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11/09/2005:
"Revolt in Paris"
...These aren't "riots". This is social rebellion, directed at decades of French imperial rule, and ultra-capitalist and racist policymaking at home. After the "decolonization" process finished in Africa (oddly leaving the former colonies entirely dependent on the Banque de France for their monetary policymaking and at the whim of French military decision-making), the colonized were supposed to be offered life in France as a sort of reparation for the destruction that went along with the imperial era. This, predictably, has turned out to be nothing more than a bone that the French have thrown at their dependents to try to keep them quiet. The idea is this: give them cheap, shitty housing away from the beautiful Metropole of Paris, give them minimum wage paying work, and hope that they shut up.axisoflogic.com
Why is France Burning? Rebellion of a Lost Generation
Saturday night was the 10th day of the spreading youth riots that have much of France in flames -- and it was the worst night ever since the first riot erupted in a suburban Paris ghetto of low-income housing, with 1295 vehicles -- from private cars to public buses -- burned last night, a huge jump from the 897 set afire the previous evening. And, for the first time, the violence born in the suburban ghettos last night invaded the center of Paris -- some 40 vehicles were set alight in Le Marais (the pricey home to the most famous gay ghetto in Paris, around the Place de la Republique nearby, and in the bourgeois 17th arrondissement, only a stone's throw from the dilapidated ghetto of the Goutte d'Or in the 18th arrondissement.
As someone who lived in France for nearly a decade, and who has visited those suburban ghettos, where the violence started, on reporting trips any number of times, I have not been surprised by this tsunami of inchoate youth rebellion that is engulfing France. It is the result of thirty years of government neglect: of the failure of the French political classes -- of both right and left -- to make any serious effort to integrate its Muslim and black populations into the larger French economy and culture; and of the deep-seated, searing, soul-destroying racism that the unemployed and profoundly alienated young of the ghettos face every day of their lives, both from the police, and when trying to find a job or decent housing.
To understand the origins of this profound crisis for France, it is important to step back and remember that the ghettos where festering resentment has now burst into flames were created as a matter of industrial policy by the French state.
