TWO nights of rioting have rocked a suburb of Paris, after youths decided they had had enough of police oppression.
Cars and bins were torched and fireworks launched at police, who attacked locals with tear gas and "flashball" rubber bullets, leaving a 14 year old boy blinded in one eye.
In a dramatic incident at 1.30 on Sunday morning, a grey Renault Clio car drove up to the Trappes police station, heavily protected by police cars.
Instead of stopping, it smashed into barriers, prompting a helicopter chase which ended with a battle between 50 rioters and 150 CRS riot police.
The fighting in Trappes was sparked by a police search of a woman wearing a traditional Muslim veil, but one man told one TV report they were generally fed up with "being treated like dogs" by the cops.
On Saturday night, the action spread to nearby Elancourt and Guyancourt.
DESERT rebels have seized a number of towns in Azawad as the Western forces dislodge Islamic groups.
The original 2012 liberation of the Sahara territories by the Mouvement National de Liberation de l'Azawad was disrupted by the involvement of 'al-Qaeda' forces in the area.
In a press statement released on January 28, the MNLA said the towns of Kidal, Tessalit, Léré, In Khalil, Anefis, Tinzawatène, Tessit and Talatayt were now under its control.
It said the local population was in danger from the return into Azawad of Malian troops, following in the footsteps of French forces.
The MNLA said the Malian army had a history of carrying out massacres of unarmed people in Azawad and since the French intervention more than 100 people had already been targeted in reprisals against Touaregs, Peuhls, Sonrai and Arabs.
It said it was assuming the responsibility of securing its towns and protecting its people against an army which specialised in crimes against the civilian population of Azawad.
Azawad formally declared its independence in April 2012. A statement from the MNLA referred to the "complete liberation of the territory of Azawad" achieved in the remarkable final uprising which began in January of that year.
It recalled that in 1960 Azawad was attached to the state of Mali,
created by France - the former colonial power - without the consent of
its people.
And it mentioned the massacres, extortion, humiliation, despoilment and
genocide carried out against Azawad in 1963, 1990, 2006, 2010 and
2012.
It condemned the "inhuman behaviour" of Mali in using various droughts
(1967, 1973, 1984,
2010….) to try and wipe out the people of Azaward at the same time as it
had asked for and received generous humanitarian aid from overseas.
Azawad is said to be an Arabic corruption of the Berber word "Azawagh", a dry river basin that covers western Niger, northeastern Mali, and southern Algeria. The name translates to "land of transhumance".
ENDLESS war and plutofascist imperialism will be the hallmark of the UK's presidency of the G8, says prime minister David Cameron.
Ten years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, neoliberal powers are launching a new phase of their phoney "War on Terror", now on the south side of the Mediterranean.
The Daily Telegraph reports that speaking at Chequers, Mr Cameron claimed there was a growing "terrorist threat" in
North Africa and talked up the need for a "prolonged struggle" to counter it.
He said: “It will require a response that is about years, even decades, rather than
months, and it requires a response that is patient, that is painstaking,
that is tough but also intelligent, but above all has an absolutely iron
resolve; and that is what we will deliver over these coming years.
“It will also require countries to work together, and I will use our
chairmanship of the G8 this year to make sure this issue is right at the top
of the agenda where it belongs.”
The Western powers are using the usual bogeyman of "al Qaeda" as the excuse for a military assault on the territory of Azawad, which declared its independence from Mali last year.
But, beyond the shrill warmongering of the corporate media, informed voices are exposing the other agendas that, inevitably, lie behind the military involvement.
Stéphane Lhomme, director of l'Observatoire du nucléaire, points out that the real reason for the French intervention is to secure the supply of uranium to the country's powerful nuclear industry - the mineral is sourced from mines in the north of Niger, a desert area separated from Mali only by a hypothetical line on the map.
And in a letter published in the Evening Standard on January 17, Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed responded to Nabila Ramdani's endorsement
of France's Mali intervention, supposedly "aimed at ridding Mali of
particularly sinister insurgents," saying it overlooks key factors which have now
made themselves manifest in the hostage seizures in Algeria.
"Firstly, 'al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb' (AQIM) was,
according to experts like Professor Jeremy Keenan from SOAS - the most cited
academic in the world on North Africa - virtually manufactured in the region by
Algerian intelligence services with clandestine US support.
