Police arrest and humiliate schoolkids, sparking outrage throughout France. - Polidicks

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46481397

What a great way of relieving the current tensions. Won't make matters worse or anything. Nope. Wouldn't be surprised if this weekend ends up being more violent than the last, sadly.

Fuck the po-lice comin' straight from the underground Dem young Frenchies got it bad cause they brown French

This one police reaction is poor, but the kids have literally no reason to protest in the first place. It's legit just kids skipping school to be violent and burn shit. And lol if there's more violence tomorow after the governement offered to talk with gilets jaunes for weeks, accepted to freeze the tax, we'll have the final confirmation all of it was just an excuse to riot.

Yeah I guess when a president with a 20% approval rate tries to unilaterally enact a series incredibly and increasingly unpopular reforms, people should be happy when he magnanimously offers to not implement the latest one. You're essentially basing your argument on the assumption that people owe their state and their society not just something but everything, and that they should just be happy with what they're handed in return. Macron's government has patently lost popular support. When a supposedly-democratic government no longer reflects popular will, but still insists on making decisions almost nobody apparently wants, people have every right to refuse to be governed by "rioting and being uncivil".

And you completely lack years of context of students riots here. This predates macron's governement. High schoolers and college students blocked schools for almost all of last year because they wanted the end of grades and tests, and there was a big push against "meritocracy in school" and things like that. High schoolers in particular protest and stop studying at any occasion, in many cases to join a cause which absolutely doesnt affect them. The french education system is far from perfect but students have been acting like it's absolute tyranny to have your performance graded.

How old are you? Because you increasingly sound like a boomer given how consistently you miss the point and spew tired clichés.

And what's your point beside your callout? Are we going to continue blindly supporting absolutely anyone who protests whatever they do and whatever the motivation? Or maybe some protests have a real cause and genuinely deserve support, and some are just glorified free violence sparked by radicalisation. Are we doing to ignore that high schools and colleges have been going on strikes for years constantly, in both privileged schools and poor ones, or present this as an isolated incident without years of context? Maybe there's a reason the police didn't arrest students in the many peaceful highschool protests and did this time? It's almost like the arrests come when the protesters are being violent and they don't happen when the students aren't stoning people or worst. (nsfw) highschooler driving into a police officer, sending him to the ER. He's just attempting to kill a man - but we should only talk about to worst examples of law enforcement reaction to that violence, and pretend that violence isn't happening, and if it's happening it's ok because they're protesting. https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/297971/6c9d8a4d-ddc4-4d25-b0e1-b77ccf043fe3/image.png How heroic of them. Maybe, just maybe, I just don't have a blind support of every violent protests and I don't take things out of their context. Maybe I'm against the trends of radicalisation and blind violence fed by social media and supporting absolutely all protests regardless of the context. But keep making ad hominems and trying to associate me with a group you hate.

I've seen the video and read the reports, the kids were rioting and trashing their school, so the police had to stop them. Probably they didn't have 151 handcuffs on hand.

Protests are least effective when civil.

And where did you get that from? Strikes, boycotts and political action can force the hand of anyone. You force someone to listen to your request by engaging in an economic headlock. Rioting and involving people that do not want to get involved, while damaging property is just a way to be a punk, especially when you have granted rights to protest peacefully.

Don't make me laugh, you talk of context and nuance when your previous post claimed that the reason behind last year's blockades was that students are lazy and don't want exams and marks. That they protest because it's "trendy". How is that not the exact same shit that you'd hear from some out-of-touch old fuck at family dinner? If you, despite your apparent disregard for them, do actually care about context and nuances, then perhaps you can stop pretending that I defend the use of violence when protesting, for a start. When your first post implies that the gilets jaunes are acting spoiled by carrying on protesting despite the government "freezing" the tax (for one year, by the way) despite the fact that said tax was a last straw and not the sole driver of the protests, and given your post history when debating about this subject, I genuinely couldn't help but make this comparison. From what I gather, you seem to dislike any protest that generates inconvenience for you.

And while this isn't the motivation for this protest in particular, you again completely ignore again the history of highschools and colleges to be blockaded and locked down by a minority of students who were protesting for that very reason - against tests and grades as whole. I was a direct witness of that and that's them telling me what they wanted, not me making this up. And it's absolutely relevant to what's happening today, because the current violence of this week is symptomatic of the same kind of radicalisation in students that i've personally seen happening for years. Students have the right to protest but this amount of violence and division is insane and needs to stop, not be encouraged.

