Posted on 11/02/2005 6:46:31 AM PST by milwguy
PARIS, France -- French President Jacques Chirac has called for calm and warned of a "dangerous situation" following a sixth night of violence in poor Paris suburbs.
"The law must be applied firmly and in a spirit of dialogue and respect," Chirac told a Cabinet meeting Wednesday. "The absence of dialogue and an escalation of a lack of respect will lead to a dangerous situation."
"Zones without law cannot exist in the republic," Chirac said. His remarks were passed on to reporters by government spokesman Jean-Francois Cope.
The spokesman said Chirac acknowledged the "profound frustrations" of troubled neighborhoods but said violence was not the answer and that efforts must be stepped up to combat it, The Associated Press reported.
The unrest, triggered last week by the deaths of two teenagers, spread Tuesday night to at least nine towns in the suburbs north and northeast of Paris as police clashed with angry youths and dozens of vehicles were set on fire
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
You talk like a DemoSocialist apologist
and appeaser. All your proposed plan
of action will do, is delay the
inevitable, as the violent separatists
become emboldened, by their "victory"
in disrupting and terrorizing the French
people.
Thanks; I was using a figure of 60 million I found somewhere on the net.
Usually such figures are only for the Metropole, and leave out the DOM, which is like measuring the US but leaving out Hawaii and Alaska
The French still have a lot of the old warrior in them. These newcomers may find themselves in a state of astonishment one of these days.
"You talk like a DemoSocialist apologist and appeaser. All your proposed plan of action will do, is delay the inevitable, as the violent separatists become emboldened, by their "victory" in disrupting and terrorizing the French people."
My "proposed plan of action"?
No, Monsieur, I do not propose plans.
I am not King, and have no authority to do anything.
If I were King, I would not tolerate lawlessness and arson, but would clear the streets with deadly force.
I also would not tolerate the teaching of Islam or certain forms of Christianity which I consider to be prejudicial to good order and discipline of the people. I would not permit my subjects to send financial aid to assist in wars in foreign states and thereby meddle in foreign affairs. Foreign affairs and war are the exclusive province of the sovereign.
But I am not King, and nobody consults me in setting public policy. Therefore, I am but an observer and do not propose anything. I describe.
What WILL happen is that the disturbances will peter out. They cannot generalize, as the French will not join an Arab riot. The government will not respond with deadly force, as the rioters have not thus far sufficiently provoked it. Remember, please, that nobody has been killed. Sarkozy will be cast as the villain, and left in that role by Villepin, since it will allow Villepin to suck up all of the oxygene in UMP.
A nationalist party will rise to prominence, and I believe it will not be Le Pen's Front National, but a more suave nationalist party headed by Philippe de Villiers.
The old "gauche plurielle" will not be able to gain traction to regain power, as they have no issues, so the center right will retain power. Villepin will be the next President, and things shall go on as before.
The intelligence services will expel more clerics, and extract information from more terrorist operatives before casting their mutilated bodies into the Tarn.
The fury and frustration of the Beur youth will continue, but it will not be able to organize, because the leaders will be systematically exported or otherwise liquidated.
The small fragment of the population that is Islamist will not be able to undermine or overthrow France. They will merely be able to be unpleasant in perpetuity, like the American black ghetto.
Sarkozy was criticized by government minister Azouz Begag for calling the protesting youths "scum," and the opposition Socialists have denounced Sarkozy's policies.
But the interior minister defended his approach.
"I speak with real words," Sarkozy told Wednesday's Le Parisien newspaper. "When you fire real bullets at police, you're not a 'youth,' you're a thug."
xxxxxxxxxxxx
The one guy who gets it right, Sarkozy, is "denounced."
When are the French going to realize that appeasement doesn't work? Maybe if enough realize this Sarkozy will unseat Chirac.
"Maybe if enough realize this Sarkozy will unseat Chirac."
Sarkozy will not "unseat Chirac".
Chirac will retire, and 2007 will be a contested race.
Sarkozy may square off against Villepin, but Villepin will probably beat him.
I was following your opinion on another thread.
You I assume are there, so my opinion is disadvantaged. But I have read that Villepin's popularity is slipping.
I think that Sarkozy has a natural base with those not on the left who want a hard line policy on terrorism, law and order, immigration and integration of Muslims. He also supports much broader economic reform.
