[bribiaLaubysdggf]

Anger as French riots spread to rural Evreux
Sun Nov 6, 2005 12:41 PM ET

By Paul Carrel

EVREUX, France (Reuters) - If 50 cars and a shopping center can be set alight in a small town in rural Normandy, then perhaps nowhere in France is immune from a wave of rioting by disaffected young people.

The fact that residents say it was only a matter of time before Evreux experienced the violence that has engulfed the rundown suburbs of Paris for the past 10 nights, speaks volumes.

"This was to be expected," 49-year-old resident Francis Hurier said on Sunday, pointing to the charred remains of a pharmacy where the stench of smoke hung in the air hours after firefighters had put out the flames.

"There are no jobs. Jobs need to be found for the young people," said Hurier, who is himself unemployed. "The cops are also too aggressive."

As in Paris, it was a housing estate inhabited by immigrant families where angry youths used vandalism and violence to express their frustration with a society they feel excludes them from jobs and is too ready to treat them roughly.

It was the deaths of two youths electrocuted in a power sub-station as they fled police more than a week ago, which ignited the passions of ethnic minorities already incensed by racism, unemployment, police treatment and their marginal place in French society.

Some 50 cars were torched in Evreux overnight and the shopping center was damaged by fire when youths went on the rampage through a housing estate on the edge of town. Two schools and a local police station were also damaged.

Conservative Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin has promised to clamp down on the violence, which has spread from the Paris suburbs to other provincial towns around the country.

The opposition Socialists have criticized Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy's "zero tolerance" policy toward rioters, whom he has branded "scum". Sarkozy has responded by drafting in an extra 2,300 police.

"Sarkozy made a mistake by talking about 'scum'. That provoked people. This is the result," said Hurier, who has lived in Evreux since 1982. "These youngsters ... just want a job and respect."

RACISM, NO JOBS

Simmering anger mixed with a sense of resignation among the locals gathered outside a burned out block of shops in Evreux.

Local Socialist councilor Michel Champredon, who runs a local housing association, said unemployment and racism were the root causes of the trouble.

"There are poor job prospects for a big chunk of the young population, especially those of immigrant origin. That creates a sense of injustice which builds up and can then degenerate into violence."

Other people were less understanding.

"This is too much, stop! Stop, do something else, but not this, not violence," said one local woman in tears.

"My wife's out of a job now," said another visibly angry resident. "I've got two kids, a house to pay for and a car loan. What do I do now?"

Jean-Louis Debre, the city's mayor and speaker of the French parliament, echoed the government's tough line.

"A hundred people have smashed everything and strewn desolation. Well, they don't form part of our universe," he said.

Champredon said the marginalisation of immigrant youths only fed the tension that led to the violence.

"There is a lot of discrimination when it comes to job recruitment," he said.

Local youngsters expected more violence on the outskirts of Evreux.

"It's civil war now," said one in a hooded top.

© Reuters 2005. All rights reserved.

[mr.nemo]

CNN.com

Unrest reaches French capital
Riots, arson take new turn, spreads across country

Sunday, November 6, 2005; Posted: 1:15 p.m. EST (18:15 GMT)

PARIS, France (CNN) -- Protesters in France expanded their arson rampage into the capital city of Paris and along Mediterranean resort communities as the nation's Interior Ministry warned the violence might grow Sunday.

Police helicopters flew over Paris and other locations in an effort to identify and stop the vandals, French radio reported.

The latest violence, sparked by the deaths of two teenagers in suburban Paris, spread west to the Normandy region and south to the Mediterranean and the resort cities of Cannes and Nice, where arson was reported.

By early Sunday, more than 900 cars had been burned, 193 people detained and several police officers and firefighters injured after a 10th night of rioting across France, according to national police spokesman Patrick Hamon.

Thirteen cars were torched in Paris, including several in the Place de la Republique in the central city.

In the Normandy city of Evreux, five police officers and three firefighters were injured when two schools, a post office, a shopping center and 50 cars were burned, Hamon said. A child care center was burned in Lille in northern France.

Two schools in Grigny, south of Paris, were set ablaze and firefighters responded to 30 reports of arson in Toulouse, in southern France, the Interior Ministry said. Several cars were on fire and several trash cans were burning outside public buildings.

A cultural center in the central city of Nantes was destroyed by fire, and a youth hostel burned in Paris, the ministry said.

The spreading violence has shocked national leaders and community residents into action as the French prime minister held special meetings Saturday and concerned citizens participated in a silent march.

For 10 days police, government and community leaders have been struggling to restore order, and debating how to quell the unrest that began October 27 in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois.

Locals blamed police for the electrocution deaths of two teenagers -- both of African descent -- who climbed a fence surrounding a power station while apparently running from police.
Poverty, unemployment, discrimination

The vandalism has spread to around 20 communities with large immigrant and Muslim populations who've been plagued by poverty, unemployment and alleged discrimination. In some areas, unemployment is 25 percent.

French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin met with community leaders and members of his Cabinet Saturday to address the situation.

Mediators and religious leaders are talking to the youths in an effort to stop the violence. More than 2,000 vehicles have been torched in the violence, and hundreds or people arrested. Some police officers, paramedics and journalists have been injured.

The rioting prompted warnings from the U.S. and British governments for visitors to be aware of the situation and avoid the affected areas.

As many as 3,000 people took part in a silent march Saturday morning, speaking out against the rioting and its root causes, state radio reported.
'Quite hard to combat'

Hamon told The Associated Press that arsonists were moving beyond their heavily policed neighborhoods to less protected areas.

"They are very mobile, in cars or scooters. ... It is quite hard to combat," Hamon told AP. "Most are young, very young, we have even seen young minors."

There appeared to be no coordination between separate groups in different areas, Hamon told AP. But within gangs, youths are communicating by cell phones or e-mails. "They organize themselves, arrange meetings, some prepare the Molotov cocktails."

In quiet Acheres, west of Paris, arsonists burned a nursery school, where part of the roof caved in, and about a dozen cars in four attacks that the mayor said seemed "perfectly organized," AP reported.

Children's photos clung to the blackened walls, and melted plastic toys littered the floor, AP reported. Mayor Alain Outreman tried to cool tempers and rejected demands that militias be formed or that the army be deployed. "We are not going to start militias," he said. "You would have to be everywhere."

Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said the government is unanimous in its determination to end the violence and address the problems.

"Once this crisis is overcome and calm is restored, each must also understand that there's also a certain feeling of injustice in some neighborhoods," Sarkozy said Saturday, according to a translation from Reuters News Agency. "I have thought this for a long time, and said it as well."

There have been calls by the Green Party and the Communist Party for Sarkozy to resign, after he called the rioters "scum" earlier in the week -- language that served only to inflame the vandalism.
Warning for tourists

The U.S. Embassy in Paris has issued a public announcement warning American travelers about the rioting.

"Although the riots have occurred in areas not normally frequented by U.S. tourists, travelers should be aware that train travel from the Charles de Gaulle Airport to the city center may be disrupted at times, as it passes near the affected area," according to the announcement, dated Friday.

