"Nothing to see here. Move along, lookie-loos"
Posted on 11/07/2005 3:08:14 PM PST by WmShirerAdmirer
They are the young men whose rioting has laid waste to Paris's outer suburbs, is spreading across France and licking the heart of the capital.
The riots are described as the worst to hit France since May 1968 and have been linked to radical Islam. However, it is better to compare the unrest to the riots that burnt down African-American ghettos across the United States in the 1960s.
"It is nothing to do with radical Islam or even Muslims," said Olivier Roy, research director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research and a leading authority on political Islam.
Although many of the rioters come from Muslim backgrounds, "these guys are building a new idea of themselves based on American street culture. It's a youth riot - they are protesting against the fact that they are supposed to be full French citizens and they are not."
As black Americans in the 1960s objected to police using the word "boy", so today's French rioters want police to stop insultingly addressing them with the familiar form of you, "tu".
"The police in France are very badly trained on these issues," said Jacques Reland, head of the European Research Forum at London's Metropolitan University.
"They don't understand the culture of these estates. They are very rough and often racist."
The unrest was sparked by the deaths of two youths in the rundown Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois. They were accidentally electrocuted at an electricity station after fleeing a police check. An interim report said police did not chase the boys to their deaths.
Although unemployment in some suburbs is as high as 40 per cent, so far the riots have lacked a political focus. And because the violence had largely untouched Paris's historic centre, the average Parisian could, until the weekend, ignore it. The boulevards at night were safe and the cafes full, even though six train stops away the streets exploded in flames.
But on Saturday, the 10th night of the riots, a group of youths, whom police described as "prepared, structured and armed", came into the centre and set fire to 51 cars, including several in Place de la Republique, the symbolic heart of the nation.
Some of the rioters are trying to outdo each other, with even high-rise blocks competing to be the toughest. "We see what the others are up to on TV and we try to match them," said Moussa, a French teenager of African background. He said he and his friends gathered every night to watch the TV reports in their housing estate in the western Paris suburb of Les Mureaux.
Dr Roy did not rule out the possibility of some of the youths turning to radical Islam. Some militant Muslims were using the riots as a recruiting tool, while others were trying to mediate an end to the violence.
But so far the differences between the two were too great. "Radical Islam asks these guys to give up their lives dealing drugs and going to nightclubs," Dr Roy said. "Many of these guys don't want to do that. They want to have cars and girls and smoke hashish."
Dr Roy said one spark to the violence was drug dealers' desire to create "free zones" on the estates "without police, social workers and journalists".
Another Euroliberal who doesn't get it. Yet.
Uh huh...keep tellin' yourself that, Olivier.
No kidding. Nothing to do with TROP.... < / sarc >
France should simply admit that their feckless Government can not generate an economy that can provide jobs or sufficient "welfare bribes" to keep them happy........then deport ALL non-citizens and troublemakers to their Turd World "paradise".....
Semper Fi
What he's saying is , "IT's all George Bush's fault."
It's all America's fault
As long as the authorities persist in thinking in terms of economics, and not the warfare planned and executed to tear down the existing order that it is, they shall remain mystified as to why the problem is so intractable. This is a counter-Crusade carried to the very heart of Europe, and it is as if the intervening years from the 13th Century to now had been the span of only a few decades.
Saladin has been very successful, and stands as an inspiration to the Saracens and Moors even today.
One of the Euros said that it's like the low-class help in a 5 star hotel want to suddenly move in with the richest inhabitants.
People have no patience anymore, or the will to work hard. They see what they don't have on tv, and resort to violence to get it.
Just don't torch any cars in Germany-- not a wise career move
"Nothing to see here. Move along, lookie-loos"
Here's another take on the riots from(AP)via the Hindustan Times & HT Media Ltd. 2005. India News
Angry youths vent anger at France, insisting riots will turn to 'war'
Jamey Keaten (AP)
Le Blanc Mesnil (France), November 7, 2005
All French-born children of Arab and black African immigrants, this group of a dozen or so teens at Les Tilleuls housing project north of Paris complained of being marginalised by French society. Years ago, France welcomed their parents as labour, often to do menial jobs most French did not want, they noted. And now, there are no jobs -- or no one willing to give them one, they said. "This isn't good for anything," says Farid, 20, angrily shaking his French identity card. He and the others refused to give their surnames, saying they fear repercussions from police or in the community.
