Rioting in France Spreads to 300 Towns

PARIS (AP) - Rioting by French youths spread to 300 towns overnight and a 61-year-old man hurt in the violence died of his wounds, the first fatality in 11 days of unrest that has shocked the country, police said Monday.

As urban unrest was reported in neighboring Belgium and Germany, the French government faced growing criticism for its inability to stop the violence, despite massive police deployment and continued calls for calm. One riot-hit town in suburban Paris said it was preparing to enforce a curfew.

<snip>

President Jacques Chirac, in private comments more conciliatory than his warnings Sunday that rioters would be caught and punished, acknowledged that France has failed to integrate the French-born children of Arab and black African immigrants...

<snip>

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5398694,00.html

Street protests have been very effective France.

Nothing ever changes nowhere as long as people don't show their teeth.

that same argument can be used in favor of military interventions.

Peace.

They are NOT effective, seldom do they ever settle anything.

Total War absolutely. Just ask the city fathers of Carthage. (Robert Heinlein)



Riots work well in France due to the cobblestone streets

the thrill, for others. At this point it is doubtful that there is one reason. Poverty, racial and ethnic inequalities, distrust of government, real and perceived abuses . . .

The US government should consider itself fortunate that its people prefer to grinch than to riot -- or all hell would break loose.

:wtf: does that mean?

Forgive me, I have a cold -- not choosing my words wisely (should probably stop posting . . .).

What I meant was that Americans, aside from some notable historical episodes, have generally chosen words over actions -- complaining/exercising their dissent/social activism, even peaceful demonstration with speeches, etc. -- over violent rioting with fire bombs, etc.

Grinching is sort of a catch-all phrase for me -- as I said, I should have chosen my words more wisely.

Peace?

I guess "grinch" is a synonym to "kvetch." Thanks.

but thank you.
So kvetch means like grinch, then? Neat. I've always wondered . . .

At least the French seem to have a government and social welfare system that acknowledges the broad-base of the nonwealthy. We are ruled by a regime that's patently criminal and illegitimate, and a Congress that unashamedly favors the rich.

Income inequality is higher here than it is in France. We also have deep rooted racial prejudice, and serious language and social barriers to recent immigrants. Prop. 187 was just the beginning. There have been suggestions that children of immigrants may not be as readily assimilated as they once were. Neither Party seems to really know what to do with the growing Hispanic minority, and barriers to immigration in America are higher than they have been in decades.

Why aren't we rioting? Not that I think that would be a good thing -it might be just what the Bushites hope for: enter stage right, the The Law and Order President.

15 years ago I was at a workshop where I spent a good deal of time hanging around with colleague in England. His parents had come from Iran, but he was born and raised in London. One day we were driving around, pulling each other's leg, and I said to "Typical Englishman!" He said "Who me? I'm not English!" I said "What do you mean? You were born here, your accent is East London, and you have typical English attitudes and tastes. You are English." He said "Mate, I'll can never be English because the English will never see me as English." It was then that I becamce painfully aware of my Americanness, and my automatic assumption that he could be a full member of his society.

A fundamental difference between this country and every other one in the world is that anyone can be an American by saying they are and by swearing allegiance to the Republic. Throughout Europe (and beyond), belonging to a nation is ethnically defined. My German friend who has lived in Uppsala for decades is still viewed as a outsider, or at best a "black Swede" - because he is not blond! Poverty, discrimination -all those things might cause anger, but consider the grinding, daily realization that you and your children can NEVER be full citizens in the only country you know.

It is this psychic trauma that is breaking loose in the night.

...that measured both the moral authority of local officials to safeguard a Nazi march and the power of police to enforce those court-sanctioned safeguards.

One important message coming out of the Ohio anti-Nazi riot: First Amendment niceties count for little among people who are dispossessed by the broader (i.e., affluent white) society. You can't have a stake in someone else's freedom when your own freedom is savagely curtailed.

I don't support rioting or violence, but only fools avoid trying to understand it. We must reckon with the fact that the young rioters in Ohio recognized the Nazis demonstrating hatefully in their neighborhoods enjoy more official sanction from society than do they. Hence their violence.

