France under Fire

[piperdiva]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe...ots/index.html


Can anyone give any clarity as to the dynamics of the situation? In other words? Why the hell are these people so pissed off, and do they have a legit reason?

[muchlove]

Wtf???

[pacific breeze]

Go to any legitimate news site, buy a newspaper, or listen to radio or TV. The issues have been in the news for a while.

[muchlove]

lol, pb.

I don't really have tv... I only get NBC locally, we don't have cable. I promise they haven't mentioned this even once at any time that I've had my tv on. I don't check CNN on a regular basis. No one else has mentioned to me that France is on fire, soooo... I didn't know.

[pacific breeze]

I was actually responding to the first post, much!

[A*O]

Dispossessed, angry, unemployed, ghetto'ised, uneducated, poor, frustrated North African 2-3 generation young men (who happen to be muslims)..... why is anyone shocked?

[ourmaninBusan]

I just got a blog site on this very subject. Apparently
French white people feel that the Muslims are not
interested in assimilating and are quietly overtaking them.

France opened its borders to open immigration, particularly
to its former colonies, in 1960 or so, and since then,
the Muslim population of France has exploded.

A lengthy blog entry on the subject:

"Those who pointed out that Islam has never coexisted peacefully
as a minority in any culture were silenced and told that Islam is a
religion of peace.

"When Boumedienne boasted in 1974 at the UN that millions of Muslims
would venture north as warriors of Islam and would conquer it with the
wombs of Islamic women , who paid attention ?

"Even the reporting of such a statement would have brought cries of racism
from the French intellectual left and its media."

I suspect, though it hasn't been proven, that the two hotel fires
in Paris were targeted towards North African immigrants.

[sputnik]

Originally Posted by A*O

Dispossessed, angry, unemployed, ghetto'ised, uneducated, poor, frustrated North African 2-3 generation young men (who happen to be muslims)..... why is anyone shocked?

true. it's a vicious circle. muslims aren't integrating and are concentrating in 'ghetto' suburbs, but at the same time, the french aren't exactly welcoming and inclusive of them, and there are so many stereotypes and derogatory attitudes.

[Mr. Authority]

I heard about these neighborhoods north in Paris. It's basically like a "ghetto" where mostly people from Algeria live and that these people were persecuted by the French police. From what I heard of this story, 2 North African teens were "accidently" killed by the police. And that sparked the riots in these neighborhoods.

[DisruptiveHair]

Originally Posted by Mr. Authority

I heard about these neighborhoods north in Paris. It's basically like a "ghetto" where mostly people from Algeria live and that these people were persecuted by the French police. From what I heard of this story, 2 North African teens were "accidently" killed by the police. And that sparked the riots in these neighborhoods.

That's sort of right. They were electrocuted when they touched a transformer by accident; they thought they were being chased by police (they weren't) and ran into an electric station. It's not like they were shot.

Everyone else: French dailies will have the best information but if you can't read French, here's a good place to start:

http://www.time.com/time/world/artic...125401,00.html

[AliceInWonderland]

My all time favourite magazine; Vanity Fair reported in an excellant expose story on the marginalization and discrimination and other unequalities facing the Muslims of France which apparantly has the biggest Muslim population in Europe and I feel really really bad for these people especially the women who can barely leave their homes w/o the fear of being raped and who are abused at home b/c of their restrictive religion, so they're screwed by the French majority and by the men in their society. Everyone should get Vanity Fair, they predicted this kind of shit over there was about to erupt and added to my major dislike for the French.

http://www.mariebrenner.com/articles/daughters/df1.html

[nana55]

You know this is not just the "poor Muslims", they have been in France since the 60's and will not even try and assimilate and basically want France to bend to them. Coming from a part of California that is going through this with the Mexicans, I totally understand. You are welcome, but now that you are here, you came by choice, at least try and assimilate. That doesn't mean lose your cultures, but Christ, they barbeque goat in their apt. I have relatives in France and they have been complaining about this for years. There are 2 sides to every story.

[Mr. Authority]

Even more bad news. It seems that some of the violence is spreading in other areas in France.

