Defiant Reactions in France to 2nd Lockdown – Citizens, Mayors, Businesses, Senators

ER Editor: The first lockdown during March to May – which didn’t require mask use – was difficult for many, and totally unwarranted. It left 800,000 unemployed, according to official numbers. At least it was understood that some people seemed to be getting sick. But the world hasn’t come to an end over this virus. The mood is thus changing, with the economic element becoming more pronounced and worrisome.

But we need to remember that none of this is being heard above the wall-to-wall MSM coverage of these repeated ‘terrorist’ attacks, with France having had 5 in 6 weeks.

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Small and Medium Businesses React

This from RT France Oct 28:

While Emmanuel Macron announced the return of national lockdown as of Friday, October 30, reactions are multiplying, especially from organizations representing small and medium enterprises, the first victims of these new restrictions.

“It makes no sense except to take us for hamsters”, according to Alexis Poulin. “Economically, this is a slaughter if there is no support plan to match the efforts that we ask of them […]. We are now waiting for precise elements to reassure us,” François Asselin, president of the Confederation of Small and Medium Enterprises (CPME), told AFP. … Many company directors will bring their companies to their knees, words broadly echoed by CPME vice-president Eric Chevée: “The closure of so-called ‘non-essential’ businesses is a real injustice. It is a real disaster for the companies concerned, especially since the announcement by the President of the Republic comes at a time of the year when many of them make a substantial part of their turnover, a few weeks before the Christmas holidays”

The same goes for the employers, the president of the Medef (ER: Confederation of Heads of Business) Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux estimating that the second lockdown was going to “cause considerable economic and human damage”. de Bézieux thus assures that he understands the “distress and anger” of the merchants who are “penalized” since “it is not in the businesses that contamination occurs but in the private sphere”. With, according to him, an extremely stiff bill to come: between 50 and 75 billion euros of gross domestic product (GDP).

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Spontaneous Evening Protests in Paris (Friday, October 29)RT France

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France’s Mayors on Behalf of Their Constituents

France has an entire HALF of Europe’s municipalities, meaning there are a lot of mayors and administrative costs. The French rely on their mayors, who constitute a real power class in France, especially from the large cities. For the smaller towns and villages, they are the ones closest to their constituents, who see the damage up close wrought by lockdown. This from RT:

Several elected officials and associations of elected officials, such as the Association of French Mayors (AMF), have called for the reopening of local shops closed because of the new lockdown. These decisions, however, are illegal under the law.

“The city center trade already weakened by the first lockdown is run by small businesses that do not have the capacity to withstand a sudden and persistent drop in their activity without jeopardizing their very existence,” reads a statement from the AMF published on October 30. “They do not understand that activities identical to their own can be authorized for mass distribution companies (ER: large supermarkets and chains) or distance selling, they are thus placed in a situation of serious imbalance of competition,” added the association, according to which “some businesses such as bookstores or hairdressing salons could fall within the scope of essential services”.

Numerous voices were also raised to denounce the possibility for FNAC (ER: large store for music, computers, phones and electronics, books, etc.) and other players in mass distribution to sell books. The government ended up imposing the temporary closure of their culture departments on the evening of October 30, “for the sake of fairness”. Villes de France, an association that brings together towns of 10,000 and 100,000 inhabitants and their inter-communalities, called on the government to “review its position on the opening of shops in city centers” and expressed its willingness to “find solutions that would allow these essential activities to be reopened, or at the very least, to close the shelves of “non-essential” products in supermarkets and hypermarkets”…

Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, deputy and president of Debout la France (ER: Stand Up, France – political party), rebelled in the following terms: “The government is creating an unjustifiable distortion of competition by leaving open the supermarkets and international groups like Amazon, which do not even pay all their taxes in France. The former presidential candidate also decided to allow the opening of businesses in the city of Yerres, where he is mayor. Still on the right, it is Robert Ménard, mayor of Béziers, who took a municipal decree with the same goal.

Including in the majority, Sophie Beaudouin-Hubière, vice-president of the LREM group (ER: Macron’s party), wrote to Prime Minister Jean Castex to denounce a “decision that is all the more unjust since the rules of distancing have been well respected [in these businesses]”. Some mayors, such as Gilles Platret, the LR councillor of Chalon-sur-Saône, have announced that they have passed municipal by-laws authorizing the opening of non-food businesses. “Because it is necessary to fight by all means against the spread of the virus, including because of the accumulation of customers in supermarkets, I took this afternoon a decree to authorize the reopening of all businesses in the city of Chalon,” said the mayor of Chalon on Twitter the same day.

