That started in the not-so-stable suburbs around Paris after the death of two young men and it seems like it's spreding now. I've not been to any of those districs recently tho.
But there is something wrong in my opinion... on top of the fact that the minister in charge of inner safety/police has been acting like an angy kid running for the next presidential elections.
What's wrong in my opinion is the big fuss TV made right from the start. Every news program shows burning cars... hence the day after, some (very few) stupid people burn cars because it's 'as seen on TV'. They even burnt a gym yesterday, and attacked a school too, just te be even more talked about.
Talk about shooting in one's foot... Priceless...
Funny thing is, media almost never speak about the role played by surroundings/environnement. All this mess happens in the large suburbs quickly built in the 50s because the country was in dire need of housing. Open spaces are waaaaaaay to large up there, no actual streets whatsoever, you can imagine.
I deeply believe all that wouldn't happen if these people were given an actual street to live on. BEEEEH, I feel like shouting this loud at times! The problem is YEARS old, it just boomed these days.
But on TV, showing burning cars is soooo much more spectacular than speaking about alternative urban planning :O That makes me want to puke...
The hope comes from auto-regulation I think. Local persons start to calm down things, and a local islamic leader also wrote a law clearly stating that such violent acts are against faith.
It took ten days for the backasswards US mainstream media to catch onto this story. Heard about it on NPR a full week before I saw it on the morning TV news.
An international guy on the radio yesterday put it in perspective when he said, imagine what would happen if Schwarzenegger stood up and called the citizens of Compton, CA (home of NWA & Dr. Dre) "a den of scum and vermin".
I see it as the '91 LA Riots crossed with Paris in May 1968.
It isn't exactly hard to keep up with international news as it happens these days. That is of course, assuming one is interested.
The stuff going in Paris is shocking, but I doubt too surprising to the locals. Britain has the same problems. Nasty tower block buildings thrown up in the sixties to cope with the rising population demands, and large unemployed immigrant populations feeling alienated and deserted. The UK saw it's fair share of similar stuff with the Toxteth and Brixton riots. I actually got caught up in the latter driving home from work on my motorcycle one day, and saw a motorcycle cop pulled off of his bike and have the living crap kicked out of him. I didn't hang around. Scary shit. Not sure what the solution is, but clearly the problem can no longer be ignored.
Oh, I've known about this for a while and have been chatting with French folks in our Unreal society, and they are pretty ticked off about it. They are saying that it's a litte overblown, and it's not "Islamist" asmuch as it's "anti-Native". The bloggers have been keeping tabls on what different mdeia outlets have been saying about it.
The one thing that surprises me is how slowly the French government is acting. 13 days? Everyone was carping on the U.S. response to Katrina after 3-4, days.
Cant say much more than what pior said, for the areas surrounding Paris, this was in reaction after the two guys' death (they tried to hide from the police -as reported on TV- in some kind of electric room) then the conflict spread over all the big cities (big for France, mainly, as pior said because the seen on TV thing, guys doing all this just to mess things up more than they already are.
The big problems we have is that medias love those kind of facts so they are adding more and more to the pressure and fear people already had, accusing the suburbs people to be criminals and government to be lazy or aggressive. This is the thing that really upsets me; they are making money over this and are doing everything they can to spread the conflict so that they can talk about something.
but yah as Scott stated, there's nothing about Islamism or terrorism in that conflict, this is just something that waited for 50 years to blow and it seems that this was the time to...
I won't say the government did nothing yet, they met a lot of organizations and tried to find solutions, but maybe not the right way, plus the medias prefer talking about burnt cars than political meetings, makes more money
I actually heard about this a couple days ago and I thought someone would bring this up, so I left it. When nothing had been stated, I thought I'd bring up the topic.
According to our news, it was started by two teens/men that hid in an electrical box and were killed. That triggered a bunch of violence and now everything is on fire. The news covers it for about 3 minutes, showing videos of firefighters putting out cars. Then they usually switch to a helicopter view of buildings burning.
I don't really trust our media outlets, and I know they don't cover international subjects as much as they should. That's why I wanted to get views from others that actually live in the country. I honestly would be more like Elysium, where I wouldn't watch the news, or read papers, but my wife likes watching the news.
The newspaper I read this morning had an interview with a youth violence researcher, he said it takes so many factors to come together just wrong to make something like this happen that we're not likely going to see it cross the border.
i think that could happen almost anywhere around large cities in europe - not limited to france, imho. large german cities have similar ghettos where the 3rd class citizens are almost isolated from the wealth surrounding them.
ever been to amsterdam? beautiful (although somewhat dirty) city with totally scary surroundings. talk about contrast...
This sort of thing doesn't happen when people feel like they have a stake in it all. France shouldn't have taken them in if they were unwilling to make them a part of society.
That's not really the point Oxy. The thread is about what's going on in France. I know this is a bit bizarre, but I agree with Weiser. Same thing happened in Britain. In the fifties the floodgates were opened from former colonies. Jamaica, India, Pakistan etc. They came in their droves seeking a new life and were faced with the jobs that people in Britain didn't want to do, in a big post war re-building effort. I don't think there was an expectation for them to stay, but moreover, there wasn't a plan in place and neither were they welcomed into society.
it's all because of the non-respected promises the state made.
