Electrocuted French Youths Spark Riots

"Spark" riots? Heh heh.

So, the kids are mad cause some idiots fled and got themselves electrocuted. I'm waiting to see how this is the fault of the police.I'm glad to see the rest of the world's youths are as irresponsible for their actions as ours.

Priceless headline though. The Onion could have used that one, word for word

And now, the first death has happened.
Apparently, the old guy was trying to put out a trash can fire when he was beaten to death. This stuff is still going on. Why isn't anyone talking about it here?

GOod question.
Looks as thought the French Goverment is trying to give the Bush administration some competition in the incompetence in dealing with a crisis department.

Not disturbing, only expected. The repressive, racist and capitalist Western systems are being assaulted by the peoples they tried to integrate to act as cheap labor and cannon fodder.

And Devin wins the cheap Marxist cliched rhetoric of the week award.
Best Devin rant since he hoped that Terrorists would attack states that voted for Bush a year ago.
BTW last I looked the kind of economic system that Devin seems to favor from the above statement sure as hell worked great in The Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and China..which has pretty much abandoned it.
I don't know if Devin A. Really means this tired 1930's Communist Party crap
B. Is suffering from a bad case of NYC Radical Chic or
C. Is just trying to stir the pot.
And I have noticied that Devin seems to get off on any kind of mob violence. Part of his playing the Revolutionary, I suppose.
As one regular once said, it's fascinating how the guy who can write so well and intelligently about movies can make such insane statments in the politics section.

Overlord, the only sense I can make of your post is that you're itching to spew something racist. There's not one racial profile involved, first of all. There are North Africans and Arabs, which are different people. Secondly, why would one expect that all the oppressed minorities would rise up as one? The Western capitalist system carefully sows discord between various racial groups. At any rate, France's history with Northern Africa makes any situation with people from that area potentially more explosive.

What I think you were trying to say is "MUSLIMS ARE EVIL!", which is just the sort of racist blather I tend to expect from the right. But even then you're coming from a completely decontextualized place. Remember, French schools banned Muslim head scarfs. As with many insular European nations, France has been hostile to immigrants.

The profile the rioters of today really have in common is youth. These are people trapped between their immigrant parents who don't see themselves as French and a French society that doesn't see the youth as belonging. But of course, hating young people doesn't fit in as well with certain idealogies as hating people for their race or religion.

And dudalb, I beg you - format your posts in ways to make them readable. I assume your posts remain, as always, ignorant statements filled with poor spelling and laughably bizarre use of capitalization, but I can't tell because you write them in some sort of haiku format.

Oh, and no, I am not terribly disturbed by this because it's mostly property damage. It's terrible when anyone dies, but the only reason I can imagine why you are disturbed by this as opposed to, say, the endless killing in Africa, is that these are the posessions of white people being endangered.

They didn't just ban head scarfs, they banned all religious symbols in public schools. There is a slight difference.

That said, there's an extreme amount of racism towards North Africans, along with a disrespect for young people in France. What they've created is a class with no hope of success. Employers discriminate based on if you live in the banueil, or in Paris proper, as most North Africans can't afford to live in the city. Even if you could afford it, many renters in downtown Paris won't rent to the North African community. It's disturbing that this classism has been going on for as long as it has, but this really is the upper class getting what they deserved.

It's like The 400 Blows meets The Battle of Algiers over there.

Devin agrees with Pat Buchanan

Paris Burning: How Empires End

by Patrick J. Buchanan
Posted Nov 7, 2005

The Romans conquered the barbarians—and the barbarians conquered Rome.

So it goes with empires. And comes now the penultimate chapter in the history of the empires of the West.

This is the larger meaning of the ritual murder of Theo Van Gogh in Holland, the subway bombings in London, the train bombings in Madrid, the Paris riots spreading across France. The perpetrators of these crimes in the capitals of Europe are the children of immigrants who were once the colonial subjects of the European empires.