And that is no way to bring along a new generation of democrats, let alone of Democrats.

portend...as a larger response to the changing socio-economic system:
It is from an email newsletter circulated by Richard Moore:
--------------------------------------------------------
http://cyberjournal.org

referenced articles:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/07/international/europe/07france.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/05/AR2005110501515.html

---

One of the themes I've been developing, with respect to
neoliberalism, is the notion of "being left by the
wayside".

This notion arises because neoliberalism combines two
aspects, which together are very alarming.

The first aspect has to do with the dog-eat-dog
marketplace, what some call a 'race to the bottom'.
Whether you're an individual or a nation -- if you want to
succeed -- you find yourself in a competitive game of "The
Weakest Link". Many fail in this game, as we see with the
unemployed and the homeless and the West (in the case of
individuals), and with collapsed economies in the third world
(in the case of whole nations).

The second aspect of neoliberalism has to do with
'entitlements', or 'safety nets': they are being
systematically eliminated, in a process that goes under
the ironic name of 'reform'. For individuals, the
relentless process of 'reform' continues to reduce
government services, social welfare benefits, working
condition and employment guarantees, pensions, etc. For
nations, 'reform' undermines budgets with reckless tax
cuts, forcing the reductions in benefits, and takes away
the ability of nations to function effectively, by ever
greater demands for privatization and austerity.

For years in the EU there have been major waves of
protests, as one group after another has seen its safety
nets removed - farmers, truckers, civil servants, medical
workers, pensioners, students etc. etc. In the third world
the removal of safety nets has been most extreme, leading
directly to mass deaths by starvation and disease.
Collapsed economies and destroyed infrastructures take
away the ability of governments to maintain order: with
the safety net of social order removed, the result is
genocidal civil wars as armed factions compete to survive.

I've seen no evidence that our esteemed leaders have any
intention of halting this 'reform' process. The evidence
clearly indicates that safety nets generally have been
targeted for extinction. In the third world, particularly
Africa, we can see that process in its final stages. With
Washington's various free-trade area initiatives -- NAFTA,
CAFTA, FTAA etc. -- we see blatant intent to rapidly
demote North American economies to third-world status. To
the extent this succeeds, that then puts pressure on the
EU -- if it wants to remain competitive in global markets
-- to further 'reform', to match North America.

With safety nets being systematically removed, and with
economic success becoming ever more difficult and
competitive, what is to happen to those who 'fall by the
wayside', those who 'have no place' in the system?

In Africa, eg. Rwanda, Zaire, The Sudan, etc., we've seen
one answer to this question: mass die-offs, and wasting
away in refugee camps. In the West, these riots in France
-- and the response to those riots by officials and the
media -- provides us with a microcosm indicator of how
those 'left by the wayside' are going to be dealt with as
the neoliberal assault continues.

NY Times: Unemployment in the neighborhoods is double and
sometimes triple the 10 percent national average, while
incomes are about 40 percent lower.
...Though a majority of the youths committing the acts are
Muslim, and of African or North African origin, the mayhem
has yet to take on any ideological or religious overtones.

Here we have a classic case of a group being left by the
neoliberal wayside. Unemployment generally is increasing
in Europe, and as the more advantaged people are forced to
compete for crumbs, those in disadvantaged communities are
increasingly left with no hope of employment or hope for
improvement in their lives. Prostitution, drugs, and crime
remain, as other 'career paths' disappear. The community
becomes 'hostile territory' in the eyes of police:

NY Times: Young people in the poor neighborhoods
incubating the violence have consistently complained that
police harassment is mainly to blame. "If you're treated
like a dog, you react like a dog"...
...The youths have singled out the French interior minister,
Nicolas Sarkozy, complaining about his zero-tolerance
anticrime drive and dismissive talk. (He famously called
troublemakers in the poor neighborhoods dregs, using a
French slur that offended many people.)