"Travelers could rely instead on airport buses or taxis to downtown Paris. Americans should avoid the affected areas."

CNN's Chris Burns and Hayat Mongodin contributed to this report

Copyright 2005 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.

[Imiweevierm]

November 6, 2005
French Ministers Meet Under Growing Pressure From Riots
By CRAIG S. SMITH

PARIS, Nov. 6 - The French government met in emergency session today to confront rioting that worsened on its 10th night, sweeping into the heart of Paris from suburbs with large Arab and African populations.

Afterward, President Jacques Chirac said the government was determined "to be stronger than those who want to sow violence or fear."

"Today, the highest priority is the return of security and public order," Mr. Chirac said after the unusual 6 p.m. Sunday meeting of the interior security council. "The last word must be from the law."

Mr. Chirac, who had summoned Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin and the ministers of defense, justice, economy and the interior to Élysée Palace, indicated that the group had agreed on certain steps both to curb the unrest and to address some of its underlying problems.

"We well understand that the evolution of things hinges on the respect of everybody, justice and equality," Mr. Chirac said, though he also warned that comprehensive action on grievances had a "prerequisite," which he emphasized was "the return of security and public order."

Mr. Chirac is under growing political and popular pressure to stop the rioting, which has spread to towns across France and resulted in at least 800 arrests, including of boys as young as 13.

Just the day before, Prime Minister de Villepin met with eight of his ministers and a top Muslim official in an effort to find a way to break the chain of violent events.

Dozens of cars were burned overnight in Paris, the worst night of violence thus far and the first time the unrest entered the capital - near the Place de la Republique neighborhood, northeast of City Hall and near the historic Marais district. All told, the police said, 3,300 buses, cars and other vehicles had been set afire and numerous buildings have been destroyed or seriously damaged nationwide since Oct. 27, when the disturbances began.

The authorities today continued to reflect popular frustration with their inability to stop what many are calling France's worst civil unrest since the 1968 student revolts.

Until today, Mr. Chirac, who is under pressure even within his own ruling party, had said little publicly about the wave of disturbances. On Wednesday, a spokesman said the president had warned that "tempers must calm down" and that further escalation would be "dangerous."

But while Mr. Chirac had guarded his words, the interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, had not, inspiring enmity in the streets by calling troublemakers "scum."

Overnight, the police called up 2,300 reinforcements but were still unable to quell the sporadic lawlessness. Seven police helicopters buzzed over the Paris region through the night, videotaping outbreaks of disturbances and directing mobile squads to various incidents. Firefighters were also active as cars and buildings were set afire.

"This is just the beginning," Moussa Diallo, 22, said this afternoon in Clichy-sous-Bois, a low-income suburb, where the protests began after two teenagers of Mauritanian and Tunisian background died while fleeing the police in what officials said was an accident.

"It's not going to end until there are two policeman dead," said Mr. Diallo, whose parents came to France from Mali. Mr. Diallo did not admit to taking part in any violence himself.

Rampaging youths have attacked property in cities as far away as Toulouse and Marseilles and the resort towns of Cannes and Nice, and in Strasbourg to the north. The police describe them as copycat attacks, all the more difficult to control because the violence and destruction are decentralized.

In its early days, the rioting appeared to spread spontaneously, but law enforcement officials now say said it is being abetted by the Internet.

Worse, the national police spokesman Patrick Hamon said, "What we notice is that the bands of youths are, little by little, getting more organized," and are sending attack messages by mobile phone texts.

But sentiment online is diverse. Some Web sites mourn the two teenagers who died last month; others issue insults to the police; but some warn that the uprisings will only give the anti-immigrant far-right an opportunity.

Prime Minister de Villepin, who called in police officers and teachers working in deprived areas for talks, has released no details to date of a promised action plan for 750 tough neighborhoods.

"I'll make proposals as early as this week," the weekly Journal du Dimanche quoted him as saying.

The Socialist Party leader Francois Hollande said the riots were a failure of government policy and leadership.

"I want to hear Jacques Chirac today," Mr. Hollande told reporters. "Where is the president when such serious events are taking place?"

Government authorities have so far found no way beyond appeals and more police to address a problem with complex social, economic and racial causes and depths of hostilities in France. The country has a population of 5 million Muslims, the most in Western Europe.

"Many youths have never seen their parents work and couldn't hold down a job if they got one," Claude Chevallier, manager of a burned-out carpet depot in the rundown Paris suburb of Aulnay-sous-Bois, said with asperity.

Interior Minister Sarkozy visited police officers overnight in the troubled Essonne and Val-de-Marne areas near Paris. Two schools were destroyed in the Essonne and cars continued to go up in flames during the night.

The worst unrest overnight appeared to be centered on Evreux, 100 kilometers west of Paris, where at least 50 vehicles, shops and businesses and a post office and two schools were destroyed.

Five police officers and three firefighters were injured in Evreux during clashes with the young rioters, Mr. Hamon said.

"This is too much, stop!" a woman in Evreux complained to a Reuters reporter. "Stop, do something else, but not this, not violence."

Evreux's mayor, Jean-Louis Debre, a Chirac confidant who is speaker of the lower house of Parliament, told reporters at the scene: "A hundred people have smashed everything and strewn desolation. Well, they don't form part of our universe."

In Evry, a southern Parisan suburb, The Associated Press reported that the authorities had found 150 explosive devices in what was described as a de facto firebomb-making factory. A senior Justice Ministry official, Jean-Marie Huet, said today that more than 100 bottles, as well as gallons of fuel and hoods for hiding rioters' faces, had been found in the rundown building.

On Saturday morning, Roman Catholic, Protestant and Muslim leaders led a march of about 2,000 people in Aulnay-sous-Bois, one of the affected suburbs. The parents of the two teenagers who died while hiding from the police touched off the rioting also issued a statement appealing for calm.

Many see the violence as a test of wills between Interior Minister Sarkozy and the young, mostly French Arab rioters. Numerous immigrants and their children blame Mr. Sarkozy for alienating young people with the way he has pressed a zero-tolerance anticrime campaign, which features frequent police checks of French Arabs in poor neighborhoods. But he has ignored calls from many French Arabs to resign, and is keeping up the pressure.

During a visit to a police command center west of Paris on Saturday, according to local news reports, he told officers, "Arrests - that's the key."

Ironically, Mr. Sarkozy, himself a second-generation immigrant, has been one of the loudest champions of affirmative action and of relaxing rules that restrict government support for building mosques.

The government has been embarrassed by its inability to quell the disturbances, which have called into question its unique integration model, which discourages recognizing ethnic, religious or cultural differences in favor of French unity. There is no affirmative action, for example, and religious symbols, like the Muslim veil, are banned in schools.

"The republican integration model, on which France has for decades based its self-perception, is in flames," the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung declared. An editorial in Germany's Süddeutsche Zeitung called the violence around Paris an "intifada at the city gates," a reference to the anti-Israeli uprising by Palestinians.

The French approach to integration is one of three basic models in Europe, which has faced large-scale non-European immigration only in the postwar era.

