French Anarchy

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Some say this is the "French intifada"

Postby nomo » Wed Nov 09, 2005 8:07 pm

For what it's worth, this Israeli blogger is convinced the riots are nothing less than the "French intifada":<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.iris.org.il/blog/archives/561-Evidence-the-Paris-Riots-Are-Actually-the-French-Intifada.html">www.iris.org.il/blog/arch...ifada.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>Not that it's all that hard to link to a Daniel Pipes article to back you up.<br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Some say this is the "French intifada"

Postby wordspeak » Thu Nov 10, 2005 1:42 am

Wayne Madsen is spreading some bizarre disinfo there. I think he's a professional anti-semite.The neo-cons (Jews?) rule the world, huh?, so much that they're igniting mass ("sub")urban uprisings. what a hoot. If only it weren't so serious. I see Alex Jones is spreading Madsen's lines.<br><br>On a side note, I'm very curious, Dreams End, what you think the RCP's role as provocateurs in the L.A. riots were, and what evidence you have, circumstantial or otherwise, about that. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Some say this is the "French intifada"

Postby Dreams End » Thu Nov 10, 2005 1:57 am

Word, you caught me talking out of my ass, there. That is, I have no proof. The only thing I had for sure was that VERY QUICKLY there was a LOT of graffiti, all over town, and all in red paint with slogans that were being pushed by them. <br><br>I HAVE been to other events that they disrupted. There was a very large march (I think it was around the same issue) that was supposed to be silent. They brought whistles. At one other events out at the Westwood federal building they were trying to provoke fights with counterprotesters.<br><br>And let me be clear. I'm not saying that they "caused" anything, here, even if I'm right that they were active that night. The level of anger and frustration was simply bound to overflow. But I do have a real sense that they are FBI and have been from the beginning. I shared in another thread how one of their leaders (can't remember who, but I think Carl Dix) was at some conference I attended as a college student, to plan NO BUSINESS AS USUAL DAY. They are always planning actions like that. They are great with catchy titles. <br><br>Anyway, here was Dix's advice. "Everyone get a gun and when the time is right, start shooting." <br><br>how do you know the time is right?<br><br>"I'll tell you." <br><br>Exact quote.<br><br>I met several young people in the RCYB (youth brigade) in LA and also Atlanta and I have to say, they were pretty cool. I don't know what the dynamics are like inside the organization. And I don't know how close they are to the Spartacist league, but they seem in the same mold.<br><br>I hope you aren't RCP and I'm pissing you off, here! I just generally distrust "left" groups who make a great effort to disrupt other left events.<br><br>As a side note, there seems to be a whole cottage industry of such groups who specifically show up at Klan rallies as counterprotesters and try to incite violence. If it's really important to you, I could try to put something together on that, but all the names of these little groups kinda run together in my head...my memory's not as good as it used to be. <br><br>As for the POLICE provoking gang violence...that's a solid case. Photos and everything. <br><br> <br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Some say this is the "French intifada"

Postby wordspeak » Thu Nov 10, 2005 2:23 am

I'm definitely not RCP. :-)<br>all interesting stuff, though...<br>I've heard similar stories of protests and counter-protests and counter-counter protests at Klan rallies... you probably needn't spend your time compiling anything, unless you think of something really significant.<br><br>But anyway. What's happening in France seems like a straight-up mass urban uprising. <br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Some say this is the "French intifada"

Postby Dreams End » Thu Nov 10, 2005 2:38 am

Besides the one good post above, I'd like to see more in the media about the connection between french colonization and the current "immigrant" population. It's not like it's some kind of weird fluke that so many Africans came to France. <br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Some say this is the "French intifada"

