The Apocalypse Continued...

[Griff]

French riots spread outside Paris

EPINAY-SOUS-BOIS, France (Reuters) - Violence erupted in the poor suburbs of northeastern Paris for a ninth consecutive night on Friday as youths set fire to cars and buildings despite a heavy police presence in riot-hit areas.

hmm... Exactly how screwed is Europe?

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Yay, first vote into the box.

Riots in slums tend to be self-limiting, rather than the spark that ignites a revolution.

Well, first of all,the article is about France, not all of Europe.

Second of all, two torched buildings and a few cars would be a quiet night in, say, NYC or LA.

I think Europe has a ways to go yet.

[Griff]

Ha! Mari and UG agree on something! You both must be wrong

[slang]

[sarcasm]Bush isnt leading Europe (yet) so they cant be all that screwed. [/sarcasm]

[xoxoxoBruce]

Good start.

Originally Posted by Griff

Ha! Mari and UG agree on something! You both must be wrong

As UG just reminded me in another thread, he and I both once agreed on something once before. I believe it had to do with the desirability of weapons for self defense.

At any rate, we both managed to get over it.

Perhaps you are being just a tad too apocalyptic when both the right wing nuts and the commie nuts disagree with you.

[Griff]

Originally Posted by marichiko

Perhaps you are being just a tad too apocalyptic when both the right wing nuts and the commie nuts disagree with you.

Actually my vote goes in the not screwed bin. I've just been dwelling on media hype for non or minor issues that gets us more government solutions, that are generally worse than the problems they are purported to solve. an example would be Bush getting in front of the media's bird-flu scheme. Now he can funnel your dollars to whichever outfits he wants... List the media scares presently being pimped, every one of them leads to your pocket book. Speaking of government solutions, did I mention that the Feds protect the over-populated Canada goose which could be carrying the flu to a pond near you? You won't be choosing which fear to bet on, Brother Bush will do it for you. If it were Kerry he'd do the same adjusted for party backers.

[Fleur]

Bird flu is starting to look GOOD.

[tw]

Rioting in Paris Suburbs Continues for a Ninth Night
The violence has isolated the country's tough-talking anticrime interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, whom some people blame for having made the situation worse with his blunt statements about "cleaning out" the "thugs" from these neighborhoods.

France has been grappling for years with growing unrest among its second- and third-generation immigrants, mostly North African Arabs, who have faced decades of high unemployment and marginalization. Critics say Mr. Sarkozy's confrontational approach has polarized the communities and the government. ...

Mishandling of street violence has tainted France's political right before. The death of a young French-Algerian man after a beating by police during student demonstrations in December 1986 ...

Notice what happens when hard line extremists take charge. In Israel, it created the murder of Rabin and a second Intafada. In South Asia, an extremist Indian government took India and Pakistan literally to within hours of a nuclear war. In Paris, well, even when American cities were burning in the 1960s, it did not continue for nine days which suggest how hard line the French government has become.

These are natural and predictable responses when extremists justify their brutality by political rhetoric rather than first learn reality. Even torture is a good thing. Just ask George Jr - extremist who is told by god what to do. Gitmoize Abu Ghraid, and then blame the enlisted men for doing it. Like Pinochet in Chile and Milosevic in the Balkan, even torture is approved by conservative extremists because, "only we know what the truth is and you can't handle it".

Well, better people have said otherwise. The Senate's 90 to 9 vote supporting a McCain amendment - voted for in direct opposition voiced by conservative extremist Cheney - now makes George Jr torture illegal.

Meanwhile, Paris is still burning thanks to extremist hardline conservatives who just know those people must be evil.

Nobody expected the Spanish Inquisition ... for the same reasons. Clearly those other people needed to be saved from themselves - even in Paris. We just need to put more troops on the street. BTW, same applies to Baghdad. Extremist conservative rhetoric proves might makes right.

Maybe someone should first ask some simple questions such as what is the problem? Unfortunately, when political rhetoric becomes fact, then violence, including an almost nuclear war, results.

[Elspode]

Why is all of this symbolic of some political thing? Are we pretty sure it isn't just a bunch of assholes out fucking shit up because they can? I know it works that way after the NBA finals here in America.

[wolf]

But they have legislated the purity of their language, and make fairly decent, if overpriced, wines.

[bargalunan]

I agree with TW.

