The planned changes would require, in part, that tech giants such as Facebook and YouTube take responsibility for copyright materials users upload to their platforms. Though the measure is claimed to be aimed at protecting copyright holders, many note that it can easily be used to restrict freedom of speech.

This weekend's wave of 'Yellow Vests' protests arrived in Paris on Saturday despite a ban on protesting along the Champs-Elysees, which was announced by French Prime Minister Edouard Phillippe after violence erupted last weekend.

Ahead of the 19th Saturday seeing Yellow Vests protests in France, troops have been mobilised to help the police focus on protecting public order in Paris. The military can go as far as opening fire if their life or the life of people they defend are threatened, Gen. Bruno Leray, Paris military governor, said Friday.

French police have banned protests on the Champs-Elysees and in its vicinity, which had been slated to take place this Saturday, 23 March, according to their statement. Similar precautionary measures have been taken by police in the French cities of Nice, Marseille and Metz.

On 14 March, scores of Palestinians in the starving Gaza Strip took to the streets in several cities carrying the slogan “We Want to Live”, calling for “equality, dignity, food and job opportunities.” That day passed quietly, but the interior ministry in Gaza warned the protesters not to take to the streets again because Hamas, the Palestinian movement which has been ruling Gaza since 2007, “has been doing its best to afford these just demands.” However, they took to the streets the next day in larger numbers, but they were violent as they burnt tyres and insulted and threw stones at policemen, prompting violent responses.

While the Yellow Vests (Gilets Jaunes) protests actually began on 17.11.18, I think most are aware that frustration with the government has been building for many, many years. Sarkozy certainly played a big role in this. Deep-rooted contractions have been left unaddressed while offshore accounts were filled up. Without wanting to dedicate a lot of space to the details of each French government since the last massive riots in 1968, I think it is easier to proceed from the fact that France has been essentially occupied by America for decades. For me personally, this helps to explain a lot.

Soldiers will be deployed across France to help maintain security during this weekend’s planned Yellow Vest protests, President Emmanuel Macron has said. The military will secure government buildings and other sites to allow police forces to focus on maintaining public order, the president said, according to comments reported on Wednesday by government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux.

It is still just about possible, with a sustained deployment of the imagination, to conceive of a set of circumstances in which Theresa May might still be able to regard her Brexit policy as a success. If, for instance, she agrees in Brussels on Thursday on the conditional short extension offered by Donald Tusk on Wednesday ; if she gets her third “meaningful vote” motion past the Speaker next week; if her MPs take Tusk’s offer seriously; if she proves better at persuading enough of them to back her deal than in the past, then – just possibly – it may all seem to have been worthwhile. Or at least it may do so for about 48 hours, until the leadership challenge begins and the policy conflicts of the next – and longer – phase of Brexit negotiations with the EU start to split her party yet again.

France has announced tough new measures on “yellow vest” protests as the anti-government demonstrations entered its fourth month over the weekend, marked by clashes with the police, nearly 200 arrests and damage to businesses by some protesters.

US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joe Dunford issued a statement Monday denying weekend media reports that the US plans to leave around 1,000 troops in Syria, saying the reports are “factually incorrect.”

Dunford presented the current planned “residual force” as 200, saying that this hadn’t changed since February. The US announced 200 would stay on February 21, but on February 22 officially increased that number to 400.

It’s not clear from Dunford’s statement where the “incorrect” aspect of the new report, which came out of a Wall Street Journal, exists. That report suggested that the 1,000 figure was not yet finalized, but was being discussed. Dunford’s comments didn’t include any details on what is actually being discussed, but just that nothing was finalized.

France’s prime minister said Paris’s police chief had been sacked and that the government would shut down “yellow vest” protests if violent groups were identified among the ranks of “yellow vest” protesters.

Catalonian independence activists are protesting on the streets of Madrid under the banner ‘self-determination is not a crime’.

More than 60 political collectives from Catalonia and other parts of Spain are heading to the nation's capital aboard 400 chartered buses, and are expected to gather and march between Atocha and Plaza de Cibeles.

The protesters are demanding that the US put and end to its involvement in Venezuelan internal affairs, lift the sanctions it imposed and rule out the possibility of military intervention in the country.

Hundreds of protesters gathered Saturday at Lafayette Square near teh White House to express their support for Venezuela's incumbent president Nicolas Maduro.

Hundreds of protesters are gathering in Washington DC to demand "No coup! No war! No sanctions!" on Venezuela, and show support for Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro against regime change efforts.