Postby * » Thu Nov 10, 2005 3:21 am

<br><br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1108-28.htm">link</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--><br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Panic in Paris</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br>by Gwynne Dyer<br> <br><br>'Scum," French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy called the rioters who have seized control of many working-class "suburbs" around Paris every night since Oct. 27, when two teenagers died in an accident that many blame on the police.<br><br>Sarkozy plans to run for the presidency next year, and he wants to seem even tougher on crime and on immigrants (two separate issues that he regularly conflates) than his main rival, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin. But his conviction that the policy of multiculturalism has failed has become the new popular wisdom in France, where right-wing commentators refer to the riots as the "Paris intifada" - as if the rioters were all Muslims.<br><br>Meanwhile, right-wing American commentators gloat that the French, who refused to follow the Bush administration on its crusade against alleged Islamic extremists in the Middle East (you know, like Saddam Hussein), now face a Muslim uprising at home. Multiculturalism, as an alternative to the U.S. "melting pot" approach in which second- or third- generation immigrants eventually lose their old identities and merge into the majority, is now under attack everywhere.<br><br>Even William Pfaff, the best informed of American commentators, no longer believes that people of profoundly different traditions can live side by side in the same country. After the July terror bombings in London, he wrote in the Observer that "a half-century of well-intentioned but catastrophically mistaken policy of multiculturalism, indifferent or even hostile to social and cultural integration, has produced in Britain and much of Europe a technologically educated but culturally and morally unassimilated immigrant demi-intelligentsia."<br><br>He was in effect arguing that the London bombs would not have happened if British immigration policy over the last 50 years had extinguished any sense of solidarity between the descendants of Muslim immigrants to Britain and Muslims elsewhere. True - but not invading Iraq would have prevented the London bombs at much less cost.<br><br>The real problem is not the failure of multiculturalism. The Paris riots are actually a splendid demonstration of the successful integration of immigrants into French culture (which has, after all, a long tradition of insurrection and revolution). The Paris riots are not a Muslim uprising. They are not even race riots. They are outbursts of resentment and frustration by the marginalized and the unemployed of every ethnic group.<br><br>The low-income housing estates that ring Paris and other big French cities are dumping grounds for everybody that hasn't made it in the cool 21st-century France of the urban centers, the old white working class as well as immigrants from France's former colonies in Arabic-speaking North Africa and sub-Saharan black Africa and from all the poorer countries of Europe. Unemployment there is often twice the national average of 10 percent. But they are not Muslim- or even nonwhite-majority communities.<br><br>Ethnic groups live jumbled together in apartment towers. The kid gangs that dominate the estates steal from strangers and residents alike and fight among themselves for control of the drug trade. But these are models of racial and cultural integration. What is happening now is neither an intifada nor a race riot - small comfort to the owners of the 28,000 vehicles burned on those estates so far this year.<br><br>This is an incoherent revolt by kids, many of them gang members, who would once have formed the next generation of the French working class. No longer needed in that role, they have no future, so they are very angry. But they are not politically organized, so after a few more nights the violence will die down again for a while.<br><br>These are neither American-style race riots nor a Muslim rebellion. About half the kids burning cars and buildings are white, working- class, post-Christian French, and they get along with the black and Muslim kids just fine.<br><br>Gwynne Dyer writes from London on international issues and is author of "War: The Lethal Custom."<br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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expulsion orders

Postby jenz » Thu Nov 10, 2005 6:18 am

last night sarko ordered expulsion of non- french convicted of riot related disorder. this a.m. concern was expressed by french human rights group , this being illegal, and also because of french nationality laws, a child born in france to foreign parnts is not automatically french. at age 18, he/she can ask for french nationality. many of those caught up in rioting are under 18, yet have all their family in France, clearly, the position for a youngster deported in those circs would be very difficult. it is difficult (as always) to make hypotheses informed by facts about whether or not there are agents provoc. involved, but yes, whatever the initial cause, the far right is riding high. it is quite accurate, as in post above, that these neighbourhoods are united by poverty rather than by race or religion. unemployment is more like 40 per cent, and obviously it is easy to associate these areas with crime, because as one youngster stated on camera last night, with no job in sight and the rent to pay you have to do business. but as always, the happy co-incidence (from the rights viewpoint) of low level drug dealing and these areas, is nothing more than that. young peple attending open air music events in France, tell me the drug dealers arrive with suitcases full in boot (trunk) of car, and openly deal while the police policing the event stroll past. similarly, if you wander round gare du nord area, central paris, not banlieu, same arrangement. these banlieu youngsters have no cars, wear the garments of universal poverty.so the barely concealed argument that immigrant community has brought crime , esp. dealing, to France is weak. similarly, I am told, the market for illegal weapons in France was enjoying a glut after the balkan conflict, and i have been told by persons very familiar with a paris banlieu that it is not unusual for quite young teenagers to have firearms. extrapolating from that admittedly slight info. i should have thought that if there were an organised opposition to french govt. in progress from 'putative islamic extremists, they would have had the wherewithall to do the thing properly. after all the maquis did a lot more damage against a far more repressive regime armed to the teeth, with very little in the way of arms themselves. long winded way of saying the picture being painted by the right cuts little ice. during the run up to a previous election, Le Pen was getting bad press because some of his supporters had thrown a man into the Seine, drowning him. following this, there was a spate of attacks on innocent non aggressive white youngsters, and each time the townspeople held a memorial march for the person murdered, the FN turned up and tried to make political capital. As someone close to a member of my family was one of those who lost his life, i was present at one such march, and observed this first hand. the NF were very clumsy about this, and my impression was that most people were thnking as I was, that this was a put up job. some of the younger people seemed to have been in tune with the fact that this was likely to happen, and were carrying anti FN stickers to put up en route. this time i would bet that the initial anger at the deaths of the 2 young people by electrocution was genuine, but that it is impossible to say how much if at all, other elements got stuck in to fan the flames. the policing in and around paris is often very insensitive. young people whom i know, (non-white) tell me how it is impossible to drive their car without being stopped, and same thing if on foot. though most french i have known would not approve of this kind of action, and it does not apply to all police everywhere, nothing has been done to stop it, and the removal of neighbourhood policing has exacerbated it. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Mathieu Kassovitz statement