'Dregs' sums up the situation quite nicely: those left by
the wayside are 'the dregs' - the part that settles to the
bottom - having no value in the neoliberal economy. And
what do you do with dregs, as in your tea or coffee
pot?... you dump them out, get rid of them, flush them
away; they have no place in a clean kitchen. The word
'dregs' candidly captures the neoliberal attitude
toward those who don't fit in.

One way that these people are 'flushed away' has to do
with how other people respond to their plight
psychologically. In many cases, people choose to
rationalize away any sympathy they might feel, typically
'by blaming the victims' for their plight, thus making
them unworthy of sympathy:

NY Times: The attack angered people in the neighborhood,
which includes the old Jewish quarter and is still a
center of Jewish life in the city. "We escaped from
Romania with nothing and came here and worked our fingers
to the bone and never asked for anything, never
complained," said Liliane Zump, a woman in her 70's,
shaking with fury on the street outside the scarred
building.

I must respect this sentiment, having always been blessed
myself by relatively privileged opportunities. And I know
that conditions in earlier times, e.g. Victorian Britain
and Ireland, were far worse for the underprivileged than
in today's Western ghettos. Nonetheless there's something
different about the plight of today's 'dregs', and that
has to do with the plight of the middle classes.

When Ms. Zump escaped from Romania, the middle classes
were on the rise in France, and the path of hard work
could enable one to 'improve ones station' in life, to
move up to the middle class. Not all succeeded, but the
opportunity was there, particularly for the skilled and
educated. But when the 'dregs' today look up and see their
middle class brothers and sisters spiraling downward, then
what hope can they have? If people are tumbling down the
ladder of success, there's no room for anyone to climb up.
For young people the sense of hopelessness is even
greater, seeing no hopeful future for themselves:

Wash. Post: Rezzoug said about 18 youths between the ages
of 15 and 25 are responsible for most of the fires and
attacks on police in Le Blanc-Mesnil, though he said some
young men from neighboring towns have joined in the mayhem.
..."We don't have the American dream here," said
Rezzoug, as he surveyed the clusters of young men. "We
don't even have the French dream here."

Chronic hopelessness, combined with economic deprivation,
is a heavy burden to bear psychologically. Resentment and
anger are natural responses to being first abandoned by
the system, then blamed for your plight, and finally
harassed by the authorities:

NY Times: "We have 10 policemen that were hit by gunfire
in Grigny, and two of them are in the hospital"...
...the violence, which has become one of the most serious
challenges to governmental authority here in nearly 40
years, showed no sign of abating...

Consider this situation from the perspective of
'attention'. If your situation seems hopeless, and no one
is paying any attention to you, except to annoy you, then
you're going to feel resentment, and you're going to feel
ignored -- as individuals, and as a community. It would be
entirely natural to feel a need to 'gain the attention' of
the larger society:

Wash. Post: Rage of French Youth Is a Fight for Recognition.
Spreading Rampage in Country's Slums Is Rooted in
Alienation and Abiding Government Neglect
..."It's not a political revolution or a Muslim
revolution," said Rezzoug. "There's a lot of rage. Through
this burning, they're saying, 'I exist, I'm here.' "

Despite this latent drive to gain attention, 'dregs' communities
typically do not spontaneously start riots in order to get
attention. Rather we see a multi-stage process.

What usually happens first is some singular outrage, such
as the filming of the Rodney King beating in LA, which
provides a focus for pent-up anger, igniting it into overt
collective aggression against symbols of the system. Once
rioting begins, it creates, among other things, a sense of
community, of empowerment, of 'being heard'.

This situation arises of itself, not necessarily
anticipated by those who first threw stones in anger. Once
it does arise -- this community empowerment aspect -- then
the riots have an additional potential source of momentum,
other than just pent up anger and resentment. The 'dregs'
community learns, in the experience of rioting, that
collective action can 'make waves'. Depending on how deep
is the sense of hopelessness, and how urgent the need for
improved conditions, there is a fine line between rioting
and insurrection, between chaos and a genuine, homegrown,
non-CIA funded, 'Colored Revolution':

Wash. Post: "We want to change the government," he said, a
black baseball cap pulled low over large, chocolate-brown
eyes and an ebony face. "There's no way of getting their
attention. The only way to communicate is by burning."

