flash-ball Archives - The Automatic Earth

Thousands of “gilets jaunes” (yellow vests) protesters marched through Paris and other French cities on Saturday for the 12th consecutive weekend of anti-government action, as they paid homage to those injured by police in previous demonstrations. Participants carried French flags and placards denouncing the government of President Emmanuel Macron, while a large banner showing photographs of people injured in clashes with police took centre stage at the march in Paris. The protest came after France’s top administrative court ruled on Friday that police could continue using controversial rubber-ball launchers against protesters.

Known as Defence Ball Launchers, the weapons fire rubber projectiles the size of golf balls, and have been blamed for leaving gilets jaunes with serious injuries including lost eyes and broken limbs. The judge said it was “necessary to allow police to use these weapons” because the protests were “frequently the occasion for acts of violence and destruction.” Around 1,000 police officers and 1,700 demonstrators have been injured since the protests began, according to official figures. [..] Macron launched a “Great National Debate” in a bid to resolve the crisis. On Thursday, he said that he too was a gilet jaune “if it meant being in favour of better salaries and having a more effective parliament.”

VIDEO: France's "yellow vest" movement demonstrate against alleged police violence in rallies across the country, as nearly 60 lawyers denounce the treatment of protesters in the courts pic.twitter.com/JGrfGyFcxI

— AFP news agency (@AFP) February 3, 2019

The French government has insisted there was ‘no indication’ the guy last week lost his eye to a police projectile. They really do everything wrong.

• More Rubber Bullets And Tear Gas At Yellow Vests Protests (DM)

Weapons including controversial rubber bullets were used against French Yellow Vests demonstrating on behalf of the ‘victims of police violence’ as they rioted in central Paris today. Heavily armed officers also used tear gas, baton charges and water cannons against members of the mass anti-government movement, who are named after their high visibility motoring jackets. They were staging their 12th Saturday in a row of demonstrations aimed at getting President Emmanuel Macron to resign. ‘We want him out, but we also want the police to stop wounding us with their Flash Ball weapons,’ said Jacques Caron, a 33-year-old Yellow Vest, who was on the street close to Place de la Bastille. The Interior Ministry reported 80,000 security officials had been deployed across France as the action erupted for a 12th successive Saturday.

In Valance in the south of France, the mayor said measures had been taken to prepare for about 10,000 demonstrators. Authorities fear up to 1,000 of those could be violent rioters. France’s top administrative court ruled Friday that police could continue using a rubber bullet launcher blamed for dozens of injuries during the Yellow Vest protests which have roiled the country since November. Last weekend Yellow Vest leader Jerome Rodrigues, 40, lost an eye after being hit by a fragment from a police projectile fired at him. Like others who have been mutilated in recent months, he said he was hit by a so-called Flash Ball – rubber projectiles fired from police guns. A bid to have them outlawed failed last week, and numerous officers were seen carrying them today.

There were 5,000 police and gendarmes standing by for trouble in the French capital today, and it started in the late afternoon when a march got close to Place de la Republicque. ‘Macron Resign’, the crowd chanted, as they threw bottles and anything else they could find at police. Huge white clouds of tear gas were smothering the area, covering rioters, as well as tourists. By 4pm there had been around 15 arrests in the Paris areas, many of them of suspected rioters carrying potential weapons, and for violent disorder. Rodrigues, 40, has bravely taken to the streets again this weekend after he suffered the life-changing injury. The French government has insisted there was ‘no indication’ he was injured by a police projectile.

This should have happened at least 3 years ago, so they could have contested the Brexit vote. Useless now.

• Rebel Labour MPs Set To Quit Party And Form Centre Group (O.)

A group of disaffected Labour MPs is preparing to quit the party and form a breakaway movement on the political centre ground amid growing discontent with Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership on Brexit and other key issues including immigration, foreign policy and antisemitism. The Observer has been told by multiple sources that at least six MPs have been drawing up plans to resign the whip and leave the party soon. There have also been discussions involving senior figures about a potentially far larger group splitting off at some point after Brexit, if Corbyn fails to do everything possible to oppose Theresa May’s plans for taking the UK out of the EU.