Just to let you know the people rioting are french people from generations. You can't blame them for being violent tho. They almost live in misery and there's no job for people who live there (a lot of discrimination).
And as pior and vahl said the state waited too much to act properly and the prime minister (who is a premium m***** f*****) keeps on fueling the fire by some meaningless measures.
And for Scott; the fact the state is taking too much time to act is because the riots are spreading all over France not only at Paris, even here in nice a lot of cars have been burned. The state is sending to many CRS (police) for a couple a people wich make the story more ridiculous.
A few days ago the state gave 100 millions euros to the local youth associations all over france (their budget have been cut a lot of time during the years).
Replies
A week of riots and you've only just heard?
[/ QUOTE ]
our media is rather ethnocentric, sorry.
That started in the not-so-stable suburbs around Paris after the death of two young men and it seems like it's spreding now. I've not been to any of those districs recently tho.
But there is something wrong in my opinion... on top of the fact that the minister in charge of inner safety/police has been acting like an angy kid running for the next presidential elections.
What's wrong in my opinion is the big fuss TV made right from the start. Every news program shows burning cars... hence the day after, some (very few) stupid people burn cars because it's 'as seen on TV'. They even burnt a gym yesterday, and attacked a school too, just te be even more talked about.
Talk about shooting in one's foot... Priceless...
Funny thing is, media almost never speak about the role played by surroundings/environnement. All this mess happens in the large suburbs quickly built in the 50s because the country was in dire need of housing. Open spaces are waaaaaaay to large up there, no actual streets whatsoever, you can imagine.
I deeply believe all that wouldn't happen if these people were given an actual street to live on. BEEEEH, I feel like shouting this loud at times! The problem is YEARS old, it just boomed these days.
But on TV, showing burning cars is soooo much more spectacular than speaking about alternative urban planning :O That makes me want to puke...
The hope comes from auto-regulation I think. Local persons start to calm down things, and a local islamic leader also wrote a law clearly stating that such violent acts are against faith.
I don't know how all that will evolve.
BTW, I don't have a car
An international guy on the radio yesterday put it in perspective when he said, imagine what would happen if Schwarzenegger stood up and called the citizens of Compton, CA (home of NWA & Dr. Dre) "a den of scum and vermin".
I see it as the '91 LA Riots crossed with Paris in May 1968.
/jzero
The stuff going in Paris is shocking, but I doubt too surprising to the locals. Britain has the same problems. Nasty tower block buildings thrown up in the sixties to cope with the rising population demands, and large unemployed immigrant populations feeling alienated and deserted. The UK saw it's fair share of similar stuff with the Toxteth and Brixton riots. I actually got caught up in the latter driving home from work on my motorcycle one day, and saw a motorcycle cop pulled off of his bike and have the living crap kicked out of him. I didn't hang around. Scary shit. Not sure what the solution is, but clearly the problem can no longer be ignored.
The one thing that surprises me is how slowly the French government is acting. 13 days? Everyone was carping on the U.S. response to Katrina after 3-4, days.
Scott
The big problems we have is that medias love those kind of facts so they are adding more and more to the pressure and fear people already had, accusing the suburbs people to be criminals and government to be lazy or aggressive. This is the thing that really upsets me; they are making money over this and are doing everything they can to spread the conflict so that they can talk about something.
but yah as Scott stated, there's nothing about Islamism or terrorism in that conflict, this is just something that waited for 50 years to blow and it seems that this was the time to...
I won't say the government did nothing yet, they met a lot of organizations and tried to find solutions, but maybe not the right way, plus the medias prefer talking about burnt cars than political meetings, makes more money
According to our news, it was started by two teens/men that hid in an electrical box and were killed. That triggered a bunch of violence and now everything is on fire. The news covers it for about 3 minutes, showing videos of firefighters putting out cars. Then they usually switch to a helicopter view of buildings burning.
I don't really trust our media outlets, and I know they don't cover international subjects as much as they should. That's why I wanted to get views from others that actually live in the country. I honestly would be more like Elysium, where I wouldn't watch the news, or read papers, but my wife likes watching the news.
ever been to amsterdam? beautiful (although somewhat dirty) city with totally scary surroundings. talk about contrast...
Just to let you know the people rioting are french people from generations. You can't blame them for being violent tho. They almost live in misery and there's no job for people who live there (a lot of discrimination).
And as pior and vahl said the state waited too much to act properly and the prime minister (who is a premium m***** f*****) keeps on fueling the fire by some meaningless measures.
And for Scott; the fact the state is taking too much time to act is because the riots are spreading all over France not only at Paris, even here in nice a lot of cars have been burned. The state is sending to many CRS (police) for a couple a people wich make the story more ridiculous.
A few days ago the state gave 100 millions euros to the local youth associations all over france (their budget have been cut a lot of time during the years).
http://chavtowns.co.uk/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=590
This sort of proves to me that this is not "Islamist", just people pissed off.
Ramucho, thanks for the info. I also have a French member of our little UT group that keeps up with this, as well, so I get a bit of the flavor.
Scott