French Riots

[Axl_owns_dexter]

Reminds me of another country who has an entire underclass of Mexican slaves. We should probably pay attention to this.

I have mentioned it countless times on here.

[Axl_owns_dexter]

You don't get the point they are not muslim immigrants - they were born in France - they are french - and not only muslims are burning cars !

Yes, but you keep on letting in more and more.  Is it really a good thing for France to keep importing more cheap labor.  You already have a 10% unemployment rate, time to shut off the valve.  I think we should shut down illegal immigration too, so I am no hypocrite.

[Where is Hassan Nasrallah ?]

You don't get the point they are not muslim immigrants - they were born in France - they are french - and not only muslims are burning cars !

Yes, but you keep on letting in more and more.  Is it really a good thing for France to keep importing more cheap labor.  You already have a 10% unemployment rate, time to shut off the valve.  I think we should shut down illegal immigration too, so I am no hypocrite.

illegal immigration is by definition .... illegal. so... i don't see your point .....

these families have been in france since 40 / 50 years. because, France has own north africa and some african countries for a while .... you don't cut this kind of links easily ....

[Rain]

Last thing - the truth about the riots, uncensured scenes http://www.ogrish.com/archives/2005/november/ogrish-dot-com-french_riots.wmv

France is in the shit.

wierd - I was in Paris 2 days before all this sh!t started

Beautiful city btw...

Nothing really happens in Paris - just a few burned cars .... nothing compared to some parisian suburbs ! 

[Jessica]

funny how<everything is blown out of proportion by medias*

I live next dooir to the trouble ( near clichy, montfermeil, sevran, ....) and i haven'"t even SEEN or smelt smoke, haven't seen groups of people and only 8 police cars the first night after these two stupid kids decided to become human  kebabs

If only journalists were not so ambitious, being prepared to lie so much, i'd have a hard time looking at myself.

[Charity Case]

I guess we Americans shouldn't be so mad a France for not sending troops to Iraq....hell...they won't even send troops to their own cities to stop this madness.  What is wrong with your leadership?  Send in the troops and put a stop to this shit now!

[Jessica]

no need for troops, it's over now , just a few oddballs damaging goods but they take any excuse every year...nothing much

[Rain]

I guess we Americans shouldn't be so mad a France for not sending troops to Iraq....hell...they won't even send troops to their own cities to stop this madness.? What is wrong with your leadership?? Send in the troops and put a stop to this shit now!

We don't like sending troops against our own citizens it makes us feel like a dictatorship to do so. Troops are sent to help not to repress. And we already have thousands of policemen down there. CRS, they are specialized in these kind of action.

[Will]

no need for troops, it's over now , just a few oddballs damaging goods but they take any excuse every year...nothing much

Nothing much? I wonder if the thousands of people who had their car, store, or school burned down would say the same.

[Where is Hassan Nasrallah ?]

no need for troops, it's over now , just a few oddballs damaging goods but they take any excuse every year...nothing much

Nothing much? I wonder if the thousands of people who had their car, store, or school burned down would say the same.

i think she 's sayong that LOCALLY , these are just dumbass bruning stuff. it's not a huge organized rioting act, like some of the medias tried to portrait it. just young assholes taking all the pressure off their environnement (parents, families, life) and expressing it trhu violence ... stupid yes. but a nice punch in the face would do it.

[nesquick]

It seems the violence is decreasing. Good thing.

[Doc Emmett Brown]

I thought this was a good op-ed piece on the riots.  The way he describes the situtation, it seems less about Muslim/African hostility and more about living out 'A Clockwork Orange' type of existence for the disgruntled youths. 

Get French or Die Trying    (yes, a pun on that rap movie  )
By OLIVIER ROY
Paris

THE rioting in Paris and other French cities has led to a lot of interpretations and comments, most of them irrelevant. Many see the violence as religiously motivated, the inevitable result of unchecked immigration from Muslim countries; for others the rioters are simply acting out of vengeance at being denied their cultural heritage or a fair share in French society. But the reality is that there is nothing particularly Muslim, or even French, about the violence. Rather, we are witnessing the temporary rising up of one small part of a Western underclass culture that reaches from Paris to London to Los Angeles and beyond.