On Saturday night, three of the MPs widely rumoured to be involved in the plans for an initial breakaway – Angela Smith, Chris Leslie and Luciana Berger – refused to be drawn into talk of a split, and insisted they were focused on opposing Brexit. But they did not deny that moves could be made by the spring or early summer. Meanwhile, Brexit was being blamed for playing an “inevitable role” in the reported decision by Nissan to abandon plans to build its X-Trail model at its Sunderland plant. According to Sky News, the company will confirm cancelling plans to build the new version of the SUV on Monday, just 53 days before Britain is scheduled to leave the EU.

Sunderland Central Labour MP Julie Elliott said: “The constant uncertainty, the chaotic government. None of it is conducive to encouraging business investment in this country.” Leslie described rumours of a breakaway as “speculation” but said: “A lot of people’s patience is being tested right now. I think there are some questions we are all going to have to face, especially if Labour enables Brexit.”

Corbyn couldn’t have done worse if he tried.

• Labour Slump Gives Tories Biggest Lead Since General Election (O.)

The Conservatives have recorded their biggest lead since the last general election after support for Labour slumped by six points, according to the latest Opinium poll for the Observer. Theresa May’s party recorded a seven-point lead over Labour in the poll, its biggest since the disastrous election campaign that left her without a majority and relying on the support of Northern Irish DUP MPs. Labour’s support fell from 40% in the last poll to 34%, while Tory support went up from 37% to 41%. It comes despite continued infighting within the government over Brexit, including a record parliamentary defeat for the prime minister over her proposed deal.

The latest Opinium poll suggests that Labour has lost support from both sides of the Brexit debate. Labour has dropped five points among both remainers and leavers. For the first time since the election, less than half of remainers (49%) would opt for Labour. Approval for May’s handling of Brexit had increased slightly, while support for Jeremy Corbyn’s handling of the issue has slumped to an all-time low. May’s approval ratings on Brexit edged up slightly to -30%, with 25% approving and 55% disapproving. Her rating had been -33% a fortnight ago.

Meanwhile, Corbyn’s net rating on the issue is now -44%, with 16% approving and 61% disapproving. His rating was -40% in the last poll a fortnight ago. Only 42% of current Labour voters approve of the way Corbyn has responded to the government on Brexit, while a quarter (26%) disapprove.

Both existing leading parties in Britain are obsolete. Same as in so many other countries. What’s the big deal? Both Labour and Tories will be gone soon, but with leaving a giant Brexit hole behind.

• Voters Will Never Forgive Tories For A No-Deal Brexit Disaster – Minister (O.)

Voters will be right to turn on the Conservative party should it allow Britain to crash out of the European Union without a deal, one of Theresa May’s ministers has warned. With concerns rising about a no-deal Brexit across Whitehall and inside the cabinet, Richard Harrington, a business minister, said that such an outcome would turn “a crisis into a catastrophe”, with manufacturers already stockpiling at the fastest rate since records began in the early 1990s. His intervention comes as some cabinet ministers are understood to believe that they have less than two weeks to persuade the prime minister to back a delay to Brexit, before a vote in parliament could force her hand.

MPs are due to hold another round of Brexit votes on 14 February. One senior government source said it was now “increasingly hard” to see how Britain would leave on schedule at the end of March. Writing for the Observer, Harrington calls on MPs to “grasp the nettle” and force through an extension of Britain’s EU membership, should the government and parliament fail to agree an acceptable exit deal. He also issues a stark warning about the electoral consequences for his party should it allow the UK to crash out of the bloc. “I understand the concerns of some MPs about being seen to delay or frustrate Brexit,” he writes. “And I know that, for others, they just want to ‘get on with it’.

“But however bracing the prospect of instant liberation from the EU may feel in abstract, that sentiment won’t last long when confronted with the economic, legal and practical reality. In the chaos that followed no deal, voters would turn on the Conservative party, and rightly so. “So it is time to focus on what in the end matters most – supporting growth and jobs in the UK … a no-deal Brexit would undermine all our efforts. It would entrench the social and economic divisions in this country, not heal them. And it … would turn a crisis into a catastrophe. That is why on 14 February … parliament needs to rule it out once and for all.”

