European Truckers, Farmers Blocking Borders In Protest Against Gas Prices

New York Times:

PARIS -- Gasoline at $4 a gallon? If only.

As prices across America hit an average $4 a gallon over the weekend, European motorists, truckers and economic planners wrestled with fuel costs around twice as high, blamed not only on the soaring price of oil but also high government taxes levied at the fuel pump.

That has made few people happy. In the latest show of distress, Spanish truckers Monday began a blockade of their country's border with France, lining up their rigs in a crawling strike to protest the cost of diesel. In France, farmers on their tractors did the same, offering a foretaste of a planned national strike by truckers next Monday.

Read the whole story: New York Times

Comments

[booker52]

And those GOP idiots just voted no against s3044. Ask yourself how much the oil companies are lining their pockets????? This is bigger then the US. It's the whole world.

[insanityfollows]

Hopefully, coming to a highway near you. I hope we see trucks parked in protest, not because freight has come to a screeching halt. If that happens, we are all smoked.

[ImmanuelGoldstein]

To bad these protests won't do jack. It's little more than a temper tantrum over something I've seen coming since the early 70's and I'm not the only ones. The truckers are doomed. They are an artifact of cheap oil and those days are OVER. Freight hauling HAS TO move to rail to save fuel, period.

[trinity]

Wow, the Europeans know how to protest...When was the last time that any place in America saw a general strike where the whole town pulled together behind the strikers?

[KillTheMessenger]

Did it go down, yet? I mean, the Europeans are protesting, so that's just gotta drive oil prices down to the $75/barrel level!

[aceholiday]

go spanish truckers go!!!!

[lvdragonlady]

Anyone reading the comments here, shows just how full of ourselves Americans are.
ME ME ME
If we could just come together as a group we could get a point across but as long as we are self-absorbed and selfish, we deserve everything that happens to us.
What a bunch of losers we are.

[TOOO]

Americans HAVE protested in the past - and have been ignored by both our "leaders" and the corporate press. All these protesters have succeeded in doing was to fill the coffers of the organizers.

I'm very skeptical about where all those donations REALLY went....

[StarkRavingNakedEmperor]

Why cant we Americans ever band together and do something like this to fight our corporate masters like the oil companies--for the greater good? Are we too brainwashed, cowed or stupid?

[SaulGood]

more like dumbed down by tv, poisoned by (junk) food, and lazy bc of urban sprawl.

[KillTheMessenger]

Stupid. But not because you don't protest but because you can't seem to warp your mind around the concept of peak oil and why we need to change our energy use habits.

[UnbiasView]

The USA has 50 years of known oil that they can access if the want to which is more than enough to bridge the gap, are we going to get it is the question that lies with the liberals that bow down to the environ wackos like yourself.

[lvdragonlady]

To worried about keeping our jobs to boycott big oil for a few days.
If there was a way for everyone to take a day off at the same time to make a point, I would like to think that everyone would come together and do it just to show how strong we can be.
Such are the dreams of an optimist............lol

[Sundialsvc4]

Their solution is very simple...

Oil is an international resource. Everyone needs it. Therefore, there is absolutely no business reason to insist that "all oil transactions must be denominated in United States Dollars."

When Henry Kissinger negotiated this treaty, the US was considered to be a "fat, dumb and happy 'benign superpower.'" (And, oh by-the-by, it bought a heckuva lot of Oil.)

Sorry, Henry. (Too bad you're still alive...) That was Thirty Years Ago.

Today, the United States has embraced your very-questionable Treaty as "a license to steal." Or, rather, "a license to borrow ... from itself." With an abandon that would make any Junkie blush, this nation now "borrows" more than $1 million a minute, 24/7/365. And it really doesn't give-a-damn what these "rapacious excesses" might mean to YOU, Mister Businessman.

Ahem...

What's gonna happen "real soon, now?" Uh huh. It happened to the British Crown-Sterling, and now it's gonna happen to you. Your "esteemed position" as "the World's Reserve Currency" is going to disappear... forever. And with it, a great big brick is going to be thrown into the machine-works of your "magical money-machine."

Yep. It's gonna hurt. But believe it or not, in the long run it will be your salvation.

[KillTheMessenger]

Since when is oil an "international resource"? Are we going to give the UN legislative rights over the production of oil in Alaska and Texas? Hardly...

[Sundialsvc4]

Oil is a resource that is produced by many countries and consumed by every country. But right now, one country (the US) has an unwarranted pre-eminent position in that trade by virtue of the fact that all transactions are denominated in its currency at the exclusion of all others.

