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VILLIERS-LE-BEL, France (AP) - French officials point to a host of causes—poverty, unemployment, the influence of criminal gangs—for riots that erupted this week. But there's one taboo issue that officially colorblind France has been unable to confront: race. The violence, like riots that spread nationwide for three weeks in exposed how parts of France have divided along color lines, with blacks and Arabs trapped in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods—like Villiers-le-Bel, in the northern suburbs of Paris, where gangs attacked police and burned cars and buildings this week. "Among the rioters, the very large majority come from immigrant backgrounds," said Douhane...

Sarkozy blames Paris riots on 'thugocracy' By Henry Samuel in Paris Last Updated: 8:04pm GMT 29/11/2007 Nicolas Sarkozy, the president of France, has risked inflaming tensions in Parisian suburbs by declaring violence this week was the result of a "thugocracy" of criminals, not social deprivation. His words came after three nights of violence sparked by the deaths of two teenagers in a crash with a police car. President Sarkozy said the riots in the suburbs of Paris had nothing to do with a social crisis At least 120 policemen were injured in the rioting that followed the accident in Villiers-le-Bel,...

Sarkozy issues warning to riotersMr Sarkozy called shooting at officers "completely unacceptable" French President Nicolas Sarkozy has vowed to bring to justice rioters who shot at police in Paris in urban unrest that followed the death of two youths. Mr Sarkozy, visiting policemen injured in the riots, said such shootings could not be tolerated. He also met families of the teenagers killed in a collision with a police car and pledged to hold a judicial inquiry. Mr Sarkozy then headed into crisis talks with key ministers to prevent the spread of three nights of rioting. There was a decrease in...

In the past, I've repeatedly written about the various epithets the PC Mainstream Media utilizes to avoid pointing to the real identity of the participants in riots, murders, and hijackings. "Somali Pirates" is one of my fave Al-Qaeda terrorist euphemisms, for example. But, now, there's the 2007 resurgence of the annual Muslim riots in France. Muslims torch and maim and slash and murder. And yet, no-one--at least no-one working for FOXNEWSMSNBCCNNABCNBCCBSAPREUTERSWASHPOSTNYTIMESDETROITNEWSISTAN--can bring themselves to call a spade a spade--a barbaric Muslim a Muslim. Paris Riot 2007 Islamic Crescent Paris Riots 2007 As I've written, FOX News once did this, but...

PARIS: The rituals and acts of rage have an eerie sameness to them: roving gangs of angry youths clashing with the riot police in France's edgy suburbs, the government appealing for calm, local officials and residents complaining that their problems are ignored. Two years after an orgy of violence in which rioters in more than 300 suburbs and towns torched cars, trashed businesses and ambushed the riot police and firefighters, Villiers-le-Bel and several nearby suburbs of Paris similarly have erupted in violence and destruction. In one sense, the unrest seems to be more menacing than during the early days of...

The French authorities deployed 1,000 police to a northern Paris suburb Tuesday to prevent a third night of youth riots amid signs that the violence could be spreading. French Prime Minister Francois Fillon visited the restive suburb of Villiers le Bel, where the death of two teenagers Sunday touched off two nights of violence that have left at least 120 police injured.Nine people were detained in Villiers ahead of Fillon's visit, police told AFP, and at least one shop was on fire later in the evening.Earlier, a court jailed eight youths over the clashes with police Sunday and Monday. Four...

Boys' moped deaths ignite riot in Paris suburb By Peter Allen in Paris Last Updated: 1:59am GMT 26/11/2007 Rioting broke in one of Paris's tinder box suburban housing estates last night after two young boys were killed when their moped collided with a police car. The scenes are reminiscent of the disturbances in 2005 which led to two months of serious rioting across much of France Molotov cocktails were thrown, and cars and plastic bins set on fire following the tragedy in Tolinette, a notoriously crime-ridden district of Villiers-le-Bel, some 20 miles north of the centre of the French capital....

If last year’s riots Paris riots were horrific, they weren’t surprising. The banlieue, suburbs like St. Denis, Poissy, and Clichy-sous-Bois, are pockets of concentrated immigrant poverty and faceless, block-style building long regarded as tinderboxes for trouble. Paris has begun building more affordable housing within its borders to reduce social isolation of those outside. Besides offering public-housing tenants an alternative to the banlieue, the move addresses the city’s own growing squatter population, which suffered from a slew of fires in the city’s outer rings at the end of the summer. While approximately eight in 10 lodgings in some peripheral neighborhoods are...

MARSEILLE, France — France's interior minister sent extra riot police to patrol the southern port city of Marseille on Sunday after a group of marauding teenagers torched a bus, seriously burning a young passenger. French police have braced for a surge of violence this weekend, as Friday was the first anniversary of the start of riots in poor neighborhoods where many immigrants and their French-born children live. In scattered violence Saturday, 46 people were taken into custody, most of them in the suburbs around Paris, and two police officers were slightly injured. The most serious violence was the bus attack...

