrive ; and similarly when firemen try to put out fires during riots or protests, nowadays they get BEATEN UP by the same rioters who started the fire. People keep saying “Yeah but the police did bad stuff, they deserve the anti-cop hate”. Okay, then can you explain the ANTI-FIREMEN HATE? The same people who claim “Death to the cops” also beat firemen up just because they try to do their job, aka prevent the destruction of the criminal rioters from becoming more dangerous. There is a true “hatred of the man in uniform” (or the woman in uniform, because of course there’s a gender-equality in this hatred, and no matter the gender, anyone wearing an uniform will get beaten up). It is also tied to the massive rise of attacks and harassment and violence towards mayors and deputies all throughout towns and villages of France - anyone who seems to represent or embody any “institution” or any form of the “government”, even FIREMEN for heaven’s sake, will become a target of violence and hatred.

And to this devolution of the “protests” into meaningless riots allowing an outburst of violence and theft ; and to this general wave of hysteric-hatred of all those wearing a “uniform” ; you need to add the mix of growing “casual violence” in France coupled with the feeling of impunity that grows in the most dangerous and criminal neighborhoods and communities of France. The “urban rodeos”, the rise of violence against pharmacists, the harassment of nurses in the street, and many more... 

I will also point out something about these protests for Nahel, this so-called “marche blanche”, something that made me think “Yep, this is going to go wrong.” or rather “This will not go a good way”. The presence of Assa Traroé by the side of Nahel’s mother during the protest. You might have heard of her because she is the sister of Adam Traore, another young man killed by the police during an arrest, and whose death caused massive protests and outrage, notably because he was black, which added to the topic of “police violence” the discussion of “police racism”. Assa took in charge the wave of protest and contestations surrounding her brother’s case, she made herself the “representative” of all the victims of police violence and police racism in France, she became the face of not only a social but also political movement, she worked hard to make the name and face of her brother the symbol of all the “innocent” victims of an “unfair” police brutality... But I put “innocent” in such a way because the big problem with the Traore family is that they are not innocent. The Traore brothers were notorious criminals, a clan renowned for drug dealing, racket and theft - a very important fact to keep in mind when you notice that the group formed by their sister, “Truth for Adama”, paints a picture of Adama and his family as innocent, lawful citizens that were harassed and killed by the police just out of racism and certainly not because they used weapons to racket junkies and scam people. And let’s not even talk of other nasty things surrounding the Traore case, such as how the group “fighting” for Traore had put up clearly anti-semitic messages, and the constant contestations of any testimony proving that maybe the Traore brothers weren’t such nice guys as it seems, or the general fear surrounding the Traore clan in their neighborhood... All of that to say - Assa Traroe did a heavy social, political and legal work to depict her brothers as innocent victims and the absolute embodiment of the “innocent victim of police brutality and racism”, infiltrating herself in any other case and protest, always putting her brother’s name alongside the ones of ACTUAL INNOCENT VICTIMS. And this is what disgusts me a lot - there are actual innocent victims of police brutality, cases where really good kid and nice guys got destroyed by racism, but they all get swept under the enormous glorification the Traore clan and its movement created for deceased criminals and definitively not nice guys. Heck, she also was one of the key players in the general confusion between French people killed by the police and the cases of black men killed by the police in the USA - she was the one that organized a protest for Georges Floyd IN FRANCE, manifesting and calling forth the FRENCH GOVERNMENT to do something about racism in the USA, and somehow invoking Floyd’s death as a symbol of police brutality “in France”? You clearly see the political thinking of this woman.

So to see her alongside Nahel’s mother, at the head of the protest, clearly made me go “Yep, that’s going to go bad”. And also seeing Nahel’s mother actually laugh and smile in the very beginning of the protest, as if she had a good time? That’s something I haven’t seen people talk about and that left me even confused, there were images on TV on her literaly having fun at the beginning when the protest put itself together, before she put on a “serious grieving” face - your son died yesterday, he isn’t even buried, and you’re laughing and smiling at a protest supposed to denounce the unfairness of his murder? It felt strangely wrong and I do not know why and how, since there was no sound recording just pictures, but... yeah it was weird. 

But to return to the original point I wanted to make: before anyone goes saying “Oh, a teen died by the police’s hand? Then the protest must be legitimate.” know that they are devolving into meaningless, senseless and dangerous riots that pillage video game shops, attack book-shops and habitation buildings, burn the car and destroy the schools of the same poor and difficult neighborhood they claim to “represent” and “protest for”, and are just a massive wave of pure, undiluted, blind hatred and violence targetting everything and everyone - a violence which clearly doesn’t have anything to do anymore with Nahel’s death, a violence purely for the sake of violence. It is very sad to say, but this clearly isn’t about him anymore, and these people managed to completely cover up and soil his death with their mass pillage and bloody stupid riots.

