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France records a rise in New Year's unrest
PARIS Rowdy revelers in France torched 425 vehicles overnight in scattered New Year's unrest that has become an annual problem in troubled neighborhoods, but there were no major clashes, the national police chief said Sunday. Last year, 333 cars were burned.
France records a rise in New Year's unrest
The Associated Press
SUNDAY, JANUARY 1, 2006
PARIS Rowdy revelers in France torched 425 vehicles overnight in scattered New Year's unrest that has become an annual problem in troubled neighborhoods, but there were no major clashes, the national police chief said Sunday. Last year, 333 cars were burned.
The police had been particularly vigilant this year because of the three weeks of rioting and arson that broke out in October. But the national police chief, Michel Gaudin, said there were no major incidents this year between youths and the police, and no seriously destructive arson attacks targeting buildings.
"Some people were worried that the period of urban violence" would be renewed during New Year's festivities, Gaudin told reporters. "I think, happily, that it wasn't the case."
The police took 362 people into custody, up from 272 last year. Among the police, 27 officers were injured on the job - 15 of them hurt during what police described as a minor scuffle near the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
A state of emergency imposed during the rioting is still in effect, and 25,000 police were on alert for the holiday.
France's opposition Socialists accused the conservative government of trying to put a positive spin on the night's events, pointing out that this New Year's Eve was the most destructive ever in terms of damage to cars, and the most widespread.
"Despite the ineffective exceptional measures, calm and tranquillity have unfortunately not been restored, and the urban violence continues," the Socialist Party said in a statement.
Car burnings have become a barometer of unrest in France. In other incidents, a small fire broke out at a school in Toulouse, in southwestern France, and was quickly put out, the local authorities said. In Nice on the French Riviera, firefighters were pelted with stones when they responded to an anonymous phone alert, officials said.
In the nearby Var department of southern France, youths also threw rocks at firefighters in a troubled neighborhood of La-Seine-sur-Mer, the local authorities said.
Outside Paris in the suburb of Argenteuil, a small fire was reported at a cultural center.
A wave of rioting broke out Oct. 27 in a poor Paris suburb after two youths who believed the police were chasing them hid in a power substation and were electrocuted. The unrest spread throughout the country in impoverished suburban housing projects that are home to many immigrants from North and West Africa and their French-born children. At the peak, youths incinerated 1,408 vehicles in a single night.
President Jacques Chirac spoke of the unrest during his annual New Year's Eve television address and urged the French to do more to fight racism and a lack of opportunities in poor neighborhoods - problems that fed frustrations among young rioters.
"Diversity is part of our history: It is a resource," he said. "It is an asset for our future."
Chirac also promised to do more to fight crime and violence.
In troubled French neighborhoods, dozens of vehicles are set afire on an average night. The figure has risen to about 300 on New Year's Eve in recent years, according to the Interior Ministry.
The Associated Press
SUNDAY, JANUARY 1, 2006
PARIS Rowdy revelers in France torched 425 vehicles overnight in scattered New Year's unrest that has become an annual problem in troubled neighborhoods, but there were no major clashes, the national police chief said Sunday. Last year, 333 cars were burned.
The police had been particularly vigilant this year because of the three weeks of rioting and arson that broke out in October. But the national police chief, Michel Gaudin, said there were no major incidents this year between youths and the police, and no seriously destructive arson attacks targeting buildings.
"Some people were worried that the period of urban violence" would be renewed during New Year's festivities, Gaudin told reporters. "I think, happily, that it wasn't the case."
The police took 362 people into custody, up from 272 last year. Among the police, 27 officers were injured on the job - 15 of them hurt during what police described as a minor scuffle near the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
A state of emergency imposed during the rioting is still in effect, and 25,000 police were on alert for the holiday.
France's opposition Socialists accused the conservative government of trying to put a positive spin on the night's events, pointing out that this New Year's Eve was the most destructive ever in terms of damage to cars, and the most widespread.
"Despite the ineffective exceptional measures, calm and tranquillity have unfortunately not been restored, and the urban violence continues," the Socialist Party said in a statement.
