Defiant millions take to the streets in battle over Nicolas Sarkozy's cuts

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Observer

Defiant millions take to the streets in battle over Nicolas Sarkozy's cuts
The return of students and workers in mass protests made the right shiver. But there was no battle of the barricades
Lizzy Davies The Observer, Sunday 17 October 2010

The clouds hung heavily over the Place de la République and the statue of Marianne, France's heroine, was draped with demonstrators' balloons.

As protesters marched on the historic Parisian site of proletarian revolt, 17-year-old Romane scowled at the rain-filled sky. "At least this is proof we're not just here for the good weather," she said. On her jacket was pinned a placard scrawled with marker pen. "Carla, we're like you," it read. "We've been screwed by Sarko too."

Nicolas Sarkozy had feared that the rentrée – the time after the holidays when France returns to normal – would be warm, encouraging protesting masses on to the wide, Haussmann-designed boulevards, and he was right to be worried.

Languishing in the polls and engaged in an almighty battle to push through his flagship pension reform – taking the retirement age from 60 to 62 – the man once cast by some as the Gallic Margaret Thatcher is facing his most testing showdown with the notoriously bellicose unions.



Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/17/nicolas-sarkozy-cuts-protests-france

[xchrom]

1. What would happen here if it weren't for the teabaggers.

The energy has to go some place and a large spectrum
Of leadership let it go there.

[readmoreoften]

2. Le Pen, France's right wing fascist candidate has about the same amount of support

as the Tea Party. Or has at various times in the past. The problem isn't that there's an enormous right in the US. The problem is that there is almost no real left here. Our labor "leaders" are often in the pockets of corporate politicians and the union rank-and-file is caught between a rock and a hard place. We have two right-wing anti-labor parties, one with fascist tendencies, one without.

But the real distinction is not that we have a "huge" right, but that they have an active left. People there don't say "A general strike! Well what about people who can't afford to take off work! Strikes hurt workers?" and other corporate tripe.

[oswaldactedalone]

3. I'd like to see a headling that reads like this...

Defiant millions of Democrats take to the polls to defeat Thug-licans once and for all. Make it happen people!