🧵THREAD: I've been observing the French press and public opinion for the past days.
Explainer on the situation in France:
Police shot a 17yo driver, known as Nahel M (or Naël)
Initially, officers claimed the driver rammed them.
A video filmed by a bystander showed this to be untrue: two police officers aim their guns at Nael's head, then shoot him at point blank range, after starting his engine.
The boy's crime: driving without a license.
Lies were spread on TV and social media about him having a criminal record. This is completely false, Nahel's record is completely clean.
President Macron called the killing "inexcusable". Police received unusually harsh criticism from a good chunk of politicians (but not all).
French actor Omar Sy, and footballer Mbappé commented, conveying their sympathies.
The police officer who shot Nahel has been detained and charged with voluntary manslaughter.
The lawyer for Nahel's family also wants to charge him for lying in his initial testimony, and to charge the second officer as an accomplice to the killing.
First angle of the incident, this is the one that most people have seen.
You can hear one officer say "I'm going to put a bullet in your head" (je vais te mettre une balle dans la tête)
Then the second officer says "shoot!"
Second angle of police shooting 17yo Nahel dead during a traffic stop.
In the left side mirror you can see both police officers, with pistols raised and pointed at Nahel's head.
Graffiti on the wall says: "Were it not for the video, Nahel would just be another statistic."
Many French people have commented online and on TV: "how does refusing to comply warrant a death sentence?". "I also drove without a license when I was young, does that mean I should be shot dead?"
The general public view the police as having used excessive force and violence.
A French ambulance worker explodes against the police: "You can see he's just a kid! [Killed] for not having a driver's license? Nanterre will hit the roof!"
The police arrested him afterwards, for allegedly "threatening" them and "inciting hatred".
French authorities enjoy immunity from a 2017 law (Article L435-1) which relaxes rules for use of deadly force.
Going beyond self defence, it gives police the right to shoot anyone who refuses to comply after 2 "loud commands", driver or otherwise, and is worded very ambiguously
Nahel's mother: "I did everything as usual: I went to work, and then an hour later they tell me my son is dead. What do I do? I gave everything, I did everything for my son, just for some son of a bitch to shoot him".
Minster of Interior @GDarmanin, while conveying his sympathies to Nahel's family, said police officers should be afforded a presumption of innocence, and insists that this law was made to protect the lives of policemen and other authorities.
Darmanin defended the law by saying many police have been killed by individuals who refused to comply.
He said, however, not to confuse that with the killing of Nahel; refusal to comply is unacceptable, but so is shooting drivers, no matter their age.
The entire country is disgusted and shocked by the killing. France has a strong tradition of striking and protesting so people have hit the streets not just in Paris, but all over including Marseille, Lyon, Toulouse, Dijon, Nantes & many more
Riot police in Marseille. People throw fireworks at them, and set cars alight (a French tradition).
Lyon:
A photograph of Nahel M., shot dead by French police during a traffic stop.
Nahel was killed in Nanterre, located in the suburbs of Paris, aka "la banlieu". The Banlieu is viewed as a product of class and racial segregation: it suffers from poverty, and many residents are of Arab and African descent-- particularly from countries that France colonized.
Protests in the Banlieu can get very heated, stemming from a deep mistrust of police.
A man tells police "what's wrong with you, killing a 17yo boy like that?", to which a policeman quietly mutters "go back to Africa"-- just loud enough for the camera:
French riot police, the CRS, are known across Europe, even among other police forces, for being extremely violent. A reputation that goes back many decades.
Macron deployed them against the yellow vests and now he chooses to wield them against the Banlieu.
The last time you had giant riots was in 2005, after two boys died by electrocution, while trying to hide from police chasing them. They committed no crime.
Nahel, the boy shot dead by French police, is of Algerian descent.
Until the 1960s, Algeria was not just a French colony, but a "département", a state/province. It was considered part of France, until the French were kicked out of the country.
It wasn't long ago that France butchered 1.5 million Algerians to try and maintain control of Algeria. Now French authorities kill an Algerian boy, it seems little has changed from a century ago.