To understand why this is so, consider two solid facts we do have on the riots. First, this is a youth (and male) uprising. The rioters are generally 12 to 25 years old, and roughly half of those arrested are under 18. The adults keep away from the demonstrations: in fact, they are the first victims (it is their cars, after all, that are burning) and they want security and social services to be restored.

Yet older residents also resent what they see as the unnecessary brutality of the police toward the rioters, the merry-go-round of officials making promises that they know will be quickly forgotten, and the demonization of their communities by the news media. Second, the riots are geographically and socially very circumscribed: all are occurring in about 100 suburbs, or more precisely destitute neighborhoods known here as "cit?s," "quartiers" or "banlieues." There has long been a strong sense of territorial identity among the young people in these neighborhoods, who have tended to coalesce in loose gangs. The different gangs, often involved in petty delinquency, have typically been reluctant to stroll outside their territories and have vigilantly kept strangers away, be they rival gangs, police officers, firefighters or journalists.

Now, these gangs are for the most part burning their own neighborhoods and seem little interested in extending the rampage to more fashionable areas. They express simmering anger fueled by unemployment and racism. The lesson, then, is that while these riots originate in areas largely populated by immigrants of Islamic heritage, they have little to do with the wrath of a Muslim community.

France has a huge Muslim population living outside these neighborhoods - many of them, people who left them as soon as they could afford it - and they don't identify with the rioters at all. Even within the violent areas, one's local identity (sense of belonging to a particular neighborhood) prevails over larger ethnic and religious affiliation. Most of the rioters are from the second generation of immigrants, they have French citizenship, and they see themselves more as part of a modern Western urban subculture than of any Arab or African heritage.

Just look at the newspaper photographs: the young men wear the same hooded sweatshirts, listen to similar music and use slang in the same way as their counterparts in Los Angeles or Washington. (It is no accident that in French-dubbed versions of Hollywood films, African-American characters usually speak with the accent heard in the Paris banlieues).

Nobody should be surprised that efforts by the government to find "community leaders" have had little success. There are no leaders in these areas for a very simple reason: there is no community in the neighborhoods. Traditional parental control has disappeared and many Muslim families are headed by a single parent. Elders, imams and social workers have lost control. Paradoxically, the youths themselves are often the providers of local social rules, based on aggressive manhood, control of the streets, defense of a territory. Americans (and critics of America in Europe) may see in these riots echoes of the black separatism that fueled the violence in Harlem and Watts in the 1960's. But the French youths are not fighting to be recognized as a minority group, either ethnic or religious; they want to be accepted as full citizens. They have believed in the French model (individual integration through citizenship) but feel cheated because of their social and economic exclusion. Hence they destroy what they see as the tools of failed social promotion: schools, social welfare offices, gymnasiums. Disappointment leads to nihilism. For many, fighting the police is some sort of a game, and a rite of passage.

Contrary to the calls of many liberals, increased emphasis on multiculturalism and respect for other cultures in France is not the answer: this angry young population is highly deculturalized and individualized. There is no reference to Palestine or Iraq in these riots. Although these suburbs have been a recruiting field for jihadists, the fundamentalists are conspicuously absent from the violence. Muslim extremists don't share the youth agenda (from drug dealing to nightclub partying), and the youngsters reject any kind of leadership.

So what is to be done? The politicians have offered the predictable: curfews, platitudes about respect, vague promises of economic aid. But with France having entered its presidential election cycle, any hope for long-term rethinking is misplaced. In the end, we are dealing here with problems found by any culture in which inequities and cultural differences come in conflict with high ideals. Americans, for their part, should take little pleasure in France's agony - the struggle to integrate an angry underclass is one shared across the Western world.

If he's right, then it's a very interesting take on the situation.   It's also different from other articles I've been reading (like Pat Buchanan) which say that the rioters do not want to be integrated into French culture and would rather be Muslim extremists.

But, really, it feels like A Clockwork Orange. 