NY Times: Despite help from thousands of reinforcements,
the police appeared powerless to stop the mayhem. As they
apply pressure in one area, the attacks slip away to
another.
...Many politicians have warned that the unrest may be
coalescing into an organized movement, citing Internet
chatter that is urging other poor neighborhoods across
France to join in. But no one has emerged to take the
lead...

I'm very pleased by these articles, because they lay
everything out blatantly and clearly, with very apt choice
of emphasis and language. 'Dregs' was a gold-star choice,
a classic candid remark, well captured and translated by
the reporters and editors.

"No one has emerged to take the lead." I like that. It
shows the mindset of the authorities, presumably found
sensible as well by the Times: "The dregs need leaders
(and as soon as we can identify some, we can go after
them!)"

In fact, an absence of leaders is a hopeful sign in any
collective initiative -- provided that 'the collective' is
able to advance its 'state of consciousness' by other
means. The problem with leadership, as a solution to the
problem of coherence, is that it creates a narrow focus, a
single channel of strategy and initiative; it is a form of
hierarchy. There is also the potential for abuse-of-power
by those who achieve leadership positions, the possibility
of incompetence or ineffectiveness at the top, and the
potential vulnerability of leaders to co-option,
corruption, or detainment -- by the well-funded forces of
reaction. The CIA-funded Colored Revolutions are just one
example of the problems of a leadership paradigm.

Far better that multiple centers of initiative spring up,
able to operate asynchronously, adapting to local
circumstances and opportunities: "As they apply pressure
in one area, the attacks slip away to another".

NY Times: "The republic is completely determined to be
stronger than those who want to sow violence or fear," Mr.
Chirac said...

We have no way of knowing whether these particular riots
will evolve into some other kind of collective initiative,
or whether they will soon be quelled by the authorities,
never having risen above chaos. But I think it has been
useful to explore this scenario, from the perspective of
'potentially hopeful collective initiatives'. The truth is
that all of us are in a hopeless situation, vis a vis
neoliberalism: those at the bottom are simply the first to
feel it in their guts.

You might pause for a moment, and imagine yourself as a
'dreg' -- if you aren't one already -- and think about
where you might find hope. For that is indeed our
condition. Bob Dylan said, "He not busy being born is busy
dying". In our case, those who are not dregs are in the
process of becoming dregs, being digested by the machine,
eventually to be eliminated from the system, at least by
the time old age is reached. No safety nets.

My own view, is that our only hope is a collective
initiative, or rather initiatives, that arise leaderless
out of the grassroots, and which are able to evolve a
sense of identity and coherence. Such initiatives can
evolve in this way only by means of dialog among ordinary
people, who have recognized that their situation within
the system is hopeless, and who are collectively taking
responsibility for creating new systems of social
orientation, based on grassroots collective initiatives.
"Internet chatter", as the Times notes, is one form of
dialog, by which news and ideas can be shared with the
collective generally.

One way that an initiative that begins with riots can turn
into something bigger is for other constituencies to rise
up in sympathy -- for the collective to broaden its base.
In order to minimize that possibility, the Matrix media
always demonizes rioters and protestors. As Chirac puts
it: "those who want to sow violence or fear".

Wash. Post: French government: Interior Minister Nicolas
Sarkozy, who has been considered the country's leading
contender in the 2007 presidential elections. Last month,
he recommended waging a "war without mercy" against
criminals and other troublemakers in the poor areas.

In the case of New Orleans and Katrina, we were inundated
with reports of looting, shootings, and rapes by the
'dregs' -- most of which turned out to be exaggerated or
fabricated -- and outside sympathy was thereby minimized
(though by no means eliminated):

One of the reasons I continue to spend so much time
publicizing 'how bad things are' is because I believe that
the path to our salvation lies through hopelessness. Until
we give up, entirely, on any hope of the system ever
working, or responding to our demands and activism, we
will not turn to ourselves, and to one another, for
creating the social forms that can replace the toxic
machine.

