Rioters Burn Paris for a Week; France Demonstrates Diplomacy

[Paul Beach]

Margaret Gray announces:

In a story that is vastly underreported in the American Media, muslim youth rioters have been torching Parisian suburbs and ghettos for over a week. In an unprecedented move in all of history, the French government has sought to understand the plight of the rioters and has not resorted to forceful tactics.

These rioters are otherwise good immigrants who have not been welcomed into the French community, and many are unemployed. This is why they are rioting. They need more social programs and more money, and the French have ignored this for years, thus causing this natural result.

http://cbs5.com/national/topstories_story_307214340.html

This show of official restraint is commendable and represents the best possible way to handle these types of disputes. The government has limited this expression of dissatisfaction to 20 Paris-region towns and has indicated that it will not allow it to spread.

The story says, "Rather than feeling embraced as full and equal citizens, immigrants and their French-born children complain of police harassment and of being refused jobs, housing and opportunities."

Their plan? "Minister of Social Cohesion Jean-Louis Borloo said the government had to react 'firmly' but added that France must also acknowledge its failure to have dealt with anger simmering in poor suburbs for decades."

Mrs. Gray knows that some have negatively stereotyped France as a nation that likes to surrender to all kinds of problems, but after 8 days of riots, diplomacy and understanding have worked, and France has neither had to resort to violence or surrendering.

This is a wonderful model to follow in the rest of the world, and should be a clear lesson to America that yes, we should have sought to understand Bin Laden rather than bomb him. There is no need for a nation to resort to police force when all the people need is peaceful understanding.

[Gail]

Ah, Paris, the City of Manifestations (protests)

There is always some type of protest going on in Paris. It looks to me as though these immigrants are becoming very French indeed!

[Paul Beach]

Isn't that wonderful? According to the news reports, these immigrants have been treated so badly that they practically deserve to light up a few hundred cars and go crazy in the streets. Maybe they will get it out of their systems and go on to lead regular productive lives like their neighbors who choose not to partake in the festivities.

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/11/04/D8DLN02G5.html

Mrs. Gray

[Gail]

There has been a real problem between the French people and immigrants in France for many years now. I'm amazed that nothing better has been done yet to deal with it.

I used to watch this issue on TV, but mostly the concern at that time (few years ago) was with the "sans papiers" type (illegal)

It could be that, like England and the influx years back with immigrants from the W. Indies and India, people will just talk about it for a while and then one day they will find that they are used to it

[Ron Lambert]

For decades, France has followed a deliberate policy of compelling Islamic Arabs to live in segregated ghettos. It's catching up to them, now.

[Paul Beach]

Margaret Gray reports:

The rioting is now extending across France. It looks like the government can't figure out how to control this. Mrs. Gray wonders if they will soon request that some other country step in and help them. Again, France seems to be surrendering to violence, even though it is from the inside.

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Here is the latest:

Rioting Spreads From Paris Across France

Nov 5, 10:39 AM (ET)

By JAMEY KEATEN

(AP) A woman and a child look at the nursery school in Acheres, west of Paris, Saturday, Nov. 5, 2005,...

AUBERVILLIERS, France (AP) - Marauding youths torched nearly 900 vehicles, stoned paramedics and burned a nursery school in a ninth night of violence that spread from Paris suburbs to towns around France, police said Saturday. Authorities arrested more than 250 people overnight - a sweep unprecedented since the unrest began.

For the first time, authorities used a helicopter to chase down youths armed with gasoline bombs who raced from arson attack to arson attack, national police spokesman Patrick Hamon said.

The violence, which was concentrated in neighborhoods with large African and Muslim populations but has since spread, has forced France to address the simmering anger of its suburbs, where immigrants and their French-born children live on the margins of society.

With 897 vehicles destroyed by daybreak Saturday, it was the worst one-day toll since unrest broke out after the Oct. 27 accidental electrocution of two teenagers who believed police were chasing them. Five hundred cars were burned a night earlier.

(AP) Childrens' photos remain stuck to the walls at a nursery school in Acheres, west of Paris,...

Full Image

In a particularly malevolent turn, youths in the eastern Paris suburb of Meaux prevented paramedics from evacuating a sick person from a housing project, pelting rescuers with rocks and torching the awaiting ambulance, an Interior Ministry official said.

