The Apocalypse Continued...

[bargalunan]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

If the violence continues, your voters will demand all politicians be Sarkozys.

YES, increase the problem in order to bring his own solution, that Sarkozy's policy. (Or perhaps he was just too much influenced by Urban Guerrilla ! :p )

But Sarkozy seems to be too extremist for French people. Weeks ago he was still the best candidate for the next presidency. Now, our prime minister De Villepin who looks more moderate hold the pole position. He looks moderate but he's keeping Sarkozy in his governement...
We're even better than US : We'll only have the choice between two members of the same political party ! French left wing is KO.

You're right, it's a policing problem, but instead of taking preventive humanist measures, too many politicians fight against each other in steril political speeches when it's too late (that's what I wanted to say in "building political theories to explain them"), and put another social pressure to contain people.
We've been waiting for years our suburbs blast.

Originally Posted by Undertoad

it would have been inconceivable for the black woman to be anything much higher than a servant.

it would have been inconceivable for my parents (white) to be anything much higher than a servant and a workman.
I don't think French people are SO racist. The main problems are unemployment, education, difference of cultures (of social classes or of immigration).

Speaking with foreign people living in France, French way of thinking is quite negative. We haven't got US "self made man" spirit.

[mrnoodle]

Europe is pretty screwed.

Some parts are pretty when they're not screwed, though.


bwah!

[bargalunan]

Yeah !

Finally De Villepin decides to restore financial support to SOME associations in suburbs (those which deal with education and housing help). It was suppressed or reduced these last years despite they guarantee important social links.

Nothing in order to finance again “emploi jeunes”, former little jobs, now suppressed, which were helping a lot of associations.

He also wants to increase scholarships, and to allow apprenticeship since fourteen years old for children with great school difficulties (it was already possible before and reduced to 16).

It’s fantastic : suddenly they find solutions ! Why did they do the opposite before ? Hoping we’ll see these promises.

But :

Now a law will allow our prefects to order curfews in every French territory which need that. It wasn't even decided in may 1968.................

Problem (never solved before or created) - > Solution (police control) - > lost of freedom allowed.

Caption : youngsters : the state is a mother for you

[jaguar]

I have to admit I have not read all of the above.
That said, I think I'm going to surprise most people by saying I think it's time to bring out the French Foreign Legion troops stationed in north africa and send them in to these hellholes with simple orders to detain all rioters, use deadly force if they resist and then promptly deport them and their families all back to wherever they came from without right of appeal and permanently blacklist them from re-entry.

What it comes down to is this, there are some immigrant communities that work, and some that don't. You can tell those that do, they learn the language, open businesses and their kids all speak the native tongue perfectly and often do better than average in school. Example: the indian community in most of the UK or the Vietnamese community in melbourne. Stereotype? Maybe, but overall, it's true.

These days though you seem to have a new class of migrants, I've heard the appropriate term is transmigrants, they're there, they make no effort to integrate, learn the language, culture or vales of where they have moved and resent being there. They are there purely for economic reasons. This has to be dealt with.

The first thing is to wake the fuck up about it. We live in an age where any kind of serious political debate about immigration is stymied very effectively by saying that anyone who has an issue with any kind of immigration is a racist, end of story. If you want to know who is the most racist group in the UK is, I'd start looking more closely at the caribbean/west african community, because sure, there may be some racism left in middle england but if I walked down the street in milton keynes talking about how all the nigger women were were stealing the white men, I'd be lynched yet I've heard exactly that more than once, races reversed, on the public busses in london and much worse. That needs to be address in open, frank, public discussion. The double standard has to go.

Secondly, there needs to be proactive measures to stop large enclaves of single ethnic minorities moving into one area, it creates what are essentially, closed colonies, guaranteeing problems in the future.

Thirdly there needs to be a stop to ridiculous kowtowing to 'multiculturalism'. I love multiculturalism, melbourne, my home town has one of the most amazing multicultural societies in the world but when someone tells me I shouldn't be kissing my girlfriend on the bus because it might offend the two devout muslim women sitting opposite, it's gone too far. It's not about assimilation, it's about integration. If you don't like the value system of the country you've moved to, go home.