And the reason I try to unmask the Matrix is so that we
can see that 'the system' is not merely dysfunctional, but
is intentionally operated by intelligent people who have
lots of power, who are flexible in using that power, and
who want things to develop the way they are developing.
They don't care what happens to the 'dregs' -- the rest of
us.

Once we realize that our situation is hopeless, and then
realize that everyone else is in the same situation, we
can see that 'we are all in this together', and begin to
see that by making all of us dregs, our leaders have
turned us into a majority constituency -- if only we can
overcome our Matrix-encouraged divisiveness.

..The youths have singled out the French interior minister,
Nicolas Sarkozy, complaining about his zero-tolerance
anticrime drive and dismissive talk. (He famously called
troublemakers in the poor neighborhoods dregs, using a
French slur that offended many people.)

in order to prevent sympathetic responses.....lest we ALL join them in, what is, a shared response to the corporate brand of globalization.

Where does that come from?

I thought the actions referred to were considered "neo-con" for neo-conservative...

?

from Wikepedia:

Neoliberalism refers to a political-economic philosophy that has had major implications for government policies beginning in the 1970s – and increasingly prominent since 1980 – that de-emphasizes or rejects government intervention in the economy (that complements private initiative), focusing instead on structured free-market methods, and fewer restrictions on business operations and greater rights to multinational corporations.

It can be contrasted with protectionism, fair trade and of course, non-capitalist economies, three different alternatives to neoliberalism.

In the United States, the term "neoliberalism" has also been used in a philosophical sense as a drive to deliberately modify the beliefs and practices of the church (especially evangelical) to tie social values with economic.

MORE > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberal


For more indepth understanding of how this author uses the term, you might read some of Richard Moore's articles here:

http://cyberjournal.org

this way.

It would be nice if political terminology was consistent around the globe but, hey.....

I'd actually rather not even have the terminology and talk about ISSUES! People flinging around terms increase labeling and that's not always fair.

Thanks again.

philosophy, for the most part, so it's not foreign. Read the history of it at the Wikepedia site....very interesting!


I know what you mean about the terminology though. It gets very confusing. Thank goodness for sites like Wikepedia. Helps me sort it all out.

Corporate globalization is a bi-partisan, world-wide project. Neo-cons not only support corporate globalization, they're willing to go to war over it. That's supposed to be the distinction, anyhow. I think it is a distinction without a difference.

Support progressives.

...see Thomas Frank's One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism and the End of Economic Democracy (Doubleday, 2000).

Highly readable and incisive. Clintonistas need this book, especially.

The far right is already strong enough in France, polling at about 15% or more. They will inevitably benefit from this.

And at all times, given comparable levels of education. We're talking about 15% of idiots and/or assholes, including in the US, as we all painfully know. If anything, rebelling will make them crawl back, as usual, behind the baseboard.

no income, no healthcare, no safety net??

until we all are swept up in the deluge. And the authorities are trying to prevent sympathetic responses and identification with them by demonizing the rioters (or in the case of the Katrina victims...those bad "looters/criminals").

American police and citizens shoot back when they're attacked by rioters.

as a country. Was it only a short time ago that we had peace and prosperity under Clinton. And we were such a spoiled bored people that they only thing we were concerned about was Clinton's sex life.

such as NAFTA (a neo-liberal invention). Recommended to read the info on neo-liberalism so you'll get a bigger picture of how things are unfolding on the world economy front. Things may have seemed more stablized during Clinton's administration, but the effects of some of his policies are only now beginning to be felt. In fact, these economic issues are, in part, the cause of the current split in the Dem party as the DLCers have adopted many of these neo-liberal policies.
These bigger issues are not quite as partisan as you might like to believe...



Brief history

Just as classical liberal philosophy justified and encouraged the "first era of globalization" which came to an end with the shocks of the First World War, the collapse of the Gold Standard, and the Great Depression, neoliberalism is associated with the contemporary "second era of globalization," the seeds of which were planted after the Second World War. In between, during the period from 1915 until the 1960s or so, different versions of more statist liberalism and economic nationalism guided the economic and social policies of many nations. In mid-1950s, a book about the theory and practice of neoliberalism, recent German liberalism and the Federal Republic of Germany was published in the German Democratic Republic.

