#Farmer's Protest in Europe

[liberty1776]

The FARMERS PROTESTS are INTENSIFYING

Support the Farmers! In USA lets all unite aginst Biden and the rich!

[mapsontheweb]

Map of countries in Europe where farmers protests are ongoing

[starfleetwitch]

🚜✊🏼In this house we stand with the farmers ✊🏼🚜

[head-post]

French farmers protest Mercosur deal

French farmers have announced a new wave of protests next week against a planned European Union free trade agreement with trade bloc Mercosur, saying increased imports of agricultural products from South America will damage their livelihoods.

Farmers are planning protests on Monday against the EU’s free trade agreement with Mercosur, saying increased imports from South America will damage European Union agriculture, the head of France’s largest farm lobby FNSEA said on Wednesday.

It came after farmers in Belgium called for demonstrations near EU headquarters in Brussels on Wednesday. Several tractors stopped in the European neighbourhood on Schuman Square opposite the European Commission and EU Council buildings.

Farmers in Belgium, which has fallen on hard times, fear that a pending treaty with the Mercosur organisation, which brings together Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil, could lead to a further decline in sales for European growers “due to unfair competition.” According to Belgian trade unions, the pact, which has been under discussion for years, could be approved during the upcoming G20 meeting on November 18-19 in Brazil.

The rally in Brussels was coordinated by police, who blocked several streets in Brussels, but traffic congestion was avoided.

“Bad agreement”

FNSEA head Arnaud Rousseau told France Inter radio:

This trade agreement, which links part of the South American states to Europe, risks having dramatic consequences for agriculture. So from Monday for a few days we will be in all regions to make sure that France’s voice is heard during the G20 in Brazil, and we hope that all European countries will join us because it’s not about a country, it’s not about France, it’s about Europe.

But French farmers are not going to block roads and motorways as they did last year, when anger at competition from cheaper imports, including from EU ally Ukraine, and the burden of regulation led to large-scale protests across the EU. He also added:

We are not here to worry the French people, we are here to tell them that we are proud to feed them and to continue to produce in France.

On Sunday, the country’s agriculture minister Annie Genevard called the planned free trade deal between South American countries and the EU a “bad agreement” as it would allow “99,000 tonnes of beef, 180,000 tonnes of sugar and the same amount of poultry” into the country and create damaging competition for local producers.

Weather-ravaged harvests and outbreaks of livestock disease, as well as political deadlock following snap elections earlier this summer, have added to French farmers’ discontent.

Read more HERE

[liam-twatter]

hey Eu... this was the first Brexit song, according to the book

[petar1989]

Tracteur de France 2024 Farmers Protest T-Shirt

https://www.teepublic.com/t-shirt/57458106-tracteur-de-france-2024-farmers-protest?store_id=2123844

[jobaaj]

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Europe could starve! Farmers are protesting all across Europe!! Thousands of tractors have blocked all roads outside Paris, while similar protests are taking place in several European countries such as Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, as well as Spain, Portugal and Romania, as well as Hungary. Tractors and hay were used to block roads, vegetables were thrown, and manure was thrown on public buildings. One farmer and his daughter were killed. Two protesters threw soup on the Louvre's Mona Lisa! But why? Because the farming system in Europe is not working. Farmers were already struggling but the latest EU laws have angered the farmers: - - A free-trade deal that could flood European markets with cheap meat and produce. - A push by the government to bring down food inflation. - A plan to phase out tax breaks on farming fuel! - A mandate to leave 4% of farmland fallow!! European farmers, who were already under severe financial strain, could not bear it so they began protesting against these EU laws. France has vowed to support these farmers as the EU has conceded and delayed the fallow requirement. However, farmers claim it is not enough. What awaits EU’s farms?? Follow Jobaaj Stories (the Media arm of Jobaaj.com Group) for more.

[channeledhistory]

[xtruss]

Farmers' Protests in Europe: Facts and Figures

What started as silent discontent over the EU's stringent agricultural policies has now swept across the entire Europe and has become a serious domestic matter, threatening a deeper fracture between governments and their voters.

— Sputnik International | Monday February 12, 2024

In recent months, farmers across European nations have been protesting unwise short-sighted policies pursued by bloc officials that harm local agriculture workers. To express their outrage, protesters are blocking highways and dumping waste in front of government buildings to draw attention to their woes.

Farmers are protesting rising financial burdens, poorly regulated agricultural imports, growing fuel prices, and other adverse EU measures in the sector. The demonstrations question the consistency of EU agricultural policy as it stands today, especially amid growing military spending and billion of euros being thrown at foreign objectives.

Take a closer look at Sputnik's infographic to learn more!

[gwydionmisha]

Farmer protests spread across Europe

[rodaportal]

🌾 Exploring the Farmer Uprising in the EU: Unveiling Grievances and Victories 🌱

Dive into the heart of the recent farmer protests sweeping across the European Union! From soaring economic pressures to import woes and environmental challenges, this post uncovers the multifaceted issues driving farmers to the streets.

