A 15-year-old student has had their hand blown off after picking up a stun grenade being used by police as mass school protests continue across France, local authorities said.
The incident comes as nearly 500 schools are expected to be completely or partially closed following student protests across the country over dilapidated schools and classrooms, overcrowding and teacher shortages preceding a nationwide day of demonstrations on Tuesday.
Almost melted my skin off picking up tear gas at Occupy Oakland. There were flash bangs. I hadn’t even considered what if I didn’t realize what I was grabbing.
Edit: same night I watch a decorated military officer in full regalia get shot point blank with non lethal shotgun. Right near the center of his chest iirc
Oh yeah Occupy NYC is how I know what it’s like to get pepper sprayed. I was in a crowd they were trying to kettle and a sergeant just let loose on the whole group around me.
I felt so optimistic during the Occupy protests. For a second it felt like we were going to make meaningful change.
please read the book If We Burn.
We need to learn from Occupy and why it failed, so the next time (which is likely coming soon) it won’t.
Can you provide a few key points?
Leaderless horizontal movements, while historically understandable, are unable to move forward as needed to effect change and hold power.
How do you avoid the problem of leaders with concentrated power in such upheavals historically getting pretty murder-happy or at least very corrupt though? Horizontal organisation isn’t an affectation but a response to a real problem historically speaking.
God damn, me too. In my lifetime, that was the movement that resonated with me the most. They beat the shit out of those people.
They seized power by violent means and they aren’t going to cede power peacefully.
That’s why they’re supposed to call it “less lethal” now. It gives them a loophole
Edit: same night I watch a decorated military officer in full regalia get shot point blank with non lethal shotgun
Based cop moment
If you’re a Marxist-Leninist, you probably already know that soldiers in the Tsar’s imperialist army switching sides and becoming revolutionaries was an important part of the Bolshevik victory. Just something to think about, idk
True actually imperialist mass murdering troops are based because of an unrelated event 100 years earlier.
The Tsar’s troops deserted because they weren’t getting food and they were getting treated badly by the Tsar. Meaning you should be even more thankful for the cop shooting the mass murderer because that encourages other militant war criminals to desert their imperialist regime.
The fuck is wrong with you
They’re a known character - classic fedora-controversial bad-faith shock reaction shtick. If your client has user tags, it’s worth dropping one on them so you don’t get drawn in.
decorated military officer in full regalia
You misspelled mass murdering terrorist
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So they have money to brutalize children but not to teach them.
uh, the same “children” also set fires to schools and doused a Principal with gasoline.
Protests are important, but les enfants are going to need a lesson in le fuck around, le find out.
The police are learning it too. Let les enfants fight for what they believe in. Carry your scars through life and know that you earned them fighting for what you believe in. Or be free from scars and know you traded your freedom and your values for a little more “safety”
They fuck shit up in France when things aren’t going the way they want.
As it happens, France has some of the strongest worker protection laws on the planet.
If they’re not afraid of you, they’re only going to use you.
“officials said”
Oh, the cops told you that huh? And you believed them?
There are three rules when dealing with any police officer. Though if you only remember the first one you’ll be fine.
Rule one: shut the fuck up. Rule two: they’re lying Rule three: shut. The. Fuck. Up.
Nah, people will always try to spin it like they did nothing wrong to begin with. I’m not saying it wasn’t the other parties fault as well, but it’s NEVER their fault and the NEVER did anything.
It works across about everything. I used to fix iPhones (back when you could) and about 3x a day people came in with broken screens and it was NEVER their fault and they just couldn’t figure out how it broke. Save for maybe half a dozen that actually said “I dropped it” or “I sat on it”. They didn’t even have a reason to lie to me, I didn’t even care I make the same regardless.
Oh I love giving my atupid reasons the phone is broken. Like, it doesn’t just magically shatter, obviously I broke the thing. My favorite one so far is “Apple Care doesn’t cover heavy scratches, but to trade this thing in, it can’t have heavy scratches?” walks outside, takes off case, not so gently tosses phone into the air “You won’t believe this……”
You are a sick piece of work, my friend. You hope that kids die. It’s disgusting.