They lied. They fucking lied.

I’m not ACAB or anti-police per antonomasia, but you can’t expect people to respect any institution if you allow them to get away with any kind of felony without consequences, if you let them even think lying could work. Luckily someone filmed the scene, otherwise this would have been another US-style police murder case, fuelling just more anger and rage. Let’s hope justice will do its job, but it won’t be enough.

People are burning and they want everything else to burn with them.

The French rioters have all the spirit of freedom without its character; they have all the boldness of anarchy without its genius. The French people want no capacity, and they want no courage, but they want both the advantages and the defects of generous minds.

- Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

I can’t help but think the ghost of Edmund Burke, the British statesman and philosopher who was highly critical of the French Revolution and its associated riots, looking down on the modern streets of Paris and sighing.

In his writings, Burke argued that the revolutionaries' disregard for tradition and established institutions would lead to chaos and anarchy. Whatever one thinks of the pensions reform everything was done constitutionally. There was nothing done undemocratically. This is how the 5th Republic has been set up by de Gaulle as a sort of ‘Republican monarchy’ in 1958. The fate of an unpopular legislation shouldn’t be decided on the streets but in the constitutional court as the 5th Republic was designed to function.Macron hasn’t done anything illegal - even if what he did was politically unpopular and perhaps heavy handed.

Regarding the French riots specifically, Burke expressed his dismay at the mob violence that had erupted in Paris and other cities. He saw the riots as evidence of the revolutionaries' dangerous and misguided approach to governance. In his famous work, "Reflections on the Revolution in France, Burke sincerely believed that the French people were capable of great things, but that the revolution had unleashed their worst impulses rather than their best. He argued that the revolutionaries had cast aside the institutions and traditions that had kept French society stable for centuries, and that this would ultimately lead to disaster. Overall, Burke saw the French riots as a symptom of a broader problem with the revolution. He believed that the revolutionaries had overthrown the established order without any clear plan for what would replace it, and that this had left France vulnerable to violence and chaos.

The same can be asked of the rioters and strikers. Every reasonable person, regardless of political alignment, knows that pensions reform have to be undertaken if the French are to continue to enjoy one of the best retirement pensions in Europe as well as also not place a horrendous tax burden on the future young generation when they get older - ironically the potential children of the very young protesters out in full force on the streets.

Certainly the current legislation can be tweaked - it is as currently conceived grossly unfair to women in the work place and those who do labour intensice work. I empathise with those protesting on some of the glaring issues unresolved. But at the same time I don’t think one should throw out the baby with the bath water. Reform can’t be buried forever as if there was no problem to address urgently. Yet no one on the left is willing to put forward good faith solutions to the problem that will continue to be a ticking time bomb for France. Macron’s view of himself as Jupiter certainly grates too. But in their visceral hatred of Macron, they let their passions over rule their reason. That’s very French.

We could literally be doing this right now.

"The Capitalist-extremist government of France declared the popular habitat defenders "Les Soulèvements de la Terre" (Earth's Uprisings, https://lessoulevementsdelaterre.org/en-eu/blog/nous-sommes-les-soulevements-de-la-terre) to be "dissolved" today.

The group responded with a long statement in French that I haven't seen translated, but here's their final piece of that statement, a picture declaring that "A MOVEMENT CAN NOT BE DISSOLVED".

They don't quit.

But Greta Thunberg made a statement of support in Paris today, saying "This is about the right to protest and it is about the right to defend life" (my back-translation from Swedish news article)."

« Le PS a phagocyté le mouvement antiraciste dans les années 1990 pour se constituer une réserve de voix et n’a eu aucun scrupule à dégager tous ses fondateurs une fois l’OPA réalisée, je propose qu’on recommence »

Mais triple buse.

La marche pour l’égalité et contre le racisme était une véritable marche militante qui venait du peuple, et non de partis politiques. C’était aussi une marche pacifique, à la rencontre de tous les français et c’est ce qui a fait sa popularité.

Toutes les œillères du monde ne feront pas de cette orgie de destruction et de vols un acte militant « pour la justice » que vous pouvez récupérer.

Brittany is on fire

Fishermen have entered the strike and, unless I'm mistaken, somebody just drove a tractor into a police water cannon.

I've got short-term nostalgia thinking back on Monday when, all manner of protests having been banned on land in the neighbourhood of the Parliament, strikers went rode a boat to demonstrate on the Seine nonetheless.

My cartoon from The Times of 25/3/23

Sorry for a new quick outburst of French political anger but...