None of the youths said they have participated in arson attacks, but their sympathies are clearly with the rioters who have shaken France to its core in the past 11 nights of mayhem that spread across the country from tough Paris projects like Les Tilleuls. "The 'elders' of the projects have tried to calm us down, but we don't care," said 20-year-old Karim, gesticulating wildly with his arms and then concentrating on rolling a joint.
He said the rioting has unified various housing projects that previously fought between themselves. The target of their rage is Sarkozy, who angered many in the suburbs by calling neighbourhood toughs "scum."
"Before it was a gang warfare between different projects. Sarkozy's given us a common target -- the government," said Karim, who like the other young men refused to give his surname. "If they fire Sarkozy, we'll head straight to the police station, and pop champagne with them," said Bidou, 22, his baseball cap cocked to the side.
Before the riots, police rarely came round, and generally patrolled in cars with windows rolled up, the youths said. They have nicknames -- like "Lucky Luke" and "Cortex" -- for some officers they know.
They complained that police manhandle them during identity card checks, even claiming that some officers plant hashish on them as a pretext for arrests, and that they regularly fire off rubber pellets during sweeps.
"You wear these clothes, with this colour skin and you're automatically a target for police," said Ahmed, 18, pointing to his mates in Izod polos, Nike sneakers and San Antonio Spurs T-shirts.
Well Police seem very useful, but I certainly can understand the "no social workers and journalists" rule. Our ruffians just want plasma TVs.
This guy isnt all wrong. The problem is as much with racist blacks as it is Islamics. But his reasoning is wrong. It isnt White racism that causes riots , its black racism.
Nothing to do with Islam or Muslims,eh?
Are poor,Catholic teenagers burning cars? Is it disgruntled Episcopalian youth rioting? Is it ALL poor youth terrorizing France, or just MUSLIM youth?
Of COURSE they don't feel like French citizens- their CULT is not compatible with all of the freedoms and modern ideas of citizenship ANYWHERE except the third world hell-holes from which their families came.
ISLAM keeps them separate, mentally and physically ,from civilization. So- of course- they must destroy civilization, not the cult to which they are truly enslaved.
See my tagline....
It's an illusion to think that punks can't serve the cause of Islamic jihad.
All over the Middle East, various combinations of Nazism, Communism, and Islam have led to violence. Communism is by definition atheistic, but that hasn't stopped Arab Nationalists from adopting many of its ideas and methods.
Muslim leaders may despise these tools, but they are perfectly capable of using them for their own purposes. The Muslim terrorists who have moved in on Kosovo are also drug-running thugs, as are most Albanians, but they are Muslims, too, and they take the same pleasure in killing Christians and burning churches.
This is like saying you can't be a Christian and a gangster. Tell that to the Mafia, or the Dixie Mafia.
If you can acknowledge the truth you will never fix the problem.
Prepare to surrender.
By the way, the Louvre had better consider sending all the art to Germany for safe keeping before it is burned down.
It's a Revolution all right, but it will fail. The French will put it down. It's unfortunate in that it could have been avoided altogether.
Unable to post this as an article due to technical difficulties at the computer I am at, but it is another view of "Multiculturalism" and the Paris riots.
Found at:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;jsessionid=JXZCEXYTWQ4SBQFIQMFCFGGAVCBQYIV0?xml=/opinion/2005/11/08/do0802.xml
Early skirmish in the Eurabian civil war
By Mark Steyn
(Filed: 08/11/2005)
According to its Office du Tourisme, the big event in Evreux this past weekend was supposed to be the annual fête de la pomme, du cidre et du fromage at the Place de la Mairie. Instead, in this charmingly smouldering cathedral town in Normandy, a shopping mall, a post office, two schools, upwards of 50 vehicles and, oh yes, the police station were destroyed by - what's the word? - "youths".
Over at the Place de la Mairie, M le Maire himself, Jean-Louis Debré, seemed affronted by the very idea that un soupçon de carnage should be allowed to distract from the cheese-tasting. "A hundred people have smashed everything and strewn desolation," he told reporters. "Well, they don't form part of our universe."
Maybe not, but unfortunately you form part of theirs.
Mr Debré, a close pal of President Chirac's, was a little off on the numbers. There were an estimated 200 "youths" rampaging through Evreux. With baseball bats. They injured, among others, a dozen firemen. "To those responsible for the violence, I want to say: Be serious!" Mr Debré told France Info radio. "If you want to live in a fairer, more fraternal society, this is not how to go about it."
