French Anarchy

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French Anarchy

Postby heath7 » Mon Nov 07, 2005 4:56 am

What is going on in France? That these riots were catalyzed by the electrocution deaths of Muslims hiding from the police just zips right over my head.<br><br>Everynight now the news reports that the 'violence' is spreading exponentially. As of this evening, the rioting has spread throughout France. Is this about to jump borders into neighboring countries? Has anything historically been dealt with like this? How are they going to quell such a widespread wildfire? <br><br>With each evening the questions grow bigger in my mind. It seems these riots have already gotten out of hand, and nothing will be able to stop them short of handicapping every European immigrant Muslim. <br><br>Is this a sign that the East vs. West confrontation is for real, or is this merely a class war?<br><br>I was amazed to find this isn't being discussed on the board yet, and would love to hear some points of views, especially from some of the lurking Europeans among us. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: French Anarchy

Postby * » Mon Nov 07, 2005 5:04 am

<br><br> FWW, here's <!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://waynemadsenreport.com/">Wayne Madsen's</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--> 'take':<br><br>November 6, 2005 -- Neo-con/fascist provocateurs behind French riots? As is the case with other European countries where fascist and Islamist fundamentalist forces have joined forces, there is increasing evidence that the riots that have swept France for a week and a half have been far more than spontaneous reactions to the electrocution at a Paris electrical sub-station of two Muslim teens who were escaping police. With an ailing President Jacques Chirac stepping down in 2007, the battle lines have been drawn between two conservative presidential candidates -- Interior Minister Nicolas Sarzoky (nicknamed "Sarko"), a confirmed neo-con in the tradition of fellow travelers in Italy, Britain, Denmark, the Netherlands, Israel, and Spain, and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin. Sarkozy has inflamed Muslims and other minorities in France by describing ghetto youths in broad pejorative terms such as "riff-raff" and "scum." While Sarkozy has inflamed the situation with his anti-immigrant rhetoric, de Villepin has sought to mollify the situation by not wanting to overreact and create more turmoil.<br><br>However, with rioting spreading beyond Paris to the north and south of the country and extending beyond young Muslims to unemployed African, Afro-Caribbean, and white young people, the situation is being used by Sarkozy to blame "Jihadist conspiracists" for coordinating the rioting. Sarkozy has strong links to the Likud Party in Israel and the neo-cons in the Bush administration and the Blair government in London. The neo-con media conglomerates such as Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation and the Hollinger Group are blaming the violence on France's relative tolerance of its large Muslim population. The neo-con media is also playing up reports that French rioters are proclaiming that they are turning Paris into "Baghdad." The always reprehensible neo-con racist Mark Steyn, who pens his vile hate-filled garbage for the Chicago Sun Times and other neo-con rags, writes that the rioting youths are not really French but Arabs taking advantage of Jacques Chirac's "weakness" on Iraq. Funny, but this editor never met too many Arabs from Cayenne, Fort-de-France, Basse-Terre, Abidjan, Antananarivo, Porto Novo, or Brazzaville. Too bad about the neo-cons, geography and history don't seem to be their strong points. Racist talking points, on the other hand, are their stock in trade.<br><br>What is happening in France has all the signs of yet another possible neo-con "false flag" operation in the same category as the Niger fraudulent uranium documents, the provocative actions of Israeli agents in New Jersey who were dressed up as Arabs during the morning of 9-11, unexplained Spanish and British government activities surrounding the train bombings in Madrid and London, and recent deadly bombings in Delhi during Hindu and Muslim holidays attributed to a previously unknown Kashmiri group. The neo-cons have been unhappy about India's Congress government (a government the neo-cons are trying to link to the UN Oil-for-Food scandal), which unlike the previous Hindu nationalist government, is making peace overtures to neighboring Pakistan. As with France, India immediately suspected closely coordinated planning in the bombings and sought to analyze intercepts of thousands of cell phone calls placed in the Indian capital shortly before the bombings.<br><br>The French politician who benefits the most from this explosion of violence in a country where Muslim citizens constitute a significant minority is Sarkozy. The losers stand to be de Villepin's faction of the Gaullist RPR party and a newly-resurgent Socialist Party, which rejects the neo-con international agenda. It is not coincidental that the rioting is mainly plaguing cities and towns governed by Socialist and Communist mayors -- leaders who are now caught between addressing the social problems that helped spark the violence and responding to calls for a return to law and order.<br><br>The Socialists, Greens, and Communists are charging Sarkozy with inciting greater violence and then failing to respond to it adequately, thus ensuring the rioting would spread beyond mainly Muslim areas in Paris to wealthier Parisian neighborhoods and beyond Paris to Rouen, Lille, Nice, Dijon, Strasbourg, Marseille, Bordeaux, Rennes, Pau, Orleans, and Toulouse. Later, the closely coordinated rioting spread further to Lyon, Roubaix, Avignon, Saint-Dizier, Drancy, Evreux, Nantes, Dunkirk, Montpellier, Valenciennes, Cannes, and Tourcoing.<br><br>As in Italy, Britain, Switzerland, and Germany, there are strong links in France between Islamist fundamentalist provocateurs and neo-Nazis. For example, French National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen is close to Achmed Huber, formerly of Al Taqwa, a Swiss and Italian financial group linked by the United States Treasury Department to Al Qaeda. Informed sources in Germany and the United States have also linked Huber to the activities of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega during the Iran-Contra covert operations conducted by the Reagan-Bush administration. Interestingly, French intelligence and law enforcement are reporting that the riots in France involve international narcotics smugglers.<br><br>The possibility that neo-cons and their fascist allies are manipulating the violence in France to their own advantage has the net result of bringing France into the neo-cons' oft-stated goal of a "Clash of Civilizations" between the West and the Muslim world. The likes of Mark Steyn are already insidiously referring to the Frankish-Muslim 732 Battle of Tours between a Moorish army and the forces of Charles Martel. Other neo-con propaganda outlets are echoing the words "Vichy" for the French government. It is all very transparent who is behind instigating the violence now sweeping France.<br><br>Reasonable political leaders in France should realize that the riots in France are being used to ratchet up tensions in Europe and distract attention away from recent reports of US secret prison camps and torture centers in Eastern Europe and additional proof that the neo-cons conspired to push the United States into a disastrous war in Iraq. Already, the neo-con media is blaming the violence in France on Islamic terrorists -- a stock phrase for the neo-cons in Washington, London, Jerusalem, Rome, and the French Interior Ministry allies of Sarkozy. However, most of the rioters, mostly from North Africa and Western Africa, are not even practicing Muslims, making the possibility of "Fifth Column" provocateurs being behind the violence all the more likely. French officials are increasingly suggesting that the violence has been closely coordinated and that the primary targets -- trains, police stations, youth centers, banks, libraries, post offices, municipal buildings, schools -- have all been connected to the French government and not to ethnic or religious groups.<br><br>Muslim rioting has also spread to Arhus, Denmark and police in predominantly Muslim neighborhoods in Brussels are on full alert. The Danish rioting conveniently broke out as a parliamentary inquiry is due to get underway on the lying by the neo-con influenced government of Anders Fogh Rasmussen on bogus Iraqi WMD intelligence. Neo-con media organs in Europe and North America are suspiciously blaming the Muslim violence on Europe's "welfare state."<br><br>The National Security Agency and other signals intelligence agencies that monitor French communications are likely in possession of intercepts that would point to interesting outside interference in coordinating and promoting the French violence and the resultant counter-actions by Sarkozy. It would be interesting to read the transcripts of Sarkozy's recent telephone conversations with his co-ideologists in Washington, London, Brussels, Jerusalem, and Rome. A few years ago, a senior inspector with the French DST (FBI) told this editor that his agency's wiretaps of Richard Perle's home in the south of France had yielded some interesting information, all of which was passed to the FBI in Washington. Perhaps it is time that raw intercepts of international phone calls and e-mail among the neo-cons be leaked in order to hang them using their own past tactics. With their fingerprints beginning to appear on the French rioting, the neo-cons are proving that they will not be put down easily.<br><br><br>more at the site.<br><br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: French Anarchy

