- See also : Doug Ireland on What Sarkozy’s Victory Means, May 6, 2007. May impure blood soak the furrows of our fields…
It’s been a busy week for our heroes. After successfully antagonising police in Los Angeles on May Day, 40 Kiwi Anarchists have flown into Paris in order to cynically exploit naïve locals, whose disgust at the Presidential victory of sociopathic Yanqui neo-con Nicolas Sarkozy has been both ‘turned into’ and ‘marred’ by violence. Thus in addition to distributing flags and masks to concerned parents in Paris, in a new development which worries experts at the Homeland Security Research Centre, the crazy New Zealanders arranged for the ritual burning, dismemberment and even stamping upon of an effigy of Monsieur Sarkozy (see below). Scienticians agree that this new tactic is clearly a signal, and possible evidence of a thawing in relations between the Kiwis and Iranian authorities (who like nothing better than a good effigy burning, especially if it’s accompanied by a good stomping). However, making funding avenues too obvious to the West may create antagonisms with the Kiwis’ erstwhile comrades among the jet-setting hordes of English, German and Swedish football hooligans, currently on sabbatical in Oslo, but previously hard at work blighting protests in Berlin and a number of other European cities with their presence…
Paris riots follow Sarkozy victory
Reuters / The Age
May 7, 2007
Thousands of extra police were drafted in to patrol sensitive suburbs today and a Reuters correspondent saw two cars burning [in] a tough neighbourhood north of Paris. Police said four cars and a bus were torched in another neighbourhood.
Youths also clashed with police in Paris’s Bastille Square and security forces fired repeated rounds of tear gas to try to break up the crowds. Disturbances were also reported in the southern cities of Toulouse and Lyon…
Riots in central Paris after election results
By staff writers and wires
NEWS.com.au
May 7, 2007
CLASHES between police and protestors have been reported in central Paris and the southeastern city of Lyon after conservative leader Nicolas Sarkozy was elected French President overnight.
In the Place de la Bastille in Paris riot police fired tear gas and at least one burst of water cannon after hundreds of rioters – some wearing masks – began throwing bottles, stones and other missiles.
Earlier, a small crowd brandishing black and red anarchist flags set fire to an effigy of Mr Sarkozy before tearing it limb from limb and then stamping on it. Demonstrators chanted “police everywhere, justice nowhere”…
Police clash with protesters after French presidential win
Radio Australia
May 7, 2007
Riot police have fired tear gas at stone-throwing protesters who gathered in central Paris to demonstrate against the presidential election victory of right-winger Nicolas Sarkozy.
The clashes took place on the Place de la Bastille where about 5,000 supporters of the defeated Socialist candidate Segolene Royal had gone to await the election results.
Up to 300 rioters, some of whom were masked, made running attacks on riot police who took up positions at the entrance to boulevards leading onto the square.
Earlier a small crowd of protesters, brandishing black and red anarchist flags, set fire to an effigy of Mr Sarkozy in the square before tearing it limb from limb and then stamping on it.
Elsewhere in the capital the president-elect appeared before cheering crowds and promised to be “president for all the French without exception.”
Mr Sarkozy beat Ms Royal by 53 per cent of the vote to 47 per cent, according to projections.
Idiots.
Yeah. It was more like 367 cars torched. But I think that’s not the last we’ve heard from the uncontrollables…
===
The election of Nicolas Sarkozy marks the victory of a project for social destruction and police repression. He is the candidate most openly favorable to the bosses and to the dominant class and he intends to govern in the best interests of the French employers’ federation, the Medef.
Let’s be ungovernable!
We need to start preparing right away to counter the attacks to come. And Sarkozy has already clearly indicated his intentions: smashing labour law and the single contract, loosening the 35-hour week, restricting the right to strike, an authoritarian reinforcing of the regime, an increase in harsh “security” measures, repression of working-class districts and an intensification in the hunt for “sans-papiers”.
The popular classes and the social and trades-union movements will now be confronted with a true challenge. Faced with a combative government and employers, no credit or confidence can be granted to a Socialist Party confined in its inoffensive and sterile parliamentary opposition, and which moreover shares many of the policies of the UMP (pension reform, expulsion of “sans-papiers”, etc.). Workers do not have anything to gain from allowing themselves to be chained to a hypothetical hope of a change of heart by an increasingly right-wing Socialist Party.
If we are to make any gains we will have to struggle for them. The election campaign has been marked by social conflicts (the strikes at the PSA Peugeot-Citroën factory in Aulnay-sous-Bois, Airbus-Eads, etc.) which must serve as inspirations for future fights. But to put a halt to the neo-liberal juggernaut, we need to put an end to struggles without strategy, protests without follow-ups and defend the autonomy and unity of the social movements, free from interference by the agendas of political parties and institutional games.
Alternative Libertaire
6 May 2007
Translation by FdCA-International Relations
===
…what we need to send in are commandos armed with 7.62mm guns and mince the lowlives!
Well yeah, maybe. I mean, I admire your revolutionary fervour Mick — and it’s not like France hasn’t witnessed that sort of thing before — but the mass murder of Sarkozy’s Government would have implications for social movements far greater than the momentary satisfaction produced by the knowledge that, for once, it was the rich and powerful what was doing all the dying.