France has “fought for 40 years” against Britain striking a deal that would hand them frictionless trade with the EU without the laws. According to Tory MP Neil O’Brien, who voted Leave in the referendum, the contentious backstop agreement is Emmanuel Macron’s “worst nightmare”. Despite what hardline Brexiteers claim, Mr O’Brien claims that the backstop could actually hand Britain a huge economic boost while tearing at the fabric of the EU.

Speaking on BBC’s Week In Westminister, Mr O’Brien said he would have taken this deal if the EU offered Britain this before the referendum.

He explained: “The backstop is France’s worst nightmare.

“If we ended up in it, which I don’t think we will, we would have complete tariff-free access to the EU but not have to obey any new laws.

“That is what the French has been working for 40 years to try and avoid.”

Unlike the 2014 Ukraine uprising, which witnessed invasive meddling on the part of US politicians and diplomats, Western support for the French Yellow Vest protests has been conspicuously missing in action.

The streets of Paris are ablaze for a fourth weekend in a row, as a swarm of Yellow Vests assert themselves against a French government which, they argue, has become increasingly detached from the cares of ordinary citizens. Yet support among Western capitals for the protesters is nowhere to be found.

General Antoine Martinez has written the letter signed by ten other generals, an admiral and colonel, and also includes former French Minister of Defense Charles Millon.

They’ve given strong warning that Macron’s signing the U.N. Global Migration Pact strips France of even more sovereignty providing an additional reason for “an already battered people” to “revolt”.

The highly decorated military co-signees assert that the beleaguered Macron is “guilty of a denial of democracy or treason against the nation” for signing the migration pact without putting it to the people.

“The French state is late in coming to realize the impossibility of integrating too many people, in addition to totally different cultures, who have regrouped in the last forty years in areas that no longer submit to the laws of the Republic,” the letter advises, also saying that mass immigration is erasing France’s “civilizational landmarks”.

French President Emmanuel Macron has held a press conference on the second day of the European Council's summit in Brussels.

Macron's address comes as the protests organised by the Yellow Vests movement in France are poised to enter their fifth week on Saturday despite the fact that the government had agreed to cancel the fuel tax hike and raise the minimum wage in line with the demonstrators' demands.

"The country needs calm, it needs order, it needs to find a normal functioning", Emmanuel Macron stated at the press conference in Brussels when asked whether he planned to call on the protest movement's participants to avoid taking part in Saturday's rally.

France has already seen four weekends of unrest after thousands took to the streets in Paris to protest high fuel prices. As demonstrations turned violent, the protestors smashed store windows and set cars on fire, prompting police to use tear gas and water cannons.

France is bracing for unrest as the Yellow Vests have been holding a rally— called Acte 5: Macron Démission (Act 5: Macron's Resignation) — for the fifth weekend, with 70,000 police officers being mobilised ahead of the demonstrations.

According to the organisers of the protests, this weekend the Yellow Vests are rallying "for social justice and tax, for a real democracy, for equal rights, for a true ecological transition."

France has honored Al-Haq and B’Tselem with the prestigious Human Rights Prize of the French Republic.

This came despite heavy pressure from Israel on the French government to pull the award from the two groups which document Israeli war crimes and abuses against Palestinians.

French justice minister Nicole Belloubet did however give in to the pressure and refused to attend the award ceremony in Paris last Monday.

Paris is bracing for yet another round of Yellow Vest protests, with demonstrators planning to take to the streets on Saturday. More than 10,000 people have already RSVP'd on Facebook to the ‘Acte 5: Macron Démission’ march.

The demonstration is scheduled to take place in the French capital on the Champs-Élysées.

The organizers, consisting of some 15 groups, have outlined their list of demands on Facebook, saying they will continue their action against Macron until all their demands are met.

The Paris riots are and were as predictable as sex producing babies and Paris today is only a precursor to what can happen in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, or Seattle tomorrow if we allow Zealots and Lunatics to run America into the ground for political agendas that fly in the face of individual freedom and liberty. Trillions for climate change is one of those lunatic fringe agendas that has nothing to do with climate and everything to do with the elite’s control of the world’s masses and wealth redistribution from developed countries to un-developed countries where the world’s elite controls the flow of the money.

Somehow we avoid the “truth” that if you squeeze a tomato hard enough, eventually it will ooze out between your fingers. Paris is oozing right now because of the strangling power of the moneylenders and the zealots and lunatics in government and radical fringe organizations! And let’s not forget that Parisians don’t have the right to bear arms. Americans do!

