On November 17 the riots that had France in flames where officially pronounced finished.

FRENCH VIOLENCE 'BACK TO NORMAL'*

November 17, 2005 (BBC) - Police said 98 vehicles were torched on Wednesday night, marking a "return to a normal situation everywhere in France".

With a supernational effort, France begins the hard work of forgetting the riots that put her first to flame and then to shame.

BACK TO NORMAL
Riots? Huh?

Last Tuesday, 11.29.05, Dom donned his big suit and sat for 14 squirmy minutes with Christiane Amanpour of CNN to get everyone started on forgetting. We hope to post more fully on this astonishing interview* later, but we've creamed off a little for you here:

De Villepin: Yes, indeed. Important and severe social unrest; we have had more than 9,000 cars [sic, 10,000, reported by his own government 11.28.05] that were burned. We had approximately 130 policemen that were injured and approximately 100 of public buildings [sic, 200] that were damaged during this period, during these two weeks of unrest [sic, 10.28.05-11.16.05, 20 days].

De Villepin: I am not sure you can call them riots**. It's very different from the situation you have known in 1992 in L.A. for example. [Once again, America is called on to authenticate and be the measure of the French experience.]...

Amanpour: What do you call it then?

De Villepin: Social unrest, you have to understand also, there were no guns in the streets. No adults; mostly young people between 12 and 20 ... so it is very special movement.

De Villepin: ...We have to say that, and it is important to also understand the real nature of these movements, there is no ethnic or religious basis of this movement,† as we can see in some other parts of the world. But it is true that the feeling of discrimination, the feeling of maybe not having the same equal chance... but what is interesting, is that most of these young people, they want to be 100 percent French.

Gentle skimmer, we are not even five minutes into it.

So why all the fuss over restive "youths", sharing no particular religious, racial, or ethnic identity but who are discriminated against as a group, going about setting France afire -- though conscientiously without rioting -- to attain 100% French-ness? It seems rather silly now. Circulez, rien à voir ici.

We have already posted on recent strikes, heartening signs of French normality. Today we commence an ongoing featurette to reassure concerned readers that France is her old self again.

FRANCE IN DENIAL OVER ALCOHOL ABUSE, REPORT WARNS

November 25, 2005 (Guardian) - The French government has been urged in a report to "snap out of its state of national denial" and take urgent steps to "denormalise drinking". ... [Hervé Chabalier] presented his report, Alcoholism - The Simple Truth [Alcoolisme : le parler vrai, le parler simple.], to health minister Xavier Bertrand yesterday. ... "One French person in 10 is ill as a result of alcohol, and every day five French people die after an accident linked to alcohol." He said 5 million drank too much, and 2 million were dependent on alcohol. The healthcare system was incapable of dealing with the plague.

The alcohol industry wryly points out that M. Chabalier comes by his expert staus on alcoholism by virtue of being an alcoholic.

France in denial. Yes, well, things seems to be settling back nicely. Tout va bien, il n'y a rien à voir.

* Absolutely no Muslims sighted during the writing of this report.

† Dom's claim is based on a French legal fiction: Under French law, minorities don't exist. A nearly 30-year-old statute that forbids researchers, demographers and others from counting people by race, ethnic origin or religion had been meant as a safeguard for France's cherished principle of equality. ... The 1978 law, aimed at protecting individuals from racial profiling, has roots in France's shame over its collaboration with the Nazis during World War II, when Jews were marked with yellow stars and sent to death camps. But the law fits neatly into France's integration model, designed as a vast leveler for new citizens to adopt French ways within a generation — and lose their past. ... Under France's model, there is no such thing as a second-generation French citizen, explained Patrick Simon, a sociologist with the National Institute of Demographic Studies. "The French model doesn't know if you are black and doesn't want to know," he said in an interview. "The idea that there is a reproduction of minority characteristics from one generation to another isn't possible."

PFFT (What is this?): La France normale 3 | Rayonnement français 0