situation in Paris

[Etienne de Bary]

As i kept receiving mails from the US from poeple worried about my safety, i make here a copy of a message i just sent to Steve Hopper :

Hi Steve,

Frankly, there's not much to worry about, there's been a mistake made by cops who left three kids hidden in an electricity little house where the kids got electrocuted, and two of them died, and the minister "de l'interieur" (head of police) talked very unwisely of the victims and the social situation, he was in fact rather insultant, and thought only of defending the cops, quite unwisely.
Then as things started to go wrong, he kept being very insultant and arrogant, showing muscles and talking loud, while the cops are really completely disarmed: Randomly burn a car is so easy, and once it's burning firemen can't do much either.

The cops are actually being prosecuted for "non-assistance to persons in danger", which is quite serious considering assistance is their aim and they were on duty.

So there are small groups of teenagers all over the country who keep burning cars in all the poor neighbourhoods to keep the attention focused, and show they do not dig it. The minister, Sarkosy, was actually a very possible next President de la Republique, he is quite young and a very arrogant person, and he does not see the difference between expressing his personal feelings and the way a minister in charge should speak as so.

There is much to say of course, but anyway i do not know if "riot" is actually the correct word. You know there is a lot of cars in this country, in a lot of cities, 100 cars burning sounds like a big thing but it's really very isolated micro-events here and there.
Burning a car does not take a lot of violence, and it makes great news pictures.

The question that comes to my mind is "- why do you worry when i don't ?"
Maybe some people overthere are happy to show that Baghdad comes to Paris when Paris did not go to Baghdad.
Well, it may look alike in picture, but it's not.

[end of quote]

it is remarkable how fast the political teams under Jacques Chirac rotate and how he manage to always chop off those who might seem to grow bigger than himself.

Sarkosy started as Maire of Neuilly sur Seine, the most notorious exclusive bourgeois subburb of Paris. His handsome tall young man in Lacoste shirt and long teeth attitudes made him highly popular there. His matrimonial life was unusually agitated, but that's not such a big deal around here.

His most notable recent metaphor was to compare the poor subburbs to scum he was to clean with a "Karscher" pressure sanding gun...

[Etienne de Bary]

Mmh, things have worsen quite a bit during the week-end actually...

[Helene Schmit]

Yes... Without enterring in etienne's political summary (;)), I have to admit that despite these really regrettable events, I don't feel at all in danger in Paris or in the south suburb, close from paris, where I live...
But there are still some places to avoid in the paris area, of course... but really not the kind of places people go to when they are sightseeing

So, as a summary: don't cancel your trips to Paris, if planned, and don't be afraid, just try to avoid the "hot spots"

and if you wanna ride, don't go by night at the "bois de boulogne" lol

[Etienne de Bary]

The Bois de Boulogne is hot, but it's not because of burning cars...

This is all in specific isolated suburbs, not in Paris.

[Wesley Tucker]

Would y'all please quit beating around the bush?

It's in the Algerian neighborhoods. By and large it's Algerian immigrants and people of Algerian and Northern African descent going on a rampage because the authorities have the audacity to insist that immigrants adhere to the same laws as everyone else.

Now, that wasn't so hard to say out loud, was it?

[Helene Schmit]

Would y'all please quit beating around the bush?

It's in the Algerian neighborhoods. By and large it's Algerian immigrants and people of Algerian and Northern African descent going on a rampage because the authorities have the audacity to insist that immigrants adhere to the same laws as everyone else.

Now, that wasn't so hard to say out loud, was it?

I personnally wouldn't use the shortcut of saying "algerian neighborhood"... this is not something that can be quickly summarized, nor assigned to a specific community...
These events are due to a minority of angry and violent people, but never forget that most of the people living in these areas just don't adhere at all to this situation, and just wanna live in peace


whatever... things are getting worse, cars are still burning, police has real troubles to face the situation, who knows how they're gonna solve the problem?

[Etienne de Bary]

Would y'all please quit beating around the bush?

It's in the Algerian neighborhoods. By and large it's Algerian immigrants and people of Algerian and Northern African descent going on a rampage because the authorities have the audacity to insist that immigrants adhere to the same laws as everyone else.

Now, that wasn't so hard to say out loud, was it?

It's not hard to say, the less one knows the easier to make a strong conviction.
France is a country with a strong state culture, that's the first point that makes it hard to get from a US point of view. The cause of these trouble is the disparition of public services in the very places where people can't affort alt private services.
Under the previous left wing gov Police stations had been opened in all these hot spots, with local cops, working with street educators, sports managers, etc., what we call a social canvas. And this had a cost in form of income taxes.
Of course the right wing, champion of security, did not close these police posts, but in most of them there was usually 2 cops left, all the rest was gone patrolling in the tube with the army to show their machine guns. Same for kindergardens, cleaning, street paving, gardens, public transport, etc. All the plans but the budget is only for next year.
Of course as these Police posts are not very useful anymore (2 cops can't even assume their own security) the subburbs are constantly patrolled by riot troops.

i live in one of these suburbs and i can tell you why there is no car burning here in Gentilly, with 2 hot "Cités" (big social buildings concentrations) : we have three local cops in charge, (municipal police, paid by the maire on local taxes) two are only for trafic, and ONE cares for conflicts mediation too, he's called Monsieur Djamel, and this one man makes all the difference.

For the proportion of black and Magrebian guys in the gangs facing the cops, it might be like 80 or 90%, there is white kids in these gangs because they are based on local solidarities, so racism is not very strong between kids that were together since kindergarden. A little bit more maghrebian than blacks i think.