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To: Vicomte13

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.


71 posted on 11/02/2005 6:09:56 PM PST by NickatNite2003
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To: NickatNite2003

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.


75 posted on 11/02/2005 6:52:11 PM PST by Vicomte13 (Et alors?)
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