France's winegrowers turn terrorists

Paris: Too much wine, some say, can cause violent behaviour. But few have gone as far as the grape growers of France’s Languedoc-Rousillon region, the world’s biggest wine growing area by volume. Hurting from over-production and cheap imports, and punished lately by the high gas prices, a small group of local wine growers has resorted to “wine terrorism” in a violent attempt to shock the French government into helping them.
   On July 26, police arrested a vineyard farmer from the region for production and possession of illegal explosives. Apprehended in a hospital where he was being treated for injuries suffered when those explosives unexpectedly detonated, 34-year-old Jerome Soulere confessed to police that he had been responsible for the July 2006 bombing of a tax collection office in a neighbouring village, the Time magazine reported on Tuesday.
   Those incidents are just two of many violent acts by local grape growers over the past three years that has targeted public and private buildings, supermarkets, tanker trucks hauling cheap imported wine, and businesses accused of gouging growers with evershrinking prices. AGENCIES

GRAPES OF WRATH


   Angered by cheaper imports and plummeting prices, financially strapped grape growers in France are resorting to ‘terrorism’
   
Over the past three years, they have targeted public and private buildings, supermarkets, and tanker trucks hauling cheap imported wine    

Last year, grape growers sent a video to President Sarkozy demanding assistance to farmers, or “blood will flow”