Postby israelirealities » Mon Nov 07, 2005 6:27 am

<!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ArticleNews.jhtml?itemNo=642115&contrassID=13&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0">www.haaretz.com/hasen/pag...ntrassID=0</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>take from ISraeli Haaretz, calling this an "intifada". <br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: French Anarchy

Postby Qutb » Mon Nov 07, 2005 6:58 am

I've lived in France, for a while in a neighborhood that was majoritarily "maghrébin" (Noth African). This has been happening for 20 years, just on a smaller scale. For those who might be interested, I recommend the film "La Haine", about life in the French ghettos. The car burning theme features prominently. Madsen is delusional if he thinks this is "false flag". How does that work, anyway. Are these not real youths out on the streets, but perhaps thousands of "neocon" agents in disguise? <br><br>The cause of this is unemployment and hopelessness. We're talking about second generation unemployed here, in many cases. Unemployment in France is at 10%, which is also the size of the immigrant population. These two tend to overlap. These kids basically have only one way of getting integrated into French society, and that's to become a professional soccer player. It's no coincidence that almost all the players on the French national team are immigrants.<br><br>These kids see the police as their enemy, and the feeling is mutual. Le Pen, the far-right nationalist, has many supporters in the police force. Seeing this as a nation-wide intifada, with the police and gendarmes in the role of the IDF, is perhaps not a bad analogy.<br><br>As for Sarkozy, he's a "law and order" oriented politician, but he also appointed France's first Muslim prefect. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: French Anarchy

Postby israelirealities » Mon Nov 07, 2005 7:25 am

From Israeli experience, riots can be authentic, but provocatuers can be there to escalate violence, we have had those here. (people disguised as arab protesters and throw stones, police retaliates...etc.etc.). if you have friends among the rioters, alert them to this possibility. if its done here, its all over.<br><br><br> <!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/642206.html">www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/642206.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br>unusual editorial in Haaretz today, calling for solidarity with the protest in Paris. <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=israelirealities@rigorousintuition>israelirealities</A> at: 11/7/05 5:50 am<br></i>
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Re: French Anarchy