Germany and Austria pursued a now largely discredited "guest worker" policy that was based on the notion that immigrants were temporary laborers who would eventually go home. But the guest workers did not go home, and their European-born children have begun demanding citizenship and equal rights.

While it is still difficult to become a citizen in Germany, there has been a strong wave of naturalizations in recent years and children born there to foreign parents now receive citizenship at birth.

Britain has followed a policy closer to that of the United States, extending citizenship to newcomers and encouraging strong ethnic communities. Immigrants arriving from Commonwealth countries in the 1950's and 1960's enjoyed immediate voting rights until Margaret Thatcher put an end to the practice in 1981. But the law created politically powerful immigrant communities.

France, too, has offered citizenship to its immigrants, but the process was slower, and many of the Algerians who arrived to work in the wake of their country's bitter war of independence against France were reluctant to take up French citizenship. Not until naturalizations became more common in the 1980's did immigrants and their adult children begin to develop political power.

The country has tried to discourage "ghettoization" by ignoring ethnic or religious differences and emphasizing French identity above all. Until the early 1980's, foreigners needed government approval to form associations.

But discrimination has flourished behind the oft-stated ideals, leaving immigrants and their French-born offspring increasingly isolated in government-subsidized apartment blocks to face high unemployment and dwindling hope for the future.

* Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

[Frannypaync]

November 7, 2005

10 Officers Shot as Riots Worsen in French Cities

By CRAIG S. SMITH

PARIS, Monday, Nov. 7 - Rioters fired shotguns at the police in a working-class suburb of Paris on Sunday, wounding 10 officers as the country's fast-spreading urban unrest escalated dangerously. Just hours earlier, President Jacques Chirac called an emergency meeting of top security officials and promised increased police pressure to confront the violence.

"The republic is completely determined to be stronger than those who want to sow violence or fear," Mr. Chirac said at a news conference in the courtyard of Élysée Palace after meeting with his internal security council. "The last word must be from the law."

But the violence, which has become one of the most serious challenges to governmental authority here in nearly 40 years, showed no sign of abating, and Sunday was the first day that police officers had been wounded by gunfire in the unrest. More than 3,300 vehicles have been destroyed, along with dozens of public buildings and private businesses, since the violence began.

"This is just the beginning," said Moussa Diallo, 22, a tall, unemployed French-African man in Clichy-sous-Bois, the working-class Parisian suburb where the violence started Oct. 27. "It's not going to end until there are two policemen dead."

He was referring to the two teenage boys, one of Mauritanian origin and the other of Tunisian origin, whose accidental deaths while hiding from the police touched off the unrest, reflecting longstanding anger among many immigrant families here over joblessness and other hardships. Mr. Diallo did not say whether he had taken part in the vandalism.

On Saturday night alone, the tally in the rioting reached a peak of 1,300 vehicles burned, stretching into the heart of Paris, where 35 vehicles were destroyed, and touching a dozen other cities across the country.

Fires were burning in several places on Sunday night and hundreds of youths were reported to have clashed with the police in Grigny, a southern suburb of Paris where the shooting took place. On Saturday night, a car was rammed into the front of a McDonald's restaurant in the town.

"We have 10 policemen that were hit by gunfire in Grigny, and two of them are in the hospital," Patrick Hamon, a national police spokesman, said Monday morning.

He said one of the officers hospitalized had been hit in the neck, the other in the leg, but added that neither wound was considered life-threatening.

Rampaging youths have attacked the police and property in cities as far away as Toulouse and Marseille and in the resort towns of Cannes and Nice in the south, Lille in the north and Strasbourg to the east.

In Évreux, 60 miles west of Paris, shops, businesses, a post office and two schools were destroyed, along with at least 50 vehicles, in Saturday night's most concentrated attacks. Five police officers and three firefighters were injured in clashes with young rioters, a national police spokesman said.

Despite help from thousands of reinforcements, the police appeared powerless to stop the mayhem. As they apply pressure in one area, the attacks slip away to another.

On Sunday, a gaping hole exposed a charred wooden staircase of a smoke-blackened building in the historic Marais district of Paris, where a car was set ablaze the previous night. Florent Besnard, 24, said he and a friend had just turned into the quiet Rue Dupuis when they were passed by two running youths. Within seconds, a car farther up the street was engulfed in flames, its windows popping and tires exploding as the fire spread to the building and surrounding vehicles.

"I think it's going to continue," said Mr. Besnard, who is unemployed.

The attack angered people in the neighborhood, which includes the old Jewish quarter and is still a center of Jewish life in the city. "We escaped from Romania with nothing and came here and worked our fingers to the bone and never asked for anything, never complained," said Liliane Zump, a woman in her 70's, shaking with fury on the street outside the scarred building.

While the arson is more common than in the past, it has become a feature of life in the working-class suburbs, peopled primarily by North African and West African immigrants and their French-born children.
Unemployment in the neighborhoods is double and sometimes triple the 10 percent national average, while incomes are about 40 percent lower.

While everyone seems to agree that the latest violence was touched off by the deaths of the teenagers last week, the unrest no longer has much to do with the incident.

"It was a good excuse, but it's fun to set cars on fire," said Mohamed Hammouti, a 15-year-old boy in Clichy-sous-Bois, sitting Sunday outside the gutted remnants of a gymnasium near his home. Like many people interviewed, he denied having participated in the violence.

Most people said they sensed that the escalation of the past few days had changed the rules of the game: besides the number of attacks, the level of destruction has grown sharply, with substantial businesses and public buildings going down in flames. Besides the gunfire on Sunday, residents of some high-rise apartment blocks have been throwing steel boccie balls and improvised explosives at national riot police officers patrolling below.

In the Parisian suburb of Aubervilliers early Sunday, with smoke hanging in the air and a helicopter humming overhead, a helmeted police officer in a flak jacket carried a soft drink bottle gingerly away from where it had landed near he and his colleagues moments before. The bottle, half-filled with a clear liquid and nails, had failed to explode.

Teenagers in neighboring Clichy-sous-Bois said they had seen young men preparing similar devices with acid and aluminum foil. "They make a huge bang," said Sofiane Belkalem, 13.

The police on Sunday discovered what they described as a firebomb factory in a building in Évry, south of Paris, in which about 150 bombs were being constructed, a third of them ready to use. Six minors were arrested.

Many politicians have warned that the unrest may be coalescing into an organized movement, citing Internet chatter that is urging other poor neighborhoods across France to join in. But no one has emerged to take the lead like Daniel Cohn-Bendit, known as Danny the Red, did during the violent student protests that rocked the French capital in 1968.

Though a majority of the youths committing the acts are Muslim, and of African or North African origin, the mayhem has yet to take on any ideological or religious overtones. Youths in the neighborhoods say second-generation Portuguese immigrants and even some children of native French have taken part.

In an effort to stop the attacks and distance them from Islam, France's most influential Islamic group issued a religious edict, or fatwa, on Sunday condemning the violence. "It is formally forbidden for any Muslim seeking divine grace and satisfaction to participate in any action that blindly hits private or public property or could constitute an attack on someone's life," the fatwa said, citing the Koran and the teachings of Muhammad.