The European Commission's decade-long tough austerity measures coupled with excessive taxation have resulted in the "yellow vests" movement, Andy Vermaut, a Belgian human rights activist, told Sputnik.

"In reality, the struggle of the Gilet Jaunes [Yellow Vests] is a cry for help from people who struggle every month for existence", said Andy Vermaut, a Belgian human rights activist, emphasising that "working is no longer a guarantee for being able to exist properly" in Europe.

The "yellow vest" protests have engulfed France since November 17 with around 136,000 people having participated in the protests nationwide on December 8, according to France 24 television broadcaster. Meanwhile, the number of those arrested have mounted to over 1,700.

President Macron is often presented as a Rothschild Boy. This is true, but secondary. Thierry Meyssan demonstrates that he owes his electoral campaign mostly to Henry Kravis, the boss of one of the world’s largest financial companies, and to NATO – a considerable debt which weighs heavily today on the solution to the Yellow Vests crisis.

Today, the search is on for a larger explanation of the mayhem. Needless to say, some are blaming Putin. Yet until such time as Russian agent provocateurs are found in the streets of Paris, it’s hard to conclude that Muscovite incitement is anything more than schadenfreude via the Internet.

Speaking of the Internet, on December 6, Buzzfeed argued, “The yellow jackets are a beast born almost entirely from Facebook.” That is, Mark Zuckerberg’s company is the problem. As the article asserts, “The yellow jackets communicate almost entirely on small, decentralized Facebook pages.”

This description of the yellow jackets’ preferred medium might well be accurate, but it’s also true that activists, even revolutionaries, found ways of communicating before electricity, to say nothing of social media.

The French President tried to quell Yellow Vest protests by vowing to increase the minimum wage and cut some taxes, but it means nothing to farmers working long hours and living on slim budgets, their union head told RT France.
President Emmanuel Macron sought to appease Yellow Vest demonstrators, offering them concessions after weeks of massive protests. A monthly minimum wage hike by €100 ($113) and tax decreases for the poor among them.

But Veronique le Floch, Secretary General of ‘Coordination rurale’ (Rural Coordination), a labor union of French farmers, told RT France Macron had only embraced wage earners but failed to deliver a similar promise to those employed in agriculture.

French Economy and Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire on 3 December spoke in favour of raising wages, accelerating cuts in public spending, and taxes in France in the wake of violent "yellow vests" protests.

French unions are marching demanding an increase in wages, pensions, and against cuts to social protection in Paris. The rally kicked off at about 1 p.m. local time on Friday (12:00 GMT) at the Place de la Republique and, people are moving toward the Place de la Nation. A group of students is chanting slogans against the policy of French President Emmanuel Macron.

The rally is taking place amid violent protests by the "yellow vests", which have been raging for weeks. The demonstrations have been marked by violent clashes with police officers, who have used tear gas and rubber bullets against the protesters.

Several French lawmakers tabled a motion of no confidence, with a vote to be held on Thursday in the wake of President Emmanuel Macron's handling of the "gilets jaunes" ("yellow vests") crisis.

André Chassaigne, of the French Communist Party; Olivier Faure, from the Socialist Party; and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, founder of France Unbowed (La France Insoumise) movement, along with 59 members of the National Assembly — the French parliamentary body — put out a joint statement while filing a motion of no confidence against Macron's government, the AFP reported.

The gunman who shot multiple victims in Strasbourg had previously been convicted and was known to French intelligence as a possible ‘security risk,’ yet managed to slip through the cracks despite tightened security across France.

“The author of these acts, listed as a security threat, had been sought by police,” the regional prefecture confirmed. Yet he has managed to escape arrest earlier in the day, before carrying out the attack near the Christmas market at around 8pm on Tuesday evening.

The protests in France, symbolized by yellow vests, cover an increasingly large part of society. Political experts have already called this movement a “new revolution”. The scale of the “yellow vest” movement is already so serious that it is absolutely necessary to analyze this phenomenon in a detailed way.

We are dealing with a vivid manifestation of modern European populism. The meaning of populism as a phenomenon rising from the political structure in the societies formed in the wake of the Great French Revolution, and based on the confrontation between right and left, are changing radically.

Emmanuel Macron’s bid to buy off France’s “gilets jaunes” protesters with instant budget handouts threatens to blast through eurozone’s fiscal limits, fatally damaging his credibility as the champion of the European project and the guardian of French public accounts.

The package of short-term measures announced in a theatrical mea culpa on Monday night leaves President Macron’s putative “grand bargain” with Germany in tatters.Emmanuel Macron’s bid to buy off France’s “gilets jaunes” protesters with instant budget handouts threatens to blast through eurozone’s fiscal limits, fatally damaging his credibility as the champion of the European project and the guardian of French public accounts.