Postby Dreams End » Mon Nov 07, 2005 11:55 am

Not that I think general rioting is the best approach to social change, but man, after a few days of urban riots, all of a sudden even the most Conservative politicians start talking about poverty, unemployment, etc. Even Bush Sr. did after the "Rodney King Riots". I think there were some provocateurs that night as well (RCP, most likely) but I don't think that really had much to do with what was going on. I had the honor of being with a group downtown which blocked a freeway (BIG DEAL in LA) for awhile. I'd turned on the TV and seen all the protesters and from the camera it looked like all of them were Black. So I decided to head downtown. Turned out that was just the usual selective camera shots and it was pretty multi-racial but I was there for a few hours. <br><br>We gave up the freeway when someone caught the palm trees nearby on fire and it seemed too dangerous to the cars. <br><br>I actually saw one of the bravest things I've ever seen that night. An older friend of mine, a veteran of activism in Argentina's fascist period saw an armed guard (can't remember if he was private or if this was outside the county jail). The guard was OUTSIDE the doors with a shotgun and the crowd around him was not pleased. My friend put himself right in front of the guy..inches from the tip of the gun and calmly urged him to go back inside. I thought he was a goner, as this guy was REALLY Nervous but he went back in and the crowd went back to doing such things as breaking windows on the LA Times building, a worthy pursuit. <br><br>And the police were actually very well disciplined at that point, at least among the larger crowds. They stayed in tight formation...splitting the group into smaller segments and kinda taking the steam out of things. Now how they might have treated anyone they arrested is a different story, but no overt violence in dealing with this very hostile crowd. <br><br>A final side note on this. A friend of mine was a private investigator in LA who ONLY worked on police abuse cases. He was absolutely fearless, maybe pathologically so! He had pictures of uniformed officers crossing out spraypainted names of gang members in various neighborhoods...and generally trying to provoke violence between different gangs. Not sure if that was all a grand plot or had more to do with the fact that all the extra federal money those days to law enforcement was going to gang suppression. Anyway, this sort of provoking does happen, but it's not effective unless the ground is already VERY fertile to begin with.<br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: French Anarchy

Postby OnoI812 » Mon Nov 07, 2005 2:09 pm

Holy crap- Is Heneghan freelancing for Reuters?<br><br>advertisement<br> <br>Paris seeks "hidden hands" in riots<br>Sat Nov 5, 2005 11:22 AM ET<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2005-11-05T162250Z_01_SCH558929_RTRUKOC_0_US-FRANCE-RIOTS-BLAME.xml">today.reuters.com/news/ne...-BLAME.xml</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br> By Tom Heneghan<br><br>AULNAY-SOUS-BOIS, France (Reuters) - With every night that France's rundown suburbs burn, officials grow increasingly convinced that drug traffickers and Islamist militants are using frustrated youths to challenge law and order here.<br><br>Many people who watch their cars, shops and schools go up in flames, however, are not buying it. They blame unemployment, racial prejudice and widespread youth boredom for the outbursts.<br><br>Finding "hidden hands" behind the unrest seems like trying to catch the rioters as they rampage through the night. Some may get caught, but far more slip away in the darkness.<br><br>"Everybody is fed up seeing our town and our district trampled over daily by these organized gangs," declared Gerard Gaudron, conservative mayor of the northeastern Paris suburb of Aulnay-sous-Bois after an hour-long march against violence.<br><br>If the police don't crack down on these "hooligans," the embattled Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has warned, "who would give the orders? The mafias and the fundamentalists."<br><br>Fouzi Guendouz doesn't agree. "I don't think that's the real reason. It was just an excuse for kids to trash things," said Guendouz, 20, a French-born business student of Algerian origin.<br><br>"The politicians blame it on Islamists because the French are afraid of this religion. They think Islam equals bin Laden."<br><br>"Whoever knows who's behind this should come here and say it openly," shouted a defiant man in a Muslim prayer cap. "The problem is there's nothing for youths to do here."<br><br>Ahmed Hamidi, a white-bearded Moroccan electrician long resident in France, had no patience with politicians in Paris, which lies hardly an hour away but seems like another planet.<br><br>"All the politicians care about are laws for homosexuals and all those immoral things," he fumed. "They are against headscarves, against beards and against the mosques.<br><br>THEORY VERSUS REALITY? <br> <br><br>Aulnay-sous-Bois was calm overnight, but there were still many charred cars and delivery vans along the way as the "march against violence" snaked in between the faded housing blocks.<br><br>Acrid smoke still rose from the smoldering ruins of a large carpet and floor covering depot set ablaze by arsonists two days ago. Deep in an isolated industrial zone, the depot was clearly the target of arsonists who went out of their way to hit it.<br><br>The growing frequency of attacks like this, in contrast to the car and trash hopper blazes set by marauding youths earlier in the unrest, prompted Paris prosecutor Yves Bot to join the officials blaming the rioting on organized gangs.<br><br>"This is done in a way that gives every appearance of being coordinated," he told Europe 1 radio. "For the moment, we see there is a movement against official institutions but it does not seem to be taking an ethnic or religious turn."<br><br>Another student in Aulnay-sous-Bois, Jeremie Garrigues, 19, doubted this was the case. "If those kids had been organized, they would have done much worse -- they would have used guns and bombs against town hall and the prefecture," he argued.<br><br>"Those are all politicians' theories," remarked an Algerian woman named Samia, whose main concern was how frightened her children were by the unrest. "We live here in reality."<br><br>NICE CARS AND EXPENSIVE PHONES<br><br>It's only on the fringes of the march, out of earshot of the multi-cultural crowd of concerned residents, that anybody tries to reconcile the opposing explanations.<br><br>"I'm sure there are drug dealers and Islamic radicals at work," said a middle-aged woman who requested anonymity. "Drugs are everywhere. They've arrested Islamic radicals nearby here."<br><br>A social worker who also withheld his name said some rioters seemed linked to the drug trade because they <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>"drive nice cars and use mobile telephones I couldn't afford to buy</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->."<br><br>"When the government is determined to fight this underground economy, there's bound to be resistance," he said. "There is no headquarters organizing this, but they seem to be coordinating their activities among themselves by phone."<br><br>The charge that Islamist radicals were trying to exploit the unrest was a difficult one for local Muslims to handle, he said, because many were working to prevent unrest and admitting there were radicals in the crowds would discredit their community.<br><br>"They can't say that, so they don't say anything," he added. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: French Anarchy

