The Parisian Powder Keg

by Jack White Sun Nov 06, 2005 22:06

This is a cut and paste of a Mark Steyn article: http://www.suntimes.com/output/steyn/cst-edt-steyn06.html

by ali la pointe - brigade de ben-bella Sun Nov 06, 2005 23:04

This is a firebrand apocalyptic rant worthy of Ian Paisley or Enoch Powell.

The riots have nothing to do with a clash of civilisations theory made popular popular by ultraconservatives like Bush and Berlisconi, much less of the anti-semitism implied in your spurious claim that;

"For half a decade, French Arabs have been carrying on a low-level intifada against synagogues, kosher butchers, Jewish schools, etc."

Pure shite! The overwhelming majority of anti-semitic attacks in France have been and continue to be perpetrated by white supremacists. The only places of worship I see being attacked here are mosques being tear gassed by the CRS and Catholic Churches containing asylum seekers being stormed by the same.

This of course raises the interesting point that your piece says nothing about the legacy of French ethnic cleansing in Algeria, or of the tens of thousands of North and West Africans who died fighting for the "republic", of police massacres of hundreds of French arabs since the 1950s, or of incidences of shoot-to-kill that would give an RUC man a hard-on.

Your piece says much less about the appalling social conditions in the soulless projects that ring Paris, of police and state institutional racism, of systematic racial profiling by the cops, or of Chirac's inflammatory pieces about "noisy and smelly neighbours"

A real republic should be home to a Bourafa or a Delhadji more than to a De Villepin or a De Dampierre, yet it isn't. Behind the veil of race-blindness and secularism, the 5th Republic is as white, aristocratic and theocratic as the royalist state was in 732. [it's also worth pointing out here that, had the moors held in Europe, all the evidence suggests that there would have been no religious intolerance, progroms against Jews, gnostics, protestants or any minorities and no Holocaust)

20 years ago tens of thousands of French Arab youth marched from Marseille to Paris in the "Marche des Beurs" with an elaborate but precise set of demands pointing the way to giving them a real stake in their native country.

The state's response? Increased attack s on employment in the sectors through which immigrants had helped to create France's post war boom, the commonplace and very public vicious racist rhetoric not just by the Front National, but also by Gaullists, but even by Communists and Socialists, the further racialisation of frenchness by removing the right of soil and its replacement with a'blood' requirement for citizenship (a bit like in Germany, and of course now Ireland), police laws and tactics designed to increasingly marginalise and criminalise 'immigrant' youth, attacks on welfare and on public services, bleating rhetoric like yours about the incompatibility of cultures and the further sectarianisation of race relations through inflammatory legislative instruments like the banning of the veil.

I detected more than a hint of glee in your apocalyptic pronouncements. Seems like your pragmatic mask is slipping as you gear yourself up for your crusade against the brown-skinned hordes.

Nardim ammok, kelb.

by ali la pointe - brigade de ben-bella Sun Nov 06, 2005 23:24

Thanks to jack white I have just seen that Whiteous Supremacist's piece is not in fact his, but one he plagiarised from Mark Steyn at the Chicago Sun-Times (a Murdoch paper, anyone?), well, as they say in Derry "what would you expect from a pig but a grunt?" The Sun-Times is awhite racist gung-ho rag. Journalists who write for the Sun Times still believe that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and that he had something to do with the 9/11 attacks.

by intrigued Mon Nov 07, 2005 13:40

is that what you're saying?
Hmm. get in contact with them now, ask them to send you cash for your 12 point thrashing dublin plan.
First off the metro system.

by doug ireland Mon Nov 07, 2005 14:21

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.

by :-) Mon Nov 07, 2005 14:39

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/05/europe_paris_riot_suburb_residents/html/1.stm

by Noel Thu Nov 10, 2005 13:08

The ubiquitous Sarkozy seems to be behind all this trouble, judging by the finger pointers around these parts anyway.

When Sarkozy became Prime Minister did he sanction the building of these ghettoes?
When he became President did he order institutionalised racism?

The French left model has failed - and the left blame Sarkozy.

by - Thu Nov 10, 2005 13:18

you can read his biog here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Sarkozy

by Noel Thu Nov 10, 2005 14:03

"Sarkozy has never been prime minister Noel."

I'm sorry comrade, but if Sarkozy was never Prime Minister - or President - how can he be blamed for the current state of urban France?

Obviously the Wiki bio is wildly inaccurate and needs updating. I believe he's to become Emperor next.

by comrade Thu Nov 10, 2005 14:27

As well as being the minister of the interior, he is also the highest elected politician of the current french cabinet, and the president of the UMP.
=
(1) His job is to run the police, run the state, and run the justice department in the interior this means "urban france".
(2) He is an elected politician not all of the cabinet has been elected in direct sufrage.
(3) He chose to run for presidency of his party UMP on condition that he didn't immediately run for Presidency of France.

Really what part of that do you have difficulty understanding?

by Noel Thu Nov 10, 2005 14:42

Welcome comrade.

So let me get this straight.
The intifada-insurrection-freedom struggle going on these past few nights is nothing whatsoever to do with historically poor policies of leftist government?
You know the sort of thing - poor housing, incompetent management of the economy, inefficient police resourcing.

No, none of the above. It's the Nazi-Fascist-Bushite Sarkozy.
That's the bit I have trouble understanding comrade.

by comrade Thu Nov 10, 2005 15:14

Its not a freedom insurrection or even an intifada.

Sarkozy's policies are linked by commentators on all sides to the length of the disturbances, and no-one can suggest that if he hadn't referred to the ghetto dwellers as "scum" after the first few nights, the trouble would have ended.

And you have obviously ignored the fact that under the leftist governments there were more parisien police on the beat. Sarkozy took them off the beat this year to "assist investigation".

So in this case Left = more police.
right = less police.
Now on whose watch did these riots occur?
Left or Right?