France: One Million Take to Streets Against Macron’s Push to Raise Retirement Age
Reuters: “Police fired tear gas and fought with violent black-clad anarchists in Paris and across France.”
More than one million protesters took to the streets across France on Thursday as President Emmanuel Macron moves to raise the official retirement age from 62 to 64. “Late Thursday the Interior Ministry said 1.09 million people had turned out for protests, whereas the CGT union claimed that figure was in fact 3.5 million,” Germany’s state-run DW TV reported Friday.
Hundred of demonstrators were arrested amid reports of arson and violent clashes with the police. “On Friday, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told news outlet CNews authorities had arrested 457 protesters and that roughly 440 security force members had been injured,” the broadcaster added.
The protesters were joined by the members of the “Black Block” group, a far-left anarchist outfit with a violent track record in France and Germany. “Police fired tear gas and fought with violent black-clad anarchists in Paris and across France on Thursday as hundreds of thousands of protesters marched against President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to raise the pension age,” Reuters reported Thursday.
This is not Syria or Libya -This is France. Protests against Macron’s pension reform have become widespread and violent. pic.twitter.com/N2BimteeSP
— Ashok Swain (@ashoswai) March 23, 2023
Paris: Special Police Unit Accused of “Brutality” Against Protesters
The French special police unit Brav-M, which was formed in 2019 to crackdown on the Yellow vests movement, was accused of “brutality” against demonstrators and rioters in Paris.
An audio clip “[f]eaturing slaps, sexual remarks, threats and boasts, this recording, which Le Monde was able to authenticate, sheds a harsh light on the behavior of police officers, in total contradiction with their ethical rules and with the law,” the French newspaper Le Monde disclosed.
The TV channel France24 reported the accusations against the special unit:
They ride in pairs, are armed with handguns, expandable batons and tear gas grenades, and have been specially trained to prevent protests from spiralling out of control. But since France’s pension protests began, officers belonging to France’s special Brav-M motorbike unit have increasingly been accused of taking the law into their own hands, intimidating and threatening people, and in some cases, resorting to the use of excessive force.
On Friday, four days after Paris was the scene of one of the most violent demonstrations in years as hundreds of thousands of people thronged the streets to protest the government’s pension reform, French daily Le Monde and online video broadcaster Loopsider published a troubling audio recording. (…)
Brav-M saw the light of the day in the spring of 2019, in the midst of France’s Yellow Vest movement, after suspected anarchists vandalised and plundered shops and cafés along Paris’s famed Champs-Elysées boulevard and set fire to the renowned Le Fouquet restaurant.
France 🇫🇷
The batons of authoritarianism.#FranceProtests pic.twitter.com/2hlBneILgo
— James Melville (@JamesMelville) March 26, 2023
King Charles’s France Visit Postponed Amid Protests
With Paris literally burning, President Macron urged King Charles III to “postpone” his visit to France—the British monarch’s first state visit after taking the throne.
“King Charles III’s state visit to France has been postponed after a request by President Emmanuel Macron, Downing Street says,” the BBC reported Saturday.
The French president said “‘we would not be sensible and would lack common sense’ to go ahead after unions called a day of pension protests during the visit,” the UK broadcaster added.
France’s Spring of Discontent
As prices rise in the wake of surging energy costs and mass-migration eats into the French welfare system, President Macron has decided to raise the age of retirement without a vote in the nation’s parliament.
France is not alone. To keep the bloated welfare states afloat and provide for the illegal migrants swarming Europe, many EU countries are enforcing new laws to retain their aging populations in the workforce. The current retirement age in Germany is 65, but the Socialist-led government wants to raise it to 67 by 2031.
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LOL.
The French protesters should just be thankful their idol – Napoleon – isn’t around to handle the crowd control.
Of all the messed up stuff going on and the insanity that is killing Western Civilization, the French are up in arms about moving the retirement age from 62 to 64. Most French don’t work real full-time jobs, to begin with, and they all take months off for vacations every year, as if they were all public school teachers.
More proof that the most dangerous place in the world is to be between a Frenchman and his leisure time.
There is more to this retirement age riot. Opportunists abound in France during these periods. Retirement age must rise. While people are rioting, maybe its time England does the same. They have been ‘too English’ for too long and authorities have taken advantage of the docile public. Retirement ages must rise, mass immigration must end and people returned to their home countries. None will be easy.
Retirement ages wouldn’t have to rise without mass migration. That’s what they should have been in the streets about.
According to someone who lived in Paris recently for a few years and still has lots of contacts that is exactly what this rioting is about. If not for a generous social safety net that many of the Arabs are taking advantage of they believe the government would not have to raise the age. There is also some anger regarding sending money to Ukraine while raising the retirement age, apparently.
Little late for it.
How about instead they cut politician’s salaries.