Postby dbeach » Mon Nov 07, 2005 2:24 pm

let me see if I got this right<br><br>tom flocco is a freeper and tom hennigan works for reuters<br><br><br>email Lenny and ask he will know on both.. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: French Anarchy

Postby proldic » Mon Nov 07, 2005 6:04 pm

"La Haine" is a great movie <br><br>Qutb is cool <p></p><i></i>
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French "anarchy"

Postby aleanor » Mon Nov 07, 2005 6:15 pm

Quotb<br><br>You're quite right in saying:<br>"The cause of this is unemployment and hopelessness."<br><br>Unemployment is between 30 and 50% in the suburbs. It's been a powder keg for years now but the situation has become worse with cutbacks in social programs and education under the right wing government. -- All things relative: Chirac's government is approximately the equivalent of Center-Left Democrats in the US. The two political systems are difficult to compare, but generally even what is known as "right wing" in France is by no means of the CIA gulag/torture sort. Although most of us would admit that Sarkozy, the Minister of the Interior, is a perfect asshole, and is apparently receiving encouragement and funds from US neo-cons as well as from other sources. We won't name any names.<br><br>France has been minding its own business, for the most part, much to the US/UK/Israeli threesome's distaste. Although I generally give Wayne Madsen a good deal of credit, I'm hoping that he's somewhat misled here in his analysis of the situation in France.<br><br>Jerome à Paris at the European Tribune provides a great resume on what's going on. It's a must-read:<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2005/11/6/62039/9755">www.eurotrib.com/story/20...62039/9755</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>These youngsters are largely attacking insured cars [few lives have been lost, as of this moment]; they're bent are making a spectacle, to make a [valid] point; little more.<br><br>Local citizen groups and police forces will be able to take care of the situation, if only the foreign factions, with their media reports, would stay the hell away.<br><br>A.<br><br><br>PS/ OnoI812: Flocco is full of bull.<br><br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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Generation jihad?

