THE MAN BEHIND THE MOVIE

Lots of parallels have been drawn between the French riots (which now appear to be easing) and the scenes depicted in Mathieu Kassovitz's film La Haine. The director has now used his website to launch an attack on Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. An edited version appears in the Guardian:

"Zero tolerance" works both ways. It is intolerable  that a politician (but is he really one?) should allow himself to upset a situation made tense by years of ignorance and injustice… By acting like a warmonger, he has opened a   breach that I hope will engulf him.

Perhaps the paper’s staff are being diplomatic, but there’s no reference to the original post’s talk of an "intifada", or the ritual reference to the Anti-Christ:

Sarkozy is an admirer of George Bush’s communication machine. He uses it to glorifies his image and to manipulate the population. Like Bush, he does not defend an idea, he responds to the fears that he himself instills in people’s heads.

What's French for "Michael Moore", I wonder?

Loïc Le Meur, meanwhile, links to an AFP article about what part, if any, blogs had in stirring up trouble in the suburbs. Not much, is the general verdict. Text messaging and mobile phones played a much bigger role.

Comments

[tcheni]

French don't have their "Michael Moore". But maybe Karl Zero is close. He's a journalist, working for Canal + on the "Vrai Journal", weekly show aired on sunday. A sort of strange melange between humor, information and demagogy. One of this particularity is to say "tu" at whatever political man he's interviewing.