Fourthly, once you've kicked the shit out of every rioter that thinks his personal disaffection gives him some kind of god-given right to destroy property and take life it's time to not only break the ghettos up but invest some serious money in them, in the schools, in job creation programs and in culturally-aware policing. Then, maybe, you'd deal with the problem.

This isn't like immigration in the past TW, and you have to face up to that.

[tw]

Originally Posted by jaguar

This isn't like immigration in the past TW, and you have to face up to that.

Unfortunately, Jaguar, you have described immigration of the past AND problems created when the intolerant fear to assimilate or integrate those immigrants. Assimilate and integrate are the same thing when it comes to the bottom line. I see nothing in your post that defines current immigration different from immigration of generations and millenium past. But I do read so many of the same biases that caused immigration problems in generations past. Feel free to post better and specific examples. But somehow we and France must immigrate people as America did in the 1800s and early 1900s. That is the reality of the world.

Clearly those rioters are the only reasons for these problems. Therefore massive strongarming and bullets will solve the problems. Well more police only expanded the outbreaks into cities from Normandy, to the Perennes, to the Med coast, and to the border with Germany. Outbreaks even in Belgium. Clearly we need more force - rather than address why things have been getting this bad for so many decades.

The home country has some standards that need be maintained. One is a common language. Another is that no religion should ever demand political action (outside of basic human rights and religious freedoms). But problems are created - integration / assimilation does not happen - when racist attitudes are problematic especially at the individual level.

Notice comments from Frenchmen literally on the other side of the tracks. They claimed they had no problem with those other people. But where on their side of the tracks were those other people? Racism exists when communities do not share the same streets. Integration and assimilation does not exist when it is only their side of town and our side.

Is that overt racism? No. But Jaguar is talking about overt racism when he claims it does not exist. He also posts as if I was discussing overt racism.

When confronted with specific examples, then we see so many who deny they are racist and yet don't even know any of 'those people'. If your circle of friends does not include those people, then why are you not routinely asking why? Circles that don't include the 'others' are not overtly racist. We just don't associate with them. Is that racist? Yes.

Is it natural to hate everyone who is different? Yes. Of course. It is naturally inbreed in how humans think. Those who don't logically acknowledge that racism naturally exists in everyone and then don't overtly confront that racist tendancy, are therefore passive racists. To not be a racist, one must intentionally cross that divide between 'them and us'. And that applies to both them and us. That is how immigrants assimilate into a nation as a nation assimilates into that new immigrant culture.

Confronting passive racism may even mean hiring a minority that is less qualified because your organization is too myopic; desperately needs multicultural attitudes.

jaguar - do you intentionally cross class and race lines especially when you are not comfortable doing so? If not, then you are part of a racism problem - a passive racist. People that a progressive country with immigrants cannot tolerate.

What has obviously contributed for over a decade into inevitable France wide riots? Passive racism. "We don't have any problem with them." Then are 'they' also shopping in the same stores? Then 'they' are also properly represented (in proportinal numbers) in your employment? At what point do the citizen of France address their own passive racism?

Why is multiculturalism a topic? Passive racism exists in us all if we all don't confront it every day.

[mrnoodle]

jaguar for president

[Undertoad]

The real Jaguar is going to be mad when he finds his account has been broken into and taken for this...!

Indians in UK have really improved its cuisine!! But can you imagine the French embracing such a thing?

[jaguar]

I feel kind of dirty.

[wolf]

Originally Posted by jaguar

I feel kind of dirty.

Get a couple more years on yah and you'll be an actual conservative.

[mrnoodle]

ur sexc. a/s/l?

[jaguar]

I still believe in socialized healthcare, social security, income tax brackets, corporate manslaughter & strong environmental laws before you get any ideas.

[warch]

No, he's a facist fighting, rational progressive!

[jaguar]

I'm sorry, if I don't engage in positive discrimination (which is still, be definition, racial discrimination) rather than say, treating everyone equally I'm a racist? That's almost admirably warped. Thankyou for making my point perfectly - question the situation, you're a racist.

