CF: From the FWIW Dept., here's the NewYawkTimes 2Cts on the situ...
I have taken the liberty of pasting the succinct stuff,imo. Link is there, too and of course, you can read similar, but possibly diff views, in other papers:
PARIS, Nov. 5 - Nighttime rioting arising from public housing developments continued to rage early Saturday, spreading to the outskirts of more cities and leaving the authorities frustrated by their inability to stop what many are calling
France's worst civil unrest since the 1968 student revolts. ...
...Most of the unrest remained confined to immigrant neighborhoods surrounding Paris, where about 100 people were evacuated Friday night from two apartment blocks after an arson attack set dozens of cars alight in an underground garage. Rampaging youths have also attacked property in the southern cities of Toulouse and Nice, and in Lille and Rennes to the north. ...
...Although the police have been unable to stop the violence because of its apparent spontaneity and lack of clear leaders, officials say they have also begun to detect efforts to coordinate action and spread it nationally. In remarks on Europe 1 Radio, the prosecutor general in Paris, Yves Bot, said Web sites were urging youths in other cities to join the rioting. ...
...Many see the violence as a test of wills between Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy and the young, mostly French Arab rioters. Many immigrants and their children blame Mr. Sarkozy for alienating young people with the way he has pressed a zero-tolerance anticrime campaign, which features frequent police checks of French Arabs in poor neighborhoods. But he has ignored calls from many French Arabs to resign, and is keeping up the pressure. ...
Ironically, Mr. Sarkozy, himself a second-generation immigrant, has been one of the loudest champions of affirmative action and of relaxing rules that restrict government support for building mosques.
The government has been embarrassed by its inability to quell the disturbances, which have called into question its unique integration model, which discourages recognizing ethnic, religious or cultural differences in favor of French unity. There is no affirmative action, for example, and religious symbols, like the Muslim veil, are banned in schools.
"The republican integration model, on which France has for decades based its self-perception, is in flames," the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung declared. An editorial in
Germany's Süddeutsche Zeitung called the violence around Paris an "intifada at the city gates," a reference to the anti-Israeli uprising by Palestinians. ...
France, too, has offered citizenship to its immigrants, but the process was slower, and many of the Algerians who arrived to work in the wake of their country's bitter war of independence against France were reluctant to take up French citizenship. Not until naturalizations became more common in the 1980's did immigrants and their adult children begin to develop political power.
The country has tried to discourage "ghettoization" by ignoring ethnic or religious differences and emphasizing French identity above all. Until the early 1980's, foreigners needed government approval to form associations, and while there are no restrictions now, the country provides little support for ethnic or religious-based organizations.
But discrimination has flourished behind the oft-stated ideals, leaving immigrants and their French-born offspring increasingly isolated in government-subsidized apartment blocks to face high unemployment and dwindling hope for the future. ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/06/in...rtner=homepage
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