[Rain]

Thank you Random ! It made my day ! It's exactly what's happening here - nothing to do w/ islam or the banning of the islamic scarf in school.
It's a matter of having no perspective ... and be completely disconnected from the french society. They identify w/ their neighborhood.

[Where is Hassan Nasrallah ?]

yup good piece.

[Drew]

Reminds me of another country who has an entire underclass of Mexican slaves. We should probably pay attention to this.

Are you meaning the U.S.? Cause if you are, I don't see how. Majority of these Mexicans are crossing the U.S border illegally, paying no taxes on the income they make, and cross back over the border almost at free will anytime they want. I don't see how these Mexicans can be a "slave".

no need for troops, it's over now , just a few oddballs damaging goods but they take any excuse every year...nothing much

Nothing much? I wonder if the thousands of people who had their car, store, or school burned down would say the same.

Exactly! Alot of people lost alot and the government would only issue a "call to order"??...that's ridiculous!!!! Police were  fighting off gas bombs with pepper spray guns. Chirac had is thumb up his ass when he should have ordered troops where they were needed.

[Axl_owns_dexter]

I don't see how these Mexicans can be a "slave".

Are they exploited, yes.  But I don't think they should be here in the first place.  And they are free to leave whenever they want.  The black slaves of 200 years ago weren't so lucky.  Maybe SLC needs a history lesson.

[Axl_owns_dexter]

illegal immigration is by definition .... illegal. so... i don't see your point ....

Did you bother to even read my post.  I said you guys need to stop immigration ASAP.  You don't need anymore labor with that 10% unemployment rate.  Do you agree?

[Will]

It always amazes me that French people just don't wanna see what happens in their own freakin country. I am French, but I will never understand that. "Just a few angry youths". Give me a FUCKIN break!! Would you say that if your car, the only good thing you owned was burned down by a bunch of fuckin assholes who were angry at French society but decided to take it down on the car you spent 5 or 8 years to afford in monthly payments? I don't fuckin think so.

Sure, violence is decreasing, that's a good thing. It doesn't mean the problems in our projects are solved. I'm so pissed off about that. French people just like to give lessons to other countries but when shit happens here it's just nothing...a storm that will pass. Open your eyes. This country is FAR from being perfect. In two weeks, media won't talk about it, they will talk about the bird flu or whatever and all of this will just be a bad dream.

"Tout va tr?s bien, Madame la Marquise..."

"On pourrait aussi envisager que tout nous explose ? la gueule..."

[Rain]

illegal immigration is by definition .... illegal. so... i don't see your point ....

Did you bother to even read my post.? I said you guys need to stop immigration ASAP.? You don't need anymore labor with that 10% unemployment rate.? Do you agree?

The frontiers are not open ... the governement is sending illegal immigrant home when they are arrested ... what action do you propose to stop illegal immigration ??

To Drew : I already said it but in France sending troops would just worsen the situation. French people seek the army when there is a natural disaster not when urban troubles arise. We already have the CRS for that, no need for the army ... what do you propose, tanks in the streets , what would they do ? Fire ??

To Will : I don't actually understand what you are so upset about ! We have a huge suburb problem, it's not new and what is happenning is fucking sad and idiotic ! But in the street, the ones that are burning cars are actually a small % of the youth living in the suburbs ! maybe just 50 or 100 young people in cities of 50 000/ 60 000 or more inhabitants are doing this shit ! There is no youth revolution, it's a fuckin sad contest between neighbohoods to know which one will burn the most cars / buses / schools in the nights. It's sad for the people who lost a car - I know someone myself - but over-reacting is just giving them some credit and I won't do that, no way !

[Will]

I'm upset because in France we don't like to face problems. I agree this became in the end a contest to know who is burning the most cars and stuff, but it still means there's a deeper problem. What I'm saying is that we'll talk about it for two weeks, De Villepin is gonna create new emergency laws and regulations and it won't actually change anything, in the end. I think we need to rethink all our politics and all our economics. I think we need a deep, actual change, trying to propose real solutions, like we were talking about on GN'R France. (plus I was kinda drunk when I posted... )