Back in the 1990s, the French sneered at America for the Los Angeles riots. As the Chicago Sun-Times reported in 1992: "the consensus of French pundits is that something on the scale of the Los Angeles riots could not happen here, mainly because France is a more humane, less racist place with a much stronger commitment to social welfare programs."

On Thursday, October 27th, two teenagers, Ziad Benna (17) and Banou Traoré (15), electrocuted themselves in a power sub-station while hiding from police in the commune of Clichy-sous-Bois. Their deaths served as the trigger for rioting by Paris's dispossessed banlieusards.

We have been slow on our write-up because it is hard to understand the character of the riots. A debate is raging whether the police did or did not give chase to Messrs. Benna and Traoré. That Messrs. Benna and Traoré ran from the police is not in dispute, this apparently being the proper civic response in the banlieue. Sad as the accidental deaths of the boys are, in themselves, they hardly seem incendiary. So why these riots now?

The rioters are young, unemployed, immigrant and unassimilated, mostly from the Maghreb and West Africa, and mostly Muslim though several wire stories omitted this obnoxious fact until recently. What is unclear is whether the rioters are rioting for assimilation or the caliphate or gangsters or nothing at all.

"We have found our thrills: playing with riot police in the evening," one 22-year-old told an Agence France-Presse reporter yesterday. "As long as the police come and provoke us in the evening, we'll bring out the Molotov cocktails, stones, petanque balls, planks."

"In the day, we sleep, go see our girlfriends, play video games," the young man continued as a half-dozen youths nodded. "And in the evening, we have a good time: At 9 p.m., we go and fight the police."

Earlier this year, Nicolas Sarkozy began his most recent turn as Interior Minister with a hard line on violent crime.

SARKOZY RIDES BACK 'TO RID FRANCE OF HOODLUMS'

PARIS June 3, 2005 (AFP) - "I will not accept any more, I'll ship them straight off to prison." ... "There will be zero tolerance from now on [for intracommunal violence]" ... "I'm here to do a job and my job is to rid France of hoodlums," Sarkozy told reporters. "And I'm not going to hold back."

M. Sarkozy's all-but-announced presidential bid has become the prism through which the French press reports the riots, the political class crafts its soundbites, and Sarko calculates his policy. The riots cease being about the prison-for-life banlieues, but about political opportuism and gamesmanship. And 2007.

FRANCE STRUGGLES AS UNREST SPREADS

November 3, 2005 (WT) - "Let's avoid stigmatizing areas. ... Let's treat petty crime differently to major crime. Let's fight all discrimination with firmness and avoid confusing a disruptive minority with the vast majority of youngsters who want to integrate into society and succeed," Mr. de Villepin said.

HAPPY JACK!
"Mais nous comprenons bien aussi que l'évolution des choses suppose le respect de chacun..."

President Jacques Chirac said the law must be enforced firmly but "in a spirit of dialogue and respect," government spokesman Jean-Francois Cope quoted him as saying.

Equal Opportunities Minister Azouz Begag openly criticized Mr. Sarkozy and said the interior minister never consulted him over policy.

"I talk with real words," Mr. Sarkozy fired back in an interview in the daily Le Parisien. "When someone shoots at policemen, he's not just a 'youth,' he's a lout, full stop."

Commentators said the intense rivalry between the Cabinet's two most powerful figures was distracting the government and beginning to dictate policy.

"With Begag, the prime minister thinks he has found a way to compete, at least in terms of tone, with Sarkozy's omnipresence on the subject, and to push him into going over the top and so to make a mistake," said the left-leaning daily Liberation.

The regional Sud-Ouest newspaper said that with presidential elections just 18 months away, Mr. Sarkozy seemed to be losing his touch: "What's at stake for him right now is 2007."

The opposition Socialists, humiliated in 2002 general elections largely on law-and-order issues, denounced Mr. Sarkozy's style and said his tough policies were failing.

"I think when you are interior minister and No. 2 in the government, you should master your own language," party leader Francois Hollande told reporters.

RIOTS INFLICT DAMAGE ON SARKOZY'S AMBITIONS

PARIS November 3, 2005 (AFP) - In pursuit of that goal, he has carved out a reputation as a brash straight-talker looking to triumph through determination and the embrace of tough US-style police tactics that contrast with what he sees as a too-soft French approach that previously reigned.

For a while, his dynamic methods -- introducing speed radars, deploying more police patrols to tough neighbourhoods, expediting court judgements against offenders, widening police surveillance powers, cracking down on illegal immigration, clearing out squatters -- worked, sending him to the top of popularity polls of an electorate which has long put insecurity at the head of its list of concerns.

But now that same bullheaded stance has turned the public perception against him, with critics blaming his repressive orders and rhetoric for fanning the riots.

Sarko's fatal error here is employing tough American-style police tactics.

M Sarkozy, who built his popularity by cutting crime figures during his first spell as Interior Minister, from 2002 to 2004, said that seventeen companies of riot police and seven mobile police brigades would be permanently stationed in difficult neighbourhoods, while plainclothes officers would be sent in to identify "gang leaders, drug traffickers and big shots".

M Sarkozy’s comments stunned left-wing politicians, who called for an orthodox government response, with public money for education, housing and job creation schemes.

Even M Sarkozy’s Cabinet colleague, Azouz Begag, the Minister for Promotion of Equal Opportunities, criticised him for describing violent youths as “scum”.

M Begag said: "You should not tell these youths you’re going to get stuck into them and send in the police. You should try to appease them."