The package of short-term measures announced in a theatrical mea culpa on Monday night leaves President Macron’s putative “grand bargain” with Germany in tatters.

Conspiracy theorists have made the incredible accusation that the French state orchestrated last night's terror attack - to divert attention from the Yellow Vest protests.

A 29-year-old gunman shot dead at least two people and injured 13 others at a Christmas market before escaping in a hijacked taxi in Strasbourg.

Protesters today made the extraordinary claim on social media that President Emmanuel Macron had set up the attack for an 'excuse' to ask protesters to call off a demonstration planned for Saturday.

Here's a footage of #farmers slinging horse poo at the cops

EMBATTLED Emmanuel Macron is to be slapped with a no confidence vote as Europe is ripped apart by political crises that could topple two world leaders in two days.

The motion has been filed by left-wing groups, in the wake of the yellow vest riots rocking France, says a report.

“The security forces have to be right 100 percent of the time and, remember, in France at the moment they are distracted with the Yellow Vest protests that are going on,” Philip Ingram, a former senior UK military intelligence officer, told RT.

As everybody knows, what set off the protest movement was yet another rise in gasoline taxes. But it was immediately clear that much more was involved. The gasoline tax was the last straw in a long series of measures favoring the rich at the expense of the majority of the population. That is why the movement achieved almost instant popularity and support.

The timing of this incident is so favourable to the Macron government. It's just a fact can't be missed or brushed away:

Takes the focus of attention away from the grievances of the people (Yellow Vests)

Takes the focus of attention away from the arrogant King Jupiter Macron

Makes public gatherings restricted in that part of France.

Play’s the identity politics card which benefits the rulers.

Who benefits from this shooting?

France opened a probe into possible Russian interference behind the country’s Yellow Vest protests, after reports that social-media accounts linked to Moscow have increasingly targeted the movement.

According to the Alliance for Securing Democracy, about 600 Twitter accounts known to promote Kremlin views have begun focusing on France, boosting their use of the hashtag giletsjaunes, the French name for the Yellow Vest movement. French security services are looking at the situation, Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Sunday in a radio interview with RTL.

Not just France but Europe should hope the tax concessions and minimum wage rise Emmanuel Macron announced on Monday will prove sufficient to quell more than a month of violent and destabilising anti-government protests.

With more than 1,250 people arrested, 400 injured and an economic cost running into billions, the gilets jaunes revolt represents a formidable challenge to the authority of the centrist president, widely seen by his critics as arrogant and out of touch. If he flunks the test, he will not be alone in paying a price.

Macron’s concessions to the Yellow Vests has failed to appease protesters and opposition politicians, such as Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who called for “citizen’s revolution” to continue until a fair distribution of wealth is achieved.
Immediately after French President Macron declared a “social and economic state of emergency” in response to large-scale protests by members of the Yellow Vest movement, promising a range of concessions to address their grievances, left-wing opposition politician Mélenchon called on the grassroots campaign to continue their revolution next Saturday.

French president Emmanuel Macron tonight announced a range of dramatic Socialist-style financial concessions to struggling workers so as to end an 'economic and social state of emergency'.

In a TV address lasting 12 minutes, he said a month of rioting and blockades justified a €100 (£90) per month increase in the minimum wage, taking it to €1498 (£1360).

This will not 'cost anything to the employer', said Mr Macron, and will be accompanied by all taxes and other charges on overtimes being scrapped.

There were also be an end-of-year bonus that employers can pay without being charged by the government, while taxes on those earning less than €2000 (£1800) will also end on January 1.

Mr Macron also ruled out any return of the Solidarity Wealth Tax, saying that he wanted to stop rich entrepreneurs 'moving abroad', so preventing 'job creation'.

German workers have expressed sympathy with the mass protests of the “yellow vests” in France. Many workers in Germany share the same grievances and recognise they also confront policies that favour the rich.

These views were revealed when candidates of the Socialist Equality Party (SGP) interviewed workers in several locations on Friday.

In western Frankfurt at the Industriepark Höchst, some 90 companies employ more than 20,000 workers. Here, many workers are following the events in France with considerable attention.

The European Commission's decade-long tough austerity measures coupled with excessive taxation have resulted in the "yellow vests" movement, Andy Vermaut, a Belgian human rights activist, told Sputnik.

"In reality, the struggle of the Gilet Jaunes [Yellow Vests] is a cry for help from people who struggle every month for existence", said Andy Vermaut, a Belgian human rights activist, emphasising that "working is no longer a guarantee for being able to exist properly" in Europe.

