Intifada in France

[tomndebb]

@Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor

The French Army should have been sent in to restore order 5 days ago.

How? Where?

You do realize that this is not a case of a Los Angeles style riot, with armed bands controlling property, right? This action has taken the form of kids on scooters firebombing individual cars or small groups throwing up barricades to stop traffic, then fading when the authorities’ sirens became audible. Meanwhile the majority of the people in those areas are just trying to go about their daily lives. There have even been peaceful marches by the residents to show that they disapprove of the kids’ actions.

I’m sure that the military can assist in the matter, but sending in the troops “to restor order” misses the point. For the most part, there is no chaotic disorder in the manner that you appear to believe. It is much closer to a guerrilla action.

[Lochdale]

I just wonder how far some posters want the French to go to “integrate” with their Islamic minority. If certain basic French values and ideals conflict with Islam or with certain ethnic group why should the French comport their values? The French fought a long and painful political/cultural war with the Catholic church, why should they import a similar problem?

[Evil_Captor]

I see an internal contradiction in what’s being said here, maybe somebody can straighten me out. I see an assertion that

1. The native French pop. is declining
2. There are few jobs for the children of Muslim immigrants.

If the native pop. is declining, that means there are fewer available to fill slots in their economy. Shouldn’t the opportunities for Muslims be increasing?

[clairobscur]

Hmmm… For a couple reasons, I didn’t watch TV nor listen to the radio for a couple weeks and barely met anybody. I noticed a front page in my paper about the riots, but since it’s not the first time young people are torching a couple cars or stoning the firemen in the disfranchised neighborhoods surrounding large cities, and since the situation in said neighborhoods was a hot issue between the two “pretenders to the crown” Villepin and Sarkozy, I assumed it was business as usual and didn’t even bother to read the article.

It seems I probably should check the news. Thanks for keeping me informed. If you hear that rampaging hords are invading Paris, killing, raping and pillaging, don’t forget to post about it here. It seems it might be the only way for me to be aware of the situation before they knock at my door…

That said, I’m not really surprised (well… assuming that the situation isn’t completely out of control). Similar localized riots, car burnings, shooting at firemen, etc… took place with a disturbing regularity in these disfranchised areas for a long time, very often resulting from some police action (as a pretext, anyway. Very often, there’s objectively nothing much to complain about these actions).
Ho! And by the way, though these areas tend to be mostly populated by north-Africans and sub-saharian Africans (For the record, most of these housing projects were build for xorking-class people in the 60s-early 70s when there was a shortage of housing. They were considered to be fine, modern and cheap place to live in then. Only slowly the native french population left, being replaced by immigrants), the “subculture” there is shared by most of the youth, regardless of the ethnic background.

On the other hand it’s not shared by the muslim/African population at large (how many time I heard them being called “la racaille”…no clue how to translate this insult… by “normal” muslim immigrants living “normal” lives in “normal” neighborhoods and who are as unable as I am to understand their behavior…I’ not talking about spectacular actions like burning cars, but their “everyday behavior”) , and not even the slighest bit by these people’s parents (second note : we’re talking about second/third generation immigrants, here. Typically…scratch that…Caricaturally, their parents have rather traditionnal values, and these youths aren’t in touch nor with the french society at large, nor with their own parents and their culture/country. They’ve truly no place in society, no ties, not only socially : work, education, etc… but even culturally. When people are making comparisons with black people in the USA, I think it makes a difference. They do not belong to their cultural/ethnic group, either. They picked some stuff from their parents, some from french society, genrally the worst in both cases and made up the rest, and what they made up isn’t really pleasant, either.)
And I’m wondering about their future, too… They’re currently in dire circumstances, and I can’t see much possibilities of improvment. For the most part, they lack the “basics” to operate normally in society (any society…they would be even more in trouble if for some reason they had to live in their parent’s countries) : communication, education, adaptability, ability to comply to rules and expectations and even to understand them, etc… Even their way of speaking immediatly gives them away. Being bored, commiting some petty crime, being resentful of everybody and everything, being bored again, that’s all I perceive in their llives from my comfortable armchair. They’re living a micro para-society which has no perspectives to offer.
Not to say that there’s no reason for such a situation. They were excluded from society in all sort of ways that I’m not going to list in a post that’s becoming very long for a topic I wasn’t even aware about, but they’re reacting by excluding themselves further.
It’s not a “muslim” problem. It’s a social problem. Turning towards Islam would probably be a major progress for most of them (and by the way, they aren’t necessarilly muslims) since it would offer some structure, some frame, some connection with the rest of the society…