In the 19th century Baron Haussman destroyed the old short and narrow streets of Paris, and built the “Grands boulevards”.
He built a lot of modern infrastructures like sewers etc …
Some advantages were that Paris became cleaner, the traffic more convenient. Another advantage was that with such wide streets, the police could control popular riots more easily !

All along the “Grands boulevards” he built high buildings. I like how people were living there. The ground floor and the highest floors were reserved for the low class citizens (there was no lift, and the ground floor isn’t always safe). Middle and high classes stayed in the middle floors. (Very high classes were living in particular buildings). So low, middle and high class were living, meeting and melting together.

At the beginning of the 20th century France was suffering from immigration : Italians “Rital”, Polish “Polacs”, Spanish. Extreme rights already wanted to expulse them, they were responsible of unemployment, lost of French culture… Few of us remember that. We just enjoy Emile Zola novels (Italian), Picasso (Spanish), Platini, Koppa (soccers players, sons of Italians and Polish immigrants) etc…

During the first World War, France used African soldiers coming from French colonies (PS : children of “Tirailleurs sénégalais” are always waiting for their income).
After WW2 France needed immigration to rebuilt the country, it was the full employment. So came north African, and black African workers. France quickly built suburbs with high modern and dehumanised buildings.
At the beginnings living in these suburbs was nice with all kinds of people : native French and immigrants. But finally those buildings badly grew old. Only the low class citizens and immigrants stayed there. Hopeless territories for hopeless people.

France thus built ghettos which suffer from lack of links between social classes.

Immigrants are the first who suffer from unemployment (they often are less skilled and at equal level suffer from racism). Second generation immigrants are still not French and no more African, Algerian etc… They’re looking for their identity and the society really doesn’t help them.
They want to work like everybody, be able to buy everything that TV boasts them. They just want to stop unfairness, racial, economical. (before, former immigrants were also less impatient and more resigned, but they could work)

I really disagree with those behaviours (made by second or and third-generation immigrants, mostly North African Arabs, or by native French people) : destroying other people cars and public structures. They can’t see any other solution.

Our anticrime interior minister and deep psychopate, (son of Hungarian immigrant) Nicolas Sarkozy’s first decision in 2003 was to revoke a police captain who tried to help communication between police and the young population of suburbs.
He never stopped pouring oil on fire.
- Calling young immigrants, the "thugs".
- Wanting to use the “Kärcher” to clean them !!!
- Rising a French Islamic fanatic as an enemy, despite nobody has ever heard of him before.

Hopeless people’s anger can easily be used. Riots really began last week when SOMEBODY (who ???) dropped a tear gas grenade (coming from police munition) in a mosque !!!

During the first gulf war, Arabian, Islamic immigrants stayed quiet in France. They don’t want to set their religion and way of life in France. (Excepted some seldom fanatics)

There are real social problems but medias are building political and religious theories to explain them, and still more divide people.

PS 1 : There are not a lot of Turkish immigrants in France (more in Germany)
PS 2 : Medias are building political and religious theories but I still believe in conspiracy theory. Sarkozy, Bush, Blair… idem

[Undertoad]

I agree with tw also.

My French teacher in high school - 25 years ago - told a story about a time she was visiting a French family. The maid came in and everyone at the table went silent and stared uncomfortably at my teacher. After the maid left, they sighed in relief. The maid was black, and the family had the stereotype that all Americans hate all blacks. They expected her to be angry and upset.

When my teacher told the story, she made an interesting point about it: it would have been inconceivable for the black woman to be anything much higher than a servant. That turns the story full circle - of an American society trying to heal from its deep racism problem, and French society that apparently had a racism problem under the surface and did not recognize it for what it was.

[Undertoad]

Also, for what it's worth, it seems to be partly a policing problem, right? For a long time the police would not engage the suburbs/projects; wouldn't even GO there, and would let even rather major crimes go unpunished. I think the lesson is partly that you can't allow that to happen; you have to police all people and not just the "low hanging fruit".

If you were a cop, and had the choice of fighting violent crime in cultures you don't understand, or spending all day writing traffic tickets, what would you do? It would take a lot of motivation to fight violent crime. A lot more if the culture is completely foreign to you.

Thus the police asking for people's papers and generally hassling them, racially profiling, because that's easy and safe, but not actually going after the hardasses, fighting and solving crime.

Barg, we will find it quite humorous and sad if you try to pin this on Bush and Blair. If the violence continues, your voters will demand all politicians be Sarkozys.