The "yellow vest" protests have engulfed France since November 17 with around 136,000 people having participated in the protests nationwide on December 8, according to France 24 television broadcaster. Meanwhile, the number of those arrested have mounted to over 1,700.

FRENCH cops have reportedly developed a secret liquid "stun" gun capable of taking out hardcore rioters - ahead of any more violent protests.

It's been claimed if sprayed at mobs of Yellow Vest protesters the disabling weapon would "stop them clean, putting people down, even with masks."

Yellow Vest protesters demanded even more concessions from Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday even after he caved in to their demands for more pay and lower taxes with a £9billion spending splurge on Monday night.

Thomas Miralles, a Yellow Vest spokesman in the southern Pyrenees-Orientales department, said Macron had failed to listen to protesters and vowed to come to Paris this Saturday for his first demonstration in the capital.

Meanwhile thousands of students angered by Macron's education reforms joined the Yellow Vests on the streets for a 'black Tuesday' of unrest, further complicating matters for the French President.

France is investigating Russia over the yellow vest riots. Sorry, Macron, please look in the mirror.

Maybe it's the language translation, or my lack of expertise on French politics, but this #Macron speech came across as weak: a lot of apologies, throwing around government money, some solutions perhaps unrealistic. Sacre blah!

The French police are taking a very heavy-handed approach to dealing with protesters as this disturbing video shows bloodied and beaten citizens being beaten and dragged by heavily armed police.

The EU army has been deployed to the streets of Paris in an attempt to crush the historic French revolution currently sweeping across France.

Armoured European Union military vehicles were filmed storming Paris on Saturday, as hundreds of thousands of protestors continue to protest globalism.

Amidst another weekend of violent unrest in cities across France, Euronews interviewed Ghislain Coutard — the man behind the yellow vest idea.

A month before the first roadblocks, Coutard responded to a call to action on Facebook by posting his own video, which would quickly go viral. In it, Coutard suggests people place a yellow safety vest on their car’s dashboard as a symbol of solidarity, earning the movement its worldwide famous name.

Coutard — who did not go to Paris this weekend — spoke to Euronews about why he put up the video, why he joined the movement, and what it would take for the protests to stop.

French people are standing up for their rights and speaking out for many others around the world who are sick at the injustice of capitalism. None more so than people of Western states who have had to endure decades of economic austerity while a tiny elite become ever more obscenely wealthy.

In addition to the irrational malign distribution of wealth that capitalism bestows, Western states — that is, the oligarch-serving politicians — spend and waste inordinate financial resources on militarism and waging criminal wars.

For the fourth weekend in a row, the French public have taken to the streets of Paris and other major cities to demand economic justice.
They also want President Emmanuel Macron to resign. Macron has so far kept his usual aloof silence on the protests, leaving it up to his prime minister Edouard Philippe to placate the angry nation.

The French Secretariat-General for National Defense and Security (SGDSN) is investigating rumors on Russia’s alleged meddling in the “Yellow Vest” movement, French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said in an interview with RTL.

Sputnik reported that the minister’s statement followed a Times newspaper report, citing citing an analysis carried out by New Knowledge, a cybersecurity company, that hundreds of allegedly Russia-linked Twitter accounts were presumably fueling the yellow vest rallies by posting pictures of injured protesters and retweeting posts connected to the unrest.

In addition, according to the Alliance for Securing Democracy, about 600 Twitter accounts allegedly linked to the Kremlin have begun focusing on France, boosting their use of the hashtag #giletsjaunes.

Though the Gilet Jaunes (Yellow Vest) movement in France may appear to have erupted from nowhere, its arrival has been a long time coming.
“Men make their own history,” Karl Marx reminds us, “but not of their own free will; not under circumstances they themselves have chosen but under the given and inherited circumstances with which they are directly confronted.”

And confronting the thousands of Yellow Vest protesters who’ve been laying siege to central Paris these past few weeks – along with millions of ordinary working people across France – have been and are the deepening consequences of a broken and defunct neoliberal economic model, compounded by the refusal of its prime movers, chief among them French President Emmanuel Macron, to wake up to the deepening dystopia fashioned in its name.

Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron have ordered a new swimming pool to be installed a few feet from their private beach - so as to avoid people taking pictures of them sea swimming.

The Elysee Palace confirmed the five figure expenditure at the Riviera retreat where France's presidential couple will spend their summer break.

It also confirmed that the French taxpayer would be paying for the new swimming pool.

While the dust has not yet settled in the streets of Paris, after sweeping protests against fuel tax hikes, it just so happens that France has taken the crown from Denmark as the most taxed country in 2017, the OECD found.