Neoliberalism's economic roots begin with the re-establishment of international monetary stability with the Bretton Woods system, which fixed currencies to the U.S. Dollar and the U.S. Dollar to gold. As an ideological movement, it became increasingly prevalent based on the work of Robert Mundell and Arthur Flemming. The Mont Pelerin Society, founded at about the same time by thinkers such as Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, and Michael Polanyi created free-market think tanks and advocacy groups in the United Kingdom and the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. They drew upon the theories of the Austrian School of economics and monetarism. Neoliberalism argued that protectionism and government programs produced economic inefficiencies, and that developing nations should open their markets to the outside, and focus on exporting. Also emphasized was the liquidation of state-owned corporations, and the reduction in rules designed to hinder business. Neoliberal ideas found expression in a series of trade talks to form the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade as well as regional free trade agreements such as the European Union and the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The slow and quantitative development of neoliberalism after World War II became more rapid in the 1970s, and not always by peaceful means. One of the often-touted neoliberal success stories is General Augusto Pinochet's Chile – which began with the violent ousting of the democratically-elected government of Salvador Allende. The Allende government had pursued radical left wing policies, and has been labeled "socialist" or "Marxist." "Free market" policies, including privatization of state assets, were imposed by "los Chicago Boys," Chicago school economists inspired by Milton Friedman. These policies were later imitated by the Bretton Woods institutions operating in many other poor countries, particularly in Latin America.

The rise of this wave of neoliberalism culminated with the Reagan government in the United States and that of Margaret Thatcher in Britain. The Reagan and Thatcher governments not only shifted their own countries' policies toward laissez-faire but used their control of the major Bretton Woods institutions to impose their policies on the rest of the world. For this reason, some regard neoliberalism as synonymous with the "Washington Consensus," the dominant policy view at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the U.S. Treasury at the end of the 20th century and the start of the 21st. A major axiom of the neoliberal school is that (to quote Thatcher) "There Is No Alternative" to globalized capitalism. This slogan is often abbreviated as "TINA."

In the late 1980s and early 1990s neoliberal policies had been embraced by the conventionally-defined center-left, as Bill Clinton of the United States backed the North American Free Trade Agreement. Free trade was seen as essential to his economic program, which promoted the creation of technology and intellectual property rights as the means by which America would be able to reduce or manage its persistent balance of trade deficit. Some center-left neoliberal economists argued that protectionism is not a left or right issue, but an issue of asymmetry, and therefore a general cause for concern.

Critics of neoliberalism in both theory and practice are numerous. This is particularly true in developing nations whose assets have been sold off to foreigners and whose domestic political and economic institutions had been undermined by the effects of being exposed to trade and rapid flows of capital. Even within the neoliberal movement there is intense criticism of how many developed nations have demanded that others liberalize their markets for manufactured goods, while protecting their own domestic agricultural markets.

Anti-globalization advocates are the most vociferous opponents of neoliberalism, particularly its implementation as "free capital flows" but not free labour flows. They argue that neoliberal policies encourage a "race to the bottom" as capital flows to the lowest environmental and labor standards, and is merely updated "beggar thy neighbor" imperialism, dating back 200 years. In this they are in fundamental agreement with many of neoliberalism's supporters who argue that neoliberalism represents an updated version of classical liberalism.

Some economists argue that neoliberal policies can create "moral hazard": governments and international financial institutitions must bail out developing nations and their creditors because they are "too big to fail." This simply encourages further risk-taking and crises. They point to the string of currency melt-downs in countries such as – Mexico, Russia, Eastern Europe, East Asia and Argentina – as proof that there is a danger to allowing risk-taking without sufficient penalty or regulation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberal

"Peace and prosperity under Clinton..." lol, so those teeming masses of poor you saw on the tv in the aftermath of Katrina just all became poor under bush*?

Easily.

a hundred years ago. From often-bloody demonstrations arose the unions, and for the first time the playing field between labor and owners was somewhat leveled.

Peace.

You'll see some pretty pissed off people, here.