Young people in the poor neighborhoods incubating the violence have consistently complained that police harassment is mainly to blame. "If you're treated like a dog, you react like a dog," said Mr. Diallo of Clichy-sous-Bois, whose parents came to France from Mali decades ago.

The youths have singled out the French interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, complaining about his zero-tolerance anticrime drive and dismissive talk. (He famously called troublemakers in the poor neighborhoods "lowlifes.")

But Mr. Sarkozy has not wavered, and after suffering initial isolation within the government, with at least one minister openly criticizing him, the government has closed ranks around him. Mr. Chirac, who is under political and popular pressure to stop the violence, said Sunday that those responsible would face arrest and trial, echoing earlier vows by Mr. Sarkozy. More than 500 people have been arrested, some as young as 13.

The government response is as much a test between Mr. Sarkozy and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, both of whom want to succeed Mr. Chirac as president, as it is a test between the government and disaffected youths.

Mr. Villepin, a former foreign minister, has focused on a more diplomatic approach, consulting widely with community leaders and young second-generation immigrants to come up with a promised "action plan" that he said would address frustrations in the underprivileged neighborhoods.

He has released no details of the plan.
If the damage escalates and sympathy for the rioters begins to fray, Mr. Sarkozy could well emerge the politically stronger of the two.
Ariane Bernard contributed reporting for this article.

• Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

[Inonanialry]

French riots continue despite curfew threat

By Tom Heneghan

Ignoring the government's threat of a curfew, youths rioted for the 12th night in France, torching more than 800 vehicles around the country and injuring four police, the Interior Ministry said on Tuesday.

The nightly protests against racism and unemployment dropped markedly in the greater Paris region, where violence had escalated to the point of shooting at police, but continued unabated in other parts of France, a ministry statement showed.

The renewed violence followed a warning by Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin that he would take a firm line against lawbreakers, including reinforcements for police and curfews not seen here since the Algerian war of 1954-1962.

Villepin's cabinet was due to meet on Tuesday to approve the new measures. A town east of Paris imposed its own curfew on minors on Monday evening and another to the west of the capital organized citizen patrols to help the police.

"Wherever it is necessary, prefects will be able to impose a curfew," Villepin said, referring to the senior officials responsible for security in departments around the country.

The prime minister urged citizens to pitch in to fight the violence, which began after the accidental electrocution of two youths fleeing the police near Paris and spiraled into nightly hit-and-run attacks on cars, buses, shops and schools.

"It's important to mobilize everyone to send out a message of calm and control," he said on TF1 television. "Residents, neighbours, parents -- anyone who can help restore calm, especially among the young, can do useful work."

The Interior Ministry said in a statement that 814 vehicles were torched overnight, a drop from 1,408 the previous night. The number of injured police officers also fell sharply from 36 on Sunday night to four
overnight. Some 143 rioters were detained.

NO TROOPS FOR THE SUBURBS

Villepin said 1,500 police and gendarmes would be brought in to back up the 8,000 officers already deployed in areas hit by unrest. He also promised to accelerate urban renewal programs.

But he dismissed growing calls for army intervention, saying: "We have not reached that point."

The opposition Socialists said Villepin had not done enough to give hope to those people in areas hit by the unrest, which has involved poor whites as well as French-born citizens of Arab or African origin complaining of racism and unemployment.

"Beyond the necessary calls for order, what was missing in the prime minister's address was a social dimension, a message and precise commitments toward the people of these areas in difficulty," the Socialist

Party said in a statement.

In Toulouse, youths set fire to a bus and 21 cars, police said. At least two cars were set ablaze near Lille and two more in Strasbourg, Reuters reporters said.

Police said 14 cars were set alight in the Yvelines district west of Paris and 17 in Seine-Saint-Denis north of the capital, home to many Arab and African immigrants where the unrest began.

On Monday, a man died after being beaten on Friday in the northern Paris suburb of Stains.

The conservative government has struggled to formulate a response that could halt the unrest, which was sparked by frustration among ethnic minorities over racism, unemployment and harsh treatment by police.

A youth who was badly burned when his two friends were electrocuted in an electricity substation they took refuge in called for calm in a statement read by his lawyer.

"All this violence is not good because it won't bring back my friends. It's better that it stops," the 17-year-old said.

The violence has prompted warnings that the unrest could damage investment and tourism in France.

The U.S. embassy in Paris issued a new warning on Monday to Americans traveling in France to be careful after Sunday night's violence in which three schools and two churches were attacked.

(Additional reporting by Eric Faye in Paris)

Copyright © 2005 Reuters Limited.

[GentlieGant]

French riots continue despite curfew threat

By Tom Heneghan

Ignoring the government's threat of a curfew, youths rioted for the 12th night in France, torching more than 800 vehicles around the country and injuring four police, the Interior Ministry said on Tuesday.

The nightly protests against racism and unemployment dropped markedly in the greater Paris region, where violence had escalated to the point of shooting at police, but continued unabated in other parts of France, a ministry statement showed.

New York City has traditionally one of the best places in the world regarding job creation, ethnic integration and socilal mobilty: the essential ingrediants to (in my opinion) a healthy and growing city.

I wish we would hear/see more "substantive" issues being addressed in this mayoral campaign.

I have been to France and lived for a short time in a small suburban community outside Paris: I remember seeing these areas. It has been a smoldering cauldren for many years. But I believe the government of France to be higly enlightened and have done, and continue to do, all that is huminly possible with an antractable problem.

[NowFloabDow]

Class Delineation + Unemployment + Youth is a tough combo to quell.

These kids have nothing to do, and a lot of time to do it in. They believe that they are being mistreated and looked down apon, a sure recipie for revolt whether it is true or not.

I can understand if these kids had been beaten up, but the fact that they got killed because they ran away as the root of this rioting is one of the dumbest things I have ever heard of.

YES they might have been treated poorly (roughed up) if caught, but blaming the cops for something they did not do.....This was a riot that was waiting for anything to touch it off.


So what can they do? they can impose curfiews, but that would incite a militant state. The perfect "Us vs. Them" for the youths to get into and be exploited by those "leaders" that simply want to use their discontent to build their own power.

We are such friggin primitive critters sometimes. As intelligent as we are, we are still so influenced by the hormones and instincts that run through us.

[wmzeto]

I have a friend who is from France and is mixed race. Although she grew up in a fairly well-to-do family, she says racisim is rampant in France. That combined with the general anti-muslim atmosphere must make people pretty frustrated.

In the meantime, if they keep burning cars in France, they will become the leader in cutting greenhouse emissions in Europe. So, in a way, they come out ahead in all of this.

[Trissinas]

Lots of great posts / links on the "uprising" in France (to label this merely as "riots" seems to misinterpret what is going down):

http://www.andrewsullivan.com/

One such post (my emphasis added):

http://www.preoccupations.org/2005/1...h_repub_1.html

The Sixth Republic?