Postby nomo » Mon Nov 07, 2005 8:26 pm

From Der Spiegel, via Salon:<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/11/07/paris_burning/print.html">www.salon.com/news/featur...print.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>Generation jihad?<br><br>The chaos in France is the latest flash point for a profound crisis of<br>integration facing Europe.<br><br>By Der Spiegel staff<br><br>Nov. 07, 2005 | Mayor Claude Dilain sits on the edge of his chair in<br>his community's wedding-banquet hall. His hands are folded on the<br>table in front of him, and his face is a tortured reflection of the<br>doubts and fears inside him.<br><br>For the past 10 years, Dilain, 57, has been the mayor of<br>Clichy-sous-Bois, a suburb in northeastern Paris with 28,100<br>inhabitants, mostly immigrants. Dilain calls it "a powder keg." He<br>slightly resembles French author Michel Houellebecq, but today he is<br>paler than even the author normally is. The strain of the last few<br>nights is no doubt part of it. But so too is a growing suspicion that<br>the modern welfare state may be fully incapable of addressing some of<br>his community's most pressing problems.<br><br>Dilain is a socialist and the vice president of the French Convention<br>of Municipal Authorities. He has been a proactive mayor, setting up<br>free soccer training for local youth, appointing youth leaders as<br>mediators and making sure that the community's waste collection<br>service functions properly. Clichy-sous-Bois is an amalgam of schools,<br>day-care centers, welfare offices, parks and a college that looks like<br>something out of an architecture competition. The community library is<br>currently sponsoring a writing contest themed "I come from afar, I<br>like my country."<br><br>By any measure, Dilain has done everything right. But these days he is<br>filled with an ominous sense that doing things right may not be good<br>enough. What good is education without enough jobs?<br><br>Television news programs portray Clichy essentially as a<br>Ramallah-sous-Bois, a place where young people in sneakers and hooded<br>sweatshirts are trying their hand at revolution. They depict riot<br>police armed with rubber bullets and tear gas patrolling streets lined<br>with burning vehicles and garbage cans. A spokesman for the police<br>officers' union is calling for the government to bring in the<br>military. And all this against the backdrop of concrete walls covered<br>in brightly painted murals, the work of local children in a program<br>sponsored by the mayor's office.<br><br>Clichy-sous-Bois serves as evidence that the French route of soft<br>integration has failed miserably. And when French Interior Minister<br>Nicolas Sarkozy, who has ambitions of becoming France's president,<br>called the youth gangs "scum" and "riffraff" who must be dealt with<br>severely, he only added fuel to the fire.<br><br>The French capital has an intifada unfolding on its doorstep. For 11<br>nights running, garbage containers and vehicles have been burning in<br>Departement Seine-Saint-Denis. Night after night, gangs of teenagers<br>storm through their neighborhoods, throwing Molotov cocktails into<br>carpet shops and nursery schools, turning vehicles into bonfires --<br>250 in one night, then 315 the next night, and 500 the next.<br><br>On Oct. 27, two local teenagers died in circumstances that have yet to<br>be clarified. They had reportedly been running from the police --<br>although officials have since denied this was the case -- and ended up<br>in an alley at the end of which was an electricity substation. The<br>warning sign Mayor Dilain had had affixed to the building's entrance<br>-- featuring comic book characters for the area's youth -- was no<br>deterrent to 15-year-old Banou from Mali and his 17-year-old Tunisian<br>friend, Ziad. They were electrocuted to death. A third boy survived<br>but was seriously injured.<br><br>A rumor that the police had driven the two boys to their deaths<br>quickly began to spread. There have been street riots every night<br>since, and the French government is in a state of crisis.<br><br>The authorities have had trouble catching these urban guerrillas. The<br>number of arrests -- 230 by last Friday, with even fewer convictions<br>-- has been small compared with the scope of the violence and<br>destruction. On Sunday night, fully 190 people were taken into custody<br>by French police after they were fired on by demonstrators in Grigny<br>just south of Paris.<br><br>French President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Dominique de<br>Villepin remained silent on the matter for five days, creating the<br>impression that they were passively looking on as the violence<br>threatened to vaporize Sarkozy's political ambitions. But then they<br>recognized that the dramatic events in Clichy-sous-Bois could in fact<br>pose a grave danger for the entire republic.<br><br>President Chirac was urged to speak directly to the French public in a<br>televised address, which he finally did on Sunday evening. "Law and<br>order must have the last word," insisted de Villepin. Sarkozy canceled<br>all foreign trips, as did de Villepin. There is now the growing sense<br>that integration à la française -- which has transformed newcomers<br>into citizens since the French Revolution -- has failed.<br><br>The rioters are the children of immigrants from North Africa and<br>sub-Saharan Africa. Schools have been on holiday in France, giving<br>these youths even more time on their hands. It's also the end of the<br>Ramadan fasting period, a time when nerves are already on edge. The<br>rebellion is directed against anything that even remotely reminds the<br>rioters of state authority -- even the mailman. They are beyond<br>reason, and no one, not their parents, not their teachers and least of<br>all the authorities, can get through to them.<br><br>Social divisions in France today run along ethnic and religious lines,<br>signifying deep cultural rifts. The ideal of the French republic --<br>the nation as a community of the willing, of citizens who enjoy equal<br>rights, regardless of their ethnic origins or religious beliefs -- is<br>giving way to a volatile coexistence among communities that want to<br>retain their identities and live according to their own rules. The<br>official French position has always been to condemn multiculturalism<br>-- and yet the state must now deal with the consequences.<br><br>The strict separation of church and state, a sacrosanct pillar of<br>French government, has become an illusion. Jihad may not be what's<br>inspiring the rioters, but Islam is undeniably an inseparable<br>component of their identity. Islam strengthens their sense of<br>solidarity, gives them the appearance of legitimacy and draws an<br>unmistakable line between them and the others, the "French."<br><br>Suddenly "big brothers" -- devout bearded men from the mosques, who<br>wear long traditional robes -- are positioning themselves between the<br>authorities and the rioters in Clichy-sous-Bois, calling for order in<br>the name of Allah. As thousands of voices shout "Allahu Akbar" from<br>the windows of high-rise apartment buildings, shivers run down the<br>spines of television viewers in their seemingly safe living rooms.<br><br>As welcome as these self-appointed keepers of the peace may be,<br>worried authorities think they have detected something akin to a<br>Muslim law enforcement group -- perhaps even the beginnings of an<br>Islamic militia. "The logic behind this unrest," says one police<br>officer, "is secession." If he's right, that could mean a nightmare<br>scenario of entire neighborhoods separating themselves from the state<br>and essentially declaring their independence, creating zones with<br>their own laws, areas to which the authorities no longer have access<br>unless they wish to be perceived as hostile intruders.<br><br>For the past 25 years, France has had special programs, plans and<br>suburban ministries for its troubled neighborhoods. Indeed, the French<br>have almost become accustomed to the sight of burning garbage cans in<br>the poverty-stricken suburbs of cities like Paris, Lyon, Strasbourg<br>and Marseille. But the problems have now escalated, with authorities<br>registering 70,000 cases of vandalism, arson and gang violence this<br>year alone. No fewer than than 28,000 vehicles -- mostly belonging to<br>the poor -- have been set on fire.<br><br>The Molotov cocktails, the stone throwers and the fanaticism are all<br>reminiscent of the student riots of 1968. But this time the rioters<br>are not the avant-garde, their leaders not leftist intellectuals like<br>Jean-Paul Sartre or Daniel Cohn-Bendit.