A nursery school was badly burned in Acheres, west of Paris.

The town had previously escaped the violence, the worst rioting in at least a decade in France. Some residents demanded that the army be deployed, or that citizens band together to protect their neighborhoods. At the school gate, Mayor Alain Outreman tried to calm tempers.

"We are not going to start militias," he said. "You would have to be everywhere."

Unrest, mainly arson, was reported in the northern city of Lille, in Toulouse in the southwest and in the Normandy city of Rouen. It was the second night that troubles spread beyond the difficult Paris suburbs.

(AP) The roof of a nursery school in Acheres, west of Paris, is caved in, Saturday, Nov. 5, 2005, after...

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In Suresnes, a normally calm town just west of the capital, 44 cars were burned in a lot.

On Saturday morning, more than 1,000 people took part in a silent march in one of the worst-hit suburbs, Aulnay-sous-Bois. One banner read: "No to violence."

Police detained 258 people overnight, almost all in the Paris region, and dozens of them will be prosecuted, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said after a government crisis meeting.

"Violence penalizes those who live in the toughest conditions," he said. "Violence is not the solution."

Most attacks have been in towns with low-income housing projects, areas marked by high unemployment, crime and despair. But in a new development, gangs have left their heavily policed neighborhoods to attack others with fewer police, spreading the violence.

(AP) Residents participate in a silent march in Aulnay-sous-Bois, a suburb east of Paris, Saturday, Nov....

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Police deployed overnight in smaller, more mobile teams to chase rioters getting around in cars and on motorcycles, said Hamon, the police spokesman.

There appeared to be no coordination among gangs in different areas, Hamon said. Within gangs, however, youths communicated by cell phone text messages or e-mails and warned each other about police, he said.

Anger against police was fanned days ago when a tear gas bomb exploded in a mosque in Clichy-sous-Bois, north of Paris - the same surburb where the youths were electrocuted. Youths suspected a police operation, but Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin met Saturday with the head of the Paris mosque and denied that police were to blame.

The persistence of the violence prompted the American and Russian governments to advise citizens visiting Paris to steer clear of the suburbs.

In Torcy, east of the capital, looters set fire to a youth center and a police station, which were gutted, city hall said. An incendiary device was tossed at the wall of a synagogue in Pierrefitte, northwest of Paris.

A police officer at the Interior Ministry operations center said bullets were fired into a vandalized bus in Sarcelles, north of Paris.

Firefighters battled a furious blaze at a carpet warehouse in Aubervilliers, on the northern edge of Paris.

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Associated Press writers John Leicester, Elaine Ganley and Angela Doland in Paris contributed to this report.

[lazarus]

Quote:

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Gail said:

I used to watch this issue on TV, but mostly the concern at that time (few years ago) was with the "sans papiers" type (illegal)

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Doesn't that talk of illegals remind you of another country thats had alot of noise about illegals recently. My guess if the cry is simply "send them home" in the US then the US will face the same problem in a few year time with the growing Spanish population.

what s happening in France was predictable. It was predictable in the UK. It was predictable here.

[jasd]

QR Frame:

French riots:

We know, don’t we… that Dubya done it, he done it; him with his lies.[/sotto voce]

Mashed Chaos Theory:

Good grief, he lied! you ain’t be heard of chaosmic wings in the ‘Namese banana plants!? They up-down up-down go and lookee, hurrycane Kitreena in Missushippyland. Well, it be like

smoky Bo Bobs tellin’, Bushes lip movin’ when he done lies… y’know, like them chaosmic wings and the boys over ther in the Nicol Kidmen Mouland , they start to burn stuff.

I hear me a song in them boys shoutin’, runnin’, burnin’…shoutin’, runnin’, burnin’. Yeah, I got me a rap.

(okay, so I don’t listen to hip-hop or reggae {…only hear it on the PA system at the recycle place}, and okay, so I don’t have ‘alternative’ slang, or such, down, all I got is warped humor -- so, I’m still grinnin’… otherwise, stand in line to whack me ‘longside my haid)

Lastly: The meter in “he lied-he lied, he lied-he lied…” puts me to mind of Sigourney Weaver in Aliens as she, on the verge of hysteria, kept repeating mantra-like, “Lucky-lucky, lucky-lucky, lucky-lucky…”

Hmm, where was I going with that…?[/scratches head]