What is happening in France? A friend of mine who lives in Paris emails me:Just got back to Paris here from Siberia and I'm astonished to find myself in the midst of mounting political violence, whose peak it seems is as yet some way off. For eleven nights in a row ever increasing numbers of cars have been torched in the suburbs of major French cities — and most spectacularly among these, Paris — in eloquent and photogenic protest at the appalling lives these suburbs generate for their almost exclusively immigrant populations. The French philosophy of excluding any but the monied and native, or very monied and foreign, from the centre of their lovely towns has an obvious British counterpart in Oxford. [We both know Oxford.] What is exciting about the present riots is:

a) that they are genuinely political and, so far as I can see, legitimate: the inhabitants of these suburbs are burning their own cars, schools and possessions (and not, so far, people) because they (rightly) believe them to be emblematic of all that their situations trap them to: crime, joblessness, helplessness, voicelessness, boredom, alienation and the awful horror of grotesque concrete tower-blocks. They are political in Plato's sense: of ceasing to fight for space within a pre-existing and deviant order, and instead going to the outside and forcing that order to reform.

b) they are well organised: the targets are apposite, and discipline among the activists remarkably strong (witness 5000 car burnings and just one or two isolated, and possibly unconnected, personal attacks).

c) they are going to continue, one suspects, for as long as the political establishment presumes to deliberately and systematically misunderstand why they are occurring. At the moment, the governmental call is for 'above all, the return of good order'; scant mention is yet to be made of even the possibility of making some effort to correct the absurd embedded racism of France's so-called meritocratic power-structures, whose professed egalitarian ethic could not be further from practical truth. Headlines moronically blurt out: 'how long will this go on?' as if it is the temper tantrum of an infant, not the organised scream for help of an entire and dismembered portion of society. Senior ministers have been threatening longer jail-terms of all things, in blackly comic, American justice style.

d) the immigrants may soon be joined in the pillage by a host of left-wing organisations. Since the riots of 1968 made the error of not going far enough and thus resulting in minimal long-term change, there is implicit consensus that for this action to be justified it must be pursued to its natural extreme: all-out civil disobedience, until the government falls. While official opinion seems to be that this political activity will quickly run its course, there is evidence that it is steadily mounting and indeed heading from outside the city into the centre. I have noticed in my very central quartier here that there has been a steady and ominous thickening on street corners and among shadows of determined looking folk from the banlieues (it reminds me a little of Hitchcock's The Birds). I look forward to their expressing themselves, with appropriate respect for human life, through the media of bonfires and chaos.

So anyhow, this is just to let you know that France is much closer to gaining its sixth republic than anything in the western media is likely to have you think. The unrest may indeed go international (Denmark has already seen the first glimmerings of revolt). I just hope it doesn't lose its focus and political rigour as the coming weeks unfold, for its efficacy relies on the precision of its message: we will no longer tolerate living in a political and economic concentration camp. I had thought to quote from Ed's email more selectively, but there's too much food for thought in what he says — and I share his reactions to the French Establishment's stance. In another email, Ed adds, 'It seems to me to be bad journalistic practice to emphasise isolated incidents of personal attacks when it is by no means clear that these attacks show any signs of having intensified with this wave of social protest in which attacks on vehicles and so on have clearly gone up by several orders of magnitude …'

***

[inofindy]

But I believe the government of France to be higly enlightened and have done, and continue to do, all that is huminly possible with an antractable problem.

Enlightened? Did not the "government of France" create the separate and un-equal conditions under which the French Muslim population is forced to live and which are now being acted against?

(I can't believe I'm turning to the philosophy of GWB to argue this, but ...)

If one believes that the deepest yearning of a human being is to achieve a state of freedom, then what is going down in France is completely in line with that belief.

Will it be ugly? Of course. Will it be successful? Who knows.

[soonahonsefalh]

A broader perspective ...

http://www.ashbrook.org/publicat/gue...g/ramadan.html


The Riots of Ramadan

Guest Commentary
November 2005

by: John von Heyking


Alexis de Tocqueville had the French state in mind when he worried about the paternal power of the democratic state. He considered civil associations as the salve that could heal the pathologies of the democratic soul, including its individualism and its tendency to seek salvation in world-transforming ideologies. Tocqueville’s teaching helps us to understand the impact of the riots in France, both for their impact on France’s domestic politics but also for international politics. Domestically, the riots underline the difficulty the French state has in integrating up to three generations of Algerian Muslims, who remember the brutality of their struggle for independence. French statism, seen as the guardian of le nation, in fact undermines the art of civil association that makes integration so necessary. The French response to the riots will have implications for the war on terrorism. For instance, Ahmed Ressam, the so-called Millennium bomber who had planned to blow up LAX but was stopped at a border crossing at Washington state, belonged to an Algerian terrorist cell in Montreal. Just last week the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) broke up an Algerian terrorist cell in Toronto.

Finally, the Center for Strategic and International Studies reported recently that Algerians make up the largest contingent of foreign insurgents in Iraq. France’s Algerian and Islamist powder keg has exploded and the situation and the regime’s response illuminate some of the deepest fault lines of the modern age.

Integrating Immigrants and Civil Associations

The majority of commentators blame the riots on the staggeringly high unemployment (as high as 35% in some areas) among the immigrant populations. However, the high unemployment is more symptomatic of deeper political and economic problems that the political class has been ineffective in addressing and understanding. For instance, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin’s longstanding economic policy has been to use the state to provide jobs while setting up trade barriers to protect French companies. Of course, this policy is self-contradictory and typifies the sclerosis of the French political class and perhaps of the Fifth Republic itself. With unemployment at ten percent for non-immigrants, the French economy is too sluggish and dragged down by the welfare state to generate jobs.

The government’s policy of housing these immigrants in public housing projects compounds the problem. Americans will be familiar with the "projects" that originated with Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society programs and with the various criminal and social pathologies they created. The lack of private ownership and the lack of self-respect that accompanies it produce the conditions for these rioters. Nicholas Sarkozy was criticized for labeling the rioters "scums" because he was supposedly insensitive to the problems caused by their unemployment. To his mind, they are scums because they destroy their own communities. The press has interviewed several shop-owners whose shops were attacked and who agree with Sarkozy. However, in another sense they are not destroying their own communities because their communities are not their own. This is why one local community leader explained that the ideals of the French Revolution—liberty, equality, and fraternity—have not trickled down to them. With no sense of ownership of their own communities, the rioters view themselves as dependents or wards of the state. The projects were meant to enable immigrant populations to practice self-government—Tocqueville’s civil associations. Amir Taheri compares this system to the "millet" system of the old Ottoman Empire where Christian and Jewish communities ran their own affairs under the more-or-less tolerant umbrella of Islamic officialdom. However, with rioters pelting their own imams with rocks, it is clear that they reject even this level of association with the broader French culture. Therefore, the "root causes" argument once again fails to account for their lack of pride in themselves. The essence of mass man, that is to say those who lack a sense of their own personality, gets enacted through such acts of violence. The violence might "express" desperation, anger, or lack of self-ownership, but it has no strategic or political goal. Villepin’s attempts to engage in "dialogue" with the rioters might constitute salutary window-dressing of a benevolent government policy, but it is at best a stop-gap measure that has come too late because his government was too timid in stamping out the violence.