Car burnings have become a barometer of unrest in France. In other incidents, a small fire broke out at a school in Toulouse, in southwestern France, and was quickly put out, the local authorities said. In Nice on the French Riviera, firefighters were pelted with stones when they responded to an anonymous phone alert, officials said.
In the nearby Var department of southern France, youths also threw rocks at firefighters in a troubled neighborhood of La-Seine-sur-Mer, the local authorities said.
Outside Paris in the suburb of Argenteuil, a small fire was reported at a cultural center.
A wave of rioting broke out Oct. 27 in a poor Paris suburb after two youths who believed the police were chasing them hid in a power substation and were electrocuted. The unrest spread throughout the country in impoverished suburban housing projects that are home to many immigrants from North and West Africa and their French-born children. At the peak, youths incinerated 1,408 vehicles in a single night.
President Jacques Chirac spoke of the unrest during his annual New Year's Eve television address and urged the French to do more to fight racism and a lack of opportunities in poor neighborhoods - problems that fed frustrations among young rioters.
"Diversity is part of our history: It is a resource," he said. "It is an asset for our future."
Chirac also promised to do more to fight crime and violence.
In troubled French neighborhoods, dozens of vehicles are set afire on an average night. The figure has risen to about 300 on New Year's Eve in recent years, according to the Interior Ministry.
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The revolt that exploded with determination and persistence in the French banlieues (with flare-ups in Belgium, Berlin and Athens) is animated by the lively rage of young casseurs, human beings who, like so many around the world, suffer endless condemnation to a daily life that is nothing but dissatisfaction, misery, humiliation and exploitation. The acts of these wild youths, which the “right-thinking”, priggish bourgeoisie simplistically write off with contempt as violence for its own sake, reveal a much more subtle meaning, laying bare the violence of an economic-social system that imposes increasingly dehumanizing obligations in its own interests and in the interest of the few who benefit from it: a useless and harmful job in exchange for a wage to pay back to the masters for homes, goods or “free” time. And just as this legalized violence is not blind, but sees quite clearly against whom it is acting, so also, the casseurs are quite aware when they vent their hatred against cops, cars, businesses, commercial centers and other symbols of isolation and power.
The riots that are going on attack two levels of state intervention at the same time: the police deployed to keep an eye on and punish the poor, and the car to be paid off in installments, symbol of individual “independence”, of consumption, of time on credit.
To drag in religious motives – as the right has done – is a pathetic attempt to stem the revolt. The excommunications of the Islamic authorities have not stopped these enraged people who do not recognize any mediators. So it is here that a more democratic politician or commentator from the left comes to concede, if not a justification, at least a motivation to the episodes that are overturning the horrifying normality of the banlieues: these invisible outskirts are an example of the degradation that bad administrations ignore, thus allowing their inhabitants, who are mostly immigrants that society does not want to integrate, to nourish a most uncontrollable rage. Thus, a plan for urban “requalification” is supposed to be necessary, perhaps entrusting the project to some architectural standards and following the principles of bio-architecture (or more simply those of a more effective social control). But from New York to Paris, from London to Ramallah, ghettoes are the very form of the market and of politics. The latest illusions of the integration of the poor are burned up together in the blazes of Clichy-sous-Bois. No one seems to ask what cities have become. Doesn’t anyone even notice that the “most rational” urban plans serve to obliterate the natural – and with it the human – environment, paving and building solely in order to give priority to the circulation of commodities and consumer-workers, to the detriment of human circulation and communication? Cities are containers of capital and human resources to invest and exploit. What then are a few hundred cars burned and other sad places damaged in comparison to the millions of people who are damaged and destroyed every day by those who impose the usual, senseless and boring life on them?
It seems unlikely that this revolt will become generalized. To achieve this, it would be necessary for each and every common mortal, pen-pushers mechanized by stereotypes and daily rhythms, to decide to become aware of the need to put an end to this system – the sole true cause of the misery which we suffer –, sabotaging it once and for all.
We joyfully greet these manifestations of the refusal and destruction of everything that represents and contributes to exploitation, brutalization and destruction of the human being.
LONG LIVE THE WILD YOUTHS OF FRANCE!
SOCIAL WAR AGAINST CAPITAL!
Some friends of the “riffraff”
[November 2005]
http://www.guerrasociale.org