Now personally I can say I do have friends from diverse backgrounds, young black muslims, irish catholics, first/second/third generation algerians, chinese, indians and sri lankans, kenyans, italians, iraqis and others but unless I actively chose not to engage with people on the basis of race your accusations are frankly, insulting. I don't count these people amongst my friends because I think I should, I do it because I interact with people I want to, regardless of colour or creed.

Yes, there probably is some latent, passive racism in plenty of people here but guess what: you have culturally accepted, very overt racism inside minority communities here, I think that's a much bigger problem right now, why don't you? What are you suggesting? That white people (and lets be blunt here, the incumbent majority in europe is white so I'm not going to pussyfoot about it) have an obligation to go out on a limb and somehow try and go out of their way to make friends with communities that often want nothing to do with them or they are to blame when those same minorities start trying to kill their police forces and burn down business? That double standard is half the problem. Who's the passive racist now?

In France right now you're dealing with hardcore criminals who have a stated goal of burning police officers to death before they will stop burning cars and shops, how do you suggest we stop that? Today. Not some long winded social policy that may or may not have an impact in 20 years. Should we just pick a couple of random officers and string them up as a sacrifice on the altar of multiculturalism? I'm sorry, I don't care who people are but they need to obey the law, if they aren't, they need to be bought into line with force if necessary. I don't see people standing up for football hooligan's rights to trash city centers after matches, why should this bunch of thugs get away with it? They're socially disadvantaged? Boo fucking hoo, try engaging with the society you live in, that might be a good start. I listed to an interview with a bunch of them today, most of them didn't seem to want anything except going back to morocco because, and I quote "there are too many jews here, I hate this place". They also said the London Bombings were great. These are not constructive immigrants, why should they be allowed in the country exactly?

As I said and you conveniently ignored, force isn't a long term solution but it is a short term one while you implement a long term one. And as I also stated above and you also conveniently ignored that should revolve around massive investment in culturally-aware policing, education and job creation. If you do give carrot without giving a stick you also reinforce the idea that rioting is a way of getting what you want. I also said that you need to integrate communities to stop creating these closed ghettos, which you then repeated as your own point in more fluffy language.

This is different, if I'm wrong, prove me so but I don't believe immigrants came to America in the same spirit as many immigrants do today. Today they feel forced by economics but dislike where they move to, have no interest in becoming part of that place or interacting with it. That is fundamentally different. It's not all, it's not all in any one group and probably not some in all groups but it's there and it's a very big problem.

Assimilation is not the same as immigration, assimilation means to absorb and make similar, integration is simply intermixing and combining, it's not semantics, it's fundamental to how you handle immigration. I don't think assimilation is the answer, usually both the locals and the newbies mix and learn from each other over time but then the concept of immigrants who actively resist integrating is new to me, i don't know the answer to that.

[xoxoxoBruce]

When waves of immigrants came to the US, mostly they went to where their own kind were. Irish went to the Irish neighborhoods, Italians went to Italian neighborhoods and so on. Even the Swedish, Norwegian and German farmers went to farm areas populated by similar groups. It was often to seek the help of a family member or someone from their village that had come before and might even be sponsoring them.

When they were congregated in their “ghettos” they were often at odds with and sometimes battled, outsiders. Over time, the kids at school or people at workplaces started to get to know each other and become more tolerant but it took a couple generations.

When people started moving out of the old ‘hoods to Levittown (suburbs) things really started to coalesce, probably because they had something in common…….crabgrass.

[tw]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

When waves of immigrants came to the US, mostly they went to where their own kind were. Irish went to the Irish neighborhoods, Italians went to Italian neighborhoods and so on. ... When people started moving out of the old ‘hoods to Levittown (suburbs) things really started to coalesce, probably because they had something in common…….crabgrass.

Don't forget, those first and second generation immigrants in the ghetto are not the same people who were the second and third generation - that moved out - maybe into the suburbs. The point was a nation's most productive people tend to be the third generation immigrants. People who are born in that country.

A problem in France: those second and third generation immigrants complain they do not have such opportunities. Complaints so widespread that violence was at least 254 French cities and towns. By numbers, the complaints are too widespread to not be legitimate.