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Once in France
One of the frustrations about covering events in France is the lack of metrics. There are a few which can be used. The numbers of cars burned on a given night. The number of towns affected by disturbances. The numbers of persons arrested. But there is a lot of critical information that can't be captured in these figures. Here are two reports, one from a site in Brussels and another from a Dutchman which have been cool and collected in the past. Here is what they have to say. The titles are the authors and not mine. I have edited only to shorten the excerpts where necessary
The Brussels Journal
The Fall of France
From the desk of Paul Belien on Sat, 2005-11-05 13:41
If Nicolas Sarkozy had been allowed to have his way, he could have saved France. Last Summer the outspoken minister of the Interior was Frances most popular politician with his promise to restore the law of the Republic in the various virtually self-ruling immigrant areas surrounding the major French cities.
These areas, which some compare to the "millet" system of the former Ottoman Empire, where each religious community (millet) conducted its own social and cultural life in its own neighbourhoods, exist not only in France, but also in Muslim neighbourhoods in Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and other countries. ...
The experience of his youth has made Sarkozy ... virtually the only one who understands what second generation immigrants really need if they want to build a future. More important than the so-called social benefits the government alms provided by welfare politicians like Chirac, Villepin and their predecessors is the provision of law and order. This guarantees that those who create wealth do not lose it to thugs who extort and rob and burn down their properties.
Sarkozys decision to send the police back to the suburbs which had been abandoned by previous governments ... would lead to riots was inevitable. Sarkozy knew it, and so did Chirac, Villepin and the others. ...
What happened instead was that Sarkozy's "colleagues" in government used the riots as an excuse .... Bringing down ... Sarkozy ... was told to shut up ... Villepin began a "dialogue" with the rioters. As a result the riots have spilled over from Paris to other French cities. Do not be surprised if this French epidemic soon crosses Frances borders ...
As for Sarkozy, the best thing this immigrant son can do is to resign and make a bid for the 2007 presidential elections ... But this could soon change if he remains a member of a Villepin government which is clearly unwilling to abolish the current "millet" system.
Peaktalk
France's Intifada
Its hard to find some good reporting on the Paris riots, one of the newspapers here this morning claimed that the violence had abated somewhat. Well, thats hardly the case. Below Ive translated an excerpt from the Dutch public broadcasting organizations report on night number nine, Friday night ... The term "Paris Riots" has become a complete misnomer. There's war going on in France and that is coming from someone who is not given to hyperbole, but the facts have made that conclusion inescapable. ...
Commentary
Paul Belien's headline "The Fall of France" will seem hyperbolic to the average reader. I know it shocked me. But in the historical memory of Frenchmen, the painful defeats of May 1940 were principally due to acting too slowly in the face of a threat, which if properly met could have been contained. One of the most regrettable things about the historical Fall of France was that the Republic had more than enough men, armor and artillery to meet the Nazis, but did not act quickly enough to save itself. And it is to this memory of belatedness that Belien principally appeals. (For a fuller discussion of the role timing in the Battle for France see this site.)
Peaktalk is the site of Pajamas Media contributor Pieter Dorsman, an investment banker by trade and who now helps "early-stage technology companies get organized and financed". He is probably not a man given to wild-eyed exaggeration. Yet he says, "Theres war going on in France and that is coming from someone who is not given to hyperbole, but the facts have made that conclusion inescapable."
It's possible that the seriousness of the situation has finally forced the principal French political figures to bury the hatchet. The Telegraph reports the French cabinet has met in emergency session on the ninth day.
The French government is holding crisis talks after a night of rioting which saw nearly 900 vehicles torched and at least 200 people arrested. ... into the second week ... appear to have spread beyond the capital ... other French cities. ... now concerns that the violence is being organised by groups of youths using the internet ... de Villepin, has summoned eight key government ministers to his offices, to try and find a political answer to France's worst rioting in decades.
It was this last piece of news -- that de Villepin was looking for a political formula on the 9th day of the riots -- that most disturbed me, almost as if Gamelin on the 9th day of the Blitzkrieg had only then begun looking for his map. How long will it take to come up with a plan? How long to execute?
Looking back, I think de Villepin thought he could contain the riots using police cordons as bulkheads while principally relying on his Minister of Social Cohesion to get the government's tame imams and community leaders into dampening down the riots. The French government has spent a lot of money creating quasi-governmental Islamic institutions in an attempt (in my view at least) to co-opt the more tractable leadership of the ghettos. It also had an infrastructure of social workers and government funded "community groups" which it probably felt could be relied on to bank the fires. Recent newspaper stories report how imams and community "mothers" have been marching against the violence, only to have themselves stoned and jeered. De Villepin unleashed his ultimate weapon and it turned out to be a rubber sword.
