LATEST FROM FRANCE

Mixed signs so far. The curfew seems to have worked to some extent. 600-odd cars being burnt out overnight is a sign of progress, according to Le Monde. But is this just a pause? We'll find out soon enough. (For more on the alleged Islamist connections, go to Ed Morrisey's piece in the Weekly Standard.)

I have two long articles to write (bills to pay, and all that) so blogging will be light until the evening, GMT. In the meantime, two of my favourite blogs, Belgravia Dispatch and The American Scene, both link to Adam Gopnik’s essay - published in the New Yorker a while ago - on the French malaise. B.D. adds a nice aside:

As for Chirac, someone pronounce him dead already, OK? The poor man has made Dick Cheney look like a brazen exhibitionist

Well said. And as for how we outsiders like to view events through our own ideological lenses, some salutary comments from Daniel Schneidermann, media expert from Libération, the Gallic Guardian:

Les Russes disent: "C'est la Tchétchénie." Fox News dit: "C'est une insurrection musulmane." Les Britanniques disent: "C'est bien la preuve que le modèle français d'intégration ne fonctionne pas." Les Espagnols disent: "Voilà ce qui se passera en Espagne, dans dix ans."

[Trans: The Russians say, "It’s Chechnya." Fox News says, "It’s a Muslim uprising." The British say "It’s clear proof that the French model of integration doesn’t work." The Spanish say, "This is is what is going to happen in Spain in ten years' time."]

Actually, that’s unfair to FNC. I criticized some of their punditry a few days ago, but most of the coverage has been fine, and there was a particularly good interview on Monday with Charles Kupchan, of the Council on Foreign Relations. (Sometimes, you know,  the unspoken rule in the media seems to be "When in doubt, give Fox a kick.")

Thanks to everyone who sent e-mails recommending French blogs. I’ll catch up with the sites asap.

UPDATE: Leading academic Olivier Roy - who was quoted in yesterday's round-up - returns to the fray in the NYT. I'm not entirely convinced by his claim that "there is nothing particularly Muslim, or even French, about the violence" but most of the article makes sense:

France has a huge Muslim population living outside these neighborhoods - many of them, people who left them as soon as they could afford it - and they don't identify with the rioters at all. Even within the violent areas, one's local identity (sense of belonging to a particular neighborhood) prevails over larger ethnic and religious affiliation. Most of the rioters are from the second generation of immigrants, they have French citizenship, and they see themselves more as part of a modern Western urban subculture than of any Arab or African heritage.

Just look at the newspaper photographs: the young men wear the same hooded sweatshirts, listen to similar music and use slang in the same way as their counterparts in Los Angeles or Washington. (It is no accident that in French-dubbed versions of Hollywood films, African-American characters usually speak with the accent heard in the Paris banlieues).

UPDATE 2:  Oxblog's Patrick Belton has just filed his latest dispatch from the streets: 

...Look closer, and there are signs that here there indeed is a war being fought by the French state, not by massive billeting of troops to quell an uprising and reassert the temporarily abeyed sovereignty of the state and the monopoly of leviathan on force, but a more secret war, being fought by the security services against determined hardened criminal networks...

(Via Instapundit)   LATER: He's had a brush with rioters, but seems to be OK.

UPDATE 3: Definitely a dip in the violence, says AFP. Fingers crossed. Libération has more on Sarkozy’s clampdown on foreigners involved in the disturbances (120 out of 1,800 people detained don’t have French nationality.) His poll ratings are down, though. While Le Figaro notes rumours of rioters planning to gather on the Champs Elysées this Saturday, the Times reports on fast-track justice in the courts.

As for root causes, Austin Bay has analysis. So does writer Sophie Masson, guest-blogging at Norm’s place:

...A modern intellectual fashion for identity politics has led to a strange political no-man’s land, where the policy of the government is to officially foster assimilation and yet adopt an anti-racist rhetoric which makes placatory gestures towards identity politics, including in education, so diluting the older approach. Then there's the rise in an aggressive Islamic consciousness in the ghettos, which, as in other Western Muslim communities, is not only a religious but a political attitude. The truculence this combination produces in some highly vocal members of the community is hardly attractive to private-sector employers, thus completing a vicious circle. All too often, young people of North African origin who live in those suburbs are automatically put into the 'truculent' bag, regardless of reality. And the government, knowing it can't possibly provide jobs for all or force the hand of private-sector employers, prefers on the one hand to soft-soap the immigrant community with high-minded anti-racist rhetoric, gyms and community centres, whilst having no real idea how on earth these young people can ever be placed in jobs.

Comments

[Martin Adamson]

As far as the point about what the rioters are wearing is concered: what were the two sets of London bombers wear? Beards and sandals? Or normal urban youth dress?

[Laban]

SWP blogger Meaders at Dead Men Left is reporting that a number of young bloggers have been arrested in France for inciting violence on their sites.

http://deadmenleft.blogspot.com/2005/11/watching-ones-back-french-bloggers.html

[Pamela]

Definition, definition, who gets the definition? Racism, poverty, religion, integration, blah, blah,.

All of the above, none of the above?

Premises are being challenged and therefore defended.

As Hannah Arendt noted "If you attack me as a Jew, I will defend myself as a Jew."

Not always a wise course of action.

It has been noted that the 'youths' - oh fuck that - thugs causing the problem are 2nd or 3rd generation. May I ask - where are their parents? Some of the people that have been arrested are reported to be as young as 10 years old. One cannot point to the apparent integration of the previous generation(s) without noting the previous generation(s) failure to supervise their offspring.

Before there is anything else - racism, poverty, etc. - can we talk about family disintegration?

Thank you.

[Russ]

I keep hearing a lot of stories about churches being burned, etcetera... plenty of links to demonstrate islamist angles. Is this merely a case of them using somebody else's uprising as "air cover?" That would immediately explain the variety of anecdotal evidence..

[Meg]

Re Fox News: as an ex-pat American, I often need an injection of FNC to keep me from pulling out my hair after watching the BBC. Last night, however, Fox drove me to the Beeb. On FNC John Gibson linked the bombings in Amman to what he called France's "Infitada" (sic). What's that, a new croissant? Mocha Infitada? Switch to BBC 1, where Caroline Hawley was reporting from the Grand Hyatt, face pale, sweater covered with debris, describing the orange wall of flame she saw explode as she sat in the hotel restaurant. Back to the studio for analysis from Frank Gardner. Watching a reporter who's nearly been blown up by terrorists hand off to a reporter who was gunned down by them, I thought: spewing half-witted blather is easy; getting real news is hard. And necessary. More reporting and less ill-informed bloviation, please.

[Clive]

John Gibson irritates me too, Meg. I know O'Reilly gets a bad press, but I don't find him half as bad. You know what, I even enjoy the slam-bam financial show on Saturdays, and I don't have a penny in the bank (the result of the good old freelance habit of living from week to week.) Brit Hume and his panel are my daily fix, and I have a soft spot for the breakfast team - the only morning show I ever really bother with. As I've said before, I wish the BBC had a media show as smart as "Fox News Watch".
But, yes, it's always best to be a channel-hopper when it comes to news...

[Meg]

Amen. Start the day with coffee, Krauthammer and blogs, followed by Fox News Watch - you're ready to rock.