Please don't react to the most provocative thing in an article by bringing it in here to have an off topic flamewar. That just starts a different kind of fire.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20457706.

Then it must have been the police that broke into the Dior and luxury stores on the Champs Elysees and looted them...or that set fire to buildings. Or it was police that spray painted "the gilet jaunes will win" on the Arc de Triumph.

This behavior forced the city to endure blockades every Saturday and holiday for months. Small businesses near the riot areas were closed and had their windows shattered or spray painted by protestors. Ordinary citizens and their kids couldn't do errands and in some cases leave their apartments for on one out of two days off a week for months on end.

The protests were violent. Who started it you can debate, but against tons of news articles, photos and videos of people fighting hand to hand, getting gassed or throwing cobblestones, lighting buildings on fire...you don't really have much of a factual foundation to say Paris didn't suffer months of violent protests before the ND fire.

I don’t they meant yellow vest , as in the people with the yellow vest doing all the violence. Rather, the whole series of protests, violence, shop destruction, streets in flames, police throwing tears gaz, etc happening for months and months every single saturday.

Event if you think the protests were justified and French will benefit from it, in the short term it hurt Paris (many destructions to street furniture, monuments, banks, restaurant, shops) and affected negatively the life of the Parisians (burnt cars, closed shops, tourism industry affected etc.)

That is only what is meant here, of course these are 2 different things.

They could also have added the Algerian African Cup victories "celebrations" that turned into riots and looting (we'll see what happen next Friday).

By attacking, looting, and setting fire to shops that have nothing to do with the government?

>Seriously? Putting the terrorist attacks in the same context as the Yellow Vest protests?

Um, yes? People died in protests, and many terrorists were from France or Belgium.

Yeah, seriously. Yellow vest protests were a fine example of "I want more without doing more, without losing anything I already have (and french citizens have plenty), and I will take everybody else in the country including visitors as hostage and eventually even burn the place down just to get it, and screw the rest of the population/world".

They do NOT represent common french people, they are in one way or the other extremists, doing what extremists usually do - wreak havoc left and right, and don't give a nanofraction of a fk about others and consequences. How do I know - I have tons of french colleagues, actually roughly 50% of the workforce, and every single one of them was annoyed as hell with them. Initial sympathies for protests against additional 10% diesel tax vaned very quickly as annoyances mounted. Utter disregard for any environmental issues was obvious - the reason for the tax, constant burning of crap in barrels on yellow vest posts, day long revving of engines in centers of the towns etc.

Maybe I missed it, but where were protests about true french issues - bureaucracy that is a far cry from properly functioning western democracy and is a proper drag on economy (it took a colleague 1.5 years to change his driving license and story is beyond ridiculous), messed up "me-first" mentality so common there, or rampant corruption on all levels on society? Where was something about making government slim, effective? Those actions could bring lowering of taxes, some real benefits to everybody. No, those wanted to keep everything as it is, comfy stable jobs with 10 weeks of paid vacation and tons of other perks, just somehow magically have more money.

The french have an overly large fondness of protesting. If they would save it for things that actually matter, the rest of the world wouldn't find it so laughable. The Yellow Vesters are even protesting AGAINST climate action (higher fuel taxes). I wouldn't call it terrorism, but it's certainly not helping anyone.

People earning enough to live decently is not "worth it"? They are protesting against stupid climate actions that are mostly taken to give the impression the government is doing something, while in reality, it is just a way of getting a little more money out of tax payers.

France barely emits 0.1% of world's CO2, how is it fair to tax fuel for cars (note that air traffic is left alone)? How is it fair when nothing is planned to help people live and work without their car?

Edit: so far, all responses conveniently avoid the part where the government is taxing gas more and more, without making the investments to provide citizens with other means of transportation. Not all of France is Paris or Bordeaux or Lyon. Just like not all the US is NYC and SF. The majority of the population has no access to reliable public transportation to even consider not using their car.

> France barely emits 0.1% of world's CO2

Sure, because they have 0.09% of the world's population.

> how is it fair to tax fuel for cars (note that air traffic is left alone)?

Both should be taxed.

You're both off. France has about 1% of the world's population and emits about 1% of the world's CO2.

That's using some rounding, but it's reasonably close for discussion purposes.

> Sure, because they have 0.09% of the world's population.

Why does it matter their percentage of the world population? Are you defending that we should reward nations where people don't care about birth control and explode their demographics while arguing in favor of climate action?

The Netherlands probably emits less. Does this mean we can dismiss all climate change projects because it won't mean anything on a global scale? Stupid and ignorant reasoning. What matters is the emission per person, and don't forget about emission in the past.

FWIW, it isn’t naive to start addressing the biggest culprits first. Action for action’s sake is the hobgoblin of little minds (to butcher the famous quote).

At least 11 persons have died in the context of the yellow vest protests, which puts them in league (in terms of casualties) with a major terror attack :

Sources: https://www.liberation.fr/checknews/2019/01/30/qui-sont-les-... https://www.lci.fr/social/11-morts-depuis-le-debut-de-la-cri... https://fr.wikinews.org/wiki/Gilets_jaunes_en_France_:_stati...

Major terror attacks in France have killed much more. Also, volontary deaths and accidents should not be compared. It is outrageous to do so.