What the hell is going on in France?

[brmdp3123]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051103/ap_on_re_eu/france_rioting_24

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. Just a little hazing.... some guys out having a little fun... you know

the sort of thing Rumsfeld considers normal.

[babylonsister]

2. It reminds me of the LA riots; sadly, when I heard about

what's going on, I was grateful it wasn't happening here-again.

[Lexingtonian]

3. their Watts riots.

[NNN0LHI]

4. Democracy can be messy n/t

[Mass]

5. Unfortunately, nothing very new.

The RW government wants to show they are tough on crime and gain votes. Kids get killed in the process (generally from poor neighborhood). The police and the RW government refuses to acknowledge the errors. Riots start.

Unfortunately, this is good for the RW government because middle class people and even working class people get frighten and think the RW government is right.

In the meantime, nothing changes.

[EFerrari]

6. Poor black neighborhoods? I know next to nada about France. nt

[Mass]

7. Poor black and beur (north africa) neighborhood mainly.

But poor white people live there too. It is just that poor people there are predominantly from N. Africa.

About 10 % of the population is arabic and, while a middle class was starting to appear when I left France 4 years ago, many were still poor . The situation did not improve since the right took power in 02.

[EFerrari]

26. Class is its own color. God help them. n/t

[brmdp3123]

9. RW government?--in France?

[Mass]

11. Sure - Chirac is as right wing as they come in France and

his party won the legislative election in 02. So, yes, it is RW.

[Egalitariat]

15. Is Jacques Chirac RW?***

nm

[Mass]

17. YES, By all mean,

Dont compare politics here and in France. In France 50 % of people vote for parties between social democracy and extreme left,so yes, Chirac is very RW. (very nationalistic too which explains he does not like taking orders from Bush).

[burrowowl]

28. Yes RW!

I have a weakness for Arlette (Troskyite)
but hopefully the Socialists and Greens will get their ass in gear.

[AngryAmish]

8. France has a huge problem with their underclass

France has created huge public housing projects in the suburbs. The children of recent immigrants do very poorly in school and jobs and have problems with racism. The rioters are mostly north africans, Algerians and the like.

The large housing projects were like many large housing projects in the US. Police do not go there, the fire dept. gets shot at, crime rampant. Police have been cracking down and actually entering these no-go areas. The resident gangs didn't like it and caused trouble. Now there is a more general rebellion ala Watts or Detroit riots.

[Mass]

12. No more than this country

[jim3775]

10. Some perspective from a Canadian fracophile blogger:

http://www.murkyview.com/archives/2005/11/03/guest-speaker-thoughts-on-the-riots-in-paris/

What I’ve seen from reports on France 2, Liberation, Le Figaro and le Monde is that in one of the “sensitive” suburbs of Paris, two youth might have committed a robbery and were hiding in a transmission/transformer site, got into the equipment and were electrocuted. Some people said they were fleeing the police and were the victims of police harassment. As is often the case, little seems to have been established about the original accident, but whatever happened, the residents of the neighbourhood were upset, and as sometimes happens, some of them took it out on anything and everything that fell to hand: burning cars seems to be a favourite. Into this cauldron of discontent stepped the Interior Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, who is hoping to ride a law and order platform to the presidency in 2007. Everything he said seemed to inflame the situation. There is large-scale discontent throughout the country as people see life getting more difficult, and the successive governments of Jean-Pierre Raffarin and Dominique de Villepin have done nothing to improve the situation as they move ahead with the privatization of major state companies and do nothing to prevent the layoffs and off-shoring of jobs that have become part of the global economy. The suburbs of Paris are often composed of high-rise low-cost housing that has fallen into disrepair and has become a hotbed of Islamic discontent and gang activity. Unemployment is high and many of the jobs on offer are low-paying, have few or no benefits and offer little in the way of security. Life is not comfortable for the residents of these areas and there is little opportunity to move elsewhere or to find better work elsewhere. It reminds me very much of riots in Watts, in Detroit and of recent outbreaks in Ohio. I believe we also saw something not too different in Manchester, in England. There were also similar incidents in Strasbourg last winter.