"This short-sighted
policy originated with the Algerian military junta's attempts to fabricate a
justification for exterminating members of the peaceful Islamic Salvation Front
after it won democratic elections decades ago. The policy was reinforced by
NATO's intervention in Libya,
shoring up Islamist militias with AQIM affiliations across the region.
"Secondly, Ramdani naively ignores NATO's strategic interests
in North Africa, described in 2007 by State Department adviser J. Peter Pham as
"protecting access to hydrocarbons and other strategic resources... a task
which includes ensuring against the vulnerability of those natural riches and
ensuring that no other interested third parties, such as China, India, Japan,
or Russia, obtain monopolies or preferential treatment.”
"Mali
is believed to have significant oil and gas potential.
"A confidential US
embassy cable (8 May 2006) obtained by Wikileaks observes that a
"significant impediment" to "extracting and transporting
oil" in Mali
is "regional political instability and terrorist activities."
"With reports of extensive civilian casualties due to French
airstrikes, it is far from clear that they will bebeneficial for Mali,
even if Ramdani concedes they may be troublesome for France. Such military action will
only lend legitimacy to the most virulent AQIM components of the insurgency.
"A better approach would be to cut off AQIM at source - by
reigning in Algerian military intelligence. But perhaps that's not the point."
Cameron's declaration of the G8's key role in the neoliberals' war on North African war will intensify protests against the June summit currently being planned in the UK by Stop G8.
A FRENCH city has erupted into rioting after the latest instance of police brutality and the predictable cover-up.
Some 30 cars were torched in Clermont-Ferrand on just one night as locals expressed their anger at the fact that Wissam El-Yamni, aged 30, was still in a coma after being arrested on New Year's Eve and suffering a 'heart attack' for unknown reasons while in the hands of the cops.
He had no medical history of heart problems and had injuries to the neck, report French media.
Wissam died on Monday this week, prompting the authorities to flood the Gauthière area with yet more police to try and quell further uprisings.
A police helicopter hovered over the estate, shining searchlights into residents' flats in a blatant show of intimidation.
TENS of thousands of people have marched through Nice ahead of the G20 summit along the coast at Cannes.
Huge numbers of police were mobilised by the French state, with a military-style operation to keep protesters on the officially authorised route.
Nice Matin reported that banks in the city centre were boarded up and a man was arrested in his home for allegedly threatening to shoot at riot police.
It said some youths had set fire to a mattress in the street and train drivers had expressed solidarity, with one TER train sounding its horn in support of the anti-capitalist protesters.
SPANISH protesters remain defiant after a brutal attack by police on the camp for real democracy in the centre of Barcelona on Friday.
Horrific scenes of riot cops truncheoning peaceful demonstrators, many sitting on the ground, have been seen by millions on the internet.
They have also sparked a new mood of determination among the thousands who have been out on the streets across Spain for the last two weeks, protesting at fake neoliberal 'democracy'.
Not only was the camp at plaza Cataluña quickly rebuilt after the police attack, but solidarity actions were held elsewhere.
El Pais reports that in Andalucía, thousands of people protested in various towns and in Seville the campers, who had held a three-minute silence, announced their intention to stay on in the city centre indefinitely.
The "indignados" in Valencia outside la Delegación del Gobierno decided to take over the calle Colon in the city centre to stage an impromptu march.
Widespread support was shown for the Barcelona protesters - from Vitoria and Bilbao in the Basque Country to Palma in Majorca and Las Palmas in the Canaries, reports the paper.
In Logroño people expressed their anger at the "violent, disproportionate and unjustifiable" actions of the police.
In Santander, around 500 people gathered with flowers in the Plaza Porticada and held a minute's silence, with a similar event in Plaza del Castillo in Pamplona.
A thousand people turned out in Santiago in Galicia and more than 500 in Murcia, Oviedo and Gijón, with further protests reported in Zaragoza and various smaller towns all across the country as the shockwaves spread from the sight of police brutality reminiscent of the Franco regime.
In Greece the new revolutionary movement has also taken hold in a big way.
The blog From the Greek Streets has videos from Athens and reported: "Today there were as many people as yesterday at the square; many are organising and determined to stay, indefinitely.
"There have been at least nine working groups formed up (general coordination, cleaning, cooking, translation/ media, technical support, legal support, medical aid etc).
"The fascists were few and isolated by the huge crowds. Come to Syntagma, everything’s changing right there, right before our eyes."