But appease them with what? The French socialist paradise already subsidizes languid afternoons of snogging and video games, concrete tenements, monthly subsistence payments, take-a-number healthcare, and virtual autonomy. Must the French model -- mon Dieu ! -- be scrapped for tough American-style welfare reform? Has M. Begag considered offering free les Xboxes, in exchange for, if not responsible civic behavior, then at least docile resignation to the French social model and a life of emptiness? Better throw in skateboards and some Che Guevara beefy Tees too.

The truth is there are no appeasement tweaks available to keep the French social paradise knitted up.

November 1, 2005 (TOL) - Sarkozy says that violence in French suburbs is a daily fact of life. ... Since the start of the year, 9,000 police cars have been stoned and, each night, 20 to 40 cars are torched, Sarkozy said in an interview last week with the newspaper Le Monde.

* * * * *

November 4, 2005 (BBC) - Minister for Social Cohesion Jean-Louis Borloo said France had to acknowledge its failure to deal with anger simmering in poor suburbs for decades.

* * * * *

PARIS November 4, 2005 (AFP) - Today, some 750 areas are classed as 'Sensitive Urban Zones' (ZUS) [officially classified as severely disadvantaged, housing a total of five million people, around eight percent of the population], where unemployment hovers at 20 percent -- twice the national average -- and average incomes are 60 percent of the national average, government statistics show.

Among young men between 15 and 25, unemployment reaches 36 percent -- and even higher if only young Arab men are counted.

Youth violence -- with car-burnings a regular feature -- has been steadily building in these dilapidated estates, with major outbreaks of rioting around once a year and countless minor incidents which go unreported.

* * * * *

PARIS November 4, 2005 (AFP) - Small-scale suburban violence is a regular but unreported fact of life in many poor areas on the outskirts of major French cities. According to the police intelligence service, a total of 28,000 cars were burned across the country this year -- even before the latest outbreak.

The French press, exhausted from its tongue-clucking and damning analyses of America in the aftermath of Katrina, can only wonder at what is happening in France.

GOVERNMENT VOW TO RESTORE ORDER FAILS TO STOP RIOTS

PARIS November 4, 2005 (AFP) - The rioting marks a direct challenge to the authority of the French government, and to prime minister Dominique de Villepin in particular.

"I will not allow organised gangs to make the law in the suburbs," Villepin declared.

The clashes have gained territory virtually every night since they began, exposing what commentators have labelled a blatant failure of successive governments to address the problems of low-income, high-immigration suburbs dominated by grim public housing estates, some of them little more than ghettos where crime and gangs run rampant.

GOVERNMENT POWERLESS IN FACE OF SPREADING RIOTS

PARIS November 4, 2005 (AFP) - In a worrying sign, the rampages that have gripped the poorer immigrant-populated outskirts of Paris since October 27 spread, for the first time, to other parts of the country, to Dijon, Marseille and Normandy, and inside the capital itself.

They have also taken on an increasingly dangerous tone, with buckshot fired at riot squad vans -- and prosecutors revealing that a handicapped woman was deliberately set on fire the night before.

WEEK OF VIOLENCE PROMPTS FRENCH SOUL-SEARCHING

PARIS November 4, 2005 (AFP) - Police union leader Bruno Beschizza described the riots as "urban terrorism", led by small knots of criminals as well as Islamic radicals.

"This is a form of urban terrorism led by a minority of kingpins, who have a financial interest, such as drug trafficking, or an ideological one, such as Islamic radicals who have been seen by our colleagues."

The role -- if any -- of Islam in the recent upsurge in violence, which has affected mainly Muslim neighbourhoods, is a highly sensitive issue in France.

Most observers searching for the root causes of the riots accuse successive governments of turning a blind eye as immigrant ghettos, synonymous with unemployment and social deprivation, swelled outside France's big cities.

Sociologist Wieviorka said the riots stemmed from years of "broken promises" by the French state, and called into question the country's entire model for integrating newcomers into French society.

"(These riots) demonstrate the failure of the so-called Republican model for social integration. We need to find something new, some combination of social solidarity and economic realism," Wieviorka said.

[All emphases added.]

Whereas the visitation of a natural disaster on America demonstrated to the French press's satisfaction the failure and heartlessness of America, the social disaster visited on France by France is simply 'mort pour rien' riots. That the French riots are widely recognized as the manifest failure, decades in the making, of successive governments points beyond politics and parties and policies to a fundamental racism belieing vaunted Republican values.

As of this writing, the rioting is well into its second week. Wikipedia is keeping an excellent up-to-date subject page on the riots here. For those wanting more timely commentary, we suggest visiting our friends at ¡No Pasarán! to whom this post owes much.

Meanwhile, life bravely goes on:

FRENCH TRAIN WORKERS PREPARE STRIKE NOVEMBER 21
November 4, 2005 (AFP)

* Devise de la ville de Paris: Fluctuat nec mergitur.

PFFT (What is this?): Empty Republican values 5 | Institutionalized racism 5 | Rayonnement français 0

Hello Zoomerx, where are you? Out tossing cocktails with your comrades?

Yes of course, they are clearly downtrodden, oppressed youth.. burning thousands of cars, setting handicapped women on fire, and beating to death an elderly man. Who can blame them? After all, French storeowners tried to sell pork in their neighborhood, right?

The fact that Sarkozy is getting dressed down over his straight-shooting remarks about the rioters, tells you everything you need to know about modern French culture.

Zee fight is too difficult. We must capitulate and give the rioters whatever they want. Oh, and none of this cowboy police tactics.