A photo of TuaHawk during the American Civil Rights Movement
“They’re setting fire to schools!!! Kill them allllll!!!”
France does not fuck around with protesting. I’m honestly shocked the government hasn’t figured out how to de-escalate.
FaFo will just give them martyrs.
They did figure it out, but the worldwide crisis in capitalism can’t be dealt with peacefully. Fascism in the only way forward for the bourgeoisie.
oh yeah, no arguments here. But this isn’t like day one of the protest. The writing has been on the wall.
This is Lemmy, an anti-authoritarian anarchist bubble, where protestors are always 100% good and the state is always 100% bad. You can’t post balanced news reporting here. /s
It’s kinda funny how the left say they are so different from the right but use the same bubble mechanics where unwanted opinions are filtered out/suppresed lol. Horseshoe theory checks out lol.
it’s kind of funny how you, oh wise enlightened centrist, are the only one to ever figure out that the thing that makes you comfortable just happens to be always right!
You cannot respect authority and respect yourself at the same time.
Here, for you: A cop trying to pass as a protester launches a projectile to justify anti-riot cops charging what’s otherwise a peaceful protest.
https://mu.social/profile/matd.eurosky.social/post/3mwxmpjqfdc2e
After that please come back explain about what “authorities” said about the protests.
We have videos and testimonies, full load of them. The state has “reports”.
And some ****** have uninformed opinions based on their prejudice towards the platform they’re on…
A cop trying to pass as a protester launches a projectile to justify anti-riot cops charging what’s otherwise a peaceful protest.
This is part of why I think nonviolent* protests require absolute discipline, including stopping others from breaking that discipline: clearly, the cops care about having a justification, however flimsy it may be, and the apologists I’ve talked to do use “yeah, well, they were attacked, so they had to defend themselves and keep the peace” as defense too. At least some of them seem genuinely convinced they’re doing the right thing by curbing violence, and even those without any conscience at all may feel more emboldened if they know they have a justification rather than relying on corrupt superiors cover for them.
Any message about police brutality is watered down by reports of violent protestors “starting it”.
Provocateurs provide that justification. Such people are the poison in any movement by throwing even carefully laid plans into disarray. But particularly in a nonviolent one, in an age of ubiquitous cameras, images of protesters stopping other “protesters” from escalating could send a powerful message to counter those claims.
* I prefer the term “nonviolent” to “peaceful” because an effective movement targeting the political will that sustains injustice can look a lot like a war. It’s just that the “weapons” aren’t guns, but strategic disruption and messaging. They have to be a nuisance that can’t be ignored, and they have to show the resilience to communicate that they won’t stop until they get what they want. That’s all easier said than done, of course, but where “peaceful” evokes an impression of people politely asking, protests need to be confrontational - just not necessarily violent.
Way to reverse the blame on the victims again. Protesters can’t control violent individuals. That’s why you deploy the police in a normal world.
But you seem to mean the protesters need to do the police’s job otherwise police will start crushing protests.
Be aware that
1.This would not be possible if the infiltrated policemen were not covered by both their hierarchy (actually they were most likely ordered to start a battle) and the anti-riot police. Anti-riot police know well how to go get an identified individual in a crowd. Were it a student, they would have done so, and not smoothly.
2. Over the last decade, we had countless of whistleblowers from the police force who were quitting over racism, sexism, gutted by the rise of the far right ideology in the police ranks. Pretend of being attacked is not to ease the decent policemen, it’s to keep pretending in medias and court. France police is deeply deeply rotted, and might well be beyond salvation.Way to reverse the blame on the victims again.
Advice to mitigate issues isn’t the same as putting blame. I think you’re confusing pragmatism for moral opposition. Cops being bastards isn’t their victims’ fault, but that observation isn’t worth jack shit if they continue to be bastards.