Villepin is in trouble with his leftist base as demonstrated by recent strikes over unemployment and privatization. Due to the sorry state of the French economy -- sagging GDP, high unemployment, soaring taxes, he will have no choice but to reform and tick off his base.
I am right now in Connecticut, but I have family in Bondy and Paris.
I would say that Villepin has never been dramatically popular, but that he has gained tremendous stature as Prime Minister, which he did not have before as the old King's favorite courtier. Now, he has power, and he has shown himself capable of using it rather wisely.
Sarkozy is a good man, but he does not really have a fully thought out plan for dealing with the Islamists. He knows that there needs to be a crackdown, and so he cracks down, but he does not gauge the reaction and gets massive protests and problems...for which he has no particular solution other than to gut it out. He will not be permitted to clear the streets "with a whiff of grapeshot", so to speak. And so he is merely entrenching enemies and problems which he does not have the wherewithal to fix.
The French economy could be better, but let's keep things realistic. The economy is not growing as fast as America's, but it is nevertheless expected to grow. As oil prices decline, this will further help. Unemployment is always high. This is a perennial problem for which Villepin is not responsible. His alleviating some of the strictness of the 35 hours will probably help at the margins, and he gets some credit for that. Taxes are high, but stagnant.
No choice but to reform?
Oh no. He can stand pat and wait for developments. Things are slowly blundering forward. The country is neither happy nor in ruins. Unemployment is as high as ever, but not higher. He has no real opponents of stature on the left.
On the right, the nationalists are the ones to watch. The Islamist issue has perplexed France for a long time, and the Front National garnered 20% of the vote in election after election. They are run by discredited personalities.
I cannot fail to observe that Philippe de Villiers has charisma. It is simply true. He is the sort of politician the French like to look at and hear. He was a vocal part of the winning side on the European Constitution, and this week of fiery protests in St. Denis and Clichy is going to have ripple effects throughout France.
An interesting and thoughtful reply. but i
disagree with some of your conclusions.
One of the worst parts of socialism is it's
pervasive mood od individual disempowerment.
That only the single minded mob can acheive
change, instead of a large faction of individual
thinkers, working in unison...there *is* a
distinction. I fear Frances problems lie more
in the lack of clarity and awareness in it's
younger generations, than even in the mobs
of radical muslims that want France to be
assimilated into the same ways of thought that
ruined the countries they fled to France from
Because those countries became terrible, dangerous,
and depressed places to be...dominated by tyrants
murderers, and theives. Like Iran is now.
so when are you leaving America since you are embarrassed to be an American?
Glad Europe is "enlightened" to "your way".
shoo fly.
Didn't bother to take note of the fact that
what i wrote, was in quotes?
Don't recognise the words or sentiment exressed
by the Hollypukers who have dissed the US while
in overseas, and or have moved to Europe since
2001?
Some things need to be made straight here.
The beurs banlieusards are French. They were born in France, not Arabie. Their first, usually their only, language is French. They were educated in French schools.
They have no "home country" other than France.
Their anger is that of the black rioters in America in the 1960s: rage at a hopelessness and sense of oppression.
How was this resolved in America?
Largely, by caving in enough to the blacks to calm the waters. White flight from the cities appropriately segregated them, and gave blacks political control of metropolitan areas. The resulting cronyism, of course, did not do a thing for the average American urban black, but it bought off the rabble rousers and leaders and gave them patronage to milk. The young urban black males turned to the drug trade. In cities where there is little white population, they flourish unregulated. In mixed cities like New York, many are arrested and suppressed.
Overall, an employment program was needed for American blacks, because idle hands are the Devil's workshop, we all know. And so there was not only Affirmative Action created, but it was primarily applied at all levels of goverment jobs. And so, a huge number of civil service jobs, indeed most in the lower grades, are done by American blacks, especially black women. Since black women are the primary wage-earners in black families, this gave them a stake in the society. And so a potentially insurrectionary circumstances in America was averted, by giving blacks territories to govern themselves and the patronage that comes from tax farming those areas, and by converting the government civil service of the cities, states and federal government into a black employment program. Of course obvious segregation was also removed.
Now, to what extent is this model applicable in France?
