Anarchy in Paris!

The government's answer is only repression: the power of the police and the army is glorified. It sounds like provocation. The words used by Villepin and Sarkozy remain the very bad time of History, it is really chocking. They do not understand at all what's happening. I do not know how the calm can come back in these conditions.

100 young people are already in jail: when they will come back in their neighborhood, they will be consider as heroes.

one of cole's convincing points is his demolition of steyn's reflexive posture of laying this at radical islam's feet, by saying (effectively) that the "racaille" are as muslim as the '91 LA rioters were christian. we have not heard (afaik, despite spotty media coverage) "allahu akbar" when another citroen gets torched.

however, one of the things that a few rightwingers have been saying that is convincing is that combo of france's left-statism and right-nativism have created this mess: ie huge amounts of gdp are tied up in servicing the (native) unemployed and retired and the agrarian countryside (+ that divine short work week, etc) while immigrants (sometimes 3 gen.s ago!) are still bottled up in these projects with no entry points to the regular economy. many commentators left & right have noted the racist geography of paris's built environment.

...which further discredits the islamism blame game, considering how "integrated" london's 7/7 bombers were. cole's argt that the rioters are part of a ghetto-creole no-longer-not-but-not-yet-maybe-never-will-be-French culture very impt i think.

Yes, it's hard for the melting pot to work when the population in question is often just plain physically isolated by geography and architecture with little/no contact with mainstream society. But the US melting pot model doesn't demand that everyone assimilate a 100% their identity into being American, either.

"Nihilistic vortex of a violence that's meaningless, pointless, and that grows drunk on the spectacle of itself from city to city, reflected by televisions that are themselves obsessed."

Suddenly "big brothers" -- devout bearded men from the mosques who wear long traditional robes -- are positioning themselves between the authorities and the rioters in Clichy-sous-Bois, calling for order in the name of Allah. As thousands of voices shout "Allahu Akbar" from the windows of high-rise apartment buildings, shivers run down the spines of television viewers in their seemingly safe living rooms.

http://direland.typepad.com/direland/2005/11/why_is_france_b.html

The result, Brooks says, is a battle for the hearts and minds of Muslim youth "between Osama bin Laden and Tupac Shakur."

Jody Rosen name drops Disiz La Peste! J'KIFFE
(Urgent & key "J'pète les plombs," in the first verse of which he tries to buy breakfast at MacDo and is told it's too late because it's almost noon.. and then goes POSTAL.. very funny.)

J'lui dis : " Ecoute mec, rien à foutre que nos quartiers soient en guerre. Attends, j'vais t'payer après t'iras niquer ta mère ! "

His first album is insane but it only came out on tape in Senegal and now I can't find one..

I should've stayed in school & done my dissertation on the banlieues and hip hop culture.. but that would involve writing a dissertation.

David Brooks - GANGSTA!

Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, because they are Conservatives. John Kerry is a Conservative by the standards of most countries in (Western) Europe. Chirac a Socialist?!??! Gaullism has a Statist element to it but it's very far from being Socialist!

"He has stood for lower tax rates, the removal of price controls, strong punishment for crime and terrorism; and business privatization."

Tho, admittedly, being French, it's not quite that straightforward:

"He has also argued for more socially responsible economic policies, and was elected in 1995 after campaigning on a platform of healing the "social rift" (fracture sociale). His economic policies have at various times included both laissez-faire and dirigiste elements."