[untenured]

"Four live bullets were fired. Two shots were fired at La Courneuve against police.

They can't say they weren't warned. The article below is about La Courneuve, and it is from 10/01:

In Suburban Squalor Near Paris, Echoes of Jihad.

[Chanticleer]

When the elevator door opens on the seventh floor, she points to a freshly painted white swath on the wall. Mrs. Dana, one of the few Jews in the projects, came home a few days ago to find the words "Death to the Jews" scrawled next to her door.

"I had to paint that slogan out," she says. "It scared my two sons. They want us to move."

No matter how hard I try to imagine, I cannot comprehend how frightening it must be to live under those kind of conditions.

[texasbluebell]

I remember in the late 80s we had a young French woman who would babysit for us sometimes. She came from Lyon, and would speak bitterly of the "immigrants" in her town who had caused so much trouble -- her own brother had been injured by some of the rioting -- and I knew nothing about what she was saying. She was very distressed, and left France because of this.

In my ignorance, I thought she was racist at the time, because she was so opposed to these "immigrants" though I had no clue where they came from, she never mentioned the word moslem, and even if she had, it would have meant nothing to me at the time.

How times have changed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here's an article from almost 2 years ago, which describes the Lyon riots of 1984, which were probably the first of the moslem riots in France:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3482641.stm