My own reading of this is that it is part of a pattern of frustration at dispossession and disenfranchisement, especially when governments speak of employment being the highest priority, and then cutting taxes on the rich and on large corporations. It is frustration at seeing a gap develop between haves and have-nots in what was once a more egalitarian society, in a country where the majority consistently polls a desire to have a strong program of social spending and where the government does the opposite. Strange, it sounds a lot like Canada! The difference is that we have yet to reach the stage of slum development that seems to have overtaken England and France over the last thirty or forty years, but it surely looks as though at least Toronto is headed in that direction with its newfound love of gunplay.

Most of us tend to think of Paris as being that fabulous area within the boundaries of the old walls of the city, the Seine, Notre Dame, the Opera, the Grands Magasins, the Latin Quarter and the like. But there are kilometers and kilometers of urban blight all around that gem in the center, and parts of that blight are starting to look like the slums of the American rust belt, often for what looks like many of the same reasons. Hence the reaction to the death of a couple of young men and the callousness of the Interior Minister.

[brmdp3123]

13. Thanks for the education.

[Mass]

16. From somebody who knows well the situation excellent description.

They are paying deeply poor choices made in the 60s to get rid of slums. Poor quality buildings 40 years later have become the new slums.

[meisje]

14. They just need hugs

[CTyankee]

18. Oh, ma foie! Ma foie!

Les Francaise sont bebes. Pas de diversite, non?

[Prefix]

19. Not a big surprise

I spent some time in France and would ride the Metro through those areas. Poverty and hopelessness that is worse than you could imagine considering how romanticized our idea of Paris is.. I would put north Paris and the banlieue up with the most dangerous neighborhoods you could imagine here in the US.

While I was there they had this huge expose on the Paris slums and how extreme right wing groups, led by Jean-Marie Le Pen's Front National, would go into the slums and pay kids to go and beat the hell out of a bus driver or cause other trouble. Leading, of course, to the National Police being called in. Police show up, massive riots. Rocks, firebombs, kid gets killed, and the cycle of violence continues. I'm not surprised that this is happening, because it was a weekly occurence, but this is a rather long and drawn-out cycle of unrest. Le Front NAtional stokes a lot of the tension and violence in the ghettos, because it furthers their cause. It's an absolute hellhole and scandalous that public housing in France is that way, but they also lack the resources to create new housing. The flow of new immigrants is such that, even if they were to try to upgrade or construct new public housing, they would become overcrowded and obsolete before the paint on the walls dries.

France's problem lies more in not being able to employ its citizens (last time I saw, it was hovering around 15%), thus leading to a terrible problem of having an extremely frustrated underclass, made mostly of Muslim North African immigrants, who are shackled by their dependence on the State to house them and pay their bills. Families of 4 or 5 living in apartments the size of my old dorm room are not uncommon. There are no parks, no entertainment, no culture. Just concrete and the Metro line. It's very sad. Unfortunately, France is not in a position to tackle a problem this huge.

[Mass]

20. It is a difficult situation, no doubt about that

but there are plenty of places in the States that are worse.

There is very little few new immigrants in France. In fact, many of these people are French citizens, second generation.

Unfortunately, it is easy to fall for the BS of the extreme right that seems very reasonnable at times, particularly when you dont know the country.

[newyawker99]

29. Hi Prefix!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[insane_cratic_gal]

21. What's going to happen to America

if the poverty lines keep getting larger and assistance keeps growing smaller.

[Ksec]

22. It DOES remind me of our riots of the 60s

The people are becoming fed up with the direction the new world order has taken. The bus has left the station and forgot to pick us up. I wont be surprised when this stuff reaches the US. The powers that be cant keep turning the screws and expect the people to just keep bending over and taking it up the ass .

[Bozita]

23. It's the lead story on CBC's 'The National' tonight - video link

http://www.cbc.ca/clips/national/thenational.ram

[leftofthedial]

24. don't worry

it's in its last throes

[kentuck]

25. I heard they burned 75 vehicles last night...

that's a lot of violence!

[fujiyama]

27. Many of these people

have been poorly assimilated into society. The government accepted many into their country, but made no effort to educate or assimilate these people. Many do not consider themself French. They have little interaction with the rest of society and face racism as well.

Unfortunately, this seems to be the case with several immigrant groups in Europe (primarilly from Muslim countries). Part of the difficulty seems to be cultural (the NEtherlands is an interesting case where some Muslims were rejecting liberalism and tolerance of some groups like gays and lesbians) though it is in part due to discrimination as well.