At this writing, the riots are entering their 12th night and have spread to Rouen, Lille, Marseille, Toulouse, Dijon, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Cannes, Nice. Thousands of cars and buses have been torched and several nursery schools fire-bombed. One fleeing and terrified woman was doused with gasoline and set ablaze.

The rioters are of Arab and African descent, and Muslim. While almost all are French citizens, they are not part of the French people. For never have they been assimilated into French culture or society. And some wish to remain who and what they are. They live in France but are not French.
The rampage began October 27 when two Arab youths, fleeing what they mistakenly thought was a police pursuit, leapt onto power lines and were electrocuted. The two deaths ignited the riots.

Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkozy, a candidate to succeed President Chirac, is said to have infuriated and inflamed the rioters. Before the rampage began, he promised “war without mercy” on crime in the teeming suburbs where unemployment runs at 20% and income is 40% below the national average. He has denounced the rioters as “scum” and “rabble.”

Like the urban riots in America in the 1960s, which the Kerner Commission blamed on “white racism,” Paris’s riots are being blamed on France’s failure to bring Islamic immigrants into the social and economic mainstream of the nation. Solutions being offered range from voting rights for non-citizens to affirmative action in hiring for the children of Third World immigrants.

To understand why this is unlikely to solve France’s crisis, consider how America succeeded, and often failed, in solving her own racial crisis.
While, as late as the 1950s, black Americans were not integrated fully into our economy or society, they had been assimilated into American culture.

They worshipped the same God, spoke the same language, had endured the same Depression and war, listened to the same music and radio, watched the same TV shows, laughed at the same comedians, went to the same movies, ate the same foods, read the same books, magazines and newspapers, and went to schools where, even when they were segregated, they learned the same history.

We were divided, but we were also one nation and one people. Black folks were as American as apple pie, having lived in our common land longer than almost every other ethnic group save Native Americans. And America had a history of having assimilated immigrants in the tens of millions from Europe.

But no European nation has ever assimilated a large body of immigrant peoples, let alone people of color. Moreover, the African and Islamic peoples pouring into Europe—there are 20 million there now—are, unlike black Americans, strangers in a new land, and millions wish to remain proud Algerians, Muslims, Moroccans.

These newcomers worship a different God and practice a faith historically hostile to Christianity, a traditionalist faith that is rising again and recoils violently from a secular culture saturated in sex.

Severed from the civilization and cultures of their parents, these Arab and Muslim youth may hold French citizenship and carry French passports, but they are no more French than Americans who live in Paris are French. Searching for a community to which they can truly belong, they gravitate to mosques where the imams, many themselves immigrants, teach and preach that the West is not their true home, but a civilization alien to their values and historically hostile to their nations and Islam.

The soaring Muslim population is a Fifth Column inside Europe.

Nevertheless, their numbers must grow. For not only do they have a higher birth rate than the native-born Europeans, no European nation, save Moslem Albania, has a birth rate (2.1 births per woman) that will enable it to endure for many more generations. The West is aging, shrinking, and dying.

Yet, to keep Europe’s economy growing and taxes coming in to fund the health and pension programs of Europe’s rising numbers of retired and elderly, Europe needs scores of millions of new workers. And Europe can only find them in the Third World.

Nor should Americans take comfort in France’s distress. By 2050, there will be 100 million Hispanics in the United States, half of them of Mexican ancestry, heavily concentrated in a Southwest most Mexicans still believe by right belongs to them.

Colonization of the mother countries by subject peoples is the last chapter in the history of empires—and the next chapter in the history of the West—that is now coming to a close.

Really? Buchanan is drawing distinctions between the U.S. civil rights struggle and the French riots. I'm guessing Devin would draw parallels. Buchanan is fear-mongering (This is the fall of Rome! The Dark Ages are upon us!) I doubt Devin feels much alarm at all.

France will be a-changin'. Can't speak for Dev, but I'm not going to jump to the conclusion that it will change for the worse.

The Empires are getting what they reaped no?

And Fear is being Mongered, but only by Buchanan.

It's the difference between saying "The Revolution is coming! Rejoice!" and "The Revolution is coming! We're all fucked!"

