Riots? What Riots?

So, France burned for over three weeks. I left for Germany for a week. And when I returned the TV news was back to talking about school kids who learn to play Chopin from the age of 5, FIVE!, near Clermont-Ferrand. The riots were but a bad dream.

The SNCF (trains) are on strike, again. Corsica got snow. Lyon didn't win for the first time this Champions League season. Hey, business as usual, right?

Ok, this may be a gross overstatement, but not completely untrue. Since I've been back (a week), I have seen virtually no coverage of riots. They've talked a little about the banlieues (the lovely areas where most of the action took place) and what is being done, etc. But I haven't seen the type of intensive "retrospective" coverage that is so typified by American media. Is this a cultural difference? Sure...but why? Now that things have calmed down and Paris isn't burning anymore, wouldn't this be the best time discuss, in depth, the real problems? Who knows...

I know others have spoken at length about this. Time magazine, my one hard-copy link to the States, has been running cover stories for the past 3 weeks about this. Ok, some measures are being taken. Citroen announced a new step in their production process to try to deal with the crisis, but it seems that a large part of the country has kind of moved on to more important things (26 shopping days to Christmas!!! (exceptional openings on the two Sundays leading up to Christmas!!!)).

While in Germany (I was there for a trade show for work), I met with a number of different Middle-Easterners, mostly distributors, but nearly without fail they brought up the riots and asked if it was dangerous in France...whoa! A distributor from Palestine who asked me if it is safe to be France right now....ummm, hmmm, yeah, wow, this is bad! The Iraqi contingent that kept looking at us and nodding knowingly - always a bit disheartening. The Saudis who wanted to give us tips on how to stay secure in an unsecure environment. YO, SARKO*, THIS IS GETTING BAD!

One of our distributors in Albania or Serbia (I can't remember which) asked us if we wanted to enact the Force Majeure (Act of God) clause in our contract so we would be able to delay shipment of the devices for up to 2 months. Great, now the Balkans are worried about us too! (this is actually true)

I'm pretty sure that Pakistan offered to withdraw some of their troops from earthquake recovery to help the CRS (French SWAT) clean up the mess.

At least this is helping the Brits at the negotiating table. "If the French social model is so great, why is the country in flames?" -Peter Mandelson, E.U. Trade Commissioner before talks with the French Foreign Minister (lifted from Time, European issue of November 28, 2005)
If only the French government could've spun it this way: "Your continued rioting only puts us in a weaker position while we discuss further European help (ahem...money) for all things."
The only thing with a greater affect would have been to say that the rioting helps Bush in some way.

Is there any proof that Chirac is still alive? Where is he?
Damn! I wish our lame duck president would disappear like this.

*Sarko AKA Nicolas Sarokozy, Internior Minister and Policitian Extraordinaire.

**Some of the incidents in this may not have taken place. The author has taken certain artistic liberties in an attempt to make a point...oh, and no, Citroen isn't really run by a guy called Claude Lefeu.

We're here tonight to talk about two young kids...

The words of the ever clueless French aristocracy - spoken by Dominique de Villepin last Tuesday on the TF1 news at 8pm.

I can’t do an entire history of this thing. I started and it is too complicated. So I am going to focus on what I think:

This country is messed up. Where to start. I think the above statement (that for honesty’s sake, what only part of his introduction to his little speech) sums up a big part of the problem. They (the French aristocracy) can not accept that there is any sort of institutional problems in the country.

The “French way” of accepting immigrants has always been: Come, and be like us. Really. Starting in the mid- to late- 19^th century different groups of people have come to France. There were Poles, Italians, Spanish, Portuguese who all came, and became French. Here in the south there are as many Fernandezes and Reyes as there are Martins and Duponts. But you wouldn’t know that they are first or second generation French because they all act “French.” This is how it is “supposed” to be. I have been talking about this for the past few years, the current societal make up is not conducive to a “conform to us” ideology. Why? First, since the fall of the French empire…umm, ok, since the end of WWII…there have been a huge influx of immigrants from the former colonies of France. France’s way of dealing with them is; give them cheap housing and welfare and other help and basically sweep them under the rug. Creating a society that allows people to go for years and years without working and forcing them all to live in the ghettos will only cause problems.

These people simmer in these areas. They are harassed by an arrogant and irrespective police force. They are marginalized and called scum by their government.

I do not for one moment think that they are innocent in this. They talk about how there is no jobs; how selling dope is the only job they can get; how it's all the government's fault for their position.

I don't buy all this crap. When you can sit on your duff all day long and do nothing, you do. When you can suck at the teet of the others, you do. No job, find one. They have trains, they have buses. When you are under 26, you usually have great deals. University education is FREE here. Get a diploma. Get another. The government pays you to go to school. They'll help you pay for your apartment. You can get help to buy food, stuff like that.

It's a question of a government (and a people) who are too used to giving and/or taking that they can not do anything to give people motivation to work.

Slate has an article today, "The French Eat Their Young" taht discusses some of this, but I don't think the author goes far enough. She fails to discuss the fact that the social system allows some of the people to have received welfare (or other similar things) for 10s or 20s of years. How do you expect people to work when they don't have to?

It's hard to believe the people that they interview who say, "Yeah, I'm looking for work, but because my name is [fill in name of stereotypical northern Africaner], no one will hire me." I know a few people who are 'looking for work.' They've sent five resumes in the past year and damn it! they can't find anything.