Pro-democracy protests are also being called for cities all across France on Saturday night.
STRIKING oil refinery and port workers have blocked access to Marseille airport as the French government grapples with a 10th day of strikes and confrontations.
About 500 workers from the l'Etang-de-Beurre refinery and others including airline and postal workers, blocked the access road to the airport, which serves local and nearby international destinations, from dawn, reports MSNBC.
"No vehicles can get through to the car parks," Medhi Rachid of the CGT union chapter at a nearby refinery in Bouches-du-Rhone, told Reuters.
The renewed demonstration came a day after President Nicolas Sarkozy sent in police to clear access to barricaded fuel depots and restore supply as trade unions kept up their resistance on Wednesday to a pension reform due for a final vote this week.
Workers opposed to a two-year higher retirement age also blocked roads to airports around France, leaving passengers in Paris dragging suitcases on foot along an emergency breakdown lane.
Outside the capital, notably in Lyon [pictured] hooded youths smashed store windows amid clouds of tear gas.
Riot police in black body armor forced striking workers away from blocked fuel depots in western France, restoring gasoline to areas where pumps were dry after weeks of protests.
Riot officers in the Paris suburb of Nanterre and the southeastern city of Lyon sprayed tear gas but appeared unable to stop the violence.
With a Senate vote on the reform expected on Friday at the earliest, unions were ramping up the pressure with strikes, go-slows on main roads by truck drivers and work stoppages at regional airports.
Fuel imports hit a record high on Tuesday, the government said, as it tried to get round a 24-day blockade of France's largest oil port, near Marseille, where 51 oil tankers lay idle in the Mediterranean, unable to dock.
With more than 3,000 service stations out of nearly 12,500 in France out of fuel, police could also be deployed to clear access to striking oil refineries, according to Sarkozy's order.
A large rally is scheduled in central Paris on Thursday afternoon.
RIOTS are breaking out across France, as the population shows its anger at the neoliberal 'austerity' measures being imposed on them by the hated Sarkozy regime.
Secondary school children have been blockading schools and youngsters have been fighting back against the police.
In several cities cars have been torched and molotov cocktails thrown at riot cops.
A college near Le Mans was set on fire and burnt to the ground.
The authorities say that 290 'casseurs' (hooligans) were arrested on Monday alone.
University students, who have not so far been involved, are now about to also join in the battle, raising the stakes still higher.
Because of union blockades of oil refineries, petrol is running out across the country, with two-hour queues forming even where fuels is available.
Airports and railway lines have been blockaded and lorry drivers staging 10mph 'snail' protests to block congest roads.
Poll show a massive 70% of the public support the strike, but President Sarkozy refuses to back down from his authoritarian capitalist position.
Comments the Daily Mail: "Many fear a re-run of the May 1968 riots in Paris when thousands took to the streets to try to bring down the government of President Charles de Gaulle."
Tuesday sees another day of mass action and strikes - and the momentum currently seems to lie firmly with the street.
A YOUTH revolt is kicking off on the streets of France, as resistance to the neoliberal Sarkozy regime deepens.
Protests by secondary school students were met with police violence in several cities, enraging the youngest generation and paving the way for more angry confrontations in days to come.
Pupils have been blockading the entrance to schools with makeshift barricades in their support for the wave of protest which has been focused on changes to the retirement age but has now taken on a much wider agenda.
Reports The Daily Telegraph: "France's BFM TV showed images of groups of students toppling waste containers in southeast France and erecting barricades in the middle of a Paris avenue.
"Police in the Val-de-Marne region southeast of Paris detained about 15 students for hurling projectiles at police and vandalising property.
"One student was injured when he was hit by a rubber flash-ball fired by police in the Paris suburbs, and another was taken to hospital in Bordeaux after clashes. In scuffles elsewhere, students in Lille burned a car and rubbish containers."
The Green Party Mayor of Montreuil, Dominique Voynet, condemned the police for shooting at children, adding that the teenager hit by the flash-ball risked losing his eye.
A big day of demonstrations this Saturday is to be followed by another day of strikes and protests on Tuesday October 19.
FRENCH resistance to the neoliberal 'austerity' measures being imposed on the people of Europe is nearing crunch point.
Millions took to the streets across the country on Tuesday in the latest of a series of defiant general strikes.
Even the government was forced to admit that the protests were bigger than previously.