Protesters can’t control violent individuals. That’s why you deploy the police in a normal world.
But you seem to mean the protesters need to do the police’s job otherwise police will start crushing protests.
When the police send provocateurs to help them crush protests, you can hardly rely on the police to also control the provocateurs. Of course nobody should have to do the cops’ job, and not everybody can realistically stop someone from starting shit, but on a practical level, isn’t it strictly better if somebody does something?
This would not be possible if the infiltrated policemen were not covered by both their hierarchy (actually they were most likely ordered to start a battle) and the anti-riot police.
They won’t suffer consequences, of course, but that’s not my point. We both agree that it’s the fault of the system for being fucked up.
On the other hand, if they were prevented from doing their job (such as other protesters holding them back from trying to attack), what are the police gonna do? Arrest people for stopping violence? I’m sure that’s a great look.
Pretend of being attacked is not to ease the decent policemen, it’s to keep pretending in medias and court.
It can be both, but either way, isn’t it strictly better to prevent them from being attacked and undermining that pretense? Because that’s what I’m on about: what can be done?
France police is deeply deeply rotted, and might well be beyond salvation.
If you have a suggestion for how to deal with this problem, I’m all ears; that’s what these discussion spaces are great for.
I just don’t think “Shit’s fucked, but it’s not my fault” is a productive mindset. It’s not wrong, just not very useful for unfucking things.
I hear what you’re saying, but I don’t think “self-policing” is a good approach either. If the perpetrator is an infiltrated cop, you’d be assaulted and charged for assaulting a cop (they act in group, and their colleagues will attest the cop identified himself as a cop). If the perpetrator is not a cop, it will most likely end in a fight and police will have again an excuse to intervene to “break up the fight”… by beating everyone.
The first thing I can see is document and expose them. The cop throwing projectile has been identified and his unmasked photo is now on Internet.
The second and even better thing is the propaganda doesn’t work well: a farmer union just announced they will join the protest to protect the kids and add their issues, that they see all related. More teachers want to join the protests, another large general union wants to join the protests.
At some point, they won’t be able to pretend everyone is violent and causing troubles.
So, I live in this country and you’re saying bullshit. We have witnesses saying people who set fire are not from the movement. When I was younger, I blocked my school and we already had that. They robbed delivery trucks, set fire to them, attacked cars and attacked us.
An eurodeputee captured images of cops, dressed as civilians, attacking their colleagues to start offenses. We saw similar records during our « yellow vests » protests.
Even if students did this, most of them disapprove. Also you have no confirmed profile yet anyway. And whoever did this does not deserve to lose his eye, jaw or hand.
What about the kid they tried to drawn? What about the 14 years old girl who got strangled? Do you have excuses for that too? Does it make you laugh?
Please, in the future, restrain from talking about topics you don’t know shit about.
Victim blaming is not “balanced news reporting”.
That first sentence of yours is very illuminating.
Lemmy is at a particularly extreme level of violence endorsement. If the people on here said the things that they usually say in public, in actual society and not their little bubble, they’d be rightfully locked up.
Posts on Lemmy are viewable to anyone, same as any other place.
I talk about how Trump should fucking die every single day IRL, and not a single person has disagreed. My boss agrees. My therapist agrees. Literally everyone with a working brain agrees.
I worry about him getting assassinated because of the backlash and potential martyrization, but overall I think the world would be better, and lives would be saved if he took a forever nap ASAP.
If you think that means I ought to be locked up, you’re a fucking fascist. Stopping fascism is the moral choice here. Ask people if Hitler’s suicide was a tragedy if you’re confused by the concept.
That hasn’t prevented members of the U.S. government or ICE from being locked up
Important safety tip. If you plan on throwing stuff back at the cops, stun grenades, tear gas canisters, etc, use a lacrosse stick.
Of course, having a lacrosse stick in a riot is an excuse for them to beat you mercilessly.