There’s a viral clip going around about how Macron was in an interview spewing BS about how ‘sacrifices’ are necessary when apparently he suddenly realizes that the arm he’s gesturing around with has an incredibly expensive watch on it….. so he tries to sneakily shove his arm under the table and takes the watch off, then resumes gesturing.
https://vxtwitter.com/ricwe123/status/1639280490921304065
Funny how THEY never make these ‘sacrifices’ they demand of the stupid plebes.
Yes, the same a-holes who tell us to conserve to save the planet do not sacrafice to save the planet themselves.
Or you can lower the death age.
We need to raise the retirement age in the U.S. as well if we are going to save SS for future generations. But nobody wants to talk about it. It’s a losing election issue. And as long as voters in a democracy can vote themselves more money from the government, it’s probably not going to happen until the system collapses. I say this as a “boomer” who stayed in the work force until age 69 before retiring and drawing SS.
Yep. There’s no public appetite for making substantial changes needed to preserve Social Security. The GoP would be wise, after decades of being the grown up and pushing for incremental changes and getting castigated for it, to let the d/prog provide the solutions and let the d/prog receive the slings and arrows.
Correction.
There’s no appetite for making substation changes needed to preserve Social Security, as long as Congress is allowed to continue pissing away trillions of dollars a year with no accountability or end. We sure as heck aren’t cutting one dollar from SS as long as we’re shotgunning hundreds of billions of dollars into Ukraine.
Until and unless Congress is forced to do their actual jobs and produce an actual balanced budget, there is ZERO reason to cut Social Security.
Yes, printing money forever is unsustainable, but cutting Social Security serves no purpose while Congress is allowed to continue to go hog-wild on anything else they want, the economy and value of the dollar is still going to crash.
Budget first, THEN we can discuss maybe cutting Social Security.
Social Security is not ‘on budget’. Balancing the regular federal budget wouldn’t directly create any relief for Social Security’s cliff. Respectfully, your comment indicates the difficulty in even holding the discussion when basic misconceptions abound.
That said there won’t be any substantial action by Congress to make needed reforms to Social Security. Many misunderstand the difference between the federal budget and the various ‘trust funds’ and how each is funded. Too much resistance even to basic common sense reforms. Many, including Congress, would rather see the 25% cut coming in a decade or so v make any changes today.
IMO, the following would be a good start for reform:
1. Raise full retirement age to 70 for those born in 1965 and 72 for those born after 1990.
2. Eliminate early retirement. If the individual can no longer work full-time due to injury then they go onto Disability. Early SSI can’t be a proxy for disability anymore. Each has a separate pool of funding and we need to stop the proxy drain on main SSI.
3. End spouse payment options. It’s an individual program and women have been in the workforce in large numbers since the late ’60s. Each person should receive what their own earnings record provides for not their spouse’s record.
4. Increase minimum work period to qualify for SSI benefits from 10 years to 25 years.
5. Only count years of full time employment; IOW a 2000 hour year/40 hours x 50 weeks by quarter. Part time work wouldn’t count as full year though it could be combined to create a 2000 hour year for credit over several years.
We aren’t going to even START talking about cutting Social Security or raising the retirement age until and unless Congress is forced to reign in the rest of their utterly insane spending.
They’re pissing away multiple TRILLIONS per year on the most utterly insane crap because they just arbitrarily decided they no longer had to do their jobs and produce a budget.
Until that changes and Congress is forced to produce an actual balanced budget, we aren’t even going to DISCUSS cutting Social Security in any form.
Raising the retirement age will never save Social Security (or any other entitlements). It might postpone its demise until after your gone, but it cannot be saved. And reducing the rest of gov’t only makes it a much bigger part of the budget. (Until we started just pretending money was everywhere, it was the largest portion of the budget.)
The gov’t should never run a benefits program. Period.
Yup. You can’t save a ponzi scheme.
Watch it that’s not allowed
We o ly have to raise the age for SS because like Medicare it’s been used for everyone, back pain , here’s your disability check, headaches, here’s your disability check, alcoholic, here’s your disability check
Didnt work outside the family , husband dies, here’s HIS SS check
Then there’s the illegals and Medicaid….
But working people who don’t scam the system, keep on working, we need your money
I dunno… sounds kind of insurrection-y…
Seen the video?
Looks pretty insurrection-y, too!
The UK was smart to Brexit and divorce themselves from these lazy bums. Germany will bail sooner or later.
Socialism in a nutshell: empower the government to make all of your life decisions for you, then riot whenever you disagree with what they’ve decided you must do.
Indeed. Another workers paradise shows its brass p[ating.
All retirement schemes depend on an influx of young workers to pay the bills. This action by Macaroon is all a natural consequence of birth rates that are far below replacement level.
Get to work y’all lazy cheese eatin’ surrender monkeys. Seriously and obviously, government should not be involved at all. Work or dont work. Invest or dont invest. Sink or swim.