Talk about lousy timing. Austerity has been Britian’s main issue for years. But not now. Brexit is the big kahuna now.

• Corbyn Calls For Snap Election To Help Put An End To Austerity (G.)

Jeremy Corbyn has called for a snap general election during a meeting of anti-poverty charities in Glasgow. He said people who have experienced “the brunt of nine years of austerity” must be allowed a new vote. The Labour leader met with voluntary organisations and charities working to tackle poverty in south-west Glasgow on Saturday, where he criticised “Tory cuts” while pointing to double-digit yearly increases in food bank use and falling life expectancy in Scotland’s most populated city. “People are suffering under austerity as a direct result of Tory cuts in Westminster passed down by the SNP in Holyrood,” he said. “The people who are bearing the brunt of nine years of austerity cannot wait years for a general election. They need a general election now.”

Corbyn paid tribute to the volunteers and charities that have stepped in to support people who are suffering, but said people should not have to rely on the voluntary sector. “It is a disgrace that people are living on the streets and forced to rely on food banks in one of the richest countries in the world,” he added. “The SNP government has not just passed on Tory austerity, it has quadrupled it for local councils. And this week’s budget will mean another £230m in cuts that will hit local services the people of Scotland rely on. “There is a clear choice between more austerity or a Labour government that will put an end to austerity and build a country for the many, not the few.”

Enough colonies left still?!

• Queen To Be Evacuated If Brexit Turns Ugly (R.)

British officials have revived cold war emergency plans to relocate the royal family should there be riots in London if Britain suffers a disruptive departure from the European Union, two Sunday newspapers have reported. “These emergency evacuation plans have been in existence since the cold war but have now been repurposed in the event of civil disorder following a no-deal Brexit,” the Sunday Times said, quoting an unnamed source from the government’s Cabinet Office, which handles sensitive administrative issues. The Mail on Sunday also said it had learnt of plans to move the royal family, including Queen Elizabeth, to safe locations away from London.

In January an annual speech by the Queen, 92, to a women’s group was widely interpreted in Britain as a call for politicians to reach agreement over Brexit. Jacob Rees-Mogg, a Conservative MP and keen supporter of Brexit, told the Mail on Sunday he believed the plans showed unnecessary panic by officials over a no-deal Brexit as senior royals had remained in London during bombing in the second world war. But the Sunday Times said an ex-police officer formerly in charge of royal protection, Dai Davies, expected Queen Elizabeth would be moved out of London if there was unrest. “If there were problems in London, clearly you would remove the royal family away from those key sites,” Davies was quoted as saying.

A comment to an article at the Saker that was turned into an article, and copied by Zero Hedge. All nice and all until the anonymous writer says young people since they grew up on the internet are less brainwashed. I’d claim the opposite.

• “We Are The Meteor… They Are The Dinosaurs…” (Saker)

The dinosaurs that are in control of our nation are old and do not understand any other way of life other than vicious imperialism. They do not understand compassion, empathy, understanding, respect, or love. The world has been this way for thousands of years. We are attempting to transition from the old ways of conquering, war, domination, and enslavement into an entirely new dimension, but the Old forces are not allowing this transition to come easily. They are fighting with everything they have. They have full control over our nation’s mainstream media establishment, and furthermore they have full control over the world’s global financial system and how it operates. This gives them incredible power to get away with almost anything they want to get away with.

The reality is that most Americans, and I agree with you it’s not right, don’t pay attention to what is actually going on in the world. They have their cars, their houses, and they don’t think too deeply about the world around them. For the have-nots, aka the poor, they are too disenfranchised and homeless or whatever to do anything about it. Nobody is united. There are only small groups, and small pockets of resistance here and there. Previous attempts to break this mold, which were led by John F Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, ended in assassination. Not enough people questioned the official narratives, at the time, surrounding these assassinations. Very few question the events of 9/11 and very few people take a look at what is happening outside of what the mainstream media is telling them. People’s needs are generally taken care of, and that’s all that matters to them.