Quite a bit. Arab youths have no jobs. This is harder in France than in America, because overall unemployment is higher, and without experience it is simply not true that one can get a job if one wants to. And there is nowhere else to go either. Unemployment in Belgium or Germany or Spain are all higher, and the countries are less open to Arabs. Also, they are French, speak French, etc. They can't just pick up and go to a country where they don't speak the language.
Idle hands are the Devil's workshop. So what is to be done? Escalating the violence is foolish. They are French, and have learned the cardinal rule of French protest: don't kill anybody. These are not American-style race riots. Detroit's killed in the 80s. Watts' killed in the 60s. Overall, hundreds of Americans died nationwide in race riots in the US.
6 nights of "rioting" in Clichy and environs, and there is some smashed property, but nobody dead. No cops, no rioters, and no bystanders.
This is not an armed revolt and it's not a "riot" in the American sense. Stores aren't being looted and people shot. In New Orleans, people were killed in the lawlessness. In Clichy, it is not complete lawlessness. It is rage, directed at some items of property, and lapidation of the armored police. But it is limited.
So we are not dealing with a thing that requires sending in the police shooting. We are dealing with a violent strike that will not generalize to all of France.
Therefore, the government will not fall.
But the riots won't stop either, for awhile.
When they are incrementally ratcheted down, what next?
Well, for this the government will need to do what the Americans did for the blacks: create massive new ranks of government jobs. If you are going to pay people unemployment and welfare anyway, you may as well make them show up for a "job" somewhere, and do something administrative for that money. Keeping hands from being idle is very important for preventing restless youth from getting into trouble.
Also, jobs give people a stake and a greater degree of respect. Beyond that, some degree of sensitivity is needed. In America, an outpouring of programs, etc., getting more blacks into entertainment and plastering their shows all around, gave the impression of improvement, and that placated people.
Objectively, in America are things really better for blacks than they were back during the riots?
Quite a bit, yes.
Objectively, have blacks been brought up to the same level of prosperity as the rest of America. No. And there is not a great deal of drive in that direction either.
But the worst excesses and threat, the head of steam of rebellion was removed, and the status of black people in America is improved much from what it was in the 1960s by those various expedients, most of which were resented and resisted by many people.
So must it be in France with the restive Arab youths. Arabs need jobs, any sort of job, to get them off the streets. As America created government jobs simply to employ black people in larger numbers than ever before, and became the primary source of employment for certain sectors of the American society, France will need to do the same. It will not be much more expensive, since you otherwise have to pay unemployment and welfare benefits, and those are not much taxed. Employment wages, at least are taxed, and people with a job have more esteem and less time for mischief.
Getting more beurs onto the televisions and into entertainment will also help.
There are no full solutions, but the Americans have provided a reasonable model for dealing with a large, unhappy racial minority that has become explosive.
Obviously the threat of terrorist organizations must be carefully monitored and whatever means necessary used to prevent the unrest to organize along that vector. But most of those efforts are necessarily clandestine, for obvious reasons: two boys are accidently electrocuted, and there is a riot. What is done of necessity to terrorist captives in order to protect France is not something that can ever be permitted to come onto the streets.
Just to reprise the quote...i think you'll
take notice of the fact, that while i did
not use the (/DrippingSarcasm) tag, that
the quote was made with buckets of the
stuff, to mock our Hollypuke
"Beautiful Eloi, Betters".
As in:
"It's crazy there! I don't feel safe in
the US any more. I feel that Europe is
a much more civilized and tolerant place.
They are much more enlightened to my way
of thinking. I am embaressed to be an
American now..."
(Man, i really hate that i can't edit my
posts. on this site.)
What really shocked me though was that he predicted that this could end in "civil war" for France. Even the BBC interviewer was taken aback.
Don't hold it against me, but I have relatives in France (and I love them all dearly). It's a little more complicated. Until the North Africans, the French were pretty successful at assimilating immigrants. We think of them as xenophobes, but it's got much more to do with cultural than racial pride. In general, as long as you became culturally French, the natives accepted you. The problem, at least according to my cousins, is that the Arabs have refused to become "French". This is a lot of the reason they're relegated to big projects on the outskirts of town. (In Europe, unlike the US, the center cities have all remained vibrant and desirable--the slums are in the outskirts.)
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.