Global Islamists as Tocquevillian Individualists

Beneath the problem of Muslims in France is the deeper crisis that contemporary Islam finds in defining itself, especially among Muslims in Western countries. Olivier Roy, author of Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah, convincingly argues that Muslims, especially those in Europe, have a "de-territorialized" sense of themselves. In Tocqueville’s terms, they are those hyper-individualists whose traditions have been shorn by the forces of democracy and who lack a sense of place and of themselves.

Muslims have historically practiced their religion with a strong sense of place and local rituals. This is why decisions based on the Shari’ah often reflect local circumstances, whether the Pakistani tribal imam who rules female adulterers be stoned or the British Internet imam who merely advises the biological father of an illegitimate child has the moral obligation to support that child. In addition to drawing different judgments from ostensibly the same Shari’ah, the tribal imam has authority over an identifiable community in a specific location, while Western imams must redefine what Islam means because they can no longer take the moral and religious traditions of their people for granted. Their community, such as it is, is too nebulous and ill-defined to have common features beyond allegiance to something called, "Islam."

For Roy, political Islam is very much a modern phenomenon because it is driven by masses of displaced or deterritorialized Muslims who have left their traditions and are searching for an "essential" Islam. Roy notices a strongly individualistic streak among them. For instance, he observes that 9/11 bomber Mohammad Atta’s suicide note contained significantly more references to himself than to Allah, which he takes signifies a modern obsession with the self. The rioters are indeed Islamists, as evidenced by their frequent chant, "Allahou Akbar!" — "God is great!" Of course, it is difficult if not impossible to identify the "essence" of a 1,500 year old tradition. Ironically, Islamists do what Westerners do when the latter express their "Orientalism" in reducing that complex tradition to a few slogans such as, "Islam is a religion of peace" and "Islam is a religion of war." Islamists paradoxically, and perversely, treat themselves as "the Other" in reducing their own tradition to some kind of "pure Islam." Doing so enables them to identify (and destroy) those deemed apostate but also because Muslims can no longer take their religion for granted as something connected with the soil. Their traditions have been uprooted over the past several generations, which contributes to a radicalized sense of identity politics.

Sarkozy and Villepin

This returns us to the l’affaire Villepin-Sarkozy and the Tocquevillian difficulty of creating civil associations with a paternal state. The style and the substance of both politicians illuminate the limitations the Fifth Republic is under in dealing with this crisis to its legitimacy. It is no wonder that these riots have been compared to the riots of 1968, the last time the Republic’s legitimacy was seriously questioned.

In terms of style, l’affaire Villepin-Sarkozy is a contest between a political outsider (Sarkozy) and an insider disguised as an outsider (Villepin) which helps to understand their respective approaches to the rioters. Sarkozy, whose full name is Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sárközy de Nagy-Bócsa, was born to a Hungarian father who earned French citizenship by serving in the Foreign Legion, and mother whose father was a Sephardic Jew and who raised three sons after his father abandoned them, and then went on to a distinguished career as a lawyer. It is no wonder Sarkozy comes across as an American-style politician because he embraces the principles of individual responsibility and admires people who overcome adversity and find success. His law and order approach to the riots is consistent with these views.

As a protégé of Jacques Chirac, Dominique de Villepin is very much an establishment figure. The "de" in his surname suggests nobility but his family gained that title through the practice of redorer son blazon or "to re-gild one’s coat of arms," whereby wealthy commoners enrich aristocratic families in exchange for the prestige bought by an aristocratic title. His fake aristocratic origin matches his fake posture as an ethnic outsider. Villepin was born and spent the first few years of his life in Morocco which he claims gives him special insight into Islam. His knowledge of Islam was displayed when he has the imams and community leaders attempt to "dialogue" with the rioters who responded with stones.

Integrating Muslims Using the Paternal State

Both Sarkozy and Villepin in the past have attempted to reach out to Muslim communities through various affirmative action programs or what Villepin calls "Republican cadets," where immigrants from disadvantaged neighborhoods receive state support to train for police and fire services. The two disagree over the manner of integrating Muslim populations into the Republic, however.
Sarkozy received favorable reviews among some Americans for his criticism of secularism and his views, expressed in his book, La République, les religions, l’espérance, that the French republic needs religious voices informing public debate. However, Sarkozy’s approach to creating this pluralistic public square is Gaullist in making the French state the primary guarantor of the French nation. While he rejects the 1905 law that separated church and state, and established laïcité for the republic, he established the French Council on the Muslim Religion as a way of regulating the imams. One of its wings issued a fatwa against the rioters, but it is likely the rioters will view this government-sponsored fatwa as even less legitimate than the imams who marched on Villepin’s prompting. Instead of making a Madisonian commitment to public pluralism of religions, Sarkozy’s approach would find its counterpart in English-speaking liberalism in David Hume’s support for a Church establishment to contain sectarian enthusiasms.

For his part, Villepin supports the 1905 laïcitŕ law. He told Canada’s National Post before hurrying back home to deal with the riots that France and Quebec, Canada’s most secularized province, "share the same humanistic vision of the world." Even so, both agree that Islam needs to be managed and Villepin merely chooses other devices to achieve this end. He established agencies to provide oversight on private foundations (some of them foreign with ties to the Middle East) that would support and regulate imams.

Governmental agencies charged with regulating contracts and foreign money transfers would keep tabs on them, while the government has established various "community groups" organized by social workers to regulate the affairs on the street. In other words, Sarkozy seeks to regulate Islam by having the state create a "French Islam" while Villepin seeks to regulate Islam indirectly through the welfare state and regulation of the finances of associations.

The approach of neither is palatable from the perspective of the rioters and from the broader Muslim community. Villepin offers them two illusions. He offers them the economic illusion of jobs from a state that cannot afford to create jobs. He offers the political illusion by assuming their problems can be addressed with "social justice," that is, redistributive economics. His support of the 1905 secularism law means at least publicly, Muslims must drop their Muslim identity. Villepin offers social justice but insults them. Sarkozy ostensibly offers greater recognition by allowing Islam into the public square, but his managed pluralism delegitimizes those imams who are brought closer to the state than others. The state, not their communities, legitimates them.

Yet, Sarkozy’s embrace of the ethics of individual responsibility at least offers those communities a method to regain their pride. It may be a coincidence that now the rest of the French government, including President Chirac, are talking tough on crime (though their actions may tell a different story) as Sarkozy did at the beginning. French public opinion certainly refuses to tolerate the rioters, and the riots may transform French politics in a manner similar to the way the murder of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh moved the Dutch to reject the postmodernist multiculturalism that ruled over it since World War Two. Sarkozy’s bellicose speech may or may not inflame the rioters, but there are clues that the broader immigrant community has responded positively to it. As one inhabitant told the Washington Post, "’We don’t have the American dream here,’ said Rezzoug, as he surveyed the clusters of young men. ‘We don’t even have the French dream here.’" "American dream" might refer to the rap culture that many youths are drawn to, but it may point to something deeper.

Self-Governing Individuals in the Fifth Republic?

