La Main d'Antoine
"La Main d'Antoine" (Antoine's Hand).
France is currently having its biggest strikes since 1968. The motives are sometimes opposing themselves, or plain stupid, and there are of course cases of brainless destruction and looting taking advantage of the chaos around.
That being said, the main motives emerging from the protest are roughly the end of the 1% and big corporations stealing from the 99% through a government that is the most obvious incarnation of the oligarchy in our history, and also more democracy (the creation of a people's self-initiated referendum, the right for the people to directly destitute any elected official through that mechanism, or things such as a citizen assembly, etc.), and other concerns both good and bad (more environmental action, or some obnoxious racist requests). The protest is supported by a vast majority of the French, and severely suppressed by the government, taking weeks before acknowledging that it may mean something and answering with worthless propositions.
The GLI F4 is a grenade containing a small amount of TNT. It is forbidden to be used by law enforcement officials all over Europe, and since a short time, in France too. But the government decided they would still "empty their stock", which is quite big.
On Saturday, the 8th of October 2018 in Bordeaux, like in any major french city, another strike was going on. Protesting, shouting, one small egg throwing session to the cops. No violence, an angry, yet peaceful strike with may be 10.000 people. At some point, the law enforcement officials, without any warning, without any reason, started to charge people , hit them, and fill the city with tear-gas bombs. Things went south, and that's when a very few people broke into closed stores. The cops were not trying to do anything to them, whereas the protesters did their best to defend themselves while also preventing looting from happening. So, injuries happen on both sides, but like every recent protest in France, tons of witnesses say that they shoot flashballs at innocent people way too close to them (an unlucky mom out of the restaurant got shot in the head purposefully by a cop that aimed it, and she wasn't even protesting), and said GLI F4 grenades on fucking citizens.
Antoine, a young guy participating in the protest, came to a scene of civil war, and when a cop threw something at him, not knowing such deadly weapon would be used, took it to throw it back, thiking that was a mere tear gas grenade. It exploded, and Antoine lost his hand. He's not the first and not the last.
I don't care if you just follow orders, if you're panicking in front of an angry mob, you can't throw that kind of shit to unarmed citizens. Of course, the responsible people (both direct and indirect, ie the government) will never have to face justice, will never even apologise for taking Antoine's hand.