Discover how governments are responding, the concessions being made, and the remarkable victory achieved by French farmers. Join the conversation on the future of European agriculture! 🚜🌍 #EUfarming #FarmerProtests #EnvironmentalChallenges #EuropeanUnion #AgriculturalPolicy 🌾🌱

📹 Watch Now: https://youtu.be/pwz6_BBrC6Y

[justinspoliticalcorner]

WaPo: How car bans and heat pump rules drive voters to the far right

Shannon Osaka at WaPo:

More than a decade ago, the Netherlands embarked on a straightforward plan to cut carbon emissions. Its legislature raised taxes on natural gas, using the money earned to help Dutch households install solar panels. By most measures, the program worked: By 2022, 20 percent of homes in the Netherlands had solar panels, up from about 2 percent in 2013. Natural gas prices, meanwhile, rose by almost 50 percent. But something else happened, according to a new study. The Dutch families who were most vulnerable to the increase in gas prices — renters who paid their own utility bills — drifted to the right. Families facing increased home energy costs became 5 to 6 percent more likely to vote for one of the Netherlands’ far-right parties. A similar backlash is happening all over Europe, as far-right parties position themselves in opposition to green policies. In Germany, a law that would have required homeowners to install heat pumps galvanized the far-right Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, giving it a boost. Farmers have rolled tractors into Paris to protest E.U. agricultural rules, and drivers in Italy and Britain have protested attempts to ban gas-guzzling cars from city centers.

That resurgence of the right could slow down the green transition in Europe, which has been less polarized on global warming, and serves as a warning to the United States, where policies around electric vehicles and gas stoves have already sparked a backlash. The shift also shows how, as climate policies increasingly touch citizens’ lives, even countries whose voters are staunchly supportive of clean energy may hit roadblocks. “This has really expanded the coalition of the far right,” said Erik Voeten, a professor of geopolitics at Georgetown University and the author of the new study on the Netherlands.

Other studies have found similar results. In one study in Milan, researchers at Bocconi University studied the voting patterns of drivers whose cars were banned from the city center for being too polluting. These drivers, who on average lost the equivalent of $4,000 because of the ban, were significantly more likely to vote for the right-wing Lega party in subsequent elections. In Sweden, researchers found that low-income families facing high electricity prices were also more likely to turn toward the far right. Far-right parties in Europe have started to position themselves against climate action, expanding their platforms from anti-immigration and anti-globalization. A decade ago, the Dutch right-wing Party for Freedom emphasized that it wasn’t against renewable energy — just increasing energy prices. But by 2021, the party’s manifesto had moved to more extreme language. “Energy is a basic need, but climate madness has turned it into a very expensive luxury item,” the manifesto said. “The far right has increasingly started to campaign on opposition to environmental policies and climate change,” Voeten said.

The pushback also reflects, in part, how much Europe has decarbonized. More than 60 percent of the continent’s electricity already comes from renewable sources or nuclear power; so meeting the European Union’s climate goals means tacklingother sectors — transportation, buildings, agriculture.

[...] Some of these voting patterns have also played out in the United States. According to a study by the Princeton political scientist Alexander Gazmararian, historically-Democratic coal communities that lost jobs in the shift to natural gas increased their support for Republican candidates by 5 percent. The shift was larger in areas located farther from new gas power plants — that is, areas where voters couldn’t see that it was natural gas, not environmental regulations, that undercut coal.

Gazmararian says that while climate denial and fossil fuel misinformation have definitely played a role, many voters are motivated simply by their own financial pressures. “They’re in an economic circumstance where they don’t have many options,” he said. The solution, experts say, is todesign policies that avoid putting too much financial burden on individual consumers. In Germany, where the law to install heat pumps would have cost homeowners $7,500 to $8,500 more than installing gas boilers, policymakers quickly retreated. But by that point, far-right party membership had already surged.

The Washington Post explains what may be at least partially causing the rise of far-right extremist parties in Europe, Conservatives in Canada, and the Republicans in some parts of the US: rising energy costs that low-income people are bearing the brunt of.

In the US, right-wing hysteria about gas stove bans and electric vehicles are also playing a role.

[sgiandubh]

C might mean well, but I find businesses using charity to sell suspicious.

Dear Provocative Anon,

What you say deserves an audio (there have been two of them two weeks ago, compensating for last week's silence). I have many things to tell you and please excuse the delay:

They really can't win, with people like you, can they? And that goes for both C and S, mind you. No matter what they do and try to promote as a side project, there is always going to be someone unhappy and vocal about it. When it's not you complaining 'business using charity to sell' is 'suspicious', there's the other fuckwit asking recently why S hasn't given all MPC's profit to charity, as Paul Newman did with Newman's Own.

So, I will be brutally honest with you, Anon. I have thoughts and questions about your own point of view and this is partially why it took me so long to answer you. It would seem you are not familiar at all with what is called 'corporate social responsibility' (CSR), since at least the Sixties. Which means, in a nutshell, companies who choose to focus part of their activity and dedicate part of their profits to charitable projects. It is done with various degrees of ethics, success and bona fides all around the world, and it is often used as a strong marketing and sales argument.

