The Youth of Today & Criminalisation

international | rights, freedoms and repression | news report Sunday December 11, 2005 16:04 by iosaf

{a sunday paper's style soliloquay }

This weekend, as the French state celebrated 100 years since the law that seperates state :+: church in education and beyond. French youth have enjoyed secular secondary education and been taught the values of the republic "liberty equality fraternity" fo 100 years. As insidiously the triad of republican values has seen added the quaternion (*) "Equity" added. France has changed: 500 French youth were attacked by police last night for attempting a rave in Rennes, shouting as near 40 were arrested "Liberté!".

On Sundays I occasionally publish an opinion piece:-

I want you to ponder how Mrs Larkin told Jim he looked great just because she was on her knees, and then she arose, and that beautiful human detail is what seperates you from and joins you to the birth of the Irish Labour movement. Jim thought it was such a funny line, and would be a secret testament to

"what its all about"
= Arise now.

500 young people tried to gather and do whatever it is they would have done in a field at Rennes, Brittany early yesterday evening.

But the local mayor, who had previously not chosen to use Loi 3.avril 1955 powers and call a curfew or avail of other municipal public order restrictions, caught wind (probably on the internet) of the fiendish intent of bringing "unknown quantities" of sound systems, speakers, bass woofers, bottles of water, glow sticks, and thus how many people there would finally be.

The Breton prefect in charge of public security Bernadette Malgorn, decided that because ""les conditions minimales de sécurité" [n'étaient] "pas remplies". (because the minimal conditions were not met) she couldn't predict if 15 000 or 20 000 people would turn up.

Oh but some would say she's an old party pooper coz she did the same thing last year, but the ravers didn't throw petrol bombs last year. Oh no! Things have changed on the old garage and sweaty t-shirt circuit. And people are beginning to associate "drugs" with new forms of violent anti-social behaviour indeed.

http://www.swissinfo.org/sfr/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=6307073&cKey=1134306973000

Of course older French people, the sort who until recently drove swanky buses in the Parisien suburbs, (and would now be happy of the loan of an old London routemaster) are well used to their hooligan offspring by now. They know they'll never vote, and scientifically that will guarantee them a leader of Chavez's stature some day. (Complete with baseball bat). There has been no wave of alarm, presidential adress, or rush to the letters pages of the newspapers to denounce the use of tear-gas, water cannon and "it is rumoured" plastic bullets.

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The development of the republic from its secular watershed of 1905 meant that the claim to sole moral authority held by the Christian churches of France, be they protestant or catholic was allowed to be challanged. And the resulting influence on the perception of the role of intellectuals in society on emergent democracies globally throughout the XX century may not be underestimated. But it has been a very long time since Sartre sold a newspaper or we expected to see "movers & shakers" on the Late Late Show.

We have in Ireland in the last days seen what has been described on the "indymedia editorial list" at least, as a most unusual and seldom scene assembly of _Irish working people_. (((This is what they look like)))

At long last, they have done what they were supposed to have done so long ago, come out of their hiding places wherever it was they were, whatever it was they did to pass these days of halcyon celtic tiger bliss.

But they also did other things in their shared and collective historical past, things which were not achieved or suffered by other emergent "democracies or republics". They endured civil wars, wars of attritition, wars of national determination, dirty wars, economic wars, drug wars. In short they experienced "war" and they seem to know they don't like it. I'd hope in doing so, in being "Irish" the "Irish" have realised how not to do certain things. Our road to the republic of "Equality .:. Liberty .:. Fraternity" is going to be different and we need no longer make the twin mistake of confrontational militancy and constitutional timidity. Our "class war" is going to be very different. It will be more like a pillow fight, and coz we're the post-Kill Bill / Matrix generation we'll fly through the air on invisible wires and be... p-h-e-n-o-m-o-n-a-l :-)


The only thing we need do is keep the Irish working people walking together.
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last coverage of a Rave & Criminalisation.
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=71268&search_text=czechtech

(*) If you don't know what a "quarternion" is and why if you're Irish you ought be proud of it-
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=69934

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If you are very very slow on the uptake just remember these easy to remember phrases :-
"fraternity" is not "solidarity"
"prosperity" is not "equality"
"equity" is not "liberty".

Mrs Larkin told Jim he looked great just because she was on her knees, and then she arose, and that beautiful human detail is what seperates you from and joins you to the birth of the Irish Labour movement. Jim thought it was such a funny line, from such a wonderful woman, that even Markievicz and Gonne would be impressed, that it would become a secret testament to "what its all about"

Arise now.

The same things will happen but with different values asigned to each part of the equation. Linked sunday papers-
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=69934