Underneath Sarkozy’s Gaullist views on state and society and his "hard-line" approach to the riots is the closest the French have to providing that American dream in the sense of a pluralistic public square constituted by self-governing individuals and associations. Sarkozy is as close to Tocqueville as French government has, and for the French to resolve this problem, for their sake and ours, they will have to listen to Tocqueville’s critique of democratic paternalism which their state typifies, and to his advocacy of civil associations. Tocqueville’s praise of civil associations derives from his assessment of the democratic soul, which he examined in 1830s America and finds important similarities with today’s deterritorialized Islam: both find themselves reconstructing their sense of selfhood amidst fractured traditions and both are highly individualistic. Tocqueville thought civil associations addressed this fractured sense of self because they enable citizens to practice at the arts of self-government on a small scale. Villepin’s reliance on private foundations, and Sarkozy’s rejection of laïcité, would address this aspect if they were not so tied to statist ideology and practice. Even so, Tocqueville thought civil associations had a way of moderating sectarian passions because it forces participants to see the consequences of their ideas in action. Bad ideas get thrown out by those who have to live with their consequences. Of course, such moderation depends on the ability of individuals to take ownership of their communities, which may no longer be realistic for them under the French regime.

French politics has historically been characterized by theatrics, and today Villepin’s illusions find their counterpart in the Islamist slogans chanted by the rioters. The strategy of both Villepin and Sarkozy has been to use a version of Tocqueville’s civil association teaching to integrate France’s Muslims.

However, Sarkozy’s French Council on the Muslim Religion is statist and lacks legitimacy among Muslims, while Villepin’s laïcité, which is also the French establishment’s laïcité, insults Muslims. Sarkozy understands Tocqueville’s insight that democracy needs religion, but undermines his own efforts. Villepin seems more willing to encourage associations, but fails to understand them in the context of the democratic soul. The failings of both illuminate the limitations of the French political culture. Sarkozy’s muted representation of an ethic of individual responsibility possibly offers more to immigrant communities, but they will reject his message insofar as years of welfare dependency has made them nearly incapable of practicing such responsibility.

The riots of Ramadan strike at the basis of the French state and its political culture with possibly greater significance than the 1968 riots. Other European governments are worried about the riots spreading to their countries because they too would face a similar crisis of legitimacy. The threat to European security would, of course, draw in the United States, who already has a problem with deterritorialized foreign insurgents in Iraq. The riots of Ramadan constitute a revolutionary moment for Europe, and people in other parts of the world will hope the revolution gets contained.


John von Heyking is an associate professor of political science at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada.

[Pvfcadbh]

and then there is this ...

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/008897.php

Postings on Muslim weblogs indicate that the riots are not spontaneous outpourings of rage, but carefully planned endeavors. Some revealed not only the planning involved in the riots, which have now swept all across France and have spread also to Denmark, Belgium and Germany, but also the Islamic supremacist goal behind them.

One wrote: “The cops are petrified of us, everything must burn, starting Monday, the operation ‘Midnight Sun’ starts, tell everyone else, rendezvous for Momo and Abdul in Zone 4 ... jihad Islamia Allah Akhbar.” Another added: “You don’t really think that we’re going to stop now? Are you stupid? It will continue, non-stop. We aren’t going to let up. The French won’t do anything and soon, we will be in the majority here.”

Meanwhile, the Union for Islamic Organizations of France, which has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, has issued a fatwa declaring: “It is formally forbidden to any Muslim seeking divine grace and satisfaction to participate in any action that blindly hits private or public property or could constitute an attack on someone’s life.” There is a strange ambiguity in this, recalling that of the CAIR-backed American fatwa condemning attacks on innocent civilians without defining “innocent”: what constitutes attacking “blindly”? Is a focused, targeted attack somehow acceptable?

[enurihent]

and then there is this ...

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/008897.php

Yes, the government of France (i believe) is Enlightened, and doing all that is humanly possible in what if fact is and intractable (subject domain of unlimited complexity) problem.

I am busy reading your posts, and can not reply any further now. But I lived near those towns (If only for six weeks) and had many friends in that exact area. Most of what I have read so far is "totally out-of-touch" with what the core issues are.

I will try do get back to yoy- but am deeply saddened by what is happening in france as we speak.

[enrisaabsotte]

I have a friend who is from France and is mixed race. Although she grew up in a fairly well-to-do family, she says racisim is rampant in France. That combined with the general anti-muslim atmosphere must make people pretty frustrated.

In the meantime, if they keep burning cars in France, they will become the leader in cutting greenhouse emissions in Europe. So, in a way, they come out ahead in all of this.

Thing is, they are that way about EVERYBODY, so maybe they should feel flattered...

I am tooling with this on another website and one thing that was brought up that was interesting was this.

For an incident that happened where noone was beaten or hurt actively by the police (two kids licked the third rail), everyone seems to be up in arms about it. It looks like people were just waiting for some reason to react and these deaths, even though they were not directly caused by the police, were enough.

The thing that was brought up in addition to this was the weird way it all was handled. They have people THROWING MOLOTOV COCKTAILS and DESTROYING PUBLIC AND PRIVATE PROPERTY for TWO WEEKS and it is only now that they are saying "HEY! Don't make us start a curfew!!!!!".

You would think that they would stop the few radical ragers that were doing this FIRST, and THEN deal with apologizing later.

[Liskaspexia]

A few radical ragers, an ineffective government, lots of pissed off people with time on their hands AND the internet ...

What do you do with that combo??

[Sthjrderfida]

A few radical ragers, an ineffective government, lots of pissed off people with time on their hands AND the internet ...

What do you do with that combo??

I recently heard a visitor from the UK say: New York City is a town where even the slightest disapproving glance; will be readily met with drawn sword.

I guess thats what a "typical" new yorker might do with that combo. We - I hope - have better things to do with our time.

My best wishes to France for an end to the strife.

[movlabc]

A few radical ragers, an ineffective government, lots of pissed off people with time on their hands AND the internet ...

What do you do with that combo??

Give them all some reefer and let them talk it out at Taco Bell.

[wiweimeli]

A few radical ragers, an ineffective government, lots of pissed off people with time on their hands AND the internet ...

What do you do with that combo?? Declare war on some defenceless country, use the ensuing nationalist gestalt to rally the variously squabbling factions of the population and the ensuing national security fears as an excuse to crack down on the remaining dissenters.

It works for this country all the time. For a while at least.

[nakeseireo]

http://www.observer.com/homepage.asp

French Police, Muslims Pull Punches ... for Now

By: Richard Brookhiser

Americans should not take unseemly unsatisfaction from the spectacle of France’s riots. Oh, why not? Like a rotten mackerel by moonlight, the French leadership shines and stinks. Dominique de Villepin, with his pompadour and his potted biography of Napoleon; Jacques Chirac, protected only by the presidency from the slammer — these jewels in the crown of Gallic civilization thought they could earn the affection of their Muslim helots by truckling to Saddam Hussein: you’ll love us, even though you chop wood and haul water, because we take oil for food bribes.