By ANGELA DOLAND, Associated Press Writer
49 minutes ago



PARIS - Rioting by French youths spread to 300 towns overnight, and a 61-year-old man hurt in the violence died of his wounds, the first fatality in 11 days of unrest that has shocked the country, police said Monday.


As urban unrest spread to neighboring Belgium and possibly Germany, the French government faced growing criticism for its inability to stop the violence, despite massive police deployment and continued calls for calm.

Meanwhile, governments worldwide urged their citizens to be careful in France.

On Sunday night, vandals burned more than 1,400 vehicles, and clashes around the country left 36 police injured, setting a new high for overnight arson and violence since rioting started last month, national police chief Michel Gaudin told a news conference.

Australia, Britain, Germany and Japan advised their citizens to exercise care in France, joining the United States, Russia and at least a half dozen other countries in warning tourists to stay away from violence-hit areas.

The victim was identified as Jean-Jacques Le Chenadec, a retired auto industry worker who died after being beaten by an attacker. He was trying to extinguish a trash can fire Friday at his housing project in the northeastern suburb of Stains when an attacker caught him by surprise and beat him into a coma, police said.

Apparent copycat attacks spread outside France for the first time, with five cars torched outside Brussels' main train station, police in the Belgian capital said.

The mayhem started as an outburst of anger in suburban Paris housing projects and has fanned out nationwide among disaffected youths, mostly of Muslim or African origin, to become France's worst civil unrest in more than a decade.

Attacks overnight Sunday to Monday were reported in 274 towns, and police made 395 arrests, Gaudin said.

"This spread, with a sort of shock wave spreading across the country, shows up in the number of towns affected," Gaudin said, noting that the violence appeared to be sliding away from its flash point in the Parisian suburbs and worsening elsewhere.

It was the first time police had been injured by weapons' fire and there were signs that rioters were deliberately seeking out clashes with police, officials said.

Among the injured police, 10 were hurt by youths firing fine-grain birdshot in a late-night clash in the southern Paris suburb of Grigny, national police spokesman Patrick Hamon said. Two were hospitalized, but the injuries were not considered life-threatening. One was wounded in the neck, the other in the legs.

The unrest began Oct. 27 in the low-income Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois after the deaths of two teenagers of Mauritanian and Tunisian origin. The youths were accidentally electrocuted as they hid from police in a power substation. They apparently thought they were being chased.

About 4,700 cars have been burned in France since the rioting began and 1,200 suspects were detained at least temporarily, Gaudin said.

The growing violence is forcing France to confront long-simmering anger in its suburbs, where many Africans and their French-born children live on society's margins, struggling with high unemployment, racial discrimination and despair — fertile terrain for crime of all sorts as well as for Muslim extremists offering frustrated youths a way out.

France, with 5 million Muslims, has the largest Islamic population in Western Europe.

President Jacques Chirac, whose government is under intense pressure to halt the violence, promised stern punishment for those behind the attacks, making his first public comments Sunday since the riots started.

"The law must have the last word," Chirac said after a security meeting with top ministers. France is determined "to be stronger than those who want to sow violence or fear, and they will be arrested, judged and punished."

France's biggest Muslim fundamentalist organization, the Union for Islamic Organizations of France, issued a fatwa, or religious decree, that forbade all those "who seek divine grace from taking part in any action that blindly strikes private or public property or can harm others."

Arsonists burned two schools and a bus in the central city of Saint-Etienne and its suburbs, and two people were injured in the bus attack. Churches were set ablaze in northern Lens and southern Sete, he said.

In Colombes in suburban Paris, youths pelted a bus with rocks, sending a 13-month-old child to the hospital with a head injury, Hamon said, while a daycare center was burned in Saint-Maurice, another Paris suburb.

Much of the youths' anger has focused on law-and-order Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, whose reference to the troublemakers as "scum" appeared to inflame passions.

[SVZ]

first fatality today

[AliceInWonderland]

good now the French will stop judging us for not being able to take care of our own when they clearly can't do shit for theirs'