"Why Paris is Burning"

[ucrzymofo87]

Here is a well written article on why the riots in Paris came about.

http://www.nypost.com/commentary/53917.htm

[Loeviz]

Well as I've read it in the paper. The starting flair was when the police cornered two youngsters that had shop lifted something (I think). And made them climb into an area where they had an electric generator and thus get shocked to death.

[Killfile]

Boo soul sucking registration. Full text included below thanks to BugMeNot. Note that there's a BugMeNot extension for Firefox.

November 4, 2005 -- AS THE night falls, the "troubles" start — and the pattern is always the same.

Bands of youths in balaclavas start by setting fire to parked cars, break shop windows with baseball bats, wreck public telephones and ransack cinemas, libraries and schools. When the police arrive on the scene, the rioters attack them with stones, knives and baseball bats.

The police respond by firing tear-gas grenades and, on occasions, blank shots in the air. Sometimes the youths fire back — with real bullets.

These scenes are not from the West Bank but from 20 French cities, mostly close to Paris, that have been plunged into a European version of the intifada that at the time of writing appears beyond control.

The troubles first began in Clichy-sous-Bois, an underprivileged suburb east of Paris, a week ago. France's bombastic interior minister, Nicholas Sarkozy, responded by sending over 400 heavily armed policemen to "impose the laws of the republic," and promised to crush "the louts and hooligans" within the day. Within a few days, however, it had dawned on anyone who wanted to know that this was no "outburst by criminal elements" that could be handled with a mixture of braggadocio and batons.

By Monday, everyone in Paris was speaking of "an unprecedented crisis." Both Sarkozy and his boss, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, had to cancel foreign trips to deal with the riots.

How did it all start? The accepted account is that sometime last week, a group of young boys in Clichy engaged in one of their favorite sports: stealing parts of parked cars.

Normally, nothing dramatic would have happened, as the police have not been present in that suburb for years.

The problem came when one of the inhabitants, a female busybody, telephoned the police and reported the thieving spree taking place just opposite her building. The police were thus obliged to do something — which meant entering a city that, as noted, had been a no-go area for them.

Once the police arrived on the scene, the youths — who had been reigning over Clichy pretty unmolested for years — got really angry. A brief chase took place in the street, and two of the youths, who were not actually chased by the police, sought refuge in a cordoned-off area housing a power pylon. Both were electrocuted.

Once news of their deaths was out, Clichy was all up in arms.

With cries of "God is great," bands of youths armed with whatever they could get hold of went on a rampage and forced the police to flee.

The French authorities could not allow a band of youths to expel the police from French territory. So they hit back — sending in Special Forces, known as the CRS, with armored cars and tough rules of engagement.

Within hours, the original cause of the incidents was forgotten and the issue jelled around a demand by the representatives of the rioters that the French police leave the "occupied territories." By midweek, the riots had spread to three of the provinces neighboring Paris, with a population of 5.5 million.

But who lives in the affected areas? In Clichy itself, more than 80 percent of the inhabitants are Muslim immigrants or their children, mostly from Arab and black Africa. In other affected towns, the Muslim immigrant community accounts for 30 percent to 60 percent of the population. But these are not the only figures that matter. Average unemployment in the affected areas is estimated at around 30 percent and, when it comes to young would-be workers, reaches 60 percent.

In these suburban towns, built in the 1950s in imitation of the Soviet social housing of the Stalinist era, people live in crammed conditions, sometimes several generations in a tiny apartment, and see "real French life" only on television.

The French used to flatter themselves for the success of their policy of assimilation, which was supposed to turn immigrants from any background into "proper Frenchmen" within a generation at most.

That policy worked as long as immigrants came to France in drips and drops and thus could merge into a much larger mainstream. Assimilation, however, cannot work when in most schools in the affected areas, fewer than 20 percent of the pupils are native French speakers.

France has also lost another powerful mechanism for assimilation: the obligatory military service abolished in the 1990s.

As the number of immigrants and their descendants increases in a particular locality, more and more of its native French inhabitants leave for "calmer places," thus making assimilation still more difficult.

In some areas, it is possible for an immigrant or his descendants to spend a whole life without ever encountering the need to speak French, let alone familiarize himself with any aspect of the famous French culture.

The result is often alienation. And that, in turn, gives radical Islamists an opportunity to propagate their message of religious and cultural apartheid.

Some are even calling for the areas where Muslims form a majority of the population to be reorganized on the basis of the "millet" system of the Ottoman Empire: Each religious community (millet) would enjoy the right to organize its social, cultural and educational life in accordance with its religious beliefs.

In parts of France, a de facto millet system is already in place. In these areas, all women are obliged to wear the standardized Islamist "hijab" while most men grow their beards to the length prescribed by the sheiks.

The radicals have managed to chase away French shopkeepers selling alcohol and pork products, forced "places of sin," such as dancing halls, cinemas and theaters, to close down, and seized control of much of the local administration.

A reporter who spent last weekend in Clichy and its neighboring towns of Bondy, Aulnay-sous-Bois and Bobigny heard a single overarching message: The French authorities should keep out.

