Re: Disaster in France-What Must Be Done Now

[Sabri Oncu <soncu@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Let us hope that this is a wake up call not only to the French
Left but to the entire World Left.

Let us hope that this is the last nail on the coffin of the Third
Way.

Let us hope that our French friends can stop Le Pen.

Sabri

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French Police Fire Tear Gas at Anti-Le Pen Protest
Sun Apr 21,10:15 PM ET
By Catherine Bremer

PARIS (Reuters) - French police used tear gas to disperse
demonstrators in Paris early on Monday as thousands protested
against the shock triumph of far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen
in the first round of presidential elections.

A Reuters correspondent said police with riot shields drove back
a crowd of hundreds of demonstrators and fired tear gas after
small groups of protesters began throwing metal barriers in the
historic Place de la Concorde.

Witnesses said protesters wearing crash helmets smashed the front
windows of the famous Parisian restaurant, Maxim's.

Others climbed up scaffolding outside the Hotel Crillon
overlooking the cobble-stoned Place de la Concorde, the city's
smartest hotel often used to host visiting foreign leaders.

Earlier police said there had been isolated cases of vandalism
but no major disturbances and no arrests.

Street marches which earlier had swelled to an estimated 10,000
people were beginning to wind down, witnesses said.

Marchers also massed in Lille, Lyon, Bordeaux, Grenoble and
Strasbourg, where about 4,000 demonstrators shouted "Le Pen,
you're finished. The French are on the streets" and "Fascism
shall not pass."

Le Pen, the 73-year-old leader of the anti-immigrant, anti-Europe
National Front party, pushed Socialist Prime Minister Lionel
Jospin into third place in the contest.

Jospin announced on Sunday that he would quit politics after the
May 5 runoff round, which polling institutes now forecast Chirac,
a conservative, will win by a landslide.

Several of the demonstrations played on corruption allegations
that have swirled around Chirac. "Vote sleaze, not fascist,"
protestors shouted in the northern city of Lille.

Le Pen, who once called the Holocaust a detail of history, played
down some of his more extreme rhetoric during the campaign, which
he focused on law and order in a response to widespread public
concern over rising crime.

He dismissed the fascist label some of his opponents have given
him in remarks on French television. "I have nothing to do with
fascism," Le Pen said. "Fascism is protesting the result of a
vote violently in the street."