Of course, they don’t need an excuse.
In the comments, it’s mentioned that the police claim that he picked up the grenade, but there is an investigation into whether that is the case or it was launched at him directly.
Regardless of whether the kid picked up the grenade, the mere fact that the grenade was launched towards kid is already crossing the line. They always try to make the people focus other things. It doesn’t even matter to them whether it was shot at him or he picked it up. As long as the focus does not lie on them shooting the thing in the first place.
Most of the patients I’ve had who became upper limb amputees from explosives had a closed hand around the explosive when it happened. You can hold something like a fire cracker in an open palm and walk away with mild burns. However, if you were holding the same firecracker in a closed fist I would be fitting you with a prosthetic in a few weeks.
Now I’m not sure exactly how much energy a stun grenade goes off with, but usually if the limb is irreparably damaged without also causing other bodily trauma, the patient was probably holding the device when it went off.
You can hold something like a fire cracker in an open palm and walk away with mild burns
I can attest that because I blew myself up with a pistol flare in 2025 (long and stupid story). My left hand at the moment of the explosion was half-stretched out and the charge blew up a few centimeters below my hand. Only superficial burns to the hand and permanent hearing damage.
If I had the charge in a closed fist, it would have easily torn a hole through my hand. And that was just 2 grams NEC. A stun grenade is much more powerful than a pistol flare (my completely random guess: 20g NEC equivalent), so I reckon that eviscerating the entire hand is not out of the question.
It doesn’t take much depending on the hand position when it goes off. We usually get about 2-3 people blowing up their hands in the trauma ward every year at the hospital during the 4th of July.
Some witness says the genade landed directly in his hand
That’s a weird way to say he caught it. The first sentence of the article says he picked it up. He doesn’t have to be a perfect victim to deserve sympathy or hold the pigs to account.
mmm catching a grenade wouldn’t make him any less a victim. They launched a less lethal device close enough to someone for them to catch it, can’t really go target blaming.
These “protestors” set fire to schools and doused one headmaster in gasoline.
So we have gone from protest to just idiot violence.
Did this child do that, would they deserve losing a limb even if they had?
I read that undercover police did those
I imagine the student thought it was a tear gas canister instead of the cops throwing explosives at children.
Relevant user name.
Of course, having a lacrosse stick in a riot is an excuse for them to beat you mercilessly.
Depends on the country I guess. Carrying a Lacrosse stick could signal that you are white and rich, so cops can leave you be.
If in Canada, I would recommend a hockey stick. You can open carry those.
lacrosse net on one side, hock stick on the other
Bring the goalie mask too.
Umbrellas are a valid option at a protest, with a little 3d printing, you could have an attachable basket to attach to the handle.
And then you can shield yourself and others by opening the umbrella as needed.
Brilliant!
Kevlar umbrella with tungsten reinforced frame?
Tungsten is too heavy. Just use a slightly thicker, hardened steel.
If you’re particularly crafty, it could be a fun machining project.
Username checks out
This is why a lacross stick is a good tool at a protest. You can scoop and launch the grenade back without it getting in your hand.
Great time to practice your backshot too!
I don’t know what a back shot is but I would be aiming to get the grenade back towards the cops as fast as possible without getting it close to myself or others.
I would be scooping and launching it back in one motion, it might not go far but if you bring it up to swing the shot back it could explode above your head.
Less lethal weapons can still kill and maim.
Not even ‘can’ they’re more likely to.
Counterintuitively, ‘less lethal’ arms can be more lethal, since people fire them with impunity.
I heard once that boxing gloves made boxing more dangerous, because previously punching someone in the head would hurt your hands so you’d focus on their chest and belly. With gloves you were free to give them a brain injury instead.
Yes that’s 100% true, the gloves are designed to protect the hands wearing them. They don’t do anything for the safety of the opponent.
That is true. Bare knuckle boxing is ironically safer for the athletes in the long term and avoids CTE/TBI related complications.