<br><br>What is shaking the public order in Europe's cities today is seething<br>desperation that has erupted in directionless violence. The rioters'<br>targets can just as easily be the government in Paris as other members<br>of the underclass, as was recently the case in Birmingham. And the<br>terrorist attacks in Madrid and London are also fresh in people's<br>minds.<br><br>It was merely a coincidence that Queen Elizabeth and British Prime<br>Minister Tony Blair met with the family members of the 52 victims of<br>the London subway and bus bombings last Tuesday to officially mourn<br>their deaths on July 7. And it was also nothing but a coincidence that<br>last Wednesday was the anniversary of the murder of Dutch filmmaker<br>Theo van Gogh by an Islamic extremist. But these highly symbolic<br>coincidences have not gone unnoticed, as evidenced by a recent story<br>in Time magazine that describes a "Generation Jihad" forming in old<br>Europe.<br><br>The events in Birmingham and the Paris suburbs are unrelated to<br>terrorism. The riots are not about jihad, Iran or Palestine. But they<br>have given rise to concerns that this urban violence could easily<br>become a breeding ground for terrorist organizations like al-Qaida and<br>other extremist groups.<br><br>According to official figures, France is home to a little over 5<br>million Muslims, the largest per capita concentration of Muslims in<br>any country in the European Union. However, the official count is<br>viewed as unreliable; religious affiliation is not recorded in the<br>French census. France's Muslims feel marginalized, as do millions of<br>other immigrants from former colonies throughout Europe, many of whom<br>are unemployed. They live in suburban ghettos, unable to afford better<br>neighborhoods. Now, with the ghettos turning into battlefields, the<br>notion that immigrants will voluntarily assimilate is proving<br>questionable.<br><br>Of course, part of the problem lies in the sheer numbers of immigrants<br>-- and the fact that they tend to live in the same place. Metropolitan<br>Birmingham, Britain's second-largest city, has a population of about a<br>million, and just under a third are of African or Asian descent.<br>Statisticians believe that Birmingham's traditional white majority<br>could become a minority in the next decade. And the same holds true<br>for Amsterdam, now home to about 150 nationalities.<br><br>Some are calling this new Europe "Eurabia," a reference to the growing<br>influence of Islam and Arabic culture, despite Europe's political and<br>cultural roots in Christianity. Indeed, one out of 10 Dutch citizens<br>was born abroad. Disneyland near Paris offers prayer rooms for French<br>Muslims. And in Britain, immigrants from former colonies have mostly<br>slipped into the poverty of ghettos.<br><br>How can the members of this "desperate and dangerous new underclass,"<br>as social workers in Leeds call them, become responsible citizens? Who<br>is preventing them from attacking one another, as was the case two<br>weeks ago in Birmingham?<br><br>It doesn't take much for violence to erupt. The recent unrest in<br>Lozells, one of Birmingham's poorest neighborhoods, claimed two lives,<br>20 injured and a large number of smashed windows and torched vehicles.<br>The violence erupted when young Asians, most of whose parents came<br>from Pakistan and India, clashed with the children of immigrants from<br>the Caribbean.<br><br>In Birmingham, the violence was triggered by a rumor that Ajaib<br>Hussein, the owner of a successful cosmetics business, had caught a<br>14-year-old Jamaican girl shoplifting and then, joined by up to 25<br>acquaintances and employees, raped the girl. There is no evidence that<br>the incident occurred, nor that the alleged victim exists. But the<br>suspicion alone -- just as in Clichy-sous-Bois -- was enough to ignite<br>the worst violence in Birmingham in more than 20 years, evidence of<br>the enormous tensions in suburbs with a similar social makeup.<br><br>In Lozells, home to about 30,000 people, more than half of residents<br>are of Asian origin and 20 percent are Caribbean. The district's 22<br>percent unemployment rate is almost three times as high as that in the<br>entire Birmingham region. "People here have to fight for every crumb<br>that falls from the tables of the wealthy," says Bishop Joe Aldred.<br><br>The violence is fed by street gangs like the "Muslim Birmingham<br>Panthers" and the "Burger Bar Boys," groups that originally formed to<br>protect residents against racist attacks. They have since turned into<br>crime syndicates, and Lozells has become a metaphor for Britain's<br>failed integration and immigration policies, a community that the<br>government can only control through tough policing. Large ghettos have<br>appeared, say experts, and the anger of those who live there is<br>directed at neighbors with different skin colors and bigger television<br>sets -- and not at the "infidels of the West."<br><br>Britain's white establishment, warns Trevor Phillips, head of the<br>Commission for Racial Equality, is "sleepwalking" into a future where<br>cities will be full of "black holes." Recent surveys conclude that 95<br>percent of all white Britons have exclusively white friends, that 37<br>percent of nonwhite residents also prefer to socialize with their own,<br>and that this trend is on the rise, especially among young people. In<br>places like Lozells, only one in 15 children succeeds in climbing the<br>social ladder.<br><br>Such neighborhoods are fertile recruiting grounds for fundamentalists<br>because "the majority of Muslims in Great Britain are frustrated but<br>cannot talk about it," says Sayid Sharif, 37, an immigrant and<br>construction engineer from north London. "They would never publicly<br>express approval of the London attacks, but they secretly believe that<br>Great Britain got what it deserved."<br><br>Britain officially mourned the victims of the July 7 bombings just<br>last week. A few days later on the other side of the channel, the<br>Netherlands marked the first anniversary of the murder of filmmaker<br>Theo van Gogh, who was killed by an unemployed Moroccan extremist.<br><br>The Dutch also face the ruins of their integration policy, long<br>considered exemplary. Indeed, for American terrorism expert Jessica<br>Stern, the Netherlands is "a laboratory that's especially well suited<br>for studying the development of fear." Stern is astonished at how the<br>murder of a single individual can affect an entire country. "How can a<br>nation suddenly become so consumed by self-doubt? And how can it be<br>that not just the Muslims, but also the native Dutch, find themselves<br>in such an identity crisis?"<br><br>Sixty percent of the Netherlands' 1 million Muslims see themselves as<br>Moroccans or Turks first, are often proud of their cultural norms and<br>values and seek comfort in their own communities. This creates<br>parallel worlds so disparate that immigrant children speak of "the<br>Dutch" as enemies. Their siblings attend Koran schools, and more and<br>more Muslim women now wear head scarves in public. Interactions<br>between Muslims and native Dutch are becoming increasingly abrasive,<br>especially in public places like Amsterdam's shopping streets.<br><br>The country's journalists, attorneys and politicians of every stripe<br>have been receiving anonymous threats. Even Amsterdam Mayor Job Cohen,<br>named one of Time magazine's "European heroes" of 2005 because of his<br>conciliatory stance, now needs bodyguards. And Dutch authorities are<br>installing more surveillance cameras in the country's most volatile<br>urban neighborhoods.<br><br>"We were too soft. The days of drinking tea are over," says Dutch<br>Minister of Immigration Rita Verdonk, who has adopted a hard-line<br>approach toward troublemakers. Her officials have increasingly taken<br>to deporting rejected asylum seekers, including those who were<br>previously tolerated and whose children even attended Dutch schools.<br><br>According to statistics compiled by the Anne Frank Foundation, there<br>have been 106 reciprocal acts of revenge since the Van Gogh murder,<br>including the firebombing of the Muslim Bedir Elementary School in the<br>tranquil town of Uden by a youth gang that left behind a clear message<br>to the country's Muslims: "White Power."<br><br>The combat zone is expanding, mirroring the scenario pale author<br>Michel Houellebecq described in his latest bestseller. And it seems as<br>if Europe's rootless immigrants are changing life on the Continent in<br>dramatic ways, with Birmingham and the Paris suburbs providing a taste<br>of what may well be in Europe's future.<br> <p></p><i></i>
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REUTERS