[clairobscur]

@Evil Captor

If the native pop. is declining, that means there are fewer available to fill slots in their economy. Shouldn’t the opportunities for Muslims be increasing?

They’re even fewer slots to fill. And what slots exist tends to require more and more qualification.

And as someone mentionned previously, many of them are basically unemployable, even assuming that racism, etc… wouldn’t play any part (to the point where someone actually looking for a job is well advised to avoid mentionning he’s living in the most well-known of this disfranchised “cités”). At the risk of being prejudiced, I would say that a number of them would dream of being stars, but wouldn’t even get offered a (quite well paid, by the way) job as street sweeper.

[Lochdale]

@Evil Captor

I see an internal contradiction in what’s being said here, maybe somebody can straighten me out. I see an assertion that

1. The native French pop. is declining
2. There are few jobs for the children of Muslim immigrants.

If the native pop. is declining, that means there are fewer available to fill slots in their economy. Shouldn’t the opportunities for Muslims be increasing?

Not really. The demand is only for jobs in the low-end service sector as manufacturing jobs are going to eastern Europe or the Far East. Regardless, just because a population is declining does not mean that it should be replaced wholesale by an entirely different group.

[treis]

@Rune

Integration and assimilation is precisely changing values so they fit with those whereto one is integrating. What you’re describing here is not integration – but parallel societies. One can certainly argue that is to be preferred, but then lets not put the onerous on the French for “refusing to integrate them into the larger society”, when integration is not what you had in mind.

The problem I (possibly wrongly see) is that Arabic/NA conservative Muslims aren’t seen as really French by the French. I am not saying that the French have to change their core values just to change the definition of what can be considered French to include these minorities.

[Ludovic]

What’s the state of gun control in France? Seems to me, despite the fact that authorities in France have claimed that there wouldnt be much for the military to do, that the presence of a well-armed public would to much to quell this sort of stuff.

After all, one citizen with a gun could take out a whole group of unarmed car-torchers. And a group of armed car-torchers would be advertising themselves to the ones with the bigger guns.

[GIGObuster]

@Ludovic

What’s the state of gun control in France? Seems to me, despite the fact that authorities in France have claimed that there wouldnt be much for the military to do, that the presence of a well-armed public would to much to quell this sort of stuff.

After all, one citizen with a gun could take out a whole group of unarmed car-torchers. And a group of armed car-torchers would be advertising themselves to the ones with the bigger guns.

OTOH, one has to remember what hapened in Watts and in 1992 LA with a well-armed public: dozens dead, many by gun shots, while in France the number of dead is (AFAIK) zero.

I’m beginning to think that while serious, the France riots are not as bad as the media is showing.

[crowmanyclouds]

What, the media hyping a story, never seen it happen.

[Sevastopol]

@Rune

Well call me old fashioned, but to me “typical teenage alienation” make for sulking teenagers and irresponsible sex, not for large scale, week long riots. There are alienated teenagers and social injustice everywhere, more so supposedly where the welfare state is less comprehensive than in France, yet the whole world is not ravaged by such riots everyday – so there must be something that singles out the French experience.

It’s the food. French food is tasty and super-nourishing. What’s a teenager to do with all that energy?

[AFAIKnow]

@GIGObuster

OTOH, one has to remember what hapened in Watts and in 1992 LA with a well-armed public: dozens dead, many by gun shots, while in France the number of dead is (AFAIK) zero.

I’m beginning to think that while serious, the France riots are not as bad as the media is showing.

