NEWS FROM FRANCE

Not easy to find fresh angles on the riots in the Parisian suburbs. When I looked at Le Monde's site late last night, they were leading on... Dick Cheney (ah, it's nice to have a cheap and easy distraction.) This morning, however, there was no getting away from the pictures of streets on fire. 

In the meantime, I'll be keeping an eye on Loic Le Meur's blog.

UPDATE: The way some parts of the blogosphere are leaping to conclusions about "intifadas" and "Islamofascists" worries me a little. Remember how lots of people on the Left relished calling the LA riots an "uprising"? I'm not saying the rumours are baseless, but let's not get caught up in a blogswarm if we don't have enough evidence. As of this evening, AFP is quoting police commanders as saying there's "nothing to support the existence of an organisation behind the riots... speculation of "a radical Islamic influence is baseless."

But, yes, there is certainly something rotten in "la banlieue". As the latest issue of the Economist notes:

Vehicle-burning has become the suburban crime of choice. Last New Year's Eve some 333 cars were burned, a figure the police celebrated as “stable”.

Comments

[Sunny]

True say Clive, it seems blogs are speculating very heavily about how this is another example of Islamofascism, when there is no evidence to support it.

[Jules]

funny that attacking Police, Firemen, Ambulance workers, Teachers, saying "this is a no-go zone to you guys", gang rapes of girls, insults to non-arabs, occurs in suburbs in Danemark, Sweden, France with a predominantly arab population though. I don't think you'll see many vietnamese in these riots.

Arabic culture encourages boys to behave like little kings, and Islamist preachers preach separatedeness so as not to be "contaminated" by the infidel.
Add to this rigid labor laws creating long term unemployement, long term welfare handouts to rot on(in France at least) and slap on the wrist sentences if they do get caught stealing or whatever (when the Poilce dares to go in), and you have a large population with contempt and resentment for the French and the state - which is what you see in these riots.

(I lived in France for most of my life, and am now in Australia).

The only place I know of where arabs are well integrated is the US - thanks to the US's strong sense of identity , plenty of job opportunities, and the hard US hand of the law on those who choose to be violent.

[Loic]

Hi, sorry for not doing a better job reporting what's happening there but I am on holidays this week, still in France, but far away in the French Carribean

What I can say though is that there is nothing happening in Paris itself but rather in the suburbs, usually about 20km, Paris itself is very safe.

[Clive]

Nothing to apologize for, Loic. The links have been really interesting.

[Loran]

Hello

All these "riots" are something really really serious. I do not want to minimize it.
Howevern I would like to make some remarks:

1) most of the places in France are ( hopefully !) safe...
Only some places are facing these riots.
These places are the "Cités". I do not know the English translation for this.
It looks a bit scarry to me to have a look to CNN, showing Bagdad just there out... This is not the case.

2) this is something that maybe look strange from outside, but there is in France, a "cult" of the revolution... (of course this nothing like this there, at least for the moment). That is why maybe it looks less serious from there than from the US (where people looks happy to see problems in France, but this is another story).

3) The cités 's problem is not new... We are facing these kind of things since... lets say 20 years (as far as I can remember)...

4) Of course, it could be linked to some religious purpouses. However, all the reactions, there from the religious try to calm people (For a lot of reasons). The point there is that these riots are not controlable...
Because this is the fact of some uncontrollable young people.
(This is true to say, that for some of them there is a deep religious feeling.
However, for info Yesterday, girls -that should be at home in an islamic point of view- were present in the fights/shoots against the policemen).

5) I have the feeling, that what is new there, is that the TV AND THE BLOGS are the vector of the disease....
The aim is to see his "cité" on the 8pm TV info flash (JT).
And the blogs is the way to "communicate" to people in the other "cité".
"Communicate", I would rather say, to show abuse on the other "cité"...
There is an escalation there...

To finish, I would say that I am a bit worried there, because I dont know how it could stop...