Think about these people, whose brand is probably immediately recognizable wherever you go, spare perhaps Pyongyang:

I just picked this Coca Cola Foundation recent CSR project in Brazil totally randomly, using Google. Some might think it's just another cynical diversion: one of the world's biggest corporate profiteers, happily contributing to the current obesity pandemic (including in Latin America), suddenly showing one of its biggest markets they do have a conscience, after all, and a social one to boot. And addressing, at the same time, one of the continent's post-colonial bleeding wounds, which is to say, the organic imbalance between rich and poor, as far as access to means of production, land ownership and use and sales opportunities go. 480 farmers benefitting from Coca Cola's magnanimity is probably but a tiny drop of hope in an ocean of dour social injustice, but the truth is, Anon, if nobody does anything good, then nothing good will happen at all. It is as simple as that, and while their modus operandi is probably not exactly my cup of tea, you will have to admit it works, at least to some extent and for some people. Plus it greatly enhances the company's do-good, sensible and reliable global image, because of course, what happens right now in the state of Minas Gerais is but a tiny part of a bigger strategy.

Might I add that even those robber barons, à la Cornelius Vanderbilt or Jay Gould, who made their ruthless fortunes building the railroads of a still very young United States of America, ended up giving a very small part of their same fortune to various charities. It wasn't nearly enough what we would consider as 'reasonable', in 2024, but it did start a philanthropic trend, that took considerable speed after the 1919 Boston Molasses Disaster. The Sixties have just added more pragmatism and gave a name to what was, at its very start, quite an opportunistic endeavor.

Even so, Vanderbilt and Gould themselves did not invent anything, really. One should look to good old Europe to find what is probably the first big CSR project in human history, still going strong since 1521. May I introduce you to the Augsburg Fuggerei:

[for even more pious charity: https://www.fugger.de/en/fuggerei]

Renting one of those wonderful Hansel and Gretel houses for less than one euro/year, plus three daily Hail Mary is something to behold, right? Jakob Fugger the Young, the guy who had this brilliant idea (which, might I add, is still run and operated by the Fugger banker family, even nowadays) was literally a ruthless kingmaker, a colonial trade and exploration pioneer, but also a religious bigot who flatly refused to extend his charity to Protestant families. Still, his pious dream goes on - the Fugger Family Foundation even actively plans its next 500 years. This is Germany, after all 😉.

Those people’s money stinks more of corruption and crime than S or C’s ever could, Anon. Still, they are remembered as benefactors, by many. History is seldom cruel to those who are willing to pay for their posterity.

But you know what, Anon? Compared to the Fuggers and the Vanderbilts and the Goulds, S and C are really small fish in an even smaller, fickler pond. I think they are doing it out of their good heart and I think they are honestly, genuinely responsive to the idea of giving a chance to young, struggling artists. But, in the process, are they also trying to market themselves as more approachable and less controversial, considering the (oh, I shall never tire to repeat this, with gusto) cosmic amount of bullshit plaguing their respective public images? My somewhat cynical answer is also yes, Anon. To which may I immediately add that it's not even important: all that counts are the tangible results of whatever good things they do with their booze and/or fitness profits.

Results and helping trigger a change in one's life is all that really interests me, Anon. It seems to bother you, though, so I will cheekily end this long rant with a couple of questions: do you have a problem with poverty? do you believe in giving people a (second) chance, or do you think only the rich are worth considering and valuable?

If so, I honestly pity you, girl. For the real indigent in all this might be you.

[head-post]

Polish farmers block rail links with Ukraine

On 18 February, Polish farmers completely blocked the movement of trucks in both directions at the international checkpoint Dorohusk-Jahodyn and disrupted railway communication with Ukraine, Ukrainian media reported.

Since 9:00 Kyiv time, Polish farmers have been completely blocking the movement of lorries in both directions at the Dorohusk-Jahodyn international checkpoint. The farmers are holding a large-scale protest on the access roads to the village of Dorohusk.

Despite the protesters’ promises to let perishable, dangerous or humanitarian goods through, not a single heavy vehicle has crossed the border since then. The State Customs Service of Ukraine noted that shuttle buses passed through normally without queues.

As of 16 February, Polish farmers blocked six checkpoints on the border with Ukraine.

Read more HERE

[vidma-kazhe]

At this point, "honest and patriotic Polish farmers" aren't even trying to hide their sponsors. Is the rest of Poland OK with this open call for invasion and destruction of Europe?

Dear Poles, YOU HAVE FALLEN VICTIM TO A RUSSIAN PSYOP THOSE ARE RUSSIAN PSYOP WORDS YOU'RE SPREADING "THOSE ARE VALID CONCERNS--" YOU ARE BLOCKING IMPORTANT MILITARY AND HUMANITARIAN AID TO A NATION BEING INVADED AND SUBJECT TO GENOCIDE. YOU COULD'VE CHOSEN ANY OTHER AVENUE OF PROTESTING, BUT YOU SPECIFICALLY CHOSE THE ONE THAT IS AIDING AND ABETTING OUR ENEMIES. YOUR ENEMIES.

PLEASE, STOP AND THINK. Respectfully, Someone who really doesn't want to have my city leveled because of someone's misplaced and short-sighted economic concerns stoked by misha the gru agent.