And so you base your whole generalization on your sole anecdotal experience, while touting stuff about the importance of context and nuance? Cause it was actually a lot more complex than what you make it out to be, and your simplistic portrayal of the issue frankly gives off the impression that you have a warped view of what happened.

Yes it was more complex and different protests happened in difference schools, i've had direct experiences with a couple of them, had friends tell me their experience in their school (sometimes supporters of it sometimes not) and followed the news (and not from medias like the figaro if you want to dismiss my points that way too). But the point is that this protest is part of a streak going on for years since Hollande's mandate, that students are already used to strike every time a big protest happens, but usually less violently. And a big majority of students are against the protests and are sick of people screaming "may 68" every year. I've been in support of protests that genuinely were fighting against something unjust, but in so many school, a circle of students is being completely unreasonable and demanding the world to bend to what they want right now, and will do anything to shut down the school wether or not most students agree with them. And i'm seeing the same pattern here.

That's wildly discounting of structural changes to education and selection for higher education in the last two years. Pretty terrible that no matter how well informed they are on what they are protesting, high schoolers will always be suspected to protest just to miss class. Besides, why do you think this pattern depends on a student body that's renewed basically every year and not on the higher-ups who've maintained a trend of higher education merchandising and have been the same person for the last 10+ years? Consider the following: how about we actually listen to student representifives if just once and stop letting trade-school-owning assholes who've never taught once in their lives be education minister?

Here's what students are currently protesting against : The new system to apply for university is "slow" and "the selection process it too harsh" (The old one was as shitty as this one, and people protested over it too) And in 2021, the high school system will change to a "specialization" system. Students will have to choose 3 specialization the 1st year, and 2 others the 2nd year. A bit like majors I suppose? Also, 40% of the final grade will consist of constant evaluation thought the years, , the rest is classic, 4 majors exam and 1 oral exam. Now, I won't go more in-depth than this, and I won't criticize it that much since It's been 2 years since I finished school. But that's the current issues at hand. For the protest side of things, Loth is not a 100% wrong, but he's not 100% right either. I mean, we are talking about students between 14 to 18 years old. Not exactly the range where you always act on rational though. Without stats, in an average protest, some student will protest for what they believes is right, some will follow the movement with barely any info, but will still be protesting as a way to raise the voice of those who "fight". And then, some of them will use this as a way to skip school, and the rest will be violent (This doesn't include student trying to go to school, of course) However, the percentages are debatables, but that's mostly it. Now then, do you believe that we should let minors do property AND bodily damage on the ground that "violent protest bring result"? And do you believe that the correct course of action for the police would be to sit there and watch as public space are getting trashed? But on the flip side, should we listen to what student have to say, at the very least? (If you are wondering, that's a yes) And should we believe that all of the students protesting are doing it in good faith? (That's a "too difficult to tell but let's not be naive") This is a delicate subject to handle, since we want to have faith in our youth. And that's good! But at the same time, we've been there, and it would be foolish to think that they aren't doing what our generation have done in the past. Now, this is my hot take on this mess, and only my opinion. tl;dr / conclusion: Don't assume that all of the student are acting on bad faith, but don't assume all of them are acting on good faith either. Also, in a general note, peaceful protest are less likely to be demonized by the media and the public. Don't give them weapon to harm you cause. PS : I don't find the police asking troublemakers to assume one of the standard arrest position "humiliating", since that's basically standard operating procedure.

just general gilets jaunes news, but it looks like some cops might be shooting at head height https://twitter.com/Jake_Hanrahan/status/1071535135156256771?s=19 https://twitter.com/Jake_Hanrahan/status/1071544486981980162?s=19

NSFW somebody got their hand blown off, presumably from a flash grenade https://twitter.com/Saymyname8418/status/1071515044997988353?s=19

Goddamn pigs. They're the same everywhere. I hope they burn eith their leader.

PS : I don't find the police asking troublemakers to assume one of the standard arrest position "humiliating", since that's basically standard operating procedure. Hard agree on this much, but then the officier goes on to post a video of the arrest online saying «this is how you manage a class» which tells a lot about their mindset going into these protests. Also, a remarkable ammount of highschoolers arrested then probably did nothing at all. A group of them burned some shit down which caused everyone in a few hundred meter radius to get arrested - so why attempt to humiliate everyone in a video? Whoever among them didn't hate the cops before now sure as shit does.