What de Villepin's planning probably missed was that the millet system plus the Internet formed a combination that would go through the 21st century "impassable Ardennes" like s..t through a goose. The millet system meant that potentially hostile foci were were already pre-deployed outside the cordon, often in cities outside Paris. And the Internet of course ensured that command and control could be exercised at a distance by command cells despite any number of deployed riot police. My guess is that by day 6 or 7 the French leadership began to doubt whether their impenetrable defenses would hold. By 9th day, I think, a real panic had begun to set in and they are now scrambling for a Plan B.
posted by wretchard at 1:50 PM
A country in flames French cities teeter on the edge of anarchy
By Kim Willsher in Clichy-sous-Bois, Paris
(Filed: 06/11/2005)
In pictures: Paris burns after week of rioting
Gangs of youths were once again on the rampage across France last night as the guerilla warfare, which has engulfed a string of Paris suburbs for more than a week, took hold in cities throughout the country.
Firemen battle a warehouse fire in Aubervilliers, north of Paris
Firemen battle a warehouse fire in Aubervilliers
Rioters played cat-and-mouse with the police, swooping to set fire to buses, public buildings, shops, factories and in one case a crèche before disappearing, leaving a trail of destruction.
Yesterday, after a ninth consecutive night in which rioters boasted they had made parts of France "like Baghdad", more than 750 cars had been set ablaze, the highest tally on a single night so far.
Police arrested 203 people including a 10-year-old boy, who was caught clutching a bottle of petrol.
Over the past 10 days riots, arson attacks and violent clashes have spread from the notorious banlieues of Paris - the grim housing estates that are home to many of the country's large North African immigrant community - to the rest of the country.
Yesterday officials reported incidents erupting from Rennes in the west, to Toulouse in the south and Strasbourg in the east.
Despite a string of emergency meetings and the drafting of 1,500 members of the CRS riot squads into the Paris suburbs, police and politicians have failed to control the worst violence the city has experienced since the riots of May 1968.
In the early hours of yesterday, gangs of youths threw blazing rubbish bins across the streets and set fire to cars, many of which belonged to their own neighbours.
The acrid smell of burning rubber and refuse filled the air and plumes of flames shot skywards, their orange glow illuminating the grim high-rise blocks, which have become France's 21st century ghettos.
A burnt-out vehicle Aulnay-sous-Bois, north-east of Paris
A burnt van in Aulnay-sous-Bois, north-east of Paris
Above one desolate street on the outskirts of Paris, a helicopter clattered but firefighters were forced to watch helplessly as a car burnt itself out. Any attempt to approach it resulted in a terrifying hail of stones, Molotov cocktails and other missiles.
Elsewhere in France, fire officers were pelted with metal petanque balls, car batteries and even cooking pots.
The commander of Paris's 14th Fire Brigade, Captain Sébastian Lamoureux, said his force had adopted tactics learnt from its counterpart in Northern Ireland and launched their rarely used "Urban Trouble" plan.
Fire engines had been ordered not to leave their station without a support vehicle and a police escort, he said.
"We don't get involved unless there's a danger of the fire spreading. Otherwise we leave the vehicle or the rubbish bin to burn itself out."
The renewed violence erupted hours after Dominique de Villepin, the French prime minister, repeated calls for calm and summoned young representatives from the Paris suburbs to his office for talks.
"I think he appreciated meeting us and learnt something. It was a good initiative for him to take," said Anyss Arbib, one of the representatives.
"There needs to be better relations and communications between the police and the people in the banlieues."
Residents pass a burned car in Aulnay-sous-Bois
Residents pass a burned car in Aulnay-sous-Bois
The first violence was triggered after a routine police patrol in the district of Chêne-Pointu in Clichy-sous-Bois, north-east Paris. The districts of Clichy are typical of the outer-Paris sink estates, which are home to many second and third generation immigrant families. The French Fifth Republic expects them to bury their own customs in the name of integration and consequently they have discovered there is more liberté, egalité and fraternité for some than others.
Across France some 751 neighbourhoods, housing around five million people, are classified as severely disadvantaged. In Clichy, less than 10 miles from the chic Champs Elysées, half the 28,000 population is under 25 and unemployment is more than double the national average of 10 per cent.
The incident which triggered France's most violent convulsion for almost 40 years began on the evening of October 27, as police officers approached a group of youths, most of North African descent, returning from a football match. Some of them panicked and ran.
"We all do it. You don't hang around and wait to be pushed around or arrested for nothing," said one Clichy teenager.