But now, after more than a week of arson and uproar, it turns out that France’s Arabs don’t like France any more than we do. Now maybe Froggy knows what we feel like: we liberated them, and were rewarded by 60 years of ingratitude. They kissed Saddamite ass, and are being rewarded by son et lumiere.

All right, stop. If this goes on, there will be Jerry Lewis jokes. What, if we want to be thoughtful, is an American to think?

Americans have to get used to the notion of cities rotting from their periphery. Paris itself, from Sainte-Chapelle to the Pompidou Center, is safe, an urban ode to rationality: what Washington, D.C. might become in 500 years if it were a real place. The immigrant poor, and their children, are consigned to lower-class housing in the suburbs, which reflects the bastard aesthetic of Stalinism and Bauhaus. You’d riot too if you had to live in such ugly places.

Americans also have to get used to the relative calm of these riots, at least in the early stages. When the lid blows off here — and it is greatly to our shame that this should be so — people die. Fifty-five people were killed after the Rodney King verdict. Yet for 10 days what we saw from France was burning stores, cars and buses. A crippled woman almost died in a firebombed bus, but she was carried out by the heroic driver. One person died on Monday. This is mild, not only by our norms, but by the standards of French history. How many thousands died in the Algerian rebellion, or the Paris Commune, or the June days? One must conclude (talk about squinting for silver linings) that both sides are pulling their punches.

It is easy to see why the cops should be pulling their punches. The establishment simply doesn’t know what to do. In the early going Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy talked about “zero tolerance” for “scum.” But the French government seems to have reflected that a policy of zero tolerance may require the use of maximum force. If you’re serious about zero, then you have to be willing to do anything. And how are you going to do that when the actions you refuse to tolerate are being committed by members of an ethnic minority that is edging towards one-tenth of the population, and a quarter of the country’s young people?

If the police or the army did what French rulers have done in the past, and what, with their instinct for riding a train of thought all the way to the end of the line they might still be capable of doing, what would be the result? The explosions of French history have long aftershocks.

Louis XIV made French Protestants second-class citizens — and Protestant Europe fought him and his heirs for a century. The French Revolution dethroned the Catholic Church — and some French Catholics didn’t get over it until Vichy. If the French state cracks down now, they may be cracking down on into the 22nd century.

France’s Arabs must be equally perplexed. One of them reportedly expressed the hope, as poignant as it is impossible, that his community should just be “left alone.” If they wanted to be left alone, then they could have stayed in Morocco, or wherever they or their parents came from. They didn’t, because those places were poor. To be left alone now that they are in France means being left permanently outside the mainstream of French life. When they are employed, they can do grunt work; when they’re not, they can lie in the safety net. A few lucky individuals may become soccer stars or super models; others will pursue local politics, the traditional permanent career of outsiders.

For the rest, being left alone will mean sitting in self-made Bantustans. Their street address may be in Clichy-sous-Bois, but their mental address will still be the North African village, or slum; except that it will be a village or slum surrounded by the inducements and frustrations — drugs, girls, advertising —of postmodern Western life. Bright lights, no city. Living in a hut, outside the candy store. Segregationist policies didn’t work in South Africa, when the rulers imposed them on the ruled; they won’t work in France, even if the ruled impose them on themselves.

So what are they doing in the streets? They are not numerous enough to rule the state (or not yet). They could, at a maximum, divvy it up, compelling the government to make their neighborhoods formally as insular as they are now in fact. Mostly they want attention, and to scare people. And then it’s back to square one, until the next riot. Maybe in some cave in Pakistan, Osama is plotting to blow up the Eiffel Tower. But these riots are less dramatic than 9/11, and more intractable.

What France mostly feels is the pathos of a former great power. The Italians, except for an outburst under Mussolini, wisely gave the game up centuries ago, and have devoted themselves to the arts, and the arts of living, the eye and the palette. But the French are still too close to —though very far from — Jena and the Marne; too close even to a showboat like de Gaulle. They might be fine, if they could perform a selective lobotomy. Stick the Arc de Triomphe and its pompous statuary in the Louvre, where it belongs. Write books; eat bread; learn Arabic. That is their future.

copyright © 2005 the new york observer, L.P.

[DoctorDeryOne]

November 13, 2005

A Very French Message From the Disaffected

By MARK LANDLER

PARIS, Nov. 11 - The last time France was convulsed by rioting as serious as the current bout - the student revolts of 1968 - the symbol of the insurrection was a paving stone, which the protesters dug out of the streets by the hundreds to hurl at the truncheon-wielding police officers.

This time around, it is a burning car, going up like a brandy-doused flambé or smoldering like a crushed cigarette.

More than 7,000 vehicles have been set ablaze since the civil unrest began in the suburbs of Paris on Oct. 27. The daily damage report posted by the French police is a car owner's nightmare: 502 burned on Friday night, 463 the previous night, 482 the night before that, and so on.

No other country in Europe immolates cars with the gusto and single-minded efficiency of France. Even during tranquil periods, an average of 80 vehicles per day are set alight somewhere in the country.

"Burning cars is rather typically French," said Michel Wieviorka, a French sociologist who has studied the phenomenon. "The last two weeks have been unusual, but it is more common than people realize."

The practice, he said, goes back to the end of the 1970's, when the suburbs began to seethe. Empty, parked cars made an inviting target for gangs of young men, nursing a grudge and hungry for attention.

"It is very easy and quite spectacular," Mr. Wieviorka said. "Set a fire and the whole world watches you. It calls the attention of the media, and when the media comes, the politicians follow."

Though it is difficult to pinpoint the incident that set off the trend, the city where it first became an urban sport is Strasbourg, the Alsatian capital and home of the European Parliament. Since the 1980's, gangs there have marked New Year's Eve by hunting cars with lighters and cans of gasoline.

Today, the image of a car in flames is emblematic of France's restive suburbs, with their disaffected populations, predominantly French of African descent. Far-right political groups use the pictures to dramatize the supposed dangers of immigration.

But wrecking cars speaks to more than a simple urge to deface property or demand attention. Cars offer - and symbolize - mobility, Mr. Wieviorka said, something the residents of these projects lack in French society.

In Grigny, a working-class suburb south of Paris where the clashes between residents and the police turned violent, the sense of confinement is not only psychological but physical. The housing project is set off from other neighborhoods, with buildings that encircle windswept inner courtyards.

Last Sunday night, youths used blazing cars to form a barrier against the police. Several of them said they only singled out vehicles that belonged to people who they believed had connections to the police. Besides, said a 26-year-old man of Senegalese descent who gave his name as Djibri, "What else are you going to burn?" It is less harmful than attacking people, he noted.

In truth, burned cars are a fraction of the cost of the mayhem. The French insurance industry estimates the total damage so far at $235 million, of which only $23 million was damage to vehicles. As Anne Morrier, a spokeswoman for the French insurers' federation, pointed out,

"There aren't the most beautiful cars in these neighborhoods."

With Renaults and Peugeots being turned into blackened carcasses every night, the French auto industry cannot be thrilled. But the carmakers have said little.

"This is a complicated social issue," said Isabelle Cros, a spokeswoman for PSA Peugeot Citroën. "The car is merely an object."

• Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company