Oh, dear. Who's not "being serious" here? In Normandy, it's not just the cheese that's soft and runny. Granted that France's over-regulated sclerotic economy profoundly obstructs the social mobility of immigrants, even Mr Debris - whoops, sorry - even Mr Debré cannot be so out of touch as to think "seriously" that the rioters are rioting for "a fairer, more fraternal society". But maybe he does. The political class and the media seem to serve as mutual reinforcers of their obsolete illusions. Or as the Washington Post's headline put it: "Rage of French youth is a fight for recognition".
Actually, they're very easy to "recognise": just look out the window, they're the ones torching your Renault 5. I'd wager the "French" "youth" find that headline as hilarious as the Jets in West Side Story half a century ago, when they taunted Officer Krupke with "society's" attempts to "understand" them: we're depraved on account of we're deprived. Perhaps some enterprising Paris impresario will mount a production of West Eid Story with choreographed gangs of North African Muslims sashaying through the Place de la Republique, incinerating as they go.
In fact, "rage" seems the least of it: it's the "glee" and "contempt" you're struck by. And "rage" in the sense of spontaneous anger is a very slapdash characterisation of what, after two weeks, is looking like a rather shrewd and disciplined campaign. This business of car burning, for example. In Iraq, the "insurgents" quickly got the hang of setting some second-hand Nissan alight at just the right moment so that its plume of smoke could be conveniently filmed from the press hotel balcony in time for NBC's Today show and Good Morning, America. For a while, every time you switched on the television in America, there'd be some doom'n'gloom anchor yakking away in front of a live scene of a blazing Honda Civic - as reassuring in its familiarity as that local station somewhere or other in North America (Thunder Bay, I think) that used to show a roaring fireplace as its test card all night. What the Aussie pundit Tim Blair calls the nightly Paris car-B-Q looks great on television, but without being sufficiently murderous to provoke the state into forcefully putting down the insurgency.
Indeed, it's an almost perfect tactic if your aim is to have the entire French establishment dithering in grievance-addressing mode until you've extracted as much political advantage as you can. Look at it this way: after two weeks, whose prestige has been more enhanced? The rioters? Or Mayor Debré, President Chirac and Prime Minister de Villepin? On every front these past two weeks, the French state has been tested and communicated only weakness.
As to the "French" "youth", a reader in Antibes cautions me against characterising the disaffected as "Islamist". "Look at the pictures of the youths," he advises. "They look like LA gangsters, not beturbaned prophet-monkeys."
Leaving aside what I'm told are more than a few cries of "Allahu Akhbar!" on the streets, my correspondent is correct. But that's the point. The first country formally to embrace "multiculturalism" - to the extent of giving it a cabinet post - was Canada, where it was sold as a form of benign cultural cross-pollination: the best of all worlds. But just as often it gives us the worst of all worlds. More than three years ago, I wrote about the "tournante" or "take your turn" - the gang rape that's become an adolescent rite of passage in the Muslim quarters of French cities - and similar phenomena throughout the West: "Multiculturalism means that the worst attributes of Muslim culture - the subjugation of women - combine with the worst attributes of Western culture - licence and self-gratification. Tattooed, pierced Pakistani skinhead gangs swaggering down the streets of northern England areas are as much a product of multiculturalism as the turban-wearing Sikh Mountie in the vice-regal escort." Islamofascism itself is what it says: a fusion of Islamic identity with old-school European totalitarianism. But, whether in turbans or gangsta threads, just as Communism was in its day, so Islam is today's ideology of choice for the world's disaffected.
Some of us believe this is an early skirmish in the Eurabian civil war. If the insurgents emerge emboldened, what next? In five years' time, there will be even more of them, and even less resolve on the part of the French state. That, in turn, is likely to accelerate the demographic decline. Europe could face a continent-wide version of the "white flight" phenomenon seen in crime-ridden American cities during the 1970s, as Danes and Dutch scram to America, Australia or anywhere else that will have them.
As to where Britain falls in this grim scenario, I noticed a few months ago that Telegraph readers had started closing their gloomier missives to me with the words, "Fortunately I won't live to see it" - a sign-off now so routine in my mailbag I assumed it was the British version of "Have a nice day". But that's a false consolation. As France this past fortnight reminds us, the changes in Europe are happening far faster than most people thought. That's the problem: unless you're planning on croaking imminently, you will live to see it.
© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005. Terms & Conditions of reading.
Commercial information. Privacy and Cookie Policy.
Famous last words...
I'm not sticking up for any of the factions involved, I think they all suck,
but kneejerk analysis of the problem doesn't lead to understanding
and understanding is key to forming a wise response.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.