Terrified that the police were chasing them, which the officers have denied, three fled towards an electricity sub-station. Ignoring the danger signs, they scrambled over 10ft walls topped with three rows of barbed wire. Minutes later two of them, aged 15 and 17, were electrocuted and died. Miraculously the third survived, but was seriously burnt. As word of the tragedy spread, the anger and frustration never far below the surface of the banlieues erupted. Angry youngsters have pledged to keep fighting so their friends did not "die for nothing".
Many of them also blame the tough-talking interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, for making matters worse. He has described the rioters as "scum" and threatened to "hose down" the estates to get rid of them.
"He's disrespected us, which is a declaration of war," one young man told the Sunday Telegraph as he surveyed one of Clichy's housing estates that was dotted with piles of ash and broken glass. "Those guys, our friends, died for nothing and we're being dissed. Someone has to say sorry."
Since then politicians, social commentators and journalists have been picking over France's failure to integrate its burgeoning immigrant population.
"The Republic is not keeping its promise of liberty, equality and fraternity," thundered the respected sociologist, Michel Wieviorka, in the Libération newspaper. "Cultural identities are not sufficiently recognised and there is no longer any mediation between the inhabitants of these areas and the politicians. It's a total crisis."
Yet while the violence has dominated French media all week, most citizens are otherwise unaffected by the tumult - an indication of just how detached from mainstream French life those living on the troubled housing estates have become.
This weekend, even residents sympathetic to the rioters called for a halt to violence. One 30-year-old Moroccan, whose car had been torched by local youths, said: "Obviously I'm angry with the youths who are burning the cars of people living in their own area."
Yet many agree that Mr Sarkozy is partly to blame. The interior minister was unrepentant, however. "This minority of hooligans and assassins must not be confused with the immense majority of youngsters in the banlieues," he said. "I refuse to let these organised gangs make the law. The Republican state will not give in."
OK... just to be an jerk and nitpick .... Nero recited bad poetry while Rome burned (fiddles hadn't yet been invented) and he supposedly struck the match and blamed it on the Christians (I guess some things never change).... but that's beside the point.Mr. P said:Didn't they do that Fiddling stuff in Rome once too.
Now ya want some real Fiddling, come south!
Trigg said:Many of them also blame the tough-talking interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, for making matters worse. He has described the rioters as "scum" and threatened to "hose down" the estates to get rid of them.
"He's disrespected us, which is a declaration of war," one young man told the Sunday Telegraph as he surveyed one of Clichy's housing estates that was dotted with piles of ash and broken glass. "Those guys, our friends, died for nothing and we're being dissed. Someone has to say sorry."
Lets see, they're burning cars and setting people on fire and they don't think they should be called scum? :bangheads morons.
I think it's finally time for the French police to get out the big guns and start shooting back at the hoodlums. Unless of course they're just going to let the rioters take over the entire country, which if this going on much longer is looking like a possibility.
Sunday, November 06, 2005
Now that it's Sunday, do you think rioters will respect the Sabbath day?
posted by U*2 @ 5:24 AM
The night's activity: 1295 vehicles torched, 312 arrests, and Paris hit for the first time since the riots started. In Evreux, rampaging youths armed with baseball bats directly confronted riot police.
Violent confrontations between riot police and hooded youths took place in Evreux where the shopping center 'du quartier de La Madeleine' was hit by extensive damage. There were injuries on both sides but police authorities were unable to supply any numbers (or unwilling to).
See this post for details on activity earlier in the night (ie. incidents not repeated in this post).
A McDonalds in Corbeil-Essonnes was demolished. 2 people suffered smoke inhalation when hundreds were evacuated from a building in Athis-Mons. In the Mureaux, 30 rioters on a roof, under the spotlights of a helicopter, threw objects at riot police.
Gunfire and cars torched in the City of Light; Chiraq silent
4 cars were torched in the rue Dupuis, near Place de la République, in a neighborhood were street lighting has been out of order for several days. Towards 9PM the rue Béranger (near the rue Dupuis) was closed off after residents reported gunfire from the rooftops. Once police left the area youths were seen torching vehicles causing an explosion which spread fire to the stairway of a building. Sunday morning, the police have issued a warning to neighborhood merchants to be careful (ie. you are on your own, people!).
Still no word from President of Ripoublika Franska, Jack Chiraq.
Françaises, Français, vous êtes dans la merde jusqu'au cou, Françaises, Français, démerdez-vous!
Yer no FUN! :funnyfaceKarlMarx said:OK... just to be an jerk and nitpick .... Nero recited bad poetry while Rome burned (fiddles hadn't yet been invented) and he supposedly struck the match and blamed it on the Christians (I guess some things never change).... but that's beside the point.