As a reminder, these decisions taken at the local level come the day after the national lockdown was implemented, for which the government specified on its website: “Non-essential businesses and establishments receiving the public (ERP) will be closed during the containment”. Municipal by-laws that are illegal under the law, according to what several prefectures are already announcing. The Prefecture of Corrèze, in a tweet, informs “shopkeepers that any municipal by-law that would authorize the continued opening of businesses whose activity is not authorized by the decree of 29/10 is illegal”. It is thus before the administrative courts that these municipal decisions will come to an end, the State seemingly determined to enforce the new measures decided by the government.

Large department stores like FNAC and Darty plan to stay open, even if they may be forced to close certain departments for the simple logic that it will be Amazon who gets the benefit. This from Europe1:

But it is simply considered essential to open up. “If we’re closed, Amazon will take it all. They have already launched promotions. We must react”, said FNAC.

An article published today, Monday November 2, titled Second Lockdown: those mayors who brave the ban on business closures, lists a growing number of municipalities, whose mayors are signing authorizations for their local businesses to reopen, even though such a move is illegal:

Faced with the second containment put in place this Friday, many mayors have issued a decree to protect their non-food local businesses. Valence, Yssingeaux, Perpignan, Béziers… The list is growing rapidly, hour by hour this Saturday, of mayors who have decided to stand up to the government. Since Friday, the first day of the new lockdown, more and more local elected officials have signed decrees authorizing non-food or “non-essential” businesses to remain open in their municipalities. These orders were immediately declared illegal by the prefectures, but the mayors and the government are in a tug of war.

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Medical response

This summary, with video interview, by Le Libre Penseur (Free Thinker):

A group of health professionals explains why lockdown is absolutely useless in this health crisis. Dr. Louis Fouché discusses the collateral damage of the first one. He also comes back to the absurd figure of 400,000 deaths thrown out by Macron during his speech, a figure that makes no sense and does not correspond to any reality. The good news is that Dr. Louis Fouché reminds us that mortality has not changed much in France to date, knowing that the deceased are very old and that they were due to die within the next few months. There will also be discussion of the ban on treating in France with safe drugs while validating Remdesivir, which is poisonous for the kidneys and totally useless against covid-19!

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French Senate Vote (FranceSoir)

This Thursday, October 29, the Senate did not support the government and the second lockdown decided by the executive branch.

The Senate, dominated by the right-wing opposition, pronounced itself against the declaration of Prime Minister Jean Castex on the health crisis with 178 votes against, 130 votes for and 27 abstentions. The government’s decisions, which have serious consequences for the nation and the French people, were overshadowed by the Nice bombing. Following on from this, mayors opposed the measures and established decrees allowing the opening of non-food businesses.

The Senate does not vote its confidence

The position was clearly announced by Bruno Retailleau in a press release: “The Senate will have to vote tonight on the means within the framework of the emergency law. But there is no question of giving the Government a release on its management of the crisis. This management has not been satisfactory and the government has never heard the proposals of the LR group (ER: Les Republicains, centre-right, who may only be playing politics). Like the French, we no longer have confidence.”

The press release added: The Republicans in the Senate did not vote the confidence that the Prime Minister had come to seek this afternoon. The first lockdown was that of improvisation: no masks or gel, shortage of medicines and gowns, repeated contradictory injunctions.

The second lockdown was that of unpreparedness. The president of the scientific committee had, from the beginning of the summer, announced a severe relapse and nothing was done. We are in the situation where we were in March before the confinement.

The Government has not taken advantage of the respite the virus gave us this summer to implement a real strategy. This second containment marks the Government’s failure and it is the French who are paying a heavy price for this negligence. No additional resuscitation beds, failure of the only method that is worth testing, tracing, isolating.

For her part, Senator LR Valérie Boyer declared, “While the teams of Didier Raoult were the only ones in France to screen massively and to recommend a course of treatment, without excess mortality, you preferred to engage in a battle against hydroxychloroquine, if not a battle against Marseille.”

Unfortunately, the centre-right isn’t calling for stopping the lockdown, merely for massively increasing government debt to bail out the smaller businesses. In this, they are playing right into the hands of the Great Reset crowd.

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