Posted on 11/02/2005 3:41:29 PM PST by Pikamax
c By Charles Bremner Widespread rioting is forcing the French Government to address its failure to integrate a large immigrant population
ACRID fumes lingered in the air of Aulnay-sous-Bois yesterday as Mohamed and Sidi looked at the charred shell of a delivery van and explained why violence had erupted in the northeastern suburbs of Paris. “Sarko has declared war on the estates, so it’s war he’s going to get,” said Mohamed, 20, the son of a Moroccan immigrant. Sidi, his friend, concurred: the suburbs had endured another night of street fighting because Nicolas Sarkozy, the Interior Minister and would-be President of France, had “disrespected” the estates with his tough talk and harsh police actions.
More than 200 vehicles were burnt across the north Paris region and 35 people were detained when rioting that began in Clichy-sous-Bois last Thursday spread on Tuesday to nearby Aulnay, Sevran and other districts in Seine-Saint-Denis, the département that rings the northeast quadrant of Paris. The unrest began after three teenagers were electrocuted when they climbed into a supply station to escape a pol ice identity check. Two died.
M Sarkozy’s police were highly visible yesterday around Aulnay’s “Cité des 3,000”, an estate of slab-like blocks of council flats that in recent years has had riots and raids on suspected terrorist haunts.
The defiant anti-government talk of Mohamed and Sidi is the norm among the disaffected Muslims of the estates after clashes with France’s heavy-handed riot police. After a sixth night of destruction, however, it was clear that they had a point.
M Sarkozy’s provocative tactics and his feuding with Dominique de Villepin, the Prime Minister, appear to have fed the unrest in districts that are permanent cauldrons of anger.
As Mohamed offered his morning-after analysis in “le Neuf-Trois”, as the troubled département is known from its police designation, President Chirac broke a week-long silence. Addressing the Cabinet in the Elysée Palace, only five miles but a world away from “le 93”, he called for calm and implicitly pointed the finger at the Interior Minister, who is a foe as well as leader of his centre-right UMP party.
The President said that he understood the “profound frustrations” of the immigrant districts. “The absence of dialogue and escalation of disrespect would lead to a dangerous situation,” he said. The message was aimed at M Sarkozy’s “zero tolerance” law enforcement, a fierce approach that community leaders, the opposition Socialists and some of M Sarkozy’s own colleagues regard as counter productive.
M Sarkozy, an iconoclast whose star status is on the wane, has offended immigrant groups and the Left by using gunslingers’ language, promising to “hose down” immigrant estates that have turned into havens for crime and drug dealing. He has caused anger by branding as la racaille — scum or rabble — the small-time lawbreakers who hold sway in les cités, the big run-down estates.
M Sarkozy was attacked this week by Azouz Begag, Minister for Equal Opportunities, for using “warlike” language. “Order is re-established by fighting the discrimination that victimises youths,” M Begag said.
The Interior Minister hit back yesterday, saying that people were weary with politicians who blurred reality with euphemism. “I use real words. When someone shoots at policemen, he is not just a ‘youth’, he is a lout, full stop,” he said.
M de Villepin has called for understanding of the estate residents’ plight and held a meeting with the parents of Ziad Benna and Bouna Traore, the dead teenagers.
Insiders say that M Chirac told M de Villepin to let M Sarkozy handle the riots alone in the hope that he would damage his chances in the race for the 2007 presidential elections. Libération said yesterday that government bosses were more of a threat to France’s social fabric than the rioters.
M Sarkozy offered the now-standard explanation, which symbolise France’s failure to integrate the workers who came from its former North African colonies in the 1950s and 1960s. “These problems are the result of the installation of foreign workers on the edge of our cities after the war, whose children could not find work,” he said. “The first generation of immigrants managed to integrate better than the third.”
Both Left and Right now accept this diagnosis of a model that is theoretically “colour blind”. There is little agreement on how to tackle the challenge.
M Sarkozy called for US-style affirmative action to help immigrant children to enter the mainstream and he wants more recognition for non-French cultures. M de Villepin, who wants to beat M Sarkozy to the presidency, said this was dangerous. “We have seen the damage that this has caused in Great Britain,” he said.
"M Sarkozy called for US-style affirmative action " Yeah, that'll work.
So, I guess the French have surrendered again, this time before the fight even began.
Let the French Intifada begin...
WWNBD?
What would Napoleon Bonaparte do?
He deployed heavy artillery in the streets.
But then, he was Corsican, not French.
“Sarko has declared war on the estates, so it’s war he’s going to get,” said Mohamed, 20, the son of a Moroccan immigrant.
France has a lot to learn.
The only thing that's going to get the Muslims' attention is a Rwanda-style massacre. It's an open question who gets massacred first
Widespread rioting is forcing the French Government to address its failure to integrate a large immigrant population
Coming to a town near you in the good ole U.S.A., only it will be illegal mexican immigrants and their supporters. Did you see what they did in Sacramento, Ca.? It is coming............
You can't make this stuff up.
Three teens electrocuted, but only two died? Let us have a moment of silence for the English language.
De Gaul had rather vituperative things to say about these kinds of so-called Frenchmen who sold out France in the face of the Nazis. 60 years later the party of De Gaul has come full circle.
We could send them a copy of the Rush Limbaugh theme song --"My City Is Gone".
The West is saddled with incredibly stupid leaders. They cannot figure out why third generation "immigrants" cannot integrate into the West. Perhaps our leaders are morons with god complexes who have not the brains to ask the "immigrants" themselves what they want instead of having dreamy thoughts of liberal utopia.
What did they do in Sacramento? Haven't heard anything.
You Californicators have little sense of perspective. ;-)
VERY true. As long as there are talking heads in MSM continuing the clap trap that "its society's fault" instead of the low lifes that commit the crimes, the danger to us is very real. The only way to stop it once its started is to give no quarter, deal with the thugs hard and fast. IF they want to burn their own communities, let them live there with ZERO public assistance to rebuild what they destroyed. Let them live in their burned out cars and apts....with no place to buy groceries because they were burned and looted too. Make them live in the hell that they created!
Kill enough of the little bastards, and they will get tired of dying! It wouldn't hurt to bury their little arses in a body bag primed with pig poop, either.
Have I just ruined my future as a politician?
I sure do hope so!
When is the French president going to start being referred to as "Imam?"
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