France in flames

No problems eh ? No Chechnians attacking theaters and schools, no bombings in the heart of Moscow ?

 

I really wonder what people would say if it were hooligans or neo-nazi's that were rioting for weeks, burning everything and shooting at the fire brigade.

I think both groups would have been clubbed near death by special police riot forces, or even by the army. still these ''north african'' guys can pull this off, and the only thing that happens is that they get filmed and a few get arrested.

So please explain to me, why are these guys positively discriminated? Are we scared for being called racists because we punish troublemakers? Or do we fear further escalation and that's why we do nothing?

I think the time has come to set the army on this, guys throwing molotovs at random should be treated for what they are, unpredictable, violent and armed terrorists. (that's right, they terrorise the country)

 

LeFleur

Great points. What if they were neonazis/hools indeed... Would we hear people arguing that they go mad because of poor accommodations, job prospectives and little social acceptance?
A nice lesson in double standards.

 

Does France have a law or two preventing the deployment/use of troops domestically?

That's the only explanation I can come up with, aside from utter incompetence on a scale that meets or exceeds that which we saw with FEMA's "handling" of Katrina.

And yes, LeFleur does make good points.

 

@LeFleur: most true! I support your point of view in 100%.

 

... but that's what I say, when they ask me about East-Germany and the racaille there. No jobs, no future, no upringing... no nothing except rampant xenophobia where the only non-German in the range of 50 km is a investor from a foreign land... desperately trying to escape the mob...

The worst thing to do know anyway is bring in the military. Of all bad options, the military option is the worst. If they bring in the military, fires will be all over and probably cross the borders. First rule: Never ever use the military against your own citizens, except you are ready to kill lots of them.

 

Perhaps the human race has simply decided to let itself go, and this and Katrina are simply the outward symptoms of its euthanasia.
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Nah.

Just bring in the army, put the rioters down, and get on with the rebuilding. We've seen enough of this crap already in NO.

 

I seek to escape the one year long civil-service that indiscriminates people by being twice as long as the conscript-service. Other than that; depressing winter, cold people, high taxes, inadequate chances of employment, and the curiosity towards foreign culture. All very good reasons to leave.

What do you mean? Even if the wave was IN and not OUT of them, they really would need to relax the legistlation in this area -especially Russia, that still seems to be almost paranoid.

 

New Zealand is full of immigrants and we don't have any of this sort of violence going on. Plenty of our immigrants maintain strong links to their own culture and don't make any special effort to "integrate", but I don't see anything wrong with that. I prefer to deal with people as individuals rather than just labelling specific groups. All of my neighbours are "immigrants" and they're all very nice people. I don't go and hang around with them all the time, but they're still good people to have in the community. Why can't we all just learn to get along.

 

Perhaps you are just prone to ending up on the wrong side, Iago?

But I feel dmc's glowering stare. Lets cut it.

 

My last general post to immigration in general.

Yeah, I know. While I had one or two unpleasent encounters with turkish looking individuals (not violant ones, though), I'm not prone to damn all of them to hell.

And there is the issue of critical thinking. People never think about the motives of these guys.


Back to topic: I don't think that sending in "the troops" will accomplish anything. It could be getting worse.
At least, with no political actions like setting the immigration problems on top of the agenda.

 

You do not use the military on your own civilians, ever. That *is* a recipie for disaster and a horrible statement to make.

 

Ah, but are they considered "their own civilians"?

 

They got the birth and paperwork to show for it, no matter the colour of their skin.

These kind of things are as much if not more a social and economical problem than a cultural or racial.

 

@ Chev: Thanks for the info - as I said, I'm lamentably ignorant about the particulars of this, being many thousand kilometres away.

@ HB: Too right. Thankfully, it seems that while NZ and Australia have occasional minor race-motivated problems, it's never as bad as what's going on in France. It could be due to a lack of concentrated marginalised non-Anglo communities (with a few obvious exceptions - Redfern in NSW, for example), but that's just a guess. In fact, the most recent rioting in Redfern was sparked by a remarkably similar event - a young Aboriginal male was killed while fleeing police (IIRC, he was impaled on a fence, but I don't know what the coronial investigation found).

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Apparently, the first fatality in the rioting has been recorded. On top of that, rioters are actively ambushing law enforcement personnel.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/french-riots-claim-first-life/2005/11/08/1131212012103.html

http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/french-police-injured-as-rioters-open-fire/2005/11/07/1131212007307.html

I agree that it's a bad idea to turn your military on your own people. However, there's a difference between deployment and engagement, and it's becoming painfully clear that the police and other order mechanisms are failing (a curfew has now been imposed in Paris).

Police and law enforcement are actively being targeted and seriously injured by rioters; I don't think it's an overreaction to put the army on the streets to help restore order when everything else has failed. Of course, if the military starts opening fire on its own citizens... well, then you'll have a minor civil war on your hands.

What interests me more is the nature and organisation of these riots. They're too precise and directed (for want of a better word) to be the work of a spontaneous uprising. Obviously something is very wrong in France for this kind of rioting to occur, and from what I can ascertain, it has a strong obvious socio-cultural/economic element to it. I don't know enough about domestic politics in France to make an informed comment, though.

While it's easy to point blame everywhere, re-establishing order should be the first priority - and since current methods aren't enough, something more needs to be done. It is a dangerous path to bring in the military, but I don't see too many other options at the moment, and this violence and destruction has to be brought under control and/or stopped. Once that's been achieved, they can worry about finding the people responsible, the reasons why, and then figuring out how to prevent it from re-occurring.

 

I didn't mean officially. The problem could be that this border in french society affects politicians and policemen in their actions. I am afraid that they will use more force against rioters with maghrebian or african background as if the rioters were caucasians.

You can break that down to the individual. Will the average policeman hesitate to shoot at an non-white person?

 

I think you mean the average WHITE policeman ? And that makes it sound as if every white cop is a racist, which is simply not true.

Also, France has a large contingency of non-whites on the policeforce.