"One riot-hit town in suburban Paris said it was preparing to enforce a curfew."

President Jacques Chirac, in private comments more conciliatorythan his warnings Sunday that rioters would be caught and punished (ooh... that is heavy-handed... it's a good thing he sounded more conciliatory...), acknowledged that France has failed to integrate the French-born children of Arab and black African immigrants...

I feel like I am a freeper responding to this story but I have to respond how my gut responded. Riots, nearly by definition, are sparked when the "mob" acts out violently against the state and all order. Riots will continue for as long as it takes the state to reestablish that order. People follow the leader and take advantage of gaps in state control... isn't one of hte first things you do is establish a curfew in a riot?

Nothing happens quickly here, not even military responses...

It's no coincidence that bureaucracy is a French word.

basically a Arab youth rebellion..

After WWII France used its colonies in N. Africa to gain manpower.
They set these people up in ghettos with very poor services and refused to integrate them into the larger french society.... This has lasted until now... and the children of these people have fucking had it... Thus the riots!!!

THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ISLAM, FUNDAMENTALISM OR TERRORISM!!!

The authorities would like for it to seem to be strictly a race issue, but the economic problems and inequities are the catalyst.
And these problems are global. This is just a harbinger of things to come around the globe...

Wasn't France supposed to be the model of social development where all its citizen were taken care of? What broke here?

I heard the riots are also happening in Denmark and Belgium... The facts seem similar: underprivileged, marginalized youths, unemployment etc..

How can this have happened in some of the most socially progressive societies in the world?

Anyone?

The devil makes work for idle hands.

I believe in the past few years, the French Govt has started to reduce some of the benefits it provided to it's people. The level they were being given out at was unsustainable.

Universal Health Care, mandatory 6 weeks of vacation, 35 hour work weeks, high wage rates, and 18 months of unemployment insurance caused French made products to be very expensive, and un-competitive in the world market.

As a result, French goods and services are not being bought, and unemployment has been around 10% for over a decade.

Among those under 25 the unemployment rate is over 25%

And for those with non-european ancestry, the unemployment rate is 40%.


So not only is this demographic severely under represented in the job market, they are also being the hardest hit by benefit cuts.

The fact that this segment is mostly Muslim and of North African decent makes it look like targeted oppression, and thus the riots.

IMO France has a very volatile population, Chirac kissing and making up with Bush was not a smart move. Maybe Hugo Chavez had something to do with it. Maybe he sparked that sense of nationalism and now everyone is outraged. Americans are somewhat more docile and it takes a lot more to get us going. I don't think this region is nearly as progressive as the East.

I see this problem as failed welfare state in intergrating large numbers of immigrants and their families, problems of young Muslims caught between 2 cultures and rejecting the dominant European one, and socio-economic, racial problems.

DemEx

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,383623,00.html

November 7, 2005

RIOTING IN FRANCE

What's Wrong with Europe?

By Rüdiger Falksohn, Thomas Hüetlin, Romain Leick, Alexander Smoltczyk and Gerald Traufetter

For 11 nights running, French police and firefighters have battled rioters on the streets of Paris suburbs -- and the violence seems to be spreading. But the unrest in France is only the latest chapter in the difficulties Europe has been having integrating its immigrants.



REUTERS
Local youths watch as firemen extinguish burning vehicles in Paris last week.
Mayor Claude Dilain sits on the edge of his chair in his community's wedding banquet hall. His hands are folded on the table in front of him, and his face is a tortured reflection of the doubts and fears inside him.

For the past 10 years, Claude Dilain, 57, has been the mayor of Clichy-sous-Bois, a suburb in northeastern Paris with 28,100 inhabitants, mostly immigrants. Dilain calls it "a powder keg." He slightly resembles the French author Michel Houellebecq, but today he is paler than even the author normally is. The strain of the last few nights is no doubt part of it. But so too is a growing suspicion -- that the modern welfare state may be fully incapable of addressing some of his community's most pressing problems.