EDIT: For clarity, I'm much less certain than Buchanan that any real tumult is coming. This isn't the End of History or anything. The barbarians are not storming the gates... because the rioters aren't barbarians. My sum attitude on this is "Bunch of folk angry about being stuck in slums? Go figure. I would be too."

Bottomline is the reaping is happening and thats exactly what Devin is getting at.

If there are those who can twist this into fear mongering thats something else.

The current situation in France makes La Haine (Special Edition) look all the more prophetic.

I'm not sure whether there's a R1 DVD available.

Ding! That's what I keep trying to explain to people. It's a generation of people frustrated with their ill-defined place in their society.

The fact that they're Muslim is incidental, but the Right is spinning it otherwise. Do a Google for "Muslim insurrection in France" and you'll get a couple of articles talking about how Muslims are beginning a takeover in Europe (when the article isn't gloating about the French getting their "secular, open" society turned back on them).

If these were a bunch of white French kids, it'd be covered a lot differently. But the fact that they're Muslim and some of them look kinda black has the Right in a tizzy.

Still amazing when some people talk out of their asses without any understanding of a given situation.

I have to agree with Devin on that one.

Those youths revolted and rioting are the sons of the first disfranchised immigrants. Those ones, after being confined to a very delimited territory -a ghetto-, were denied any social standing whatsoever in the french community. Some of them turned to crime organizations, taking control of their own small community. It's the children of this generation who's out there. They had enough of being between the crap home and the society who made them citizen but yet can't tolerate them being anything but janitors.
The climate of racism in France was hidden, but damn well present. Some people just noticed. Just look for the votes for LePen's extreme right-wing party. Even cops from Algerian or Middle-East descent get discriminated by his own peers. so imagine anyone else aspiring to become lawyer or accountant.
It's one hell of a social problem they have, but just blaming them because their arabs or Muslim is just retarded.
I understand their anger, agree with it, but burning a kindergarden is also retarded, and they'll end up causing problems for their own community in the end

At least bother to examine why they do it. Information is out there, even more now with the Net. It's not only for porn...

Interesting summary here.

Wait, are people here implying there might be more to these riots than just being the natural inclination of evil, evil (non-Christian) brown people?

That's a nice one.

A RATM quote in this situation: "and the riot be the rhyme of the unheard"--Calm like a Bomb.

All who feel oppressed will rise against oppression. It's that simple. These people feel they have been overlooked for far too long. The proverbial camel's back was broken. It happened in LA in 92. It happened in Watts, Detroit, anywhere where people have been marginalized. True, they destroy their own neighborhoods and shops, but imagine how hopeless the are if they decided that destoying property was the only way they could bring change? Whether or not they are correct in their actions is irrelevent. Of course this is the inccorrect choice of action. But, it's the only one they feel they have.

Either that or they're kids who feel like the rules don't apply and this is their big chance to go nuts. You make it sound like every one of these rioters is Thomas Paine.

In other news, is anyone seriously questioning the demographer's forecasts that Europe will by Muslim in 200 years?

True dat. That doesn't take away from those who need to be heard.

Frank, this kind of violence is a reaction to the rage created by marginalization. I am sure that most of these kids couldn't articulate it, which is a big part of why they're rioting and not writing manifestos.

Ah yes, the old predicting-almost-infinitely-complex-and-chaotic-systems trick.

I remember a film about this ...

Devin, I don't contest your assertion that these kids are marginalized, angry, and largely hopeless: that's one of the reasons why France is seen as one of the breeding grounds for islamofascism. I'm saying that mobs take on minds of their own and riots become self-sustaining because it's just plain liberating to throw off the shackles of civilized behavior and go crazy.

Have you ever been in a riot, by the way? I have. It's weird. First, you're part of this big group that has a unifying identity, but isn't violent. Then, someone takes the role of tribal leader and does something illegal, like destroy something, and gets away with it. A rush of power ripples through the group, and the next guy does something a little more extreme. Before you know it, the mob realizes that it can do pretty much whatever it wants, and you're left standing there going, "How the hell did this thing go south so quickly?" I'm not even talking about the dispossessed, by the way: I'm talking about sports fans. Nevertheless, the dynamic is the same: "Hey, for once in our lives, we can get away with this!"