Paris Rioters Set Woman Afire as Violence Spreads

The African immigrant attackers doused the woman, in her 50s and on crutches, with an inflammable liquid and set her afire as she tried to get off a bus in the suburb of Sevran (search) Wednesday, judicial officials said. The bus had been forced to stop because of burning objects in its path. She was rescued by the driver and hospitalized with severe burns.

Me thinks it’s only a matter of time before people start dying, unless the authorities crack down.

[GIGObuster]

@AFAIKnow

Paris Rioters Set Woman Afire as Violence Spreads

Me thinks it’s only a matter of time before people start dying, unless the authorities crack down.

The point was that if guns were common this woman and many others would be dead by now.

And the authorities are already cracking down, (hundreds of arrests already and plenty of rubber bullets from the police) and still:

Violence sweeps France in 10th night of riots

The mayhem came in direct defiance of a warning from Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy that rioters faced stiff punishments. He said setting cars on fire could ‘cost dear in terms of sentences’ and that the government was ‘unanimous’ about standing firm against violence, which many are describing as France’s worst civil unrest since the 1968 student revolts.
Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin was yesterday forced to call a crisis meeting of his ministers and a top Muslim official as the rioting continued to spread.

Last night five classrooms at the Sleeping Beauty Nursery School in Grigny, in the Essonne region south of Paris, went up in flames as well as two classrooms at another school.

In a measure of public dissatisfaction with the government, Yvan Lemaitre, the parent of one of the pupils at the Sleeping Beauty school, told French radio: ‘Burning a school is unacceptable but the man who lit the fire is Sarkozy.’

[Ludovic]

What I mean by “well-armed public” was the ostensible targets of their wrath, rather than the noble protesters themselves. In France, they are utilizing their civil right to blow other people’s shit up all over the place, whereas in America, the capitalistic enemies (such as grandmothers and young teens) they killed in the spirit of Common Sense and democratic revolution were mainly confined to their own ghettoes.

Unless I’m wrong and there are hundreds of brown-only communities spread across France where this is confined to, in which case I retract my statement. Furthermore I also don’t condone forming a posse and shooting people at random for simply being on the street, which happened to people of all races from people of all races during American riots.

However, I don’t think car-torchings and barricades could last very long in all but a few American communities, both from the citizenry and the police. Of course, this is all to the bad, because those who willfully destroyed tens of thousands of dollars of property are simply demonstrating the will to power that comes with self-liberation. By no means do they deserve anyone, police or citizenry, to disrupt their little political treatise with real bullets. If you know what I’m saying.

[DSeid]

@Rune

But most everybody agrees the French Muslims are not very religious and do not to any great length identify themselves with Islam, and in fact, scarves and other visible religious symbols are rare – wherefore they should have no need to bill themselves as Muslim-French. And French society stress religion very little. And there are also other non-catholic religious communities in France which don’t seem to have the same problems, amongst them the largest Jewish community in Europe (and the third largest in the world I guess). Do French Jews need to cast themselves as Jewish-French, or Protestants as Protestant-French? Etc. And as I said, Buddhist-French and Hindu-French don’t seem to tear through the streets torching cars. So perhaps religion is not the cause after all.

Sorry that I was too subtle. They are visibly different whether or not they take on the trappings of Islamic expression because they look different. They are identified as “other”, not really French, and religion has little to do with it other than in an ancient more tribal sense of one aspect of group membership. And being kept in an outsider status these youths are glomming onto that tribal identity. Compare and contrast to the history of Jews in France? Well despite having been there for many many generations, there are still many French of Christain heritage who see the Jews as not really quite French, or not as French as they are. But at least the Jews are well educated and look the same and are middle class. Historically Jews were as downtrodden and scapegoated in France as elsewhere in Europe (and I am not referring to HaShoah here), but Jews, even while poor and ghettoized, had intact enough community structures and self contained laws to provide the constraint from acting out upon disaffectation. These youths do not have those community structures, and the fragment of Islam that they have attached to is a militant brand of tribal pride that does not impose constraints.

HeelB4Zod

Still, what explains what’s going on in the U.K. or the Netherlands, where one could plausibly argue the multiculturalism mosaic model has been tried, and yet many of the Muslim and/or MENA community still find themselves outside the “mainstream” with living conditions similar to those facing the rioters in the Paris suburbs? To what extent do Muslims and/or the MENA community self-segregate and how is that contributing to the situation?

Of course, the US, the paramour of multiculturalism, has lots of segregation (both self and other imposed) too, and had its riots as well. A stated value of tolerance helps but is not in and of itself enough. I am sure that there is self-segregation going on in these communities as well, probably all the more for the feeling of unwelcome by the rest of society. In the US we got there as a result of our history of slavery, and of course the evil side of human nature. The French are getting there after the fact by importing in a lower class that looks different, not accepting them as members of the culture, and having no jobs for their children when they try to enter the workforce. You do not get to unified middle class values by imposing them. You get there by getting all your component parts to at least the edge of middle class with realistic hope that the next generation can get farther, so that they can buy into the dream. There is no such hope for this population in French. They have quickly become an entrenched easily identifiable underclass of others.

[Evil_One]

@clairobscur

For the most part, they lack the “basics” to operate normally in society (any society…they would be even more in trouble if for some reason they had to live in their parent’s countries) : communication, education, adaptability, ability to comply to rules and expectations and even to understand them, etc…

The above makes the following headline from CNN.com even more amusing.

“Angry French teens want jobs, respect.”

Apparently, many of them are incapable or unwilling to behave in such a way to earn either one.

[clairobscur]

@Ludovic

What’s the state of gun control in France? .

I don’t even know. You can get a license to own a handgun, but I couldn’t tell whether you get one essentially automatically if you ask one or if you must state some reason (like say belonging to a sport club). In any case it must stay in your house at all times, except for transportation purpose and dismounted (your car isn’t considered as extension of your house). Only once someone told me he had one. So, it’s not like they’re common.

Though theorically possible, only extremely rarely a license to carry a handgun is issued, and this only to people who are directly at a high risk of being assassinated (typically a foreign political figure in exile whose life has been threatened).

Rifles are easier to come by, if you have a hunter’s license.

[HeelB4Zod]

@GIGObuster

The point was that if guns were common this woman and many others would be dead by now.

And the authorities are already cracking down, (hundreds of arrests already and plenty of rubber bullets from the police) and still:

Violence sweeps France in 10th night of riots | World news | The Guardian

GIGObuster, I think this riot is interesting in character, very 21st century. The riot has spread geographically into central Paris. But the riot is in a sense “disciplined” in that (except for the burning of the woman on crutches) violence has not yet begun.

I wonder how prevalent e-mail, chat rooms, text messaging has been in organizing the riots, and I wonder just who is directing the rioters to only commit arson and avoid outright violence (except for throwing stones). We’re now on day 10, and the situation isn’t showing signs of abating.

It’s as if the rioters are not interested in a spontaneous burst of anger followed by exhaustion (which, IMHO, characterized the 1992 L.A. riots), but in keeping a simmering situation just under the boiling point, so as to sustain it. They don’t want to give Sarkozy an excuse to really crack down and bust skulls, but they also want to maximize their media visibility and the property damage they can inflict.

Who has an interest in sustaining the riots?

[Rune]

@HeelB4Zod

Who has an interest in sustaining the riots?

I’m not ready to try on conspiracy theories, and would think no one could control such a riot even if they tried. But there are those that think it’s all, at least partially, a bid to harm Nicolas Sarkozy’s chances at the next president election, 2007.

E.g. The Fall of France | The Brussels Journal

Others report a lively coordination through internet forums and web pages.
But never worry. Gadaffi has promise to come and help the French. heh. This ought give all the yanks who seethed when Castro and Chavez promised the US help following Kathrina, a good laugh.

[chappachula]

@treis

The problem is that Arabic/NA conservative Muslims aren’t seen as really French by the French.

Or maybe the other way round: Muslims aren’t seen as really French because they dont want to see themselves as French–they want to be Muslims.