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.