A large sea of demonstrators met at Lafayette Park for a march on Washington Saturday afternoon to show opposition to the Trump administration’s effort to overthrow Maduro and replace him with opposition figure Juan Guaidó, who has declared himself president with the support of the US, Canada, many European nations and other leaders.

President Trump says that the ongoing rioting in France is caused by dissatisfaction with the Paris accord on climate change.

‘How is the Paris Environmental Accord working out for France?’ Trump tweeted on Saturday.

‘After 18 weeks of rioting by the Yellow Vest Protesters, I guess not so well!

‘In the meantime, the United States has gone to the top of all lists on the Environment.’

It is unclear what Trump was referring to.

Surreal footage has emerged of a bank going up in flames after France's Yellow Vests were back in full swing on Saturday following a brief lull at the end of President Macron's unsuccessful 'great debate' - during which thousands of town halls were conducted over a two-month period in the hopes of solving national issues through citizen debates.

But now protests turned to riots are quickly returning to being potentially deadly with a number of dramatic close calls on Saturday.

Yellow vest protests in the French capital, which are ongoing for the eighteenth consecutive weekend, have evolved into serious clashes between activists and police, a Sputnik correspondent reported on Saturday.

As many as 31 people have been detained so far, according to media reports.

Earlier in the day, French police fired tear gas against protesters as yellow vest rallies continue for the eighteenth consecutive weekend in the country's capital, a Sputnik correspondent reported.

France has ended two months of citizen debates in which Yellow Vest supporters were invited to air their grievances. Parisians who spoke with RT said the meetings were a stunt used by Emmanuel Macron and won’t lead to real change.

The French president launched his “great debate” in mid-January in response to the popular Yellow Vest protest movement. Up to 500,000 people participated in 10,000 meetings nationwide, with discussion topics ranging from taxes to the environment. The national dialogue has been credited with giving Macron a much-needed boost in the polls – but few seem optimistic that the debates will lead to concrete changes.

“It would surprise me if he takes any measures, but I don’t expect anything,” one Yellow Vest supporter told RT.

Clashes between protesters and police broke out as the Yellow Vest rallies entered their 18th consecutive week, causing more headaches for President Macron, whose “great debate” aimed at pacifying the protests ended on Friday.

Saturday’s rally saw thousands of people flooding the streets of downtown Paris, with many wearing black balaclavas and holding French flags.

Violence erupted on the Champs-Elysees in Paris, where protesters congregated to take part in the weekly march which began in November. According to the Associated Press, Paris mobilized more police than in previous weeks in an attempt to stave off unrest.

A resolution recently introduced in the Missouri state legislature would affirm that boycotts are protected political expression.

The measure, sponsored by Black progressive lawmaker Brandon Ellington, says that “criticism of a nation by individuals, including as a nonviolent citizens’ boycott, does not constitute bigotry against the citizens of that nation.”

It upholds the constitutional right to boycott “any entity when [people] have conscientious concerns with the entity’s policies or actions,” adding that the state should not “punish individuals” for supporting boycotts by denying them contracts.

According to the resolution, boycotts are “an expression of encouraging the government of the nation to modify its policies and practices to uphold the inalienable human rights of all people within its borders.”

The heavy-handed policing of anti-government “yellow vest” demonstrations, during which thousands of protesters have been arrested and many wounded, reflects a steady erosion of civil liberties in France, the country’s human rights watchdog said.

Demonstrators are gearing up for major demonstrations in front of the White House in Washington March 16 to protest President Donald Trump's violent attempts to overthrow the democratically elected government of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.

“U.S. hands off Venezuela! NO to the coup — NO to sanctions — NO to a new U.S. war,” reads a statement by the Act Now to Stop War and Racism (Answer) coalition and some 150 other organizations and individuals behind the Saturday protest.

The upper house of the French parliament has greenlighted a bill giving police broad powers to quell unrest. It comes as a rights watchdog warned of civil liberties being undermined in France due to crackdowns on protest.
Following hours of tense debate on Tuesday, the French Senate approved an anti-hooligan ('anti-casseurs') bill by a margin of 210 votes to 115.

The bill has courted widespread controversy, having been denounced as "liberticide" by the left, and hailed as a "the law of protections" by the French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner.

Concerns over the Trump administration's increasingly hostile policy in Venezuela grew Tuesday after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the U.S. was withdrawing all diplomatic personnel from the country.

