My local rag LA DEPECHE in the South of France barely mentions the "riots" and no one in my village seems to care about it. It'a bit as if it happened in China. Paris isn't the nombril du monde, eh?
In fact I learned of them (no French TV in this house) through the US media on the net.
A few points though based on personal experience.
I lived in LA during the Rodney King riots. And I feel like Crocodile Dundee telling the French: you call this a riot? HA! THAT'S (pulling out an enormous knife) a riot!
You had to be in LA I suppose, but honestly that comparison in laughable. When the Champs-Elysees are deserted except for patrolling soldiers, wake me up, OK?
Two, I was in France in 1968, in Fontainebleau (Dad was in the service; went to the international lycée there); I was 14. Now that's what I call riots. The country closed down for what? a month? I missed two weeks of my favorite comics, maybe three. De Gaulle fled to Baden-Baden if I recall correctly.
Maybe the French just like blowing up things now and again; that would show that the gens bronzés are assimilating the native customs, no?
Ah ca ira ca ira....
The french disturbances are not yet riots, they don't engage in open clashes with the police. They don't even come close to the activities I was involved in when we defied the police in Dortmund, Frankfurt, Bonn and Rome and occupied the town hall, tore out (historic!) cobbles stones from the streets, built barricades, smashed shop windows and invaded the food sections to grab bottles and cans to be used as objects to throw at the police. We went through the classic mano a mano exercise, garnered with clouds of tear gas, police sirens, burning trash containers, flying stones, shattering glass, quaky bullhorn commands, the attack and retreat tactics to 'hold the ground', grizzly water cannons, soaked parkas, burning eyes, police arrests and (the joy) of liberating comrades from police vans, the monotonous tak-tak-tak sound of the rotors of helicopters above the square - all the chaos and emotions of a serious street fight.
Nothing of that happens now in France. Again: The kids don't engage in frontal clashes with the police.
And what makes it different to the riots in the US and what happened two weeks ago in the UK:
As the song says: A working class heroe is something to be.
And it makes for good stories to tell your kids. "The USA appears destined by fate to plague America with misery in the name of liberty." Simon Bolivar, Caracas, 1819
Daddy, tell me again
Daddy, tell me again that beautiful story of gendarmes and fascists, and students with long bangs and sweet urban guerrilla in bell-bottom trousers, and Rolling's songs, and girls in miniskirts.
Daddy, tell me again all the fun you had spoiling old age for rusted dictators, and how you sang Al Vent and occupied the Sorbonne during that French May in the days of wine and roses.
Daddy, tell me again that beautiful story of that crazy guerrillero they killed in Bolivia, and whose rifle nobody dared to pick up again, and how since that day everything seems uglier.
Daddy, tell me again that after so many barricades and after so many risen fists and so much spilt blood, at the end of the game you were not able to do anything, and under the cobblestones there was no beach sand.
It was a hard defeat: all that was dreamt of rotted in the corners, was covered with cobwebs, and nobody sang Al Vent any more, there are no more crazies, not more pariahs, but it needs to rain as the square is still filthy.
That May is far away, far away is that Saint-Denis, how far Jean-Paul Sartre is, that Paris is very far, however sometimes I think that in the end it was all the same: blows keep striking those who speak too much.
And the same dead remain rotten by cruelty. Now they are dying in Bosnia, those who used to die in Vietnam. guaranteed to evoke a violent reaction from police is to challenge their right to "define the situation." --- David Graeber citing Marc Cooper
It is true, as I note above, that the amount of damage - to property and in terms of human carnage - is much less than one saw in riots like 1992 LA.
On the other hand, France is not gun happy like California. Firing pellet pistols at the cops doesn't have the same result as firing 45s and Mac-10s.
I was a kid in the 50s and 60s, there were very bad riots then.
That said...if some kind of dialogue doesn't happen, it could get worse before it gets better. "Once in awhile we get shown the light, in the strangest of places, if we look at it right" - Hunter/Garcia
I think when a society is in crisis, riots (especially if they don't kill people as the French riots so far seem to have done) are a good thing.
Hell. what was the French Revolution?
The LA riots led to a much needed reform of the LAPD and other stuff.
I'm appalled that African-Americans didn't riot en masse after Katrina, everwhere. I would have set a car or two on fire myself if I was 18 and lived in DC.
The French rioters (for this is what they are, not Muslims or foreigners) of today are as alive as those of 1968. Not necessarily a bad thing.
The Americans seem dead, spiritually crushed. Read the frontpage post on Kos on Bush's latest blow aggainst the poor.
It is not the French riots which are the news, it is the ABSENCE of American riots, like the dog who didn't bark in the night.
Perhaps part of the problem in France is having essentially zero minority representation in government? I don't know the statistics.
Regardless of what you think about American policies, we do have a pretty good record of finding minorities to fill important positions. For example, one does not need to look very hard to notice the highest ranking cabinet post, and fourth in line to be "the most powerful person in the world," is a black woman. And there are obviously a number of Hispanics in government. Ralph Nader, an important (although never elected!) politician, had Lebanese parents.
It seems to me that rioting is sort of a last ditch attempt to make a statement, and the lack of recent violence in America may reflect the availability of other methods to voice one's opinion.
Ben P
The problem with dailyKos is that there are a couple of dozen sensible front page posters who are overwhelmed by tens of thousands of idiots. The site gets huge amounts of traffic and is obviously one of the principal political sites on the web. Unfortunately, the idiots have taken over and as a result, DK is in my opinion now a force that damages the liberal agenda in America.
Basically, it's a mob. "Get out the pitchforks and stick them in Joe Lieberman!" "Burn Rove at the stake!" "Hillary must die!" "THIS crisis will FINALLY be the END of BUSH and his NAZIS!" It's idiotic.
The result is that productive, long-standing liberal policies like Gerrymandered voting districts to insure minority representation, get unthinkingly painted with the same tarbrush as the Iraq war. Note the complete lack of participation by elected officials? That's because when one of them sticks his head into the room for a minute to see what's going on, the beer bottles come crashing down on his head. Barack Obama being a recent example: He puts in a very well thought out, sensible position statement and the mob throws it back at him for not being extreme enough. No elected official will put up with such nonsense.
It's not a productive environment, it's a place where the mob is whipped into a fury against the establishment. All it does is make it harder for reasonable people--including officials who have actually been elected to office--to make a practical effort to make progress on liberal issues. Kos has gathered a mob, it's out of control, and it is a divisive force in the liberal community and the Democratic party.
I pop in there once in a while when the debate is about a technical topic that I'm interested in, like hybrid cars or wind power, but the widespread "Burn the Vichy Dems at the stake" sentiment leaves me cold.
Kos needs about a hundred full-time moderators and a clean sweep of the nutcases.