Boxing gloves became popular because it protected the hands from getting cut up when striking the skull, allowing prizefighters to have more bouts without having to wait for their hands to heal between each.
It’s a problem in football (US) as well. The pads and helmets mean they can hit head-to-head without risking a fracture. Instead, they get concussions and CTE.
Head to Head isn’t why head injuries are more common, the helmet makes your brain bounce around a lot more on any hit.
The stoppages and padding make hits way more dangerous independently of the head as well.
ACAB
All Cops are Nazis
I think you should try and learn a bit more about history. Because what the nazis did was a lot worse than throwing a stun grenade at kids.
Well the specific group of Nazi’s you’re talking about (almost) all dead. Cops are currently alive and are being bastards. Priorities.
You could learn from history too. Our police statuses never changed from their creation, they are inherited from Vichy’s police. So it’s kinda a nazi thing, yeah. 😐
The Nazi in this context is fascism, not nationalism. When government and corporate interests are indistinguishable, that’s fascism. Cops uphold corporate/government interests. Cops do not uphold rights of citizens, nor do they protect them. Thus cops are Nazis.
Comparing the party which tried to exterminate a race with the cop giving you a ticket because you speed up and saying they are both equally bad is a bit of a stretch. Of course some (too many) cops do some atrocities today, but it’s nothing compared to what the SS did. I don’t really disagree with your arguments, but they only holds for a fascist state. And the assumption that all states in the world are fascist is a difficult one to defend.
You sure ice detention centers are so benign? The nazis didnt start out with millions of innocents killed either, it took them a few years to work up to that.
Have fun being robbed, raped, and killed without police 🙄
Towns who have kicked out police and instituted a democratic system had their crime rate drop massively. See Cherán: “in the last year there have been no murders, kidnaps or disappearances.”
Ive been robbed a couple times, cops did nothing. Wcyd.
My home was burgled. The police did not prevent it and did not help afterwards.
The only thing that helped at all was insurance.
Police is useless for that. It’s basic statistics.
There are other way to bring security and help than police you know. You can be creative and start thinking, it does not hurt. Reducing security to « police = security. No police = nothing in place = chaos » is intellectual laziness at its finest…
Yeah police don’t prevent none of this. They don’t prevent being robbed and if you’re not rich their investigation don’t turned out great, they don’t prevent women being raped and most of the time their investigation only make the victim relive their trauma and let the perpetrators go free. So yeah great example you got here
How many times have you avoided getting robbed, raped or killed due to police presence?
Homicide is about the only thing that they ever seriously investigate. If you’ve ever been robbed or raped, then you’ll know that they are laughably ineffective at catching and prosecuting the perpetrator, even when presented with evidence.
The very fact that these crimes are still committed speaks to the efficacy of a police deterrent, which is to say, none.
If you feel as if you cannot criticize your law enforcement, then law enforcement will inevitably become more and more corrupt over time. Everyone should scrutinize the fuck out of their local PD and never give them the benefit of the doubt on anything.
Yep, my home was victim to robbery with sexual assault and the best I can say the cops did was ensure he didn’t come back that night for more. They basically asked if we had a camera, then checked if we had drugs, and that was the extent of the investigation. They didn’t notice the cut window screen or footprint under that window.
A heavily militarized police force enfringes on our contitutional right to assemble and protest.
I guess self-defence isn’t an option then?
I mean. Did they try making sure billionaires get more while continuing to deprive the working class?
Centrist governments the world over, creating fertile grounds for fascist swings. Because centrists protect wealth inequality. Which is a tragedy of course because these fascist swings make wealth inequality even worse.
When the French gave up on the
JilletGilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) demonstrations in the face of Macron’s pushback instead of doubling down, this shit is what they were setting themselves for.Those were pro fossil fuel boomers
Gilets Jaunes are planning a comeback on the 17th.
I really hope France leads Europe again in overthrowing the XXI century dynastic quasi-monarchy.
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