A woman has been seriously burned and three others are suffering from smoke inhalation after youths set fire to a bus in the French city of Marseille. A group of teenagers reportedly forced open the doors of the vehicle and threw flammable liquid inside before fleeing. There have been several attacks on buses over the past week, coinciding with the one year anniversary of riots in poor suburbs across the country. The riots were sparked by the deaths of two teenagers in the capital, Paris. Minor skirmishes were reported in Paris on Saturday. An additional 4,000 officers had been deployed...

Police injured as violence flares in suburbs of Paris By Colin Randall in Paris (Filed: 31/05/2006) At least 100 youths, many brandishing baseball bats, clashed with police in a new outbreak of violence in the same Parisian suburbs in which nationwide rioting started last autumn. The disturbances, which were described as "violent and intense" and left several policemen injured, extended from late on Monday night into the early hours yesterday. Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets after coming under attack, while Xavier Lemoine, the centre-Right mayor of Montfermeil, one of two affected suburbs, was left fearing for the lives...

POLICE sent reinforcements to the troubled suburbs of northern Paris yesterday after a night of rioting revived fear of a return to the violence that raged through France’s immigrant housing estates last year.In another sign of continuing racial tension, the Government also ordered an inquiry into an anti-Semitic black group that staged an aggressive march through the Jewish quarter of the capital. Seven policemen were injured on Monday night in the town of Montfermeil. Rubber bullets and stun grenades were fired at youths, many of whom were masked and wielding baseball bats. About 100 youths hurled projectiles and petrol bombs...

France's far-right political party, the National Front, has emerged stronger than ever from the civil unrest that has plagued the country in the past six months, a new survey shows, suggesting that the party could play a major role in the presidential election next year. The National Front's outspoken and vehemently anti-immigration leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, has had occasional bursts of support before: four years ago, he made it to the runoff for president, losing to Jacques Chirac. But after riots by second-generation immigrant youth last fall, Mr. Le Pen's approval rating in polls surged five percentage points, to 21...

TEN STUDENT protesters were injured yesterday after a Paris motorist, angry that they had blocked a road, drove his car into them. The driver only escaped following police intervention after his car was overturned and he was dragged out by the demonstrators. The incident near the Sorbonne University laid bare some of the frustration surrounding the government's new plan for getting more young people working and the opposition of students and unions to the scheme. On Paris's Left Bank, protesters disrupted traffic by picnicking on a busy boulevard. They were heading away when a frustrated motorist tried to burst through...

"France: Riots again,”...last week. The title could be the same this week. Riots are starting to become a way of life in France, or maybe it's the sign of something more sinister. Last November it was cars, warehouse, and schools in flames. Now it is casseurs randomly smashing in storefront windows and administering random beatings. The country of arrogance was very sick. Muslim youngsters living a thug's life of radical Islam, violence and drugs; widespread anti-Semitism; high rates of unemployment. Nothing has changed since the riots of November. No politician is offering real solutions. France is still on the verge...

Police fought running battles with rioters in central Paris last night as youths attacked officers with bangers, bottles and concrete at the end of a mass demonstration against a youth employment law that has caused a political crisis for Jacques Chirac's ruling party. Trade unionists and student leaders said up to three million people took to the streets across France yesterday - the second time in eight days that the country has seen its biggest street demonstrations in almost 40 years. The protests, including one by hundreds of thousands of students and scholars who marched through central Paris, were mainly...

Post your observations here. Richard Miniter was on FNC and said that even if an employee is caught on videotape stealing from their employers, they cannot be fired.

Violent Youths Threaten to Hijack Demonstrations in Paris By ELAINE SCIOLINO PARIS, March 29 — The images are unnerving: hooded, swift-footed youths infiltrating protest rallies in the heart of tourist Paris, smashing shop windows, setting cars on fire, beating and robbing passers-by and throwing all sorts of objects at the riot police. They are called the casseurs — the smashers. With more huge marches planned for next week as part of a continuing protest over a new jobs law, the casseurs are the volatile chemical that could ignite an even bigger crisis for the government than the impasse over the...

Opponents of France's new youth labour plan are hailing protests that have millions in recent weeks as a huge success. But not everyone is celebrating. Spare a thought for the long-suffering businesses located along the march routes. "They broke two of our windows," says Nathalie Gosselin, owner of the Paris bar Le Reveille Matin. Her establishment is located near Place d'Italie, where most of the demonstrations originated. During a recent protest "thugs hit the shop windows on their way up the avenue, and hit the demonstrators on their way down". Mrs Gosselin, who heads the local shopkeepers' association, says members...

As darkness fell at Place de La Republique, the acrid smell of tear gas drifted through the early evening air. It mingled with a distinct smell of cannabis as the shouts and jeers of the crowd echoed around this historic square in what has become a Paris springtime of discontent. These, though, were not the peaceful marchers of earlier in the day but youths who had come intent on violence, seeking running battles with police. Earlier in the afternoon, hundreds of thousands of protesters had gathered at Place d'Italie in the south of the city. But the festival atmosphere quickly...