And, in an extraordinary development, Le Monde reports that the police in Marseilles have been accused of lying about the turnout - by the cops' own trade union.
Whereas organisers reported that a massive demonstration in the Mediterranean port had attracted 230,000 people, the police estimate was a paltry 24,500.
The union 'Unité SGP police' accused senior officials of making out the protests were diminishing while they were in fact growing and of crossing the line between public service and politics.
With another day of action planned for this Saturday, Sarkozy's regime is being put under enormous pressure.
But the stakes are high - a forced climb-down over the retirement age in France would send a signal out across the continent that the neoliberal shock doctrine can be defeated on the streets.
FRENCH resistance to neoliberal ''austerity' measures is gaining new momentum.
Reports Reuters: "French labour unions, heartened by large street marches against pension reform, agreed on Friday to call for another protest on Saturday Oct. 2 and a follow-up day of strikes and protests on Tuesday Oct. 12.
"The move, announced in a statement after union leaders met in Paris, raises the stakes in a showdown with President Nicolas Sarkozy before a pension reform bill that would raise the retirement age to 62 from 60 is debated on Oct. 5 in the upper house. The government continues to rule out any retreat on the plans.
"Between one and three million people took to the streets across the country on Thursday to denounce Sarkozy's pension plans. The turnout was 2.9-3 million according to unions and 997,000 according to police."
MILLIONS of people took to the streets of France on Tuesday to oppose the neoliberal attack on the retirement age being carried out by unpopular president Nicolas Sarkozy.
Reports Sky News: "The public sector walkout brought much of the country to a standstill, with transport, schools, hospitals and postal services affected.
"The French Interior Ministry said more than 1.1 million people took part in the demonstrations to mark the strike, but the CFDT union put the figure much higher at 2.5 million.
"Marches took place in 220 locations across France.
"President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to raise the age of retirement from 60 to 62.
"He says the measures are necessary if France is to combat its rising budget deficit. The new legislation is being discussed in parliament.
"But outside, on streets across the country, there were angry demonstrations. The unions are furious.
"They claim Mr Sarkozy governs only in the interest of the rich and that the ruling elite should pay for the financial crisis - not rank and file workers.
"They say they have the people on their side and the President is now facing a 'perfect storm' of protest.
"Mr Sarkozy's approval ratings have continued to fall across the summer. His government has been badly damaged by a corruption scandal involving France's richest woman Lillian Bettencourt - the L'Oreal heiress.
"The man at the centre of the imbroglio is also the labour minister, Eric Woerth. He, as it happens, is responsible for driving through the pension reforms."
ABOUT 50 travellers armed with iron bars and hatchets have rioted in the small town of Saint-Aignan in central France after police shot a man dead, reports the BBC.
Violence erupted when the crowd, some of them masked, tried to force their way into a police station in the town in the Loir-et-Cher region.
In the ensuing riot, a bakery was trashed, three cars torched and trees, traffic lights and road signs damaged.
Three hundred soldiers were brought in to restore order.
Nobody is believed to have been hurt during the incident, which appears to have no connection with rioting in the eastern city of Grenoble over the weekend, which began after police shot dead an armed robbery suspect there.
The confrontation lasted some four hours before the rioters left town, France's L'Express newspaper reports.
At Saint-Aignan, the travellers were protesting at the death of a 22-year-old man shot by police, reportedly as he tried to run down two of their officers.
Prosecutors say the man failed to stop his vehicle at a checkpoint and dragged a gendarme on the bonnet for 500 metres (yards). The gendarme escaped with light injuries.
Arriving at a second checkpoint, the driver allegedly then charged the two gendarmes on duty there, one of whom opened fire and killed him.
Both gendarmes were taken into custody after the incident but released without charge.
French TV channel TF1 News reports that the shooting occurred in the town of Thesee, near to Saint-Aignan.
"It was a settling of scores between travelling people and the gendarmerie," Saint-Aignan's mayor, Jean-Michel Billon, told AFP news agency after the riot.
He was quoted by L'Express as saying he was concerned the rioters were still close to the town and might return.
RIOTERS have exchanged gunfire with police in the French city of Grenoble, setting fire to shops and cars after police shot dead a man accused of robbing a casino, reports RTE News.
Youths torched between 50 and 60 cars in the southeastern French city, as well as construction equipment and two shops, while police arrested a 17-year-old and an 18-year-old, police said.
Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux was to visit the city this afternoon, his ministry said.