Dilain is a socialist and the vice-president of the French Convention of Municipal Authorities. He has been a proactive mayor, setting up free soccer training for local youth, appointing youth leaders as mediators and making sure that the community's waste collection service functions properly. Clichy-sous-Bois is an amalgam of schools, daycare centers, welfare offices, parks and a college that looks like something out of an architecture competition. The community library is currently sponsoring a writing contest themed "I come from afar, I like my country."

By any measure, Claude Dilain has done everything right. But these days he is filled with an ominous sense that doing things right may not be good enough.

What good is education without enough jobs?

Television news programs portray Clichy essentially as a Ramallah-sous-Bois, a place where young people in sneakers and hooded sweatshirts are trying their hand at revolution. They depict riot police armed with rubber bullets and tear gas patrolling streets lined with burning vehicles and garbage cans. A spokesman for the police officers' union is calling for the government to bring in the military. And all this against the backdrop of concrete walls covered in brightly painted murals, the work of local children in a program sponsored by the mayor's office.


Clichy-sous-Bois serves as evidence that the French route of soft integration has failed miserably. Of what use is education when there are no jobs? The hardnosed approach French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has taken has only made matters worse. And when Sarkozy, who has ambitions of becoming France's president, called the youth gangs "scum" and "riffraff" who must be dealt with severely, he was only adding fuel to the fire.

The French capital has an intifada unfolding on its doorstep. For 11 nights running, garbage containers and vehicles have been burning in Departement Seine-Saint-Denis. Night after night, gangs of teenagers storm through their neighborhoods, throwing Molotov cocktails into carpet shops and nursery schools, turning vehicles into bonfires -- 250 in one night, then 315 the next night, and 500 the next.

On October 27, two local teenagers died in circumstances that have yet to be clarified. They had been running from the police, it is said -- although officials have since denied this was the case -- and they ended up in a dead-end alley at the end of which was an electricity substation. The warning sign Mayor Dilain had had affixed to the building's entrance -- featuring comic book characters for the area's youth -- was no deterrent to 15-year-old Banou from Mali and his 17-year-old Tunisian friend, Ziad. They were electrocuted to death. A third boy survived but was seriously injured.


A rumor that the police had driven the two boys to their deaths quickly began to spread. There have been street riots every night since, and the French government is in a state of crisis.

The authorities have had trouble catching these urban guerillas. The number of arrests -- 230 by last Friday, with even fewer convictions -- has been small compared to the scope of the violence and destruction. On Sunday night, though, fully 190 people were taken into custody by French police after they were fired on by demonstrators in Grigny just south of Paris.

A grave danger for the republic

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France is like the old southern plantation oweners, who just couldn't understand why the slaves didn't just settle down and enjoy a secure job, home, and food on the table. They just have no clue as to what they are dealing with here.

They just don't realize you can't force people to be "French" by passing no headscarve rules etc. to counteract a changing population that doesn't want to be traditional French.

Immigration is changing France, and will soon convert it.

Hell, that's better than Boosh's NOLA emergency action plan!

First step in Boosh's EAP is to wait until all the poor blacks have lost all hope of escaping hurricane Katrina. Next step is to put a white man in charge of FEMA and forget all about it. Step three requires the white FEMA man (called Brownie) to sit around the office, email peers and surf the net for porn. Step four is to cover up the crime area with news blackouts and shortage of power to the cities. Step five is to send in a federal loyalist like Halliburton and pillage the land of all prosperity. The final step is to have so many consecutive scandals that this one disappears off the map rather quickly creating another scandal.

3.5: Post police pickets to prevent any spontaneous civilian assistance from achieving its goal (and prevent many race- class-profiled victims abandoning the area);

and

4.5: Send in Iraq-crazy recent returnee military (mostly well-behaved, though, miraculously, it seems) and viscious (mostly white) mercenaries trained to shoot to kill.

borhoods instead of more "comfortable" neighborhoods. The powers that be never do anything until the rich and comfortable start screaming about it.

It was the poorer neighborhoods that got trashed, I guess because that's where the rioters live and they don't have the easy means to get where the powers that be live.

These ain't necessarily the brightest bulbs on the tree, resorting to this kind of stupid crap.

And for whom do you imagine the police work?