"All we demand is to be left alone," said Mouloud Dahmani, one of the local "emirs" engaged in negotiations to persuade the French to withdraw the police and allow a committee of sheiks, mostly from the Muslim Brotherhood, to negotiate an end to the hostilities.

President Jacques Chirac and Premier de Villepin are especially sore because they had believed that their opposition to the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003 would give France a heroic image in the Muslim community.

That illusion has now been shattered — and the Chirac administration, already passing through a deepening political crisis, appears to be clueless about how to cope with what the Parisian daily France Soir has called a "ticking time bomb."

It is now clear that a good portion of France's Muslims not only refuse to assimilate into "the superior French culture," but firmly believe that Islam offers the highest forms of life to which all mankind should aspire.

So what is the solution? One solution, offered by Gilles Kepel, an adviser to Chirac on Islamic affairs, is the creation of "a new Andalusia" in which Christians and Muslims would live side by side and cooperate to create a new cultural synthesis.

The problem with Kepel's vision, however, is that it does not address the important issue of political power. Who will rule this new Andalusia: Muslims or the largely secularist Frenchmen?

Suddenly, French politics has become worth watching again, even though for the wrong reasons.

Amir Taheri, editor of the French quarterly "Politique internationale," is a member of Benador Associates.

[Devil_Dante]

Yes, two kids running away from cops, got some shock therapy while hiding in a electricity cabin.

Now, all the youngster (unemployed, gangsta-like, bit poor) are angry (not really sure why, but than again, nobody knows) and
are contributing to Paris' reputation, City of Light. I heard more than 5000 cars are burnt down now. Even a kids school has been burnt down.

This has been going on for like two weeks now and France is planning to put in the army. And they won't shoot with rubber.

[Loeviz]

Well it also has to do with France not giving 2 cents for their poor, which the riots apparently are taking place.
The children are rioting cause they have like no chance to get out off the slums or something in that way.
I also read that Kadaffi offered his help with the riots, didnt say how he would help though

[Devil_Dante]

Since two days ago, there are also some burns in Brussels and some other countries. Taking exemple from Paris, looks more like an excuse for vandalism.

[Loeviz]

Perhaps, I think this is gonna end really nasty. Many casualties

[Messatsu]

Well well look what keeping people separated in there own communitys has eventually created. Now its to late to think of what should have been done, since things have escalated to the point where the french government has sent military forces on the scene. I personally don't think that these urban youths will take up the same type of crusade as the supposed "martyrs" of the extremist muslim faith, i would rather see their riots in the same ligth as the L.A. riots way back. These kids have a set way of thinking, wich is that they are being discriminated against by the french people, that they are excluded the same way as black people are from higher social or economic status because they are stuck in a proverbial hell. They even use rap the same way it was used back in the 80's and mid 90's as a form of protest against the governments lack of interest in making their lives any better.

[Killfile]

From a historical point of view, this is fairly common - just not as of late. Every time the French Government has f**ked up and created a system of social inequality and poverty (which is exactly what's happened here) since the 1700s the French people (one demographic or another) have rioted in the streets of Paris.

Sometimes they've decapitated a king or two, and often they've baracaded off the Streets. Louis Napoleon II widened the streets of Paris to make the baracade style revolutions impossible - but popular uprisings against government policies are the foundation of the French republic.

Following the same historical thread, I'd guess that the recent commission of military troops will end badly for the French Government which will likely suffer a vote of no confidance over this. The problem will go away of its own accord when the (extremely reasonable) demands of the rioters are met.

[Libaax]

The Interior minister(sp?) Sarozy said he would cleanse the areas the riots is happening in. That sounds like a really smart thing to do.....

[Devil_Dante]

The Interior minister(sp?) Sarozy said he would cleanse the areas the riots is happening in. That sounds like a really smart thing to do.....

Hahahah something like that. More like "I will cleanse all the shit that lives in that area"

[panasonic]

the foundation of their republic is pretty dam ncrappy. ive been to museums in Paris, and they had so many damn revolution in a year. they had the june monarchy, the october democracy etc etc. not exactly the real names, but the main idea is the same.

[Killfile]

the foundation of their republic is pretty damn crappy. I've been to museums in Paris, and they had so many damn revolutions in a year. They had the June monarchy, the October democracy etc etc. not exactly the real names, but the main idea is the same.

I corrected your caps and some typos because I'm obsessive like that. Pay it no mind.

As Thomas Jefferson (a contemporary of many of the revolutions you speak of) once said "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

Revolution is a normal part of the democratic process. Early experiments in modern democracy had to deal with facilitating a peacefull transition of power from one power structure to the next. They also had to work out a way to protect minority interests from what Alexis de Toqueville called the "tyranny of the majority." The Americans got VERY lucky very early on. The US Constitution in conjunction with American experiances with a powerfull executive (King George III) and a weak exeuctive (the Articles of Confederation) created a well balanced system of government dependent on a Federalist system that seperated power yet further between state and national government.