Fuck the Traore family. They’re a criminal clan, a drug-dealing gang. Assa Traore managed to make her brother, Adama, into a “symbol” of “police brutality” and “racism in France”, yes... But she did so by pushing him above and over all the other victims of police brutality. Every time she speaks it is “My brother this, my brother that, Adama this” and then she adds “And the others, and all the others, and all our dead”. You’re going to say “Yes, but it is her brother, it makes sense”. Maybe - but when it came time to do the march for Nahel’s death, the Nahel’s protest, she managed to place her brother’s name right next to Nahel. I heard as much of Adama’s name during the protest as of Nahel’s name, because she was leading the movement and had overtaken it.

It was the same thing that happened when she manifested for George Floyd’s death in France - she made it all about her brother’s death. If you believed her words, George and Adama were one and the same. Dead for the same reasons, in the same way, at the hands of the same police. 

There are so many other victims of police brutality, so many other victims of actual racism - so many innocent victims... But do we know their name today? No. No because every time their case is presented, every time there is a march or protest for them, Assa Traore and her group “Truth for Adama”/”Justice for Adam” slides in, and takes over, and makes it all about Adama. She made him a symbol yes - but by erasing all the others, and “fusing” them within her own brother. Her brother part of a group of thieves and drug-dealers who were feared in their own neighborhood - a brother that was killed when the police came in to arrest his older brother for attested drug-dealing and extortion business - a brother that was recognized by the justice as guilty of sexual assault during his time in prison. 

She literaly published on the Internet the names of those that had brought testimonies against her case - and was brought to court for that, as she had posted these names saying they were purposefully doing that to “block the truth”, that they had lied and were in some sort of conspiracy. Because this is the Traore’s family (seventeen siblings born of four mothers, since her Malian father praticed polygamy) main obsession and claim for years and years: there is “another truth”, Adam was an innocent victim brutalized to death by the police out of racist reasons - for them this is the truth and there is none other, and whoever claims anything else (be it the court, the police, the actual testimonies of people on the scene) is lying. This is why their social-political group is called “Truth for Adama”. They insist on having the “truth” - but they have already planned their “truth” ahead, and they also willingly occult their own “truth”, such as trying to hide or defend as much the criminal activities of some of the Traore brothers. 

But what really enrages me is how Assa Traore and her group manage to confuse everything and mix everything. She has all of the anti-racism associations and activists in her pocket, and it is a noble thing for her to manifest and protest against racism and racist deaths... But when you look at the facts as they are, at what she truly does, outside of any context - she is literaly hijacking other marches and other protests to make it all about her brother, she places her brother’s name BEFORE those of other victims (listen to the protest she leads - each time it is “Adama” first and then the other name listed briefly before “Adama” goes back and is repeated again and again). When you listen to the news, you notice that day after day, Nahel’s name is replaced by Adama. Same thing with George Floyd - Assa made all of the news in France about her, and made any protest in France tied to Floyd into a Traore case. 

And I won’t even mention the other forms of discrimination or racism within the movement “Justice for Traore” - from the fact they insult the Black policemen of France of being “traitors” for just being in the police and working as policemen (because in their mind all Black people should work against the police, and not in it), to the incident everybody seems to have forgotten of antisemitic messages on flags and signs during some of the big Traore-led protests... 

Assa Traore seems to be a bit of an “attention-hog”, if you excuse me this very nasty expression. The way she puts herself forward in every manifestation, the way she makes every other man’s death at the hands of the police about Adama (men “of color” of course, not white men, because against for her the fight against police brutality and the fight against racism is one and the same - hence why they called Black policemen “traitors to the cause”), the way she mixes together police-caused deaths between countries, the way she made her brother the synthesis of numerous other victims, and she places herself as the only true activist against racism in France... I don’t know but I doubt about her true intentions. She was not a political or social activist before - she did help take care and reinsert delinquant youth before her brother’s death, but she wasn’t a public figure in any way, and ever since Adama’s death she received prizes, and she was given positions in several magazines and medias, and she got involved with many political groups, and she is now out there in every manifestation... But it is especially the way she literaly drowns the names and cases of other police-caused deaths under the name of Adama that makes me tick. 

Anyway I’ll stop there because I won’t go back about everything... This is all becoming such a mess. All I want to say is Nahel is not Adama, and it truly makes me angry that they are making all of this about Adama, and not about Nahel. Every time people start to talk again about the Nahel case, about what happened, about the exact things - boom! Assa and the Traore group arrive and put Adama in the front. They did so with all the other cases of “police brutality”, but it wasn’t as obvious because these cases weren’t as heavily mediatized - but now that we have a clearly mediatized and big case with Nahel, it becomes obvious how they are just pulling the cover towards themselves. 

End of my rant (for now. I can’t promise you another won’t come out, because this is a time of anger and madness and chaos in France)