"A Very Special Movement"

Lou Dobbs just interviewed Dominique du Villepin. I only caught the end of it. Dobbs closed with a skeptical comment about just how special can the occasion be when 9000 cars had been burned. I said to myself, "Here we go again..." Villepin is an elitist dick, but, by the gods, he has a point here, and he is listening to the people.

I do not think that there is one single politician in the U.S. that comprehends in even the most facile way the recent history of France and the way they have gone about handling immigration and the blowback from a couple hundred years of colonial adventures. Frankly, they know Fucking Shit about the whole thing, PARTICULARLY the history of Algerian colonization, and the ensuing War of Independence 1956-1962, and the years of internal struggle up to and including the Civil War, recently and blessfully "concluded".

I have said it before: One cannot enter a reputable French bookstore and NOT find at least a table or two and a shelf devoted to studies of the annihalation of Algerian culture, the wars and massacres, the "cafe wars" in the heart of France, wherein more than 5000 people lost their lives, or the terribly difficult legacy the whole rotten enterprise has left to the citizens of that fair country. Whatever their regional or ethnic origins.

One hell of alot of people, even on DU, have no idea of the disgust the people of France and the rest of Europe have as a whole for war, now. What matters is the plight of my family and friends, the state of my neighborhood, the quality of life, in a place every hidden byway has been drenched in blood over centuries of immigration and conflct. When you raise a glass with a fellow in my neighborhood you had better look him in the eye, because we are all in this whirlwind of care together and we know it.

That War! Algeria! ...has affected modern French society in ways that the average American is fully and completely unaware of. Arabic language has been on the street for a century, and the North African immigrants and their children who populate the bainlieus and slopes bring their history with them - all the tragedies, broken families and fatherless children., all the trauma of death, destruction and hate... it is said "The sins of the Fathers will be visited on the heads of the children, Yea, unto the seventh generation." It is a big problem. The French will find a way. This has been going on for 2000 years.

LFR