The Paris riot of this week

[Louis VI the Fat]

Seeing as how it generated some interest earlier today, here's the story of this week's riot in Paris:

PARIS, France (AP) -- Rivals accused rightist presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy of worsening tension between youths and police on Wednesday after clashes at a Paris train station overnight.

Officials said Tuesday's confrontation at the Gare du Nord terminal began when police arrested a 33-year illegal immigrant who attacked staff when asked to show his ticket.

Youths at the station, a hub for trains to suburbs north of Paris, said police had manhandled the suspect. Shouting "Sarkozy hypocrite", hundreds of youths threw flower pots and bottles at police during unrest that lasted for several hours.

Police used teargas to disperse youths who smashed shop windows. Thirteen people were arrested.

Sarkozy confirmed his status as a law-and-order hardliner in riots that hit the poor suburbs around Paris and other French cities in 2005, and rivals were quick to blame him for fomenting a climate of hostility between youths and police.

Socialist officials said Tuesday's clashes were the legacy of the "provocative habits and language" of Sarkozy while its presidential candidate Segolene Royal said the violence highlighted Sarkozy's policy failures.

"In five years with a rightist government that has made security its main campaign issue, you can see that it's failure all down the line," Royal told Canal+ television.

Sarkozy, who stepped down as interior minister on Monday to focus on his campaign, justified the police action.

"I want to tell the French that I will not be on the side of fraudsters, cheats, dishonest people ... those who think that in order to get heard, they must demolish a train station and break public equipment paid for by taxpayers," he said.

Election looms
Francois Baroin, Sarkozy's successor as interior minister, said the man stopped by ticket inspectors was of Congolese origin and well-known to police.

After initially being dominated by economic questions, France's election campaign has increasingly come to focus on issues of security and immigration this month.

Centrist presidential hopeful Francois Bayrou, who trails Royal and Sarkozy in opinion polls, avoided criticizing Sarkozy by name, but said: "It's very important to end this climate of perpetual confrontation between police and some citizens."

The clashes came a week after police sparked an outcry by detaining a Paris teacher for several hours after she tried to prevent the arrest of an illegal immigrant near her school.

Le Monde daily said in an editorial both events highlighted the "climate of incomprehension" between police and some French.

Sarkozy has sought to soften the tough image he built up as "France's top policeman", meeting factory workers and quoting widely from poets in recent campaign speeches.

But critics say he remains a hate-figure for many in the neighborhoods hit by the 2005 riots, the worst in 40 years.

And a video of it thrown in for good measure, albeit an altogether not very exiting one.

Ah well, it's all teh usual. The 'youths' this article speaks about, or those 'some citizens' of Bayrou and Le Monde, are euphemisms for 'North and West African young men'.

On the one hand, there is a brutal police force that deliberately singles out these *cough* youths. On the other, there is an enormous reservoir of angry young immigrant men, entirely disenfranchised, feared and socially ostracised by those who are neither immigrant, young, or men.Cause and result have become entirely entangled. I can see the point of both. French police really is amongst the most racist and brutal of western Europe. The police isn't and I don't want them to be naive, blacks and Arabs are so overrepresented in crime rates it's not funny anymore. Seventy to ninety percent of all crime is caused by fifteen percent of the population.

Then again, I'd really hate to be a young Arab and to be held guilty until proven innocent. It's humiliating.
Many Arabs, Africans live in the suburbs, in small, poor houses with large families. With ever present mothers who hardly venture outside and often unemployed, authoritarian fathers. Nothing really, that contributes to a healthy and happy family life. So the boys spend most of their time hanging out on the streets with their mates. Where inevitably cops will check them out on a regular base.
They simply mistrust all government institutions, refuse any authority- police, teachers, social norms. They despise society as much as society despises them.

Sometimes, all of this is combined with a surge in Islamic identity, internet Islamism, talk of Paristan, identification with the Palestinian intifada, a feeling that Muslims worldwide are surpressed by Jews, French, Americans, Russians. TThrow in a good deal of ignorance and semi-literacy and it's clear that any small spark will suffice to ignite the powder keg.

Today, one man being arrested for riding the metro without a ticket was enough to start yet another text-message intifada: ' Gare du Nord! Les feuks ('cops') are beating up a Muslim! Bring Ahmad, Yazid, Habib, Youssouf - quickly...'

That all of it today was started by a simple arrest of a 33 year old paperless man from the Congo, with a criminal record of 22 crimes commited in France, and not only stupid enough to be an illegal immigrant and not buy a ticket but also to attack two employers over it was seemingly lost on them.
Or maybe they simply don't care about such things. Mind you, the rioters quickly devoted all their attention to destroying and looting a sports shop, where they all helped themselves to a fine new pair of shiny sneakers with a big logo of a western oppressionist firm emblazoned on it.

Warning: clicking the link below reveals an image that may be found disagreeable by workplace net-nannies, and any young children you may be hovering about:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

To indulge Dev Dave, who was curious about who these fine young gentlemen are, and to vent my anger a bit, here's a picture from a previous riot.
The guy on the right is not laughing at the plight of a French woman being brutally beaten up by a pack of scum, he is really only exclaiming his frustration that nobody will employ a person of refined manners and agreeable character like him.