Element Alpha
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Well, I'm french, I live in Toulouse right now. Normally, I live in Belgium (neighbour country of france, up north).
When I moved to france a couple of months ago, one of the first things I noticed was the police opression. In Belgium(where I live 99% of the time), policemen are more or less polite. Here in france, I noticed them right away. Opening peoples cardoors and shouting at people who had done nothing wrong. I talked about this to a 'real' french guy, and he said that's what people wanted. That's what people had voted for 3 years ago. Repression. The strong arm of the law if you will. This conversation happened two days before the riots started.
You must understand that the people who are rioting are 2nd and mostly 3rd generation immigrants, living in the banlieu's (also called "cité") of big cities. Banlieu's where built 30/40 years ago as welfare homes. Imagine big white concrete buildings, with a little bit of a green area in between, now filled with grafitti's, litter, cats, and youngsters who have nothing to do all day. They have lived there all their lives. They went to school nearby (in france, you can't choose wich school you go to, except if you go private and pay a lot of €€€) and were put all together in schools where most of them failed miserably or didn't go to after being expelled for the n-th time. Most of them never found a job. Some have older relatives living with them in the banlieu's, and these relatives don't have jobs either. In short, what I'm trying to say is that they don't have any kind of good perspective for the future. They have nothing to do all day, they have no work(just mentionning they live there on their resumé is enough to make sure of it), don't go to school, nothing. Some very rare exceptions do make it, and those more fortunate guys leave the banlieu as soon as they can. So a place like this is a concentrated area of very frustrated folks.
Now add the repressive governement. Policecars patrolling. Searching (harrassing?) random people just because they're outside. Everyday. They did that for years. I saw this afternoon on german television, how they had taped policemen who where fysicaly harming two kids for no reason at all. One of the cops just smacked one of them in the head to make him shut up. It reminds me of south african apartheid sometimes. And the 'catchfrase' if you will of france is "liberté, egalité, fraternité", wich means liberty, equality and brotherhood. What a farce they made of it.
The bucket is full and the tap is still running.
After the so-called incident where the two kids were electrocuted, some of the inhabitants of such banlieu's just HAD to react. They started protesting in the streets. Police came in and there was a fight. Cars got burned, but it wasn't all that bad just yet. What made the riots really take off was Sarkozy, the minister of interior affairs, who commented on national television that the protesters were scum (he said 'racaille', wich puts emphazis on the uselesness of the persons being called it as well as saying they're worthless and evil). After that, he continued his speech by saying he'll clean out the banlieu's with a karsher. A karsher (picture) is a high pressure water pump to clean really dirty things.
From there on the riots have spread across france, for the simple reason that a lot of people living in these banlieu's just had enough. Most aren't litterate enough to go into politics and change things, and those that are get out of there as soon as they can and try to forget about ever being there (exceptions aside, of course). A lot of the rioters are very young (13-16) and don't realize they aren't doing much good by doing al this. But they also just don't care. That's how bad it is. It just can't get worse for them anyway. That's how I see it at least.
Lastly, on the firms being trashed, like that mcDonalds or the renault garage (there were more), it seems most of them are old scores that needed to be settled, like the renault garage, who invested right next to a banlieu to gain benefit of the big-tax adventage this would bring, only not to hire one single person who lived right next to it in the 'ghetto'. Things like that. Of course there's also a lot of random violance.
But it's true that it's not as terrible as a lot of media make it out to be. Except for the people talking about it, and the subway being blocked because a burning car was driven into a station, it doesn't bother me that much in daily business.
If you want to try and understand the issues, try the movie "La Haine". It was shot about 10 years ago and predicted all of this (wich wasn't really hard to do).
When I moved to france a couple of months ago, one of the first things I noticed was the police opression. In Belgium(where I live 99% of the time), policemen are more or less polite. Here in france, I noticed them right away. Opening peoples cardoors and shouting at people who had done nothing wrong. I talked about this to a 'real' french guy, and he said that's what people wanted. That's what people had voted for 3 years ago. Repression. The strong arm of the law if you will. This conversation happened two days before the riots started.
You must understand that the people who are rioting are 2nd and mostly 3rd generation immigrants, living in the banlieu's (also called "cité") of big cities. Banlieu's where built 30/40 years ago as welfare homes. Imagine big white concrete buildings, with a little bit of a green area in between, now filled with grafitti's, litter, cats, and youngsters who have nothing to do all day. They have lived there all their lives. They went to school nearby (in france, you can't choose wich school you go to, except if you go private and pay a lot of €€€) and were put all together in schools where most of them failed miserably or didn't go to after being expelled for the n-th time. Most of them never found a job. Some have older relatives living with them in the banlieu's, and these relatives don't have jobs either. In short, what I'm trying to say is that they don't have any kind of good perspective for the future. They have nothing to do all day, they have no work(just mentionning they live there on their resumé is enough to make sure of it), don't go to school, nothing. Some very rare exceptions do make it, and those more fortunate guys leave the banlieu as soon as they can. So a place like this is a concentrated area of very frustrated folks.
Now add the repressive governement. Policecars patrolling. Searching (harrassing?) random people just because they're outside. Everyday. They did that for years. I saw this afternoon on german television, how they had taped policemen who where fysicaly harming two kids for no reason at all. One of the cops just smacked one of them in the head to make him shut up. It reminds me of south african apartheid sometimes. And the 'catchfrase' if you will of france is "liberté, egalité, fraternité", wich means liberty, equality and brotherhood. What a farce they made of it.
The bucket is full and the tap is still running.
After the so-called incident where the two kids were electrocuted, some of the inhabitants of such banlieu's just HAD to react. They started protesting in the streets. Police came in and there was a fight. Cars got burned, but it wasn't all that bad just yet. What made the riots really take off was Sarkozy, the minister of interior affairs, who commented on national television that the protesters were scum (he said 'racaille', wich puts emphazis on the uselesness of the persons being called it as well as saying they're worthless and evil). After that, he continued his speech by saying he'll clean out the banlieu's with a karsher. A karsher (picture) is a high pressure water pump to clean really dirty things.
From there on the riots have spread across france, for the simple reason that a lot of people living in these banlieu's just had enough. Most aren't litterate enough to go into politics and change things, and those that are get out of there as soon as they can and try to forget about ever being there (exceptions aside, of course). A lot of the rioters are very young (13-16) and don't realize they aren't doing much good by doing al this. But they also just don't care. That's how bad it is. It just can't get worse for them anyway. That's how I see it at least.
Lastly, on the firms being trashed, like that mcDonalds or the renault garage (there were more), it seems most of them are old scores that needed to be settled, like the renault garage, who invested right next to a banlieu to gain benefit of the big-tax adventage this would bring, only not to hire one single person who lived right next to it in the 'ghetto'. Things like that. Of course there's also a lot of random violance.
But it's true that it's not as terrible as a lot of media make it out to be. Except for the people talking about it, and the subway being blocked because a burning car was driven into a station, it doesn't bother me that much in daily business.
If you want to try and understand the issues, try the movie "La Haine". It was shot about 10 years ago and predicted all of this (wich wasn't really hard to do).