Pompeo cited the "deteriorating situation" in Venezuela that escalated in January after the U.S. recognized opposition leader Juan Guaidó as "interim president," rebuking President Nicolas Maduro and coordinating efforts to overthrow the elected government.

Pompeo announces US pulling out all diplomats from #Venezuela pic.twitter.com/LAev9qtyqR

— Josh Lederman (@JoshNBCNews) March 12, 2019
The presence of embassy staff in Venezuela is a "constraint" on US policy? That sounds very regime changey to me. Buckle up just in case. pic.twitter.com/y1ckutYKG2

— Hawaii Delilah™ (@HawaiiDelilah) March 12, 2019

“Palestine” has been compared to many things. The world’s longest colonial war, a “hell-disaster” – Churchill’s memorable epithet – and the site of Israel’s “war on terror”, a conflict in which we are supposed to believe that the Palestinians are playing the role of al-Qaeda or Isis or any other outfit which the west and its allies have helped into existence, and which Israel is going to fight on our behalf.

But there are times when Palestine turns out to have been located in the Bermuda Triangle. The Palestinians disappear. They cease to exist. They are forgotten, irrelevant, outside the landscape of fear, pain, injustice and occupation that we once heard about so often. No one can imagine what has happened to these Palestinians. Like the aircraft and boats which strayed into the mythical triangle, they shouldn’t have been there in the first place. Sad to see them go. But it’s a mystery.

Fifty weeks have passed since the Great March of Return demonstrations began at the fence separating the Gaza Strip and Israel. Since March 30, protesters in Gaza have demanded the right to return to their homes and villages in historical Palestine, and demanded an end to Israel’s 12-year blockade of the Gaza Strip, which has gutted the coastal enclave’s economy and deprived its roughly two million inhabitants of many basic commodities. Palestinian woman have been a part of the protests from the beginning. According to Gaza Health Ministry, more than 250 Palestinians have been killed during the Great March of Return, including six women.

On this Friday, more than 7,000 Gazans demonstrated, more than half of them women after the leaders of the protest called for Palestinians to join in the “Friday of Palestinian women” in honor of International Women’s Day.

Lawmakers last month backed tighter internet controls contained in legislation they say is necessary to prevent foreign meddling in Russia’s affairs. But some Russian media likened it to an online “iron curtain” and critics say it can be used to stifle dissent.

People gathered in a cordoned off Prospekt Sakharova street in Moscow, made speeches on a stage and chanted slogans such as “hands off the internet” and “no to isolation, stop breaking the Russian internet”.

The rally gathered around 15,300 people, according to White Counter, an NGO that counts participants at rallies. Moscow police put the numbers at 6,500.

“If we do nothing it will get worse. The authorities will keep following their own way and the point of no return will be passed”, said 28-year-old protester Dmitry, who declined to give his full name.

A crowd of Yellow Vest protesters broke into and trashed a Masonic lodge in the French village of Tarbes. The ransacking has been condemned by the French government, who accused the protesters of “stupidity” and “intolerance.”

Some 450 protesters had gathered in Tarbes on Saturday for the 17th straight weekend of anti-government demonstrations. Around midnight, La Dépêche paper reported, some protesters began shouting “we’re going to the freemasons!”

A smaller crowd of protesters marched on the Masonic temple, with one battering down the door of the secretive organization’s clubhouse. More protesters pelted rocks at the building and eventually the group forced its way inside. They overturned furniture, trashed the esoteric art hanging on the walls, and stole four ceremonial swords; they gave these back later on.

For some months now, France has been the scene of turbulent upheaval. Fierce social conflict has long been a defining feature of the country’s political life. It has been a historical given in a nation constructed, for the most part, post-1789 on the basis of a revolution of universal scope that, along with the social advances won in 1936, 1945 and 1968, still exerts a strong hold on the collective memory and the country’s institutions, despite attempts to eradicate all traces of it.

Tens of thousands of people braved cold weather on Friday in Algiers to demand President Abdelaziz Bouteflika step down, as rallies against the ailing leader's re-election bid spread across Algeria for a third consecutive week.

The protest, which coincided with International Women's Day, saw an even larger crowd pour onto the streets of the capital compared with the previous mass gatherings.

In what has become a habit since February 22, the mostly young demonstrators chanted slogans against the 82-year-old president, his brother and "le pouvoir", or the powers that be - a vague term Algerians use to refer to the shadowy clique of politicians, high ranking military officials and oligarchs who they believe have been running the country.