Father drags his son out of the protest and puts him in the trunk 😂😂
People howling in the video: "His mother caught him, he's screwed now"
Sports car rams into a Lidl (grocery store) repeatedly
Someone brought a chainsaw😂😂 dude
French police beating the crap out of someone
Surveillance tower is knocked down with construction equipment
WATCH my full take on YouTube:
Absolutely Wild Moments of French Protests https://t.co/lHBpbJ100j
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
French police put Bashir Biazar in a camp for posting pro-Palestinian content. He's been there 3 weeks.
They want to deport him even though he's lived in France with his family for 2 years. They're smearing him, saying he is an Iranian agent, with 0 proof.
Help raise awareness.
The French government will not even answer his lawyer. This is completely insane.
They are holding him under administrative detention, with no charges, and in a camp for illegal migrants, which is ridiculous given he resides legally in France.
The way they detained him, it was a trap.
They asked him to come down to the station on June 3. He was arrested on the spot. All based on an expulsion order from May 22— and not allowed to respond at all!
If France wish to deport him, then why not do it? To make him suffer.
Today, the High Court will decide whether to permit #Assange to appeal the UK's decision to extradite him to the US.
If denied, all of Assange’s legal avenues in Britain are exhausted, and he will appeal to the ECHR.
I am attending the hearing. Live updates below:
2) The US are seeking to extradite Wikileaks founder Julian Assange for publishing classified government documents. These documents exposed US war crimes in Afghanistan, Iraq, and beyond.
If extradited, he could be sentenced to 175 years in prison.
3) The High Court granted Assange provisional leave to appeal, unless the US can guarantee that Julian Assange
–Will be granted 1st Amendment rights in the US
-Will not be prejudiced because of his nationality at trial
Under Oslo, Israel had to free Palestinians like Waleed Daqqa. That was In 1993. He died last week. Killed through deliberate medical negligence.
Thousands of Palestinian hostages are in Israeli dungeons, without charge or trial. The world didn't care.
Waleed Daqqa wasn't held under administrative detention, but the fact Israel kept him in violation of Oslo, and then even after completing the 35 years of his life sentence! And on top of all this, denied him conjugal & family visits, or proper medical care.
He was supposed to be top of the list for any prisoner deal, because they are done based on seniority. He could have been freed in at least 4.
Denied. Over and over.
The Resistance fought for him and the thousands like him that the world ignored
BREAKING: Julian Assange has been granted limited leave to appeal by the High Court.
I have just been given the ruling and will provide more information below
Before I include more points of order (the ruling is around 66 pages) this means that Assange has not exhausted his legal options in the United Kingdom, and may yet convince a court to stay and bar the extradition to the United States
This is a full explanation of the Assange case, please watch it if unfamiliar (and even if you are) as it encapsulates the entire issue in one video.
There's no such thing as a "debate" about Israel. You don't debate theft. Theft is wrong.
Israelis are thieves. That's what colonialism is. This is not their land, and as long as they are there, there will be resistance. They will leave one day whether they like it or not.
What Israel have done is ruin the Jewish communities in Arab countries. The Israelis, on purpose, created hostile environments toward Jews in Arab countries, specifically to make them leave to Israel. How do we return these communities now? This is the only question that matters.
But the majority of Israelis, the Israelis who make political decisions, the ones who created the terrorist groups Haganah, Irgun, Lehi-- which then became the IDF-- they're all Europeans, and they can simply go back to Europe where they belong like all European colonizers.
Alas, Victoria Nuland resigns, her 10-year war against Russia a giant, pathetic flop.
My favorite moment was her trip to Niger last summer after the coup, expecting the red carpet treatment, and instead Tchiani refuses to meet and sends his adjutants.😂
Speaking of which, Putin ground Nuland and NATO's war against Russia to a total halt using well-placed, insurmountable fortifications. This is why the famed "spring counteroffensive" never came.
Russia's stockpiling and mass-production of shells, which the West couldn't catch to even in 50 years, is another major factor:
BRICS, and outmaneuvering sanctions also contributed to Russia's victory: