Rioting youths burn hundreds of cars in France

[IDemo]

Authorities upbeat despite violence marking anniversary of ’05 unrest

AP -Updated: 9:35 p.m. ET Oct. 28, 2006

CLICHY-SOUS-BOIS, France - Marauding youths torched hundreds of vehicles overnight and on Saturday in renewed violence coinciding with the first anniversary of riots that exposed a deep schism between poor North African immigrants and mainstream France.

A group of teenagers set one bus on fire Saturday in the southern French port city of Marseille, seriously wounding a passenger. Three others suffered from smoke inhalation, police said. Two other public buses and 277 vehicles around the country were burned overnight, police said.

Six police were injured and 47 people were arrested, ministry officials said. Still the Interior Ministry described the night as “relative calm,” noting that up to 100 cars are torched by youths in troubled neighborhoods on an average night.

Police had braced for a bigger replay of violence in the poor suburbs predominantly made up of Muslims from former French colonies in Africa. Friday marked the one-year anniversary of the deaths of two teens that ignited three weeks of riots in 2005.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15424638 /

[razors edge]

1. Better read the fine print

on your car insurance, they already exclude acts of war, some acts of riots.

I'm sure they are reading this as well, and planning accordingly.

[aquart]

2. Colonies. That empire stuff just kills ya.

[SoCalDem]

3. So France, how' ya liking that Empire stuff now?

Empire has consequences. the only ways to avoid these consequences ...

continue the Empire

or

make sure the abandoned empire is well prepared and economically stable...happy people do not leave their homeland willingly

[Benhurst]

5. Bad news for BushAmerica as its fascist business empire

begins to collapse.

BushAmerica: Fort Apache The World.

[Truebrit71sbruv]

6. um....

.... not sure what you're driving at there...

[JVS]

8. So should France have just turned their colonies loose and said...

"Stay the fuck out of France"? If anything these riots are the result of seeking reconciliation with the former colonies by relaxing the hurdles to immigration that these people would have faced if they had not been from French colonies.

[SoCalDem]

9. Like I said, "happy people do not leave their homelands"

Apparently when the French left, the conditions "at home" were not all that great, hence the migration to France..

Empires don't end well, and blowback almost always happens.

[JVS]

10. But France could have told them to stay out. You don't see people...

from South America fucking shit up in Spain and Portugal because they were never invited to the Ruling country. While you might imagine that your taunting is somehow useful to teach the French some kind of lesson (one that might have been useful 50 years ago), it merely encourages those among the French who would take a more draconian stance toward immigrants.

[SoCalDem]

11. France welcomed former subjects

as long as they did the "dirty work"..(just as the US looked the other way with Mexican immigration)...

as long as the emigrees were "content" to "stay in their place".

the first generation may have been content to do that, but their children and grandchildren are not .

The ones who came first, may have accepted the "2nd class citizen label", but their progeny who were BORN in France (or any other "empire" country) , resent being treated that way, and with the mass communications we have today, they KNOW they are not treated the same.

The younger folks are always the apple-cart upsetters.

Why Spain & Portugal locked them out, I don't know...but they have had their share of poor vs elites too..

[JVS]

12. So would France be better served by adopting a "minute man" policy...

of sealing up the border and telling the people from the former colonies that they don't want any more to show up?

[SoCalDem]

13. the genie is out of the bottle ..

"Minutemen-like militias" won't work ANYWHERE..

I hate what's happening there (and other places) but it didn't "just happen"..

People who are angry do awful things..

The violence will just escalate, until the real issues of 2nd class citizenry are addressed..and addressed fairly.

[saltpoint]

4. In France they diss on Main Street.

[Miss Chybil]

7. I'm sure they're winning hearts and minds with this tactic. nt

[David__77]

14. France gets what it deserves.

The racism and imperialism have reaped its rewards.