Denial will get you nowhere, Geoff. Now, get out there and make some babies!

Agreed. The media continues to cover this as either Muslims getting uppity or disenfranchised immigrants having had enough with no thought given to any other reason. This is not black and white and I wish people would stop treating every event in the world as if it's an either/or situation. What is happening is horrible but the way it's being covered and discussed is equally as reprehensible.

So? Why would that be a bad thing versus a predominant Christian culture like we have in North America?

Jurassic Park?

I didn't say it would be.

Two is quite enough.

Then maybe you can explain why you brought it up...

He didn't say anything about it being a being good or bad thing. Frank was questioning the article's/demographer's forecast's assertion that Europe would/could become Muslim in 200 years.

I might add, a perfectly logical question to raise.

Sure. Because Werbal ridiculed the proposition that the Muslims are taking over Europe. Assuming that the trends of the last 40 years will continue, they are.

History favors the fertile. It's only a matter of time.

. . .

Having said that, I invite Joe (and anyone else, for that matter) to question this assertion. I'm staking out the position above, but I'm willing to be argued out of it.

I didn't ridicule the position. When I meant the Right was talking about a "Muslim takeover" I meant they were talking about it in the sense that they're taking over, like, within a year.

NOT by population change.

Ah.

Frank, pull up some predictions from two hundred years ago about today and then start telling me how concrete your position is.

Considering the mind boggling amount of events that can hinder population growth I think the concept of anyone being able to succesfully predict what the population of any sociological group will be like in fifty years is absurd let alone two hundred.

As (and IF) their political power decreases, the white population will become more dispossessed. As their wealth decreases and resources in the white population become more scarce their birth rate will tend to go up. This happens for a whole smorgasbord of biological, cultural, and economic reasons... in fact, it's most of the same factors that keep the birthrate among the non-native French population high.

The same processes responsible for the 40 years of low birthrate among white Europeans, that you are basing your constant state predictions off of, would eventually work to reinforce the white population. All things else being equal (and they never are), and assuming limited intermarriage (impossible to predict), the two populations would eventually reach something close to parity.

So Europe would be "muslim" AND "christian". Or, more properly, it would be an even mix of the native European ethnic groups and the African/Asian ethnic groups.

And all of that is still a gross simplification...

Overall, I agrew with the assertion. Europe will become Muslim. I just challenge that it will happen in 200 years (roughly 3 generations). Seems to be an awful quick shift to happen. Then again, look at the population changes in America for the past 200 years. It's an interesting subject to be sure.

Here's a link to a good article giving good back-up for the assertion of Europe becoming predominately Muslim.

http://www.danielpipes.org/article/1796

It's amazing how many demographic predictions turn out to be totally wrong.
A lot will depend on how much the Muslim community assimilates. If it becomes a case like most of the Moselms in the UK until the last few years,no big thing. They just go to Mosque on Friday instead of Church on Sunday.
But if they insist on shoving a fundamentalist brand of Islam down people's throats, then we have a major problem.

And Buchanan is wack on hispanics. The idea there is some vast conspiracy to pull the southwest back into Mexico is pure crazy. The fact is most Hispanic...illegal and legal..seem to be assimilating pretty quick. Once they get over the language problem...and the majority learn English as fast as possible because it is the way to get ahead in the US...they are'nt much different then Anglos in all but a few minor points.
Buchanan is a bigot, pure and simple, and quoting him on any issue is bad tactics.

I've done a little more research on this issue. So far, I've found a number of articles that reference studies that back my assertion, but I have yet to find the studies themselves.

I'm going to try and drill down a little more. I'll see if I can find some hard data get a look at methodologies.

Aware that predicting the future is a sucker's game, but finding it irresistable nonetheless,
FC

And this is why while I don't always agree with you, Frank, I respect you. You're the John McCain of CHUD.

Thanks, 2.35:1. That is high praise, indeed.