The only real hope now lies in the younger generations. Those who grew up with the internet. They are a little less brainwashed. They read alternative media. They have access to more information, and therefore, the truth. They are questioning things. They are angry about what is happening and what their country is doing. Furthermore, there is a growing sense amongst the general population that the “powers that be” and the mainstream media do not serve their interests. (Which is why Trump was elected). So I would not say that all hope is lost and the US is doomed to start WW3.

The Observer tries to go anti-populist, but trips up over the fact that Italy’s been falling for well over a decade, which actually caused the rise of populism.

• La Dolce Vita Slips Away Again As Italy Tumbles Back Into Recession (O.)

Sharing his predictions on the economy less than a month ago, Luigi Di Maio, the Italian deputy prime minister, believed the country was on the cusp of an economic miracle akin to the one enjoyed in the 1960s. “During that period we built highways, now we can build digital highways,” he enthused. His comments were met with derisive laughter. There was even less to laugh about on Thursday when figures revealed that Italy, which is saddled with a public debt of about 130% of GDP, had lurched back into recession for the third time in a decade. [..] Officials in Rome can only look back over the past 10 years with sadness. Italian GDP is about 5% below where it stood in 2008 and unemployment, which hovered around 6% before the financial crisis, remains stubbornly at just over 10%.

Poverty levels are up and there is little extra money in the kitty to invest for the future without increasing the country’s enormous debts. A budget forged by the coalition of Salvini’s League party and Di Maio’s Five Star Movement (M5S) was agreed in December after months of battling with the European commission. At issue was the debt mountain and how the coalition planned to increase it in breach of EU rules. The EU’s 3% annual deficit limit was safe, but the rule preventing member states from increasing already high debt-to-GDP levels was going to be contravened. A compromise was reached once the EU accepted forecasts for 2019 that showed Italian GDP increasing by an optimistic 1%.

With the economy now in recession as it enters the new year and GDP growth flat at best, the prospects for maintaining Italy’s debt mountain at 130% of GDP are slim. Lorenzo Codogno, a former chief economist at the Italian finance ministry, believes the budget has set Rome on course for another crisis. “All the leading indicators suggest the first quarter of the year will be as bad as the last, and the second quarter will be flat. It’s likely things will pick up from there, but even then, it will mean the economy finishes the year in a weak position,” he says. Salvini and Di Maio have put increases in pension entitlements and plans to introduce a basic income high on their agenda, along with taxes on banks and cuts to business tax reliefs.

Flash-Balls, Pitchforks And A Backstop

Jan 302019

January 30, 2019 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 7:58 pm Primers Tagged with: Brexit, Brussels, Corbyn, crisis, democracy, EU, flash-ball, Groucho, guillotines, Macron, May, pitchforks, violence 6 Responses »

Jan van Eyck Madonna and Child at the Fountain 1439 (height: 7.4“, 19 cm)

It’s educational and even somewhat entertaining to observe the role of the western press in the ongoing erosion and demise of democracy in Europe. But while it’s entertaining, it also means their readers and viewers don’t get informed on what is actually happening. The media paints a picture that pleases the political world. And it it doesn’t please politicians to lift a veil here and there, too bad for the public.

The Shakespearian comedy that was performed last night in the UK House of Commons is a lovely case in point. Basically, MPs voted whether or not to allow PM Theresa May to change the Brexit deal she had told them about a hundred times couldn’t possibly be changed. Brexit has turned full-blown Groucho by now: “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.”

It was exactly two weeks ago last night that lawmakers voted by a historic 432 to 202 count to reject May’s Brexit deal. And now they voted to a) let her change it and b) go talk to the EU about changing it though Brussels has said as often as May herself that it cannot be changed. Remember: the UK is set to leave the EU 59 days from now, and counting.

It’s like in a game of chess that has long turned into a stalemate or threefold repetition situation: you stop playing. No such luck in British politics. The only way the parliament could find ‘unity’ (in a narrow vote) was to agree to ditch the Irish backstop that is an integral part of why the EU accepted May’s deal to begin with.

