Vanessa Beeley — Civilians in Police Crosshairs as France Adopts Totalitarian Tactics to Squash Yellow Vests

The insanity of Macron supporting the “uprising” in Venezuela while sanctioning vicious reprisals against his own people at home is glaringly obvious to all but Macron and his backers....

MintPress News
Civilians in Police Crosshairs as France Adopts Totalitarian Tactics to Squash Yellow Vests
Vanessa Beeley

Vanessa Beeley — GILETS JAUNES: Civilians in Police Crosshairs as Macron Adopts Totalitarian State-Practices to Suppress Dissent

"Look over there — Venezuela, Syria."

21st Century Wire
GILETS JAUNES: Civilians in Police Crosshairs as Macron Adopts Totalitarian State-Practices to Suppress Dissent

Vanessa Beeley

Oliver Haynes — Gilets Jaunes under attack

Many figures of the European establishment regard Emmanuel Macron as the saviour of the European project. Yet his response to these protests – violence, mass arrests and the reinstatement of national service for 16-year olds – would hardly be out of step with the more retrograde national populist and authoritarian regimes. If Emmanuel Macron wants to save his reputation, let alone Europe, he must start leading by example, ban the flashball, and take these protests seriously rather than continuing to lapse in moments of anger into diatribes about scroungers while he lets the riot cops run riot against protesters.

Macron’s response suggests what other leaderless protest movements across Europe will face as systems continue to collapse. The Gilets Jaunes have arisen out of the profound inequality that is fracturing societies across Europe. It is against that inequality that leaders must take a strongman stance. There is nothing strong about attacking protestors who are just trying to make their voices heard....

If the reaction to Occupy didn't already put to rest all the faux outrage about violent suppression of dissent in countries that the US doesn't like, this should. But it won't. Double standard, you see.

Liberalism is revealing its real face as "bourgeois liberalism" as the rule of the ownership class based on class privilege. The myth of liberalism as the "end of history"is foundering on the rocks of open revolt by the oppressed.

Open Democracy
Gilets Jaunes under attack
Oliver Haynes

See also

People's Dispatch
In their tenth week of protests, Yellow Vests face brutal police crackdown

Muhammed Shabeer

Sophie Law — French riot police are now using semi-automatic weapons with live ammunition against Yellow Vest protestors as Macron's law and order crisis spirals

The story is widespread on social media but the Daily Mail is the only corporate medium that a search turns up a day later. News suppression?

Daily Mail (13 Jan 2019)
French riot police are now using semi-automatic weapons with live ammunition against Yellow Vest protestors as Macron's law and order crisis spirals

Sophie Law

On Twitter. Click the link for a video.

Largest yellow Vest protest yet. This is growing and spreading. The French people will not let the globalist government win! #YellowVests
pic.twitter.com/Ko7Fol4p1Z

— MagaGary (@magagary687) January 12, 2019

Prabhat Patnaik — The Yellow Vest Movement

Balance sheet approach to economic analysis and its social political implications. How neoliberalism, controlled by finance capital, rules in the EZ owing to its self-imposed constraints and intransigence of finance capital to accommodate.

People's Democracy
The Yellow Vest Movement
Prabhat Patnaik | Indian Marxist economist and political commentator, retired from the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning in the School of Social Sciences at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi (1974-2010), and vice-chairman of the Planning Board of the Indian state of Kerala from June 2006 to May 2011

Martin Armstrong — The New French Revolution?

Martin Armstrong mentions the increasing tax burden on workers in Europe. He doesn't mention that the increasing tax burden results from the institutional structure of the EZ, where the member countries have ceded currency sovereignty to the ECB. As a result, these countries are no longer sovereign currency issuers and cannot self-fund. Like US states, they have to tax or borrow to spend and there are institutional limits on borrowing (deficit spending) imposed by treaty.

The key point in the post is the use of chemical weapons domestically against the civilian population. Ironically, such use is prohibited in war but permitted for domestic security. Just like the use of pepper spray against US domestic protestors, in addition to tear gas. I recall the use of tear gas in the protests against the Vietnam War war during the Nixon Administration in Washington, DC. At that time, there was only the alternative press, no social media, and the corporate press largely suppressed the news on the protests. Armstrong reports the same occurring in France now.

Armstrong Economics
The New French Revolution?

Martin Armstrong

See also

Counterpunch
The Euro-Establishment’s Fear of Populism

Andrew Spannaus | Milan-based journalist and strategic analyst, elected chairman of the Milan Foreign Press Association in March 2018

Rémy Herrera — Cops in France brutalize high school students who join Yellow Vest protests

I would be skeptical of this if I had not witnessed it in France and the United States in the past.

In fact sort of behavior has a name in law enforcement and criminal justice. It's called "punitive" enforcement. On the one hand, it is mindset of some that join law enforcement, and it is also a result of a punitive culture in some departments that is at least condoned by superiors and supervisors.

So, there are two factors operative. One is sadistic disposition, and the other is control through fear and intimidation.

In liberal society, these are generally considered signs of fascism.

Worker's World
Cops in France brutalize high school students who join Yellow Vest protests
Rémy Herrera

Olivier Blanchard tweet

https://twitter.com/ojblanchard1/status/1070776221741580288