Postby dbeach » Wed Nov 09, 2005 1:56 am

I don't think Tom Henaghan of cloak and dagger wrote that article from reuters<br><br>still checking <p></p><i></i>
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Re: WHY IS FRANCE BURNING?

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Nov 09, 2005 10:31 am

<br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://direland.typepad.com/" target="top">direland.typepad.com/</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--><br><br><!--EZCODE IMAGE START--><img src="http://www.markdroberts.com/images/Direland-5.jpg" style="border:0;"/><!--EZCODE IMAGE END--><br><br>WHY IS FRANCE BURNING? The rebellion of a lost generation<br><br><br>Saturday night was the 10th day of the spreading youth riots that have much of France in flames -- and it was the worst night ever since the first riot erupted in a suburban Paris ghetto of low-income housing, with 1295 vehicles -- from private cars to public buses -- burned last night, a huge jump from the 897 set afire the previous evening. And, for the first time, the violence born in the suburban ghettos last night invaded the center of Paris -- some 40 vehicles were set alight in Le Marais (the pricey home to the most famous gay ghetto in Paris), around the Place de la Republique nearby, and in the bourgeois 17th arrondissement, within walking distance from the dilapidated ghetto of the Goutte d'Or in the 18th arrondissement. <br><br>As someone who lived in France for nearly a decade, and who has visited those suburban ghettos, where the violence started, on reporting trips any number of times, I have not been surprised by this tsunami of inchoate youth rebellion that is engulfing France. It is the result of thirty years of government neglect: of the failure of the French political classes -- of both right and left -- to make any serious effort to integrate its Muslim and black populations into the larger French economy and culture; and of the deep-seated, searing, soul-destroying racism that the unemployed and profoundly alienated young of the ghettos face every day of their lives, both from the police, and when trying to find a job or decent housing. <br><br>To understand the origins of this profound crisis for France, it is important to step back and remember that the ghettos where festering resentment has now burst into flames were created as a matter of industrial policy by the French state. <br><br>If France's population of immigrant origin -- mostly Arab, some black -- is today quite large (more than 10% of the total population), it is because there was a government and industrial policy during the post-World War II boom years of reconstruction and economic expansion which the French call "les trentes glorieuses" -- the 30 glorious years -- to recruit from France's foreign colonies laborers and factory and menial workers for jobs which there were no Frenchmen to fill. These immigrant workers, primarily from North Africa, were desperately needed to allow the French economy to expand due to the shortage of male manpower caused by two World Wars, which killed many Frenchmen, and slashed the native French birth-rates too. Moreover, these immigrant workers (especially Moroccans, particularly favored in the auto industry) were favored by industrial employers as passive and unlikely to strike (in sharp contrast to the highly political Continental French working class and its militant, largely Communist-led unions) and cheaper to hire. In some industries, for this reason, literacy was a disqualification -- because an Arab worker who could read could educate himself about politics and become more susceptible to organization into a union. This government-and-industry-sponsored influx of Arab workers (many of whom then saved up to bring their families to France from North Africa) was reinforced following Algerian independence by the arrival of the Harkis. <p></p><i></i>
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france