There are/are even serious voices saying Ireland should leave the EU along with the UK, to make it easier for the latter to do what the former absolutely doesn’t want. That’s also part of the kind of mindset in which this plays out. Brexit has turned into a complete delusion, in which bickering and blame-games have been more important than practical solutions, for all sides.

A hard Brexit is used as some ultimate deterrent, and 59 days before the big moment it may actually turn into the disaster some Project Fear or another has been talking about for over 2.5 years. If that time has been used the way it should have, adapting deals, agreements, contracts, laws, all might have been fine(r).

What the role of May’s opposition in all this consists of is ever more confusing. It certainly never was to profile itself or come up with original ideas. In the process, Jeremy Corbyn appears to have hurt his reputation as much, if not more, than May. Quite the achievement. And now May says Corbyn “has no plan for Brexit”, but she does: only, it was voted down in the largest defeat in modern parliamentary history.

And then all of a sudden, as everyone is busy doing something else, Britain finds itself in a huge crisis of democracy.

Over Two Thirds Of UK Public Don’t Feel Represented By Political Parties

More than two thirds of the British public feel they are not represented by the main political parties, according to a new report on the divisions caused by Brexit. Research by campaign group Hope Not Hate found that the disconnect had increased from 60% to 67% over the last six months as Theresa May negotiated the EU withdrawal agreement.

The poll of nearly 33,000 people and results from focus groups also revealed that many felt they were being left in the dark or were “overwhelmingly bored” by the process. It has also seen an increase in the proportion of the public feeling pessimistic about the future – with very few believing that Brexit will address the frustrations and inequalities that lay behind the vote to leave the EU in 2016.

More people also believe that Brexit is feeding prejudice and division and taking the UK “backwards”, up from 57% in July 2018 to 62% last month. Just 20% of people said they could trust the government to deliver a “good Brexit”. Almost as many Leavers (66%) as Remainers (75%) said they do not trust the government to deliver a Brexit that works for them.

None of the options being considered by parliament have consensus support across the UK, according to the report, and 42% of people think that it would be sensible to delay leaving the EU by a few months so we can agree a better deal with the EU or hold a Final Say vote.

Perhaps that is the topic that should have been discussed yesterday in the House of Commons. But the MPS far preferred to regurgitate long discredited useless stalemate ‘moves’. That’s how much they all care for their own voters. They go from one election to the next, and why would they care about the time in between, what could possibly happen to them?

Well, for one thing, pitchforks could happen. Which methinks is a clean poetic link to another European country that finds itself in deep crisis and distress but refuses to recognize it. France.

The interwebs are full of video’s and photos of police brutality perpetrated during the by now 11 Saturdays the Yellow Vests have protested president Macron and their people’s overall situations. It didn’t start out with all that violence, and sure, part of it may have been in response to protests, but what’s gone on in the last few Saturdays is something else.

And the media once again are silent, or mostly. Macron gets more coverage for telling Venezuela’s Maduro to resign than for his own regime’s cruelty towards its own people. But the French people do watch those videos, social media trump traditional ones in these cases, so there’s something good about them after all.

And the Yellow Vests, though the people don’t like the violence, still very much have their sympathy. Seeing Macron’s police beating them up the way they have will only increase the resolve. People losing their eyes, their hands, hundreds if not thousands with less severe but still serious injuries, it’s all being added to Macron’s tally.

French Police Weapons Under Scrutiny After Gilets Jaunes Injuries

The French government is under growing pressure to review police use of explosive weapons against civilians after serious injuries were reported during gilets jaunes street demonstrations, including people alleged to have lost eyes and to have had their hands and feet mutilated.

France’s legal advisory body, the council of state, will on Wednesday examine an urgent request by the French Human Rights League and the CGT trade union to ban police from using a form of rubber-bullet launcher in which ball-shaped projectiles are shot out of specialised handheld launchers. France’s rights ombudsman has long warned they are dangerous and carry “disproportionate risk”.

