Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know it's just PR bullshit like Amesys/Qosmos execs did 10 years ago pretending their surveillance software was only used to catch pedophiles and terrorists (despite human rights orgs being on their lists)... funny btw that 4 Amesys/Qosmos execs have just been indicted this month. However, as a french person i must agree Macron is a criminal and a terrorist. A criminal because he goes (as most presidents would) aga…
Wrong and exaggerated on so many levels. What you are saying is caricature of the left extremist way of thinking. No the yellow vest movement was nothing but peaceful, quite violent actually, throwing cobbles or molotov cocktails at police forces, using forklifts to force their way or destroy public properties, burning banks, setting cars on fire, etc. They were even allowed to demonstrate every week for at least 2 y…
> No the yellow vest movement was nothing but peaceful
Did i claim the movement was peaceful? It's a revolutionary movement, of course shit is gonna burn. Now three important questions:
1) Who determines the level of violence of protests, if not the government going against the will of the people and deploying robocops and military-grade equipment on the streets to destroy any opposition? May i remind you teargas is internationally recognized as a weapon and forbidden by the Geneva convention? Let's not even talk about their "non-lethal" grenades and bullets, who are very much lethal (see Vital Michalon, Rémi Fraisse...)
2) What is considered violent? Is it more violent to break a bank's window and set fire to the bourgeois restaurant where Sarkozy had dinner on his first night as president (Fouquet's), or to ensure that the 10 millions of french people living below the poverty line (not accounting for undocumented people) struggle every day for basic food and services, causing exhaustion and death, often leading to suicide or work-related deaths? Does taking part in breaking stuff (not beating people) justify to be mutilated for life in your view of Justice?
3) We may agree that throwing a molotov cocktail at a cop is violent, whether we agree or not if it's a legitimate action. In this specific case, a cop may preemptively attack as a case of self-defense. However, that's never what i've heard or witnessed. People throwing molotov cocktails at cops are a handful, out of hundreds of thousands protesting, and these are usually thrown as self-defense from the people AFTER cops have attacked them ruthlessly. In reality, most people getting hurt/mutilated by police are peaceful protesters, because they have less self-protection reflexes than people used to black block and popular self-defense tactics. In some cases, they're people who were not even involved with the demonstration, and were just passing by on the streets when the cops assaulted them. Do you think that's legitimate action by the police to just beat down random bystanders?
> Also they are really not representative of the French people but they wanted to impose their ideas, not democratic at all, much like what happened in the Capitol.
That's not true. It was (is?) a very popular movement whose primary demand is popular democracy through people's assemblies, which is the opposite of "not democratic at all". According to your understanding, what kind of ideas do gilets jaunes want to impose and to whom? What do you think of Macron's attempted recuperation via his official citizen congress on climate change, of which he discarded all proposals when they were not going his way? Which side is more democratic? A government elected by less than 50% of the population (i'd like to remind you that we abstentionists are the biggest political party of France), or a popular movement which polls indicate has way above 50% of popular support?
> They basically behave like traffic smugglers and encourage people to try the crossing to Sicily.
That's bullshit. They didn't take money from people, for starters. Then we may wonder how rescuing people at sea when they have great chances of drowning is encouraging anyone to try and cross the sea. If due to humanitarian there were 0 deaths from crossing the sea, that COULD be an argument. However, there's thousands of deaths every year so that hardly stands scrutiny. Moreover, we could argue facilitating people to cross in good conditions is actually a good thing: why do some people enjoy travel visas and first-class tickets while others get neither? How is that fair? Especially when the former are from the richest countries on earth, whose wealth is built on the colonial and/or neocolonial exploitation of the latter?
If you want to talk about scandals in the mediteranean see, you should take a look at Frontex (european coastal guard agency), and its budgets and actions. How can "cost guards" with now half a billion euros yearly budget and over 10,000 employees leave so many people to drown? You may understand more if you take a look at their scandals (see Wikipedia) including european law violation (attempting to create an armed militia despite european regulations not allowing it), international law violation ("pushbacks"), and corruption (undeclared meetings with undeclared lobbyists from the weapons/surveillance industry is illegal for european institutions). See also this CCC talk from a few years ago about Frontex's surveillance tech: https://media.ccc.de/v/36c3-10994-no_roborders_no_nation_or_...
> Steve was not killed by the police.
What's your source? There's very compelling testimonies and arguments in favor for that case, so much so that even the prosecutor had to indict some cops for "manslaughter", which is really unusual, as cops are rarely prosecuted in France when they kill someone. Despite the police initially claiming noone fell into the water during its muscled intervention, they later acknowledged at least 14 people had fallen into the river (not all during police intervention), of which 7 have been "fished" by the firefighters and 4 by a local safety association. One of those 4 people testified that there was a fifth person who actually drowned, which is why some people from the rescue teams testified they were already aware one person had potentially drowned.
That the police initially communicated that nobody fell into the river, despite everyone knowing otherwise, is a good sign that they knew what happened and were trying to cover up, as they often do. For example, that's also what happened when they killed Rémi Fraisse: First they claimed someone had died somewhere they were not at the time where no police intervention was going on, and they had nothing to do with it. Then they claimed they threw a grenade at him but death was caused by molotov cocktails of him (in his backpack) taking fire. Then the analysis proved that the only explosives/flammables found on his body and backpack were from the grenade thrown by the gendarmerie. And now they're in a limbo of conflicting testimonies were the only things sure is that safety training has been ignored (such grenades MUST be rolled on the floor, not thrown in the air), the police warnings ("sommations") were not done properly (no loudspeaker), and the officers who gave order to throw the grenades had no authority to do so (requires a certain grade in the military).