Pave: "Blood Will Flow"

Le jour 456 de Sarko

In France when the government inconveniences you, if you deem the social order regressive, or should accommodations be insufficiently generous, well, just huddle up with like-minded yobs and destroy something.

SITUATION 'UNCONTROLLABLE' AS WINEMAKERS
GO ON RAMPAGE IN SOUTHERN FRANCE

March 7, 2006 (Decanter) - Disenchanted winemakers attacked police vehicles, wine tankers and négociants yesterday in a further attempt to elicit financial help from the government. Over 100 winemakers, masked and armed with crowbars and sledgehammers, began the day by descending on a wine depot in the Mediterranean port of Sète.

The group attacked an Italian wine tanker and emptied its contents, several thousand litres of Italian wine, onto the tarmac. More wine was spilled shortly after when the winemakers stormed La Navale Française – another négociant in Sète... Several thousand hectolitres of wine were sent gushing out of opened vats, flooding the quayside before the demonstrators took to the roads.

The winemakers formed a rolling roadblock on the A9 motorway between Montpellier and Béziers and attacked police vehicles, including a motorcycle, with sledgehammers. One police van was set alight.

FRENCH WINE 'RADICALS' THREATEN MORE VIOLENCE
December 12, 2006 (beveragedaily.com)

CRAV WINE MILITANTS ISSUE ULTIMATUM

May 21, 2007 (beveragedaily.com) - French wine militants have warned the country's new president, Nicolas Sarkozy, there will be more violence if he does not offer more support to the sector.

Several balaclava-clad men claiming to represent militant winemaker group, Comite d'Action Regionale Viticole (CRAV), made their threats in a video passed to the France 3 television channel in Languedoc Roussillon. Addressing the new president, Nicolas Sarkozy, they said:

If in one month nothing has changed and prices have not risen, then the winemakers will emerge from the maquis (hinterlands) and act. ... Winemakers, we call on you to revolt. We are at the point of no return. If Sarkozy does not have the sense to support the wine sector, he will be responsible for what happens.

It is thought more violence is likely in the wake of EU plans to reform Europe's wine sector. Formal proposals, to be announced on 4 July, may involve ripping up 400,000 hectares of vines and Languedoc Roussillon is expected to be one of the areas worst hit.

CRAV's latest threat comes only a few weeks after claiming responsibility for minor explosions at several supermarkets in Languedoc. No one was injured, but one source close to CRAV has told BeverageDaily that may change. He said central leaders had always warned against injuring people, but their power has disintegrated and splinter factions containing more radical elements were now acting on their own.

It is understood the group contained more than 800 members last year.

FRANCE'S WINE TERRORISTS

PARIS August 1, 2008 (Time) - Hurting from over-production and cheap imports, and punished lately by the rising cost of gas, a small group of local wine growers has resorted to "wine terrorism" in a violent attempt to shock the French government into helping them.

... CRAV's commando operations began with the 2005 bombing of a state agricultural building. CRAV members, or independent sympathizers, have repeatedly carried out bombings or acts of vandalism since, including three acts of property destruction in a 10-day span in May this year alone. In mid-July, CRAV logos were discovered spray-painted at a Narbonne agriculture collective whose vandalized vats had drained nearly 132,000 gallons of wine on the ground — an estimated loss of around $450,000. Last year, it sent a video to newly-elected President Nicolas Sarkozy demanding assistance to the region's grape growers, or

"blood will flow".

Quixotic as it may seem to outsiders, the group — and many Langeudoc-Rousillon growers who support its aims while condemning the violence used to achieve them — want the French government to protect them from a rapidly globalizing market. Foreign wine from cheaper producers such as Italy, Spain, Australia, the US, and South America — where costs can be one-fifth of those in France — has saturated the market, and driven down demand for locally-grown grapes. That has depressed the price Langeudoc-Rousillon growers get for their crops by up to 50% in recent years.

With revenues plummeting and production costs on the rise thanks in part to escalating gas prices, local farmers are demanding financial aid from Paris. But European Union rules limit how much help the French government can extend; Brussels has repeatedly urged growers to cut costs by letting nearly 500,000 acres of land lie fallow, and swap plonk production for more expensive, higher quality wine.

... Jérôme Soulère's lawyer, Jean-Marie Bourland, doesn't justify his client's avowed acts of destruction, but sympathizes with his client's predicament.

We're in a country where, alas, our leaders don't pay attention to well-behaved, and listen to those who leave them no choice. ... For some, I suppose, posing a bomb is their attempt to pose a question.

What CRAV might want to consider is that a government that has made their industry dependent on government is probably not where the solution lies. CRAV also might want to awaken to the fact that there is no lasting protection from the free market. You are either in or out. If you are out then the government becomes your principal customer and, on a commercial basis, governments are notoriously cheap.

PFFT (What is this?): CRAV, bombing its way to a bright future 0 | Rayonnement français 0