Several hundreds of protesters gathered on Saturday at the Place Charles de Gaulle in the French capital of Paris for the 17th consecutive weekend of rallies of the yellow vest movement opposing the French government's social policies, a Sputnik correspondent reported.

While these protesters are planning to walk around three miles during their march, another group of protesters is holding a sit-in demonstration. They are going to sit at the Champ de Mars in downtown Paris during the whole day.

On the same day, yellow vest protests are scheduled to take place in the French cities of Lille, Bordeaux, Toulouse and others.

Emboldened by the election of Trump and the emergence of far right allies across the world, Israel is entrenching its system of oppression in ways that create urgent threats to the realisation of the collective rights of the Palestinian people. Israel is expanding settlements at the fastest rate since Oslo, with Khan Al Ahmar and 45 other Palestinian communities in the West Bank facing forcible transfer. With the passing of its Nation State Bill in July 2018, Israel has embedded into its constitution the denial of equality under the law to Palestinian citizens of Israel who were already subject to more than 60 laws that directly discriminate against them.

Rioters in the French city of Grenoble set fire to 65 cars and targetedsecurity forces with fireworks and Molotov cocktails, officials said Tuesday, after a third night of violence sparked by the death of two teenagers during a police chase.

Clashes began on Saturday evening when two men, aged 17 and 19, were spotted by police riding a stolen scooter without a license plate and without helmets.

They were being followed by a police vehicle when they crashed into a bus, according to the local prosecutor’s office which is treating their deaths as accidental.

“Young people from the neighbourhood saw what happened and have the feeling that there was a mistake by the police,” said Hassen Bouzeghoub, the director of a social club in Grenoble’s Mistral area where the men died.

A family member, who did not give his name, claimed “police are responsible for their death” in comments made to an AFP reporter outside the city court on Sunday.

8,000+ arrested, 500 major injuries, 2,000+ imprisoned (as of Feb. 14), 1,500+ awaiting trials (Feb. 14), 12 deaths, 20+ blindings, 6 hands lost, 10,000+ rubber bullets fired. Cops never switch sides – they have too much to lose.

The Yellow Vest protesters have apparently adopted an unconventional weapon against the French law enforcement – fecal bombs. At least three policemen have been already affected by them during the most recent protest.

The criminal police (BAC) officers came under the excrement attack in the city of Marseille on Saturday, getting heavily stained by fecal matter. One of the officers has reportedly received injury to insult, sustaining physical damage to his elbow.

There is a pushback in France against President Emmanuel Macron’s speech to a major Israel lobby group last month vowing to criminalize anti-Zionism.

More than 400 intellectuals, artists and activists have signed an open letter to Macron that was published on 28 February in the national newspaper Libération.

“Mr. President, we are French citizens who respect the laws of the republic, but if you adopt a law against anti-Zionism, or if you officially adopt an erroneous definition of anti-Semitism that permits outlawing it, please know that we will break this law with our words, our writing, our art and our acts of solidarity,” the letter states.

“And if you decide to pursue us, to silence us, even to imprison us for that, well, you can come and get us.”

For the first time in years, the drumbeat of civil war has become audible across the United States. The nation looks destined to repeat history thanks to a media that is no longer able to objectively perform its job.

The predominantly left-leaning US media has just entered its third consecutive year of open warfare against Donald Trump. This non-stop assault risks aggravating political passions to the point where ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ snowballs into something completely beyond our ability to control. Like full-blown Civil War.

Over the weekend, the Washington Post, one of most prominent serial producers of partisan agitation, published an article entitled, ‘In America, talk turns to something unspoken for 150 years: Civil War’. The piece, which deftly places Democrats above the fray, opens with the following whiff of grapeshot:

Thousands protested in Montenegro’s capital Podgorica on Saturday, the fourth such rally in as many weeks, demanding that President Milo Djukanovic and his government resign over alleged corruption, cronyism and abuse of office.

Throngs of people, rallied by civic activists, bloggers and journalists who say they are not affiliated with political parties, marched through the center of the city chanting “Milo thief”. Opposition politicians have distanced themselves from the protests.

Weekly political protests also continued in Serbia, Montenegro’s larger neighbor and fellow ex-Yugoslav republic.

Marija Backovic, a teacher from Podgorica, said she was protesting for a better Montenegro. “We are not the danger for this country ... those that are destroying it for 30 years are the real danger,” she told the crowd on Saturday.

