FRENCH President Emmanuel Macron was forced to cancel his important address to the French nation on Monday night, after a massive fire erupted at the historic Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris at 6.00pm Monday, destroying priceless French treasures as well as the roof of the historic Cathedral and its wooden interior, leaving only the stone structure intact. It was still burning yesterday morning!
Macron had been planning to announce on Monday evening a series of measures to try to appease the ‘Yellow Vest’ movement which is fighting against the massive poverty that he and his pro-EU regime have imposed on the French people.
The only big spending that is taking place by Macron is billions on civil war riot police forces, and special army units that have been told they can shoot to kill demonstrators if they fear that protesters may harm them.
These forces are in permanent training to fight Macron’s civil war against the working class! So far, over a dozen protesters have been killed and hundreds seriously injured by these state forces!
Instead of making his speech to try to ‘appease’ the ‘Yellow Vest’ movement, Macron scuttled to the scene of the fire, where the gathering crowds were expressing their astonishment that the French fire service did not have the equipment to deal with it.
Workers watched the fire bring down the Cathedral’s spire and said a few fire teams were not enough to deal with flames at such a height, and that helicopters should have been used to drop large volumes of water onto the blaze.
The ministry responded that aircraft were not used because it was feared that the weight of water falling at such a height could cause large parts of the cathedral to collapse.
Instead, one jet of of water was seen desperately trying to extinguish the flames engulfing Notre Dame. Local resident Michel Dupont said those living around the cathedral were upset that more equipment was not on site to spray water on the flames high up. ‘A lot of us are asking questions about the authorities’ response,’ he said.
Liz Boeder, another Parisian, said: ‘We need California firefighters’, in reference to the water-carrying aircraft used to tackle the forest fires in the US last year.
Kent Ardleb said: ‘What a tragedy. Notre Dame cathedral is lost. Where is the damn Fire Brigade?’ Another posted: “How come there aren’t any firefighters or water jets to be seen on any photos!?’ Dave Pasin said: ‘It seems there are no firefighters to be seen, no water, nothing?’
The truth is that the French state is only interested in the Fire Brigade as a form of civil war tool, trained in the use of water cannons against demonstrators!
This obsession of Macron and the French ruling class with its civil war against the working class is reducing the fire service to a force that cannot deal with major fires – but can operate water cannons against workers.
At the same time as French workers are marching and battling against high taxes, unemployment and low wages, Macron and the French ruling class are spending billions on military adventures in central Africa and now in Libya where they are supporting the drive of General Haftar, also backed by Egypt and Saudi Arabia, to grab Libya’s oil wealth by over- throwing the UN-backed ‘government’ that is also backed by Italy.
France and Italy, both members of the EU, are now in competition as to who will own and dominate the Libyan oil fields, and their mercenaries and special forces are fighting on opposite sides!
Meanwhile, workers in France and Italy are fighting for jobs and for higher wages and lower taxes as well as for jobs for the millions of unemployed youth – policies that the EU has imposed on their countries.
At the same time, workers in the UK are fighting to see that their Referendum victory in 2016, which decided that the UK must leave the EU, is carried out, while workers in Germany are worried that their motor car industry is about to collapse.
There is no doubt that the workers of France, Italy, Germany and the UK must unite into a single fighting force to bring down and smash the EU. It must be replaced by the Socialist United States of Europe that will expropriate the EU’s bosses and bankers and bring in a Europe-wide socialist planned economy to resolve the wages, jobs and taxation crisis!