This state of affairs is now causing the entire world trade in oil to be "a tick on the dog's tail," being flung-about by the fluctuations of one currency to the detriment of all. Guess what THAT means... this not going to continue to be "the state of affairs." Duh.

The current state of affairs effectively ties every one of the world's currencies to the Dollar, and for many years that was not seen to be a problem because the US had an extremely strong economy and was politically respectable. But today, the US is a belligerent nation that commits war-crimes with impunity, and which exploits its oil-trade position to print unlimited amounts of its own currency. Guess what THAT means... Duh.

This spinning rock in space has several billion human beings on it. Only a moderate fraction of those men and women live in America, and only an extremely-small fraction of the Americans hold these reins of power. Guess what THAT means... it's the old "whaddaya mean 'we', paleface?" You're voted off the island.

Duh.

[Leonard]

I am waiting for the truckers in this country to shut this country down in protest...

[MJD615]

I wish they would. Corporate greed and big government has gotten out of control. The only thing those two giants understand is when someone takes a bite of their pocketbooks. Unfortunately, too many Americans have gotten to be "sheeple."

[KillTheMessenger]

Oh, please. European truckers are always protesting something and there is always some border being shut down for nothing. Give me a break. This is not news. It would be news if there was a day in Europe WITHOUT protest.

[mathme]

People who exercise their freedoms are so lame.

[KillTheMessenger]

One can not protest against the fact that million year old geological reservoirs are running empty. There is nothing politicians can do about things that happened in a past when our ancestors were rat sized creatures.

[eternalkerri]

stupid representative democracy with the right to protest....

[gakabani]

AT least the Europeans are doing something, we here in America only complain like chikens. We do not even go to Congress and demand some accountability. We are a pathetic nation. Oh, I forgot blackwater is just around the corner to snatch me and send me to a concentration camp somewhere in Texas close to idiot-town missing criminal Bush.

[devadasi]

Exactly Gakabani! We should be out protesting in the streets everyday for one thing or another, as there's plenty to protest about. Good for the Europeans. When I lived in Athens there was a protest demo at least once a week in the town square: democracy in action.

[Katco]

This will be us in the not to distant future.

[Chavez08]

Unfortunately, no it won't. We, as a culture, are far too submissive to authority and afraid of our own shadows.

We may have been brave before we gave away our liberties for the illusion of safety, - the "Florida Swampland" of American politics.

Americans may call out for heroes and rebels but when one comes along, they allow the MSM to lead them like sheep into demonizing Patriots and those fighting against tyranny.

Coverage of a blockade would go down as follows:

CNN: "Terrorists have seized roadways and have disrupted critical shipments of formula to starving babies, law enforcement officials are on the scene to maintain order" (while teargas and rubber bullets are dropping unarmed protesters) "According to our resident FBI profiler, these protesting terrorists will soon modify their methods to include attacking innocent old ladies and eating puppies "

And the American people will listen to anything the TV says because we're sheep.

[gakabani]

WE ARE A PATHETIC NATION WITH NO BALLS TO DEFEND ANYTHING.

[mathme]

Whoa! I didn't see that! (ducks and covers, sticks ribbons to car)

[thinkb4uleapII]

Wolf, is that you?

[Sundialsvc4]

Lone Ranger: "Tonto! We're surrounded by injuns!"

Tonto: "Whaddaya mean 'we', paleface?"

---

Funny thing about America. We put up with an incredible amount of s*it. But the people who assume that America will put up with s*it forever are always(!) amazed. All of the sudden, this chaotic mass of fish suddenly snaps into line and, quite without warning, you are staring at a muscle-strapped Uncle Sam and an equally-determined Rosie the Riveter.

Funny thing about America. We'll even put up with s*it from OUR OWN LEADERS. Up to a point. Then, quite suddenly, something "clicks." All the public-opinion polls suddenly go topsy-turvy. Impeachment not-only shifts "back onto the table," but it becomes a pressing national priority. Criminals who considered themselves beyond reproach suddenly find themselves in orange jumpsuits (at best) or at the end of a rope.

Never say about America... "naah, it'll never happen..."

[RTIII]

It wouldn't be so benign. Here, they'd be using their new terrorist powers and be killing lots and lots of people, and then sweeping all the evidence under the rug. The ONLY hope we'd have would be "embedded journalists" in with the protesters broadcasting LIVE to the blogosphere and other alternative press - the MSM would be complicit...

Oh, and the killers would be using all their new toys, shooting from a distance, the damned cowards. UAVs and gun-toting robots would do all the dirty work...

On the other hand, I don't think either extreme is where it would be at here.

Frankly, too many of us are desperately trying to survive and are too preoccupied to protest.