As the Yellow Vest protests rage across France for the 16th straight week, shocking footage has emerged of police brutality. Apparently a Friday call for calm by President Emmanuel Macron doesn't apply to police.

By conflating anti-Zionism with anti-semitism, Macron is attempting to shield the government from criticism over its active participation in other forms of racism

Large-scale demonstrations began in France on 17 November last year in wake of the government's decision to raise fuel taxes. Despite the French authorities later discarding their plans, yellow vests protesters, dissatisfied with the government's social policies, have continued to rally across the country.

Yellow vests demonstrators are gathering to protest against French President Emmanuel Macron's economic policies for the 16th week in a row.

The Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) movement has been in steady decline since Christmastime. But the grotesque assault on Alain Finkielkraut in Paris last Saturday marks its end as a social force one could be hopeful about.

Albanian police used teargas to disperse hundreds of opposition protesters who tried to prevent ruling Socialist MPs from entering parliament.

The incineration of the poorest people in Britain at a location surrounded by some of the richest real estate in Europe was a tale of morality worthy of Charles Dickens himself. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea was rolling in so much cash, it gave rebates in council tax to some of the world’s richest people. Yet the same borough was the not-so-proud owner of social housing like Grenfell Tower. On June 14, 2017, not even two years ago, 72 people died in a building wrapped in combustible cladding. The smell of the smoke still lingers, along with much anger, and there are signs that a search for a scapegoat may be under way. It won’t be the scapegoat anyone would automatically assume, however

Thousands of yellow vest protesters took to the streets across France on Saturday for a 15th straight weekend of demonstrations, trying to re-energize supporters while stamping down on the violence and anti-Semitism in the movement's ranks.

Among the many rallies around Paris and in other French cities, hundreds gathered at the Arc de Triomphe monument in Paris to march through well-off neighborhoods to protest government policies they see as favoring the rich.

Tempers frayed at the end of the main demonstration at the Trocadero plaza, next to the Eiffel Tower, and French police used tear gas to disperse protesters.

The 15th consecutive yellow vest protests were relatively peaceful compared to previous weeks. Some 46,000 people nationwide joined the protests, a figure slightly higher than last weekend.

French President Emmanuel Macron has floated the idea that those convicted for crimes of hate speech could be banned from social media networks permanently.

President Macron floated the idea at the annual dinner of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIR) saying that a new bill to fight against hate speech online was being tabled for May of this year broadcaster BFMTV reports.

While the bill is being floated at a time where Jews are facing rising levels of real-life anti-Semitic attacks driving whole communities out of French cities, the proposal to stifle speech online comes as President Macron faces unprecedented levels of criticism from the anti-government Yellow Vest movement. The French state has cracked down hard on Yellow Vest activists, arresting 8,400 protestors in just a matter of months.

Le Parisien today (19 February) has an interview with Frances Kalifat, president of the CRIF (Representative Council of Jewish Organisations of France), the main Jewish ethno-activist organisation in France. All major French politicians are expected to attend its dinners and pay court to it it, except those of the Front National (now renamed Le Rassemblement National), who, being defenders of French interests, are systematically excluded.

War and killing are now as American as apple pie. Little thought of the victims of U.S. aggression is evident. This lack of compassion for human suffering at the hands of the political and corporate state, and the complicit military, is a travesty. It exposes widespread apathy at a level that belies imagination, and uncovers the glaring lie that Americans are exceptional.

The exceptional ones are those who stand against war and tyranny, not those who salute a flag that represents the murder and slaughter of innocents. Worshiping the purveyors of war is no different than worshiping war itself, but this distinction is lost in the brainwashed minds of those who hold the state up as a god. When support of war and those who prosecute war becomes common even in the houses of religion, as it has in the U.S., then the country as a whole has lost its way.

Last Saturday marked the 14th straight weekend of Yellow Vests demonstrations in Paris. The movement emerged in France back in November following the government's fuel tax hikes proposal and while the French government ultimately abandoned its plans to raise fuel taxes, the protests have continued.

Yellow Vests demonstrators gathered in front of the UN headquarters in Geneva on Wednesday to show their indignation with police violence during protests.

The wave of Yellow Vests rallies — named after the garment all drivers are legally required to carry in their vehicles in France — started in mid-November.

The French people may be renowned for exercising their democratic right to protest, but the Yellow Vest movement has surpassed all expectations. Sputnik spoke to Dr Binoy Kampmark, Senior Lecturer at RMIT University, for his take on what we can expect in future from the Yellow Vests.