Lawyers have also petitioned the government to ban so-called “sting-ball” grenades, which contain 25g of TNT high-explosive. France is the only European country where crowd-control police use such powerful grenades, which deliver an explosion of small rubber balls that creates a stinging effect as well as launching an additional load of teargas.

The grenades create a deafening effect that has been likened to the sound of an aircraft taking off. France’s centrist president, Emmanuel Macron, is facing renewed calls to ban such weapons after Jérôme Rodrigues, a high-profile member of the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) demonstrators was hit in the eye on Saturday in Paris. He is said by his lawyer to have been disabled for life.

Rights groups say Rodrigues’s case is the tip of the iceberg. Lawyers estimate that as many as 17 people have lost an eye because of the police’s use of such weapons since the start of the street demonstrations, while at least three have lost their hands and others have been left with their face or limbs mutilated. Injuries have happened at demonstrations in Paris and other cities, including Bordeaux and Nantes.

The whole thing is utterly insane, but the craziest thing may well be the European Court of Human Rights rejecting a temporary ban on flash-balls last month. Go ahead, Emmanuel, we won’t tell a soul! Flash-balls being an improved -and ‘home-grown’- form of rubber bullets, which in turn have been ‘improved’ upon.

French ‘Flash-Ball’ Row Over Riot-Gun Injuries

Appalling injuries caused by French police riot guns during the yellow-vest protests have triggered anger and calls for the weapon to be banned. The LBD launchers known by protesters as “flash-balls” have left 40 people severely wounded, reports say. France’s human rights chief has called for the weapon’s use to be halted, but the government insists it is deployed only under very strict conditions.

Since the “gilets-jaunes” protests began in November, 3,000 people have been injured or even maimed and thousands more arrested. The LBD40 is described as a non-lethal weapon which in fact replaced the old “flash-ball” in France. But the old name is still widely used. It shoots 40mm (1.6in) rubber or foam pellets at a speed of up to 100m per second and is not meant to break the skin. However, some of the accounts of people hit by flash-balls have been shocking.

Volunteer firefighter Olivier Béziade, 47, was shot in the temple by a riot gun during a protest on 12 January in Bordeaux. Video at the time caught him running from police and then collapsing in the street, his face covered in blood. He was taken to hospital, treated for a brain haemorrhage and left in an artificial coma, from which he emerged on Friday. He was one of five seriously wounded on that day alone.

Many of those wounded have been young. One teenager called Lilian Lepage was hit in the face in Strasbourg on Saturday and suffered a broken jaw. His mother said he had been shopping in the city centre when a policeman fired at him. Two schoolboys were badly wounded by flash-ball pellets in separate protests last month. Campaigners say a dozen people have lost an eye ..

A lawyer for some of the victims, Étienne Noël, said many had been maimed. He said police did not have sufficient training in use of the riot guns and many victims had been hit in the head. Earlier this week police made clear the riot gun would be used only where security forces faced violence or if they had no other means of defence. Only the torso and upper or lower limbs could be targeted.

Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez told the French Senate on Thursday that the use of force by police was always proportionate and under very strict and controlled conditions. “If the police hadn’t used these means of defence perhaps some of them would have been lynched,” he said. The European Court of Human Rights rejected a temporary ban on flash-balls last month, in a case brought by several people who said they had been hit by flash-balls.

There is also a grenade version of the flash-ball, named the sting-ball. Throw it into a crowd and everyone around gets hit by rubber balls at high speed.

But of course it’s not the weapons that cause the injuries and deaths, it’s the people deploying them. And the people deploying these people. The instructions to use excessive violence because the government feels threatened by its own citizens. And after that the pitchforks and guillotines, real or not. Yanis Varoufakis was right a few weeks ago, Macron is a spent force.

Only a blind fool would use these things against his own people. Or a dictator with absolute power, but Macron doesn’t have that.. By the way, when is Brussels going to condemn Macron for his use of violence?

And this is all before the European elections, and Merkel’s goodbye that will throw Germany into chaos, and and and. Europe, we never knew ya.