The rioting started after a memorial service for 27-year-old Karim Boudouda, who died 24 hours earlier in a shootout with police after allegedly holding up the Uriage-les-Bains casino near Grenoble.
Shortly before midnight, a group of around 30 youths armed with baseball bats and iron bars attacked a tram in Boudouda's working class district of La Villeneuve and forced the passengers to get out.
Police intervened to protect the passengers, and the youths began torching vehicles and attacking police who responded with tear gas.
A couple of hours later a youth emerged at the front of the rioters and fired a shot at police, who returned fire four times, police spokeswoman Brigette Jullien tolsaid.
Nobody was injured in the riots, police said.
By this morning order been restored in La Villeneuve, and police could no longer be seen on the neighbourhood's streets.
According to police union SGP-FO, violence has been on the rise in recent months in Grenoble.
'Police are at breaking point,' said regional union chief Daniel Chomette, who called for reinforcements.
The casino at Uriage-les-Bains was the third to be attacked in southeastern France and Switzerland since late March.
An alleged accomplice of Mr Boudouda escaped during the shootout and is still on the run. Police found between €20,000 and €40,000 in the back of the getaway car.
A NEW insight into the rioting involving Chinese people in Paris, has been provided by French anarchists who were at the scene.
They say the theme of the protest, to protect their community from attacks, was reactionary rather than radical in nature.
Describing what they saw on Angry News from Around the World, they write: "All of a sudden people start running. We believe that everyone is fleeing yet another load of cops, but we realize very quickly that it is something else.
"Demonstrators are chasing kids, that they are calling 'blacks and Arabs', by throwing glass bottles. One of the kids falls down, and tries to hide under the porch of a doorway.
"Running to their side, we have to calm the fury of the lynch mob. They let go this time. "We understand, listening to conversations: that 'the cops don't do their job, leaving thieves at large, the protesters have decided to take matters in hand and avenge themselves.'
"We also understand that everything started from the theft of the handbag of a demonstrator by a kid in the neighborhood, then the attempt by protesters to deliver the kid to the cops, who did not want him.
"It is from here that the demonstrators unchained their violence against the cops. Unrestrained violence, such as one was not used to seeing. Violence to punish the cops for not doing their job well enough.
"The cops decide to retreat, flooding the place under a thick cloud of teargas fired into the crowd. More than fifty cop vehicles disappear in the blink of an eye, just as the violence was beginning to reach a peak.
"Clearly, the cops decided to abandon the place to let the inter-community violence unfold, while an hour earlier it was against the cops that everyone was insisting.
"This then led to a ballet between three to four hundred members of the Chinese community and some black and Arab kids, sometimes beaten to the ground by dozens of people and accused in a rush of being thieves, in front of thirsty journacops having smelt the smell of blood and large-titles, good scavengers that they are.
"But at the time of writing, nothing definite has yet emerged in the media about what really happened. We have seen some sort of makeshift militias, bringing together over a hundred Asians, to the neighbouring estate to beat up black and Arab people in a man-hunt reminiscent of the pogroms."
WORKERS at a French factory have held two company bosses hostage for two days in protest at its forthcoming closure.
The 86 rebels at the Essex copper wire plant in Mâcon, in Saône-et-Loire, have also threatened to throw its products and equipment into the river Saône.
They are demanding a pay-off of 120,000 Euros for each member of staff, reports Europe1.
Christian Estrosi, industry minister, is said to be "deeply shocked" by the latest in a string of militant actions against the capitalist system in France.
A FRENCH town erupted into riots after the death of a youngster whose scooter had allegedly been forced off the road by police.
Residents of Woippy, a suburb of Metz in the east of the country, were not swallowing the official line that the 'accident' was in no way the fault of the cops and after a 200-strong silent protest, it all kicked off.
Said one report: "Youths set cars, trucks and a bus on fire, Deputy Mayor Jean-Marc Rosier told Reuters. They also smashed phone booths, while riot police responded by firing stun grenades, footage from M6 television network showed."
An overwhelming majority of people are happy to be living in this industrial capitalist world. We know this because we are told it constantly.
How could we foresee a near future in which the hypnotic spell is broken, the scales fall from a billion eyes and those who say 'Enough!' are revealed, all of a sudden, to be a gale force wind of revolt, a tidal wave of insurgent delight sweeping all before it, a minority so vast it will change everything?
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