Posted on 04/02/2006 6:08:56 AM PDT by MadIvan
THE images are unnerving: hooded, swift-footed youths infiltrating protest rallies in the heart of tourist Paris, smashing shop windows, setting cars on fire, beating and robbing passers-by and throwing objects at the riot police.
They are called the casseurs - the smashers. With more marches planned for this week as part of a continuing protest over a new jobs law, the casseurs are the volatile chemical that could ignite an even bigger crisis for the government than the impasse over the law itself.
They create primarily a law-and-order problem, evoking the rioting that gripped the troubled suburbs of French cities for weeks last autumn. Pumped up by news coverage, these youths boast of trying to steal mobile phones and money and vow to take revenge for the daily humiliation they say they endure from the police.
But the casseurs create an image problem as well, as striking television images and photographs of youths, some of them masked, and the police using tear gas and water cannons, give the impression of a Paris under siege. 'Don't Go to Paris,' read a headline in the Sun last week.
In live coverage of the mass protests in Paris, CNN compared the protests to the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising in Beijing. What worries the authorities now is that the targets of anger are shifting, moving beyond attacks on property to attacks on people as well.
"I am deeply worried because we are seeing an unleashing of violence by 2,000 to 3,000 thugs who come to smash and loot," said embattled interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy. "My objective is to avoid mistakes by the police, so that people can protest in safety."
The police and independent analysts say that most of the vandalism and violence that has marred the protests has been by young men, largely immigrants or the children of immigrants, from tough, underprivileged suburbs, who roam in groups and have little else to keep them busy.
"In France, we always imagine violence to be political because of our revolutions, but this isn't the case," said Sebastian Roché, a political scientist who specialises in delinquency in the suburbs.
The casseurs are people who are apart from the political protests. Their movement is apolitical. It is about banal violence - thefts, muggings, aggression."
The casseur phenomenon is revisiting old and disturbing ground. During student protests in 1994 over a plan to cut the legal minimum wage for the young, hundreds of youths from the suburbs descended on Paris to attach themselves to peaceful protests and turn their rage against the police.
Many of those youths, identified as coming in from the poor suburbs, battled the police, burned cars and smashed store windows.
In one protest, nearly 50 policemen were injured in five hours of violence.
In another incident, a television cameraman was beaten and kicked so badly as he filmed a gang of casseurs that he suffered a fractured skull.
In the current protests, the technology of mobile phones makes it easier for the roving bands of youths to coordinate their actions and warn one another about police movements.
Some of the youths even share instant war trophies: photographs and short scenes of violence and vandalism they have captured on their mobile phones.
The police have so far been using restraint, trying to avoid what is called the Malik Oussekine syndrome. Malik Oussekine was a 22-year-old student protester who died after being beaten by the police during a mass demonstration in 1986 to protest a proposal to give universities more autonomy in student selection.
President Jacques Chirac, who was prime minister at the time, withdrew the initiative; the education minister was forced to resign.
Easy solution. Anyone covering their face should be shot.
Translation: stand back and do nothing, least they agitate these hooded thugs (muslims) further.
It's never going to calm down, it's going to get progressively worse, and spread to every country in Europe. You'll be a juicy prize for the Muslim hordes.
Why so pessimistic? Look on the bright side. Next summer, you will be able to buy a chateau in Provence for - oh! I don't know - $10,000. You'll get a French maid in the French maid uniform. You can call her Perrine even if her name is Christiane. You'll have her address you "You stupid Americain!"
Perrine! I'm tired. Bring me a glass of Bordeaux and take off my shoes.
Yes, you stupid Americain.
Believe me, it will be so nice when she says it to your face, looking you in the eye right before she begs you to give her husband/father/brother/brother-in-law a job driving you around. 3 sounds rightwingintelligentsia.
Oh, la la!
Let's reduce the no. of words.
Liberte, egalite, absurdite.
BRING BACK THE BASTILLE!!
Utter nonsense by CNN. There is no comparison whatsoever between brave Chinese risking life and limb by protesting in favor of democracy and these spoiled French socialists risking nothing more than a bath from a water hose by protesting to be given more while providing less to society.
Mistakes like thwacking a few thugs, pour encourager les autres?
You're not kidding about the handbasket.
Gawd those pictures make my trigger finger tingle! What a target rich environment! The scum are lined up deep enough that with good bullets you might get two or even three with one shot.
---And again we see that French authorities can't protect property.
Rioters all should be knee-capped to give emergency rooms some business.---
The sight of them limping around their neighborhoods would do much to guarantee future tranquility. There would be anger and much finger-pointing rhetoric, but the would-be badasses would stay home, beat their girlfriends, and rob their homies.
Is this staged? The guy on the ground still has his watch. :^)
You have obviously never been to Paris.
You have no idea how deadly a bath could potentially be to a Frenchman.
;-)
You can use water cannons when it is just property.
When they start attacking people,,,shoot them.
A modest proposal: why not just shoot looters on sight? Maybe 2,000 to 3,000 bullets later the problem will be solved. Too logical? Yeah, I thought so.
..perhaps itdis time for le rubber bullets no?
"casseurs" "thugs" "jeunes". They never do mention exactly who 90 + % of these people are. They are young men of Muslim origin, North African and African immigrants who don't work and don't attend school.
France is a country on the brink of chaos and anarchy. As usually they have their heads in the sand and wave the white flag of surrender at the first sign of problems.
Freeper on the scene. hehehe.
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