This past Saturday (1/12/19) more Yellow Vest protests in France broke out. The protests always happen on Saturday, and because this was the ninth one it's being called “Act IX.”
More violence occurred, and the police are becoming more and more draconian and brutal in their responses. Many injuries have happened among the protestors, a lot of them quite serious. Tempers are fraying all around.
The media, for its part, has been doing everything possible to suppress coverage and has been often caught spreading falsehoods and lies about the movement. By Act IX, the protestors have had enough, turning their wrath on journalists, some of whom have been beaten.
The lines are now drawn. There’s the State on one side, with its enforcers the police and the journalists helping out. On the other is a very broad coalition of ordinary people.
Fair warning: many of the images below are pretty disturbing, even though I’m only providing fairly tame screen shots here. If you follow the links and view the videos, prepare to be disturbed.
Notable Events
Thank the heavens for social media. Without it, I’d have no idea what was actually happening.
But from the images and clips people are posting, several very disturbing developments from Act IX appear to include the police ratcheting up their tactics, becoming far more violent and increasingly desperate in their actions.
For starters, this was the first time I’ve seen the police out with fully-automatic assault rifles:
That’s a Heckler & Koch G36 assault rifle.
Here’s confirmation of that:
I’ve not heard any reports of any live fire happening, but it’s now a real possibility. If that weapon is all you have and you feel you have to use something… well, then that’s what gets used.
Speaking of which, the French police have been pretty excited, we suppose, to try out all of their new training and military gear. During Act IX, they used helicopters to fire clusters of tear gas grenades into an otherwise unremarkable crowd of protesters:
(For video, go here)
One can only imagine that the helicopter pilots were eager to try out their new toys on real people. However, we might also note that launching canisters from a great height may also result in serious injury to the people below.
by snydeman