Postby jenz » Wed Nov 09, 2005 11:06 am

M. Villepin last night said that France was not a country like other countries and would not accept separate development, but follow policy of assimilation. one of the french tv chaines, night before last, contrasted the French response to that which followed the rioting in England 20 years ago, stressing adoption of policy of recruitment of police from ethnic minorities. I don't think all white french people are unaware that problems originate from the treatment which typically a young person from those ethnic groups gets at the hands of the police. assimilation has not happened of course. housing problems have become worse in recent few years, with all groups in lower income bands who rent property finding rising rents and little done to ensure that property is kept in fit condition by landlords. the success Le Pen had in getting through the first round of presidential last time was met with a response of deep shame - it was as much voter apathy that had permitted this as a move toward extreme right. it is not easy to judge a country from the outside and many times things which happen in France are reported in anglo saxon press in a way which doesn't quite hit the mark. <p></p><i></i>
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more

Postby tal » Wed Nov 09, 2005 6:29 pm

<!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/">WayneMadsen</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--><br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr><br>November 8, 2005 -- More cases of arson were reported throughout France and Belgium. In Belgium, five more cars were torched in Brussels while other arson cases were reported in the towns of Sint Niklaas and Liege. There were more arson incidents in Bremen, Germany. Rioting also spread to the French towns of Toulon and Draguignan and the Breton towns of Blois, and Quimper. <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>What is significant is that many of the towns being hit in more recent rioting do not have large Muslim populations, especially those in Brittany, Alsace, and Normandy.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>Late News: As additional proof that there are psy-ops behind the current wave of unrest in Europe, not only have there been arson attacks in Sint Niklaas, Belgium (named after St. Nicholas (Santa Claus)) just before the Christmas holidays but also a wealthy neighborhood in Brussels -- Dilbeek. There was also an incident of a Molotov cocktail being thrown at the secretary of an extreme right-wing Flemish party in Brugge. Violent incidents were also reported in other districts in Brussels. France, Belgium, and Germany were the three most conspicuous EU and NATO members that opposed the US invasion of Iraq. CNN's Christiane Amanpour, married to Democratic neo-con Jamie Rubin, Madeleine Albright's one-time water carrier, is now reporting from France on the "seriousness" of the situation, likening it to the Algerian Civil War and leftist riots in 1968. She also referred to riots on one of the islands off of France but did not seem to recall its name. The island is Corsica, which has seen violence from an independence movement.<br><br>With Amanpour's scripts obviously being pre-approved by CNN's Washington head honcho Wolf Blitzer, a one time reporter for the Jerusalem Post and a former editor for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) newsletter The Near East Report, look for CNN to hype the situation in France and elsewhere as a European "Intifada."<br><br>Not coincidentally, the Australian and British media outlets owned by Rupert Murdoch are hyping the arrest of a group of rival Muslims in Melbourne and Sydney who are claimed to have been planning a "large scale" chemical attack in Australia in a "holy war." The two rival groups are being reported to have conducted a "race" to be the first to carry out a chemical attack on Australian soil. Sounds more like Fox News and Murdoch hype.<br><br>The concept of "creative destruction" is a tenet of the neo-con movement. It has been outlined by neo-con philosopher Leo Strauss and his modern day disciples, including Michael Ledeen, Dick Cheney, and Binyamin Netanyahu. As a former Mossad senior official once told the editor, "Yitzhak Rabin's assassination was carried out by the Likud to destroy the peace process and throw the region into turmoil. Never forget that." I won't.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br> <br><br> And right on cue <!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/11/09/D8DP4IE02.html">LePen</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--> steps up to the plate:<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Far-Right Leader: Riots Only the Start</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br>Nov 09 2:08 PM US/Eastern<br>        <br>By JOHN LEICESTER<br>Associated Press Writer<br><br>PARIS<br><br>French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen claimed Wednesday his National Front party has been "submerged" with prospective members and supportive e-mail since rioting erupted in heavily immigrant communities near Paris.<br><br>In an interview with The Associated Press, Le Pen described the recent violence as "just the start" of conflicts caused by "massive immigration from countries of the Third World that is threatening not just France but the whole continent."<br><br><br><br>Le Pen said people with immigrant backgrounds who commit crimes should be stripped of their French nationality and sent "back to their country of origin."<br><br>Reminded that the vast majority of youths taking part in the arson and rioting are French, born in France to immigrant parents, he said: "What does that mean? Are they French because they have a French identity card?"<br><br>French nationality should be given only to those who ask for it and "who are worthy of it," he said. "Those who got nationality automatically, who don't consider themselves French and who even say publicly that they consider France their enemy should not be treated as French."<br><br>Le Pen said he is convinced that what he described as a surge in support for his "zero immigration" platform would translate into votes at the ballot box for his National Front party.<br><br>French voters "are saying to themselves 'Le Pen was right. We were told that Le Pen is an extremist because he said that immigration problems would lead to disorder. The facts have shown that he was right,'" he said.<br><br>"We are receiving thousands of new members, tens of thousands of e- mails. All of our offices are submerged, we don't know how to respond because we don't have the staff to reply to the wave of people who, 95 percent of them, salute and approve our positions," he added.<br><br>Le Pen gave no specifics on the number of new members, but the party's top official for new memberships said the figure was closer to 1,000 and that they were requests to join.<br><br>Le Pen stunned many in France and shocked Europe by making it through to the second round of the last presidential elections in 2002. But he was soundly defeated in a runoff against President Jacques Chirac.<br><br>Le Pen said he is "more than ever" determined to run again in 2007. (more at link) <p></p><i></i>
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