Postby Gouda » Thu Nov 10, 2005 8:27 pm

<!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>It's hard not to cheer on the rioters</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--></em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> <br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,4120,1639111,00.html">film.guardian.co.uk/featu...11,00.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br><!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>La Haine, Mathieu Kassovitz's critically acclaimed 1995 film, detailed the aftermath of a riot on an impoverished Paris housing project. Kassovitz put this statement about this week's riots - and the reaction of France's minister of the interior - on his website yesterday</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> <br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>As much as I would like to distance myself from politics, it is difficult to remain distant in the face of the depravations of politicians. And when these depravations draw the hate of all youth, I have to restrain myself from encouraging the rioters.<br><br>Nicolas Sarkozy, who has appeared in the media like a starlet from American Idol and who for the past years has been showering us with details of his private life and political ambitions, cannot prevent himself from creating an event every time his ratings go down. This time, Sarkozy [who last week described the rioters as "scum"] has gone against everything the French republic stands for: the liberty, the equality and the fraternity of a people.<br><br>The minister of the interior, a future presidential candidate, holds ideas that not only reveal his inexperience of politics and human relations, but which also illuminate the purely demagogical and egocentric aspects of a puny, would-be Napoleon...<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>www.mathieukassovitz.com<br><br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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Here's my take on it...

Postby Jerky » Thu Nov 10, 2005 9:32 pm

Over the last two weeks, the tenement-packed "banlieue" of France have erupted into the kind of rioting that usually only happens when Preznit Dubya comes to town. This wanton frenzy of hyper-vandalism began after French police allegedly chased two African-born teens into a power substation, where they touched something they shouldn't have and paid the Darwinian consequences.<br><br>In the fourteen days -- or rather, nights -- since that still ambiguous incident, the rioting has spread from the suburbs of Paris to the slums surrounding a dozen more French cities, including Nice, Marseilles, Toulouse, Lille, Froufrou, Fifi and so on. <br><br>The scenes have made for spectacular television, with hundreds of balaclava-sporting youths battering dozens of innocent bystanders and putting torch to literally thousands of automobiles. The worst incident by far has been the attempted gasoline immolation of an elderly woman. Currently, the body count stands at one.<br><br>So what does it all mean? The New World take on this Old World crisis is as divided as it is predictable.<br><br>On the right, neo-conservatives see in our baguette-munching cousins' troubles nothing less than a total confirmation of their anti-Muslim "war of civilizations" ideology, and a vindication of their foundering foreign policy imperatives. Meanwhile, social conservatives and the Christian Right are simultaneously clucking their tongues and rubbing their hands in glee at the beginning of the End of the World as We Know It. Far Right white supremacists and anti-immigration organizations are no less apocalyptic in their rhetoric. Pat Buchanan writes that the Spenglerian Endgame is already upon us, and that the West is in its death throes. <br><br>On the left, the reaction has been more muted. Some wags are blaming this wave of suburban hooliganism on high unemployment, racism, and even the depressing architecture of the banlieue. Most, however, have simply maintained a spooked, wide-eyed silence on the subject. With their fingers crossed and their tongues tied, they're simply waiting for the problem to go away.<br><br>If history is any guide, there's something to be said for the ostrich tactic. Just over ten years ago, rioting and looting in the wake of the Rodney King verdict set huge swaths of Los Angeles ablaze before spreading to other cities, and scores lost their lives in the four-day conflagration. That was only the most recent in a centuries-long line of American racial disturbances that make what's happening in France seem like one of those Guns'n'Roses concerts that got out of hand. Hell, the rioting sparked by Jack Johnson's boxing victory over Jim Jeffries -- a.k.a. the Great White Freakout of 1910 -- was far more deadly and destructive than this extended pyromaniac temper tantrum.<br><br>Are the riots cause for alarm? Of course they are, but this alarm must be tempered by realism and a sense of historical perspective. Now, after fourteen nights, this "New Jihad" has already begun to wane. After a slow start, Chirac's conservative (in French terms) government has imposed a strict curfew, dispatched militarized police units, and begun conducting mass round-ups of illegals for deportation. As the stakes are raised, the criminal segment of France's unassimilated immigrant class has begun drifting back to more lucrative and enjoyable pastimes, such as playing soccer and selling drugs.<br><br>At the heart of the French riots lies a vexing paradox. With an aging native population and generous social benefits, France needs Third World immigrants to help shore up their tax base and labor reserves. Problem is, the French hate immigrants. After getting a taste of the action that made the 60's such interesting times in America's history, it remains to be seen whether the French people will attack the roots of the problem, or follow America's lead and choose, instead, to prune any problematic branches as they sprout. <br><br>For the time being, yer old pal Jerky's money is on the latter.<br> <p></p><i></i>
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