Among the 34 developed members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Emmanuel Macron leads the nation with the highest tax-to-GDP ratio, the organization reported. France leads with 46.2 percent of GDP against the average of 34.2 percent of other members, thus dropping the long-standing leader in the rating, Denmark.

The Scandinavian country’s numbers, meanwhile, shrank to 46 percent, down by 0.2 since last year. Sweden, Italy, and Greece round out the top five, while Mexico is the last on the list at 16.2 percent.

France has been gripped by rallies as Yellow Vests demand new concessions from the government. Hundreds of protesters, including the movement’s leader, were detained during the demonstrations.

Yellow Vest mayhem has hit the country for the 4th consecutive weekend. Protests in the capital this Saturday resulted in clashes between demonstrators and police, with officers resorting to tear gas. Hundreds were detained and taken into custody in the capital.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stated Saturday that Turkish police were frequently accused of using force, however, he pointed to the situation in France and urged to note how the local police treated people there, the Anadolu news agency reported.

According to the Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan cited by the Anadolu news agency, the Yellow Vest protests pointed out to Europe's failed democracy, human rights and freedom, adding that Europe's security was threatened by the native population.

"The walls of security and welfare that they so cherished started to be shaken not by migrants or Muslims, but by their own citizens," Erdogan said.

As many as 450 people were detained in an unauthorized yellow vest protest in the Belgian capital of Brussels on Saturday, with 10 individuals having appeared in court, the city's prosecutor's office said.

"The Brussels Prosecutor's Office can provide the following information. At this stage, the issuing of arrest orders has been confirmed for 10 people," the prosecutor's office said in a statement, adding that as many as 450 people had been subject to administrative detention.

Speaking to about 80,000 people at a Lega rally in Rome, the Italian Deputy Prime Minister blamed Emmanuel Macron‘s austerity policies and the EU for the deadly yellow vests protests in the French capital. Mr Salvini claimed the core paradigm set out in the EU Treaties are currently undeliverable by member states because of the contrasting attitude of the Brussels institutions against Governments’ economic proposals.

He told the crowd: “You tell me how it is possible to guarantee what is written in the institutional Treaties.

“Full employment, sustainable growth, solidarity between states and citizens.

“Look at the images coming from Paris.

“Remember those that came from Greece. Look at the economic crisis that even the super powerful Germany is starting to experience.

“Spain, or other countries.

“Think of the yellow vests who are guaranteeing public order in this square and are protesting in Paris.

Riots have been raging across the city for the last few weeks as anger about the high cost of living and increased fuel taxes threaten to topple Emmanuel Macron’s Government.

Shocking scenes today saw riot cops confronting the so-called Gilet Jaunes – after the high-vis yellow vests they have worn.

But one particular video has caused a stir after it was posted on social media.

"Yellow vest" protesters should not take to the streets of Paris, since doing so would "certainly" lead to deaths, Christophe Chalencon, who calls himself movement's spokesman, told Sputnik on Friday.

"We should no longer protest in Paris. If there are protests in Paris, there certainly will be deaths," Chalencon said, stressing the need to "continue putting pressure" on the government.

According to Chalencon, if Saturday's demonstrations end in violence, French President Emmanuel Macron "will be politically dead."

"What’s happening outside Paris is not that serious. We need to avoid… vandals and law enforcement forces, who are present in large numbers and have much more powerful weapons. We need to avoid contact with them. We need to continue putting pressure, but with an iron fist in a velvet glove," he stressed.

Marine Le Pen, the leader of the French right-wing National Rally (RN) political party, said Friday that the ongoing crisis in France can only be resolved by political means.

"We believe that the way out of the crisis is essentially political. This decision excludes any use of violence that only adds chaos to adversity," Le Pen said in a letter published on the party's website.

She noted that the political solution to the crisis depended on the authorities, stressing that French President Emmanuel Macron "is deprived of sympathy for the people, constrained by arrogance and indifference of the elites."

The so-called "Yellow Vests" protests, named after the reflective vests all French drivers are required to keep in their cars, have been ongoing in France since November 17.

Despite French President Emmanuel Macron's announcement that he was abandoning a proposed fuel tax, "Yellow Vests" protests continue under the banner "All to the Elysee" on Saturday, December 8 in Paris, a reference to the Elysee Palace, where the president of the republic officially resides.

Earlier, authorities announced that they would close the Eiffel Tower on the day of the upcoming December 8 demonstration, citing safety concerns. The Louvre, the Delacroix arts museum and the Tuileries Garden will be closed as well.