France suffere greatly because of the power of the emergant middle classes at the time of its governmental transitions. Unlike the Americas, which still had a very weak middle class at the time of the American Revolution, the French fought a class as well as a civil war during their revolutionary period.

The French upper classes, Royalists to the last, attempted to manipulate the poor to uphold the idea of a monarchy. At the same time, the middle classes, particularly young merchant sons in the colleges of France, attempted to manipulate the same poor into overthrowing the monarchy. Stuck in the middle - the poor, expolited by both sides and favored by neither, were stuck in some of the most horrific conditions in Europe at the time.

The eventual victory of the middle classes against the upper classes (which aquired the clergy as alies) resulted in a secular revolution in France - pushing the concept of Modernism into the forefront of European thought and forever changing history.

The French revolution is the tipping point - the moment at which Science becomes more imporant than Religion in fomenting the destiny of Western Civilization.

So yes, the French revolution was ugly. What do you expect? It was a political revolution, a class revolution, and an ideological revolution. Literally everything changed. In a few short years, the western world was turned on its ear.

[Libaax]

It was ugly but it did change the western world forever.

Who knows how messed the western world would look today without the frence revolution.

[ucrzymofo87]

The French Revolution would not have come about had it not been for the American Revolution...irony

[Libaax]

History is full of irony.

[sima]

it's the first time i read this forum,
and i was really glad that people actualy think
for themselves and not just taking for granted
anything the media tells them..
personaly i think that is a major problem..
everyone should ask questions - but they don't.
what happened in france, can and will happend again
in every part of the world - people just realized they
don't like being oppressed.. should have realized it earlier,
but as i said they don't ask questions, they just take what's
coming to them..

[vtwahoo]

The riots in France can be explained by one word: reification.

Now that may appear to be a word that we polisci types make up so that we sound smarter. And it is. But it's also bloody useful.

To reify is to turn a person or group of people in to an object of disgust. In this case the French have reified French Muslims and have actively persecuted them throughout the last 50 years. Just as it was impossible to be a German Jew in the 1930's it seems to be impossible to be a French Muslim in contemporary France. The French have made a concerted effort to concentrate their North African/Muslim population in the Zones Urban Public (ZUPs)...basically slums that spatialize and alienate otherness. The result: violence.

(My students would point out that I've skipped the vast majority of the process and I have...but this is the basic idea).

[Rosiel]

students? So your a teacher? Strangely attractive.
EDIT: and the care bear is cute.

[Tempest]

students? So your a teacher? Strangely attractive.
EDIT: and the care bear is cute.

'Nuff said.

[Rosiel]

Your no fun temp. No fun at all.

[Sortep]

I'm quite sure more intelligent people have said this in other posts, somewhere in the forums and far more eloquently than I am about to.

Humanities nature is that of ordered extreme chaos. like the rising and the falling of the tides, violence and malcontent swell overwhelming the social levies erected by whatever group of despots hold power at that point in time when the pressure becomes too great. As said before in this thread, it has been going on since humanities inception and is part of our natural process. The fact that the situation surrounding this incident is rectifiable is an object of great regret. More often than not, in history, blood is necessary to cleanse such things only to create a small wrinkle of hope in a broader history of injustice. Change can occur without blood.

However, power brokers rely on social entropy in order to subvert the will of the common man. This can only be done so long without a fire breaking out. Hello Paris, again. The entire scope of class warfare in society, nowadays, is attributable to controlling the populations. It focuses them upon each other as adversaries, instead of allies amidst the greater humanity as a whole.

Regardless of governmental change, the same people will remain behind the scenes pulling the strings. What made the French revolution a milestone was that the entire of order of the country was forcibly eliminated. The country created itself entirely from the ashes of the old order. We are now seeing a similar apex in multiple countries and societies around the world. Sadly enough if historical patterns apply, this is only the beginning of blood, war, and suffering. Then a short period of calm and back to the building up of tensions and hate.

It's almost like looking at an orange. If you examine it from a distance, it resembles nothing more than an orange (I know I know) sphere. If you examine it closely, complexities arise. Most of humanity are unable to change from this perspective, locking them into a thought process where it seems every action is new and every situation is completely unique. If we take everything into perspective and people eliminate foolish greed (as opposed to intelligent greed), many problems in history would've never happened.

As a species we are doomed to conflict. We both need the status quo yet resent it, locking ourselves into patterns that will continue unabated until we have our true awakening as a species. This probably applies to more than one thread here, and people of all socio-political religious persuasions need to wake our asses the fuck up.

Sorry about the long post.

[edit: Killfile mentioned the elliptical nature of the original post and it has been edited. I hope it is a bit more understandable now. I apologize if anything seems a bit off. My thinking is based on fucked up thought patterns]

[Eldo]

students? So your a teacher? Strangely attractive.
EDIT: and the care bear is cute.

I'm betting that's Killfile's wife, so keep your paws to yourself, you fucking dog.

[newbified]

She even has Killfile under her interests .

So I'm inclined to agree with Eldo.

[Rosiel]