Posted on 10/30/2005 5:06:42 PM PST by blam
Fires of 'civil war' erupt in Paris
Police in street battles after two teenagers die in chase
Jason Burke in Paris
Sunday October 30, 2005
The Observer (UK)
Hundreds of French youths fought with police and set cars ablaze in a northern Paris suburb early yesterday morning in a second successive night of rioting.
The disorder was triggered last week when two teenagers were electrocuted and killed in a local substation while fleeing from police. French authorities insist they were running away from officers investigating a break-in, but people in Clichy-sous-Bois claim that the dead youths had committed no crime.
Yesterday afternoon a silent march was held to the town hall in the centre of the suburb. Many protesters wore T-shirts bearing the message: 'Dead for Nothing'.
'We respect the republic, said Siako Karne, the brother of one of the dead men. 'The republic has to respect us.'
Firefighters extinguished more than 30 burning cars and dozens of dustbins pushed into makeshift barricades on Friday night and Saturday morning as running battles in the streets of the north-eastern suburb pitted more than 200 riot police against scores of hooded youths. At least one shot was fired at the police, 19 people were detained and 15 officers and one journalist injured, an official spokesman said.
An officer from police trade union Action Police CFTC called for help from the army to support police officers. 'There's a civil war under way in Clichy-sous-Bois at the moment,' Michel Thooris from Action Police CFTC, said. 'My colleagues neither have the equipment nor the practical nor theoretical training for street fighting.'
Clichy-sous-Bois is home to 28,300 people a large number of whom are recent immigrants from North or Central Africa. Most live in rundown, low-rise public housing estates. Unemployment rates are among the highest in France and many locals see the police as 'the enemy'.
Claude Dilain, Socialist mayor of the suburb, called for an 'efficient, rapid and transparent investigation' into the deaths of the two teenagers. A relative of one of the dead youths, who were identified by local media as 15-year-old Banou and 17-year-old Ziad, said that the two were among nine boys were playing football and 'doing nothing wrong'. 'But one of them did not have an identity card, and so they were scared when they saw the police and ran,' she said.
According to the mayor, 'no particular recent tension' preceded the riots.
The violence has focused attention once more on France's Interior Minster, Nicholas Sarkozy. Sarkozy, whose law and order policies have drawn frequent criticism from human rights groups, launched a new offensive against crime this month, ordering specially trained police to tackle 25 tough neighbourhoods in cities across France.
Delphine Batho, the opposition Socialist Party security spokesperson, called for 'serious answers' to the questions raised by the violence.
I was in France a few years ago and an "African" youth was accused of killing a subway worker. All unions went on strike, demanding better security. The press was positively racist. It turned out the worker died from a heart attack, and the kids were innocent.
The french, and much of europe, hate "people of color" as much as they hate Jews, and anyone else who might not be just like them. I have no plans of ever going back, with the exception of the UK.
This goes back to the late '50s. They should never have allowed the Arabs to have free passage. The secularists failed to notice how closed to Christianity the Moors were. In their arrogance they deluded themselves into thinking that Enlightenment values would win over religious ones. That goes back, I think, to the naive view that Voltaire and others had of the Muslim faith. They thought of it as a kind of unitarianism that could be easily stripped of its
superstitious elements by contact with French civilization.
That and the invitation of various tribal to settle in Roman lands and be solider to protect the Romans from other barbarians since the Romans all figured defending themselves was someone else's job.
I thought that the French loved black people. Josephine Baker and others...my wrong.
The French expected "people of color" to conform to their standards. They haven't. One reason is that the "people of color" are just as racist as the French.
I've started referring to them as Muzzies
They love famous (rich and powerful) Black people. The euros have much worse race problems than do we, because their societies have dramatically less opportunity and are remarkably less tolerant of others than Americans.
Nah, they just love anyone they think makes America look bad.
Sounds racial. They would not conform to the French culture, so now they are patte.
Ah yes
Europe who has always considerd themselves enlightened and America racist
Let them eat cake.
France...have a blast.
The whole thing was part of the Voelkerwanderung, a complex movement reaching via the Steppes all the way to China.
Better put some ice on that.
Part of. There are various cultural and other things going on. There were similar barbarian incursions all thru out Roman history. They managed for at least 1000 years to manage the threat. The Eastern Empire did for just over an additional 1000 years afterward. Rome died in stages not in a massive Gotterdamerung.
Nope no cake, just lead.
Fortunately for the French, they care little about political correctness when it comes to profiling Middle Eastern terrorists.
The BBC posts an odd story, seemingly written in code. Two boys, it seems, ran away from police in a Paris suburb, climbed onto an electrical [power?] station, and died. So local residents rioted, attacked firfighters sent to rescue the boys, and demonstrated. For two days running.
The first key to breaking the code is to examine the pictures which accompany the article. The local residents seem to be wearing Islamic head garb. And appear somewhat darker than most French people. Variants of the words Islam or Muslim of course never appear.
The second key to breaking the code requires some minimal knowledge of contemporary France: specifically who lives in many of the suburbs [Muslim immigrants], and who is the national official involved [Interior Minister Nokolas Sarkozy a conservative, and likely the next President of France, therefore a BBC enemy].
Life was simpler when news agencies simply reported the news, rather than encoded it.
Thomas Lifson 10 29 05
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