Four men were arrested. More expected. They planned to attack the American and Israeli embassies. More arrests expected.

Youths wielding iron bars beat up two riot policemen patrolling a rough housing project in a southern Paris suburb, police officials said Wednesday.

One officer was hospitalized with a double fracture of the skull during Tuesday night's incident in Corbeil-Essonnes, a police source said. His colleague reportedly sustained facial and body injuries. Police were called in to disperse the gang of up to 30 youths who stoned the unmarked police car as it patrolled the area, police officials said.

The police got out of their car, were encircled and attacked. Some of the youths were armed with iron bars, according to reports.

No arrests were made following the incident, police said.

"These youths fear nothing," a police union official said on LCI television.

France 2 reports that the suburbs have remained lawless. Police is scarce and gang crime is out of control. Socialists blame Sarkozy for not having enough police in the area. Le Monde published parts of a letter sent by the"mayor" of one of the worse suburbs, Seine-Saint-Denis where evidence not only of past arson but on going arson and crime are everywhere:

Jean-Francois Cordet, prefect of the Seine-Saint-Denis region north of Paris -- where the riots began -- sent an angry letter to Sarkozy in June complaining about a 14 percent increase in physical violence, a nearly 23 percent increase in theft with violence and the sense of impunity of juvenile delinquents. The daily Le Monde published excerpts of the letter.

Sarkozy, whose chances of becoming succeeding Chirac may be damaged by his failure to bring crime under control, blames the courts for not being tough enough on the perpetrators. As evidence he cites statistics demonstration that as gang crime increased in the past year, the number of prisoners decreased by over 15%. A judge said that the answer was not sending" children" to prison. The reporter showed the worsening economic blight which accompanies the crime spree.

These recent developments provide an interesting counter point to an apologist Le Monde Diplomatique article I posted bellow entitled "France: state of the estates." It argues that there is nothing to worry about since the French urban riots were far less destructive than those in Los Angeles and Mumbai. It also opposed any attempt to get rid of the high rises in which these gangs thrive. Indeed, it praises the gang counter culture. I suspect the judges, who refuse to do anything to rid the suffering communities of these"destroyers", share Denis Duclos's views.

What really happened in november ’05?
France: state of the estates

By Denis Duclos

With the benefit of hindsight it becomes clear how hasty were many of the conclusions drawn by analysts on both the left and the right after the urban unrest in France in November 2005. They took little account of the many in-depth studies on the subject (1) and generally failed to put the troubles in their proper perspective, both in time and in their relation to similar events elsewhere in the world.

Inside and outside France, there have been three main explanations for the troubles. One was that ethnic, cultural and religious tensions, exacerbated by a failure to integrate successive waves of immigrants, caused the problems on underprivileged banlieue estates. This view was defended by Alain Finkielkraut (2) and Hélène Carrère d’Encausse (3), but disputed by Olivier Todd (4).

Another explanation was that the structure of immigrant families had broken down, the only remedy for this being to restore the moral, educational and disciplinary standards of the young generation and of their parents.

It was also suggested that the root problem was mass unemployment of the young on sink estates, and the wider socio-economic deprivation of their inhabitants.

Comparing the crisis in France to similar events elsewhere may help to clarify and put in perspective these explanations, and in some cases contradict them. There are even specific features of the French events that might encourage some optimism, which is seldom the case elsewhere. For example, racial, cultural and religious strife were not in fact major factors in the banlieue revolt, which partly explains why there were so few casualties. Urban riots triggered by religious hatred can cause thousands of deaths (as was the case in India in 1992-3 when members of Mumbai’s Muslim and Hindu communities clashed). Fighting between racial groups has claimed lives elsewhere, including during urban riots in the United States, particularly in Los Angeles, between the 1960s and 1990s.

In other situations, local enmity, which may become a political issue, can cause the sort of recurrent, long-term suffering that is still experienced in Palestine and Northern Ireland (5). It may suddenly change and escalate, especially with outside interference, into civil war (Beirut at the end of the 1970s) or genocide (Rwanda in 1994).

These examples remind us that extreme urban violence may erupt in situations in which the “problem”, often minority, population (African Americans, Indian Muslims, Northern Irish Catholics) is not foreign, but has been settled for centuries. It may even, as with the Northern Irish Catholics, be the indigenous population. Just as in any social class, the opposing groups have similar mores and are only differentiated by faith. So it seems unreasonable to put all the blame for the French troubles on conflict between the cultures of recent immigrants and the national culture.

Not a recruiting ground, yet
The social and political unrest in France does involve young people of foreign parentage, but religious activists have so far failed to turn that to their advantage. As even the police have emphasised, fundamentalist Muslim clerics have not tried to find new recruits among young rebels. Perhaps egalitarian, liberal forces already exert too great an influence over them, since they seem more sympathetic to republican, perhaps even anarchist, ideals than to some quest for spiritual purity. The unrest has not caused a deep rift in the identity of these youngsters.

However, once a separatist identity has taken root in a community of believers it becomes far more durably dangerous than sudden outbursts of juvenile resentment. To rely on community and religious leaders, and their pacifism, to restore order, as some politicians and analysts advocate, would be a serious mistake. This would merely contribute to the climate of religious and racial confrontation increasingly rife in northern Europe, especially the Islamophobia gripping Holland, Denmark and the Flemish part of Belgium.

It would make little sense to do so in France anyway, there being no open conflict between ethnic groups, though a return to racist beatings and victimisation by the police, as happened in the past, is always possible. The remaining far-right groups are not strong enough to risk provoking the “foreigners” in their “ghettos”, unlike the British National Party in Britain, which was responsible for baiting Pakistani and Bangladeshi youth, thus indirectly triggering riots in Oldham and Bradford in 2001.

We should ask a rather different question. France has a secular tradition and a reasonably open mind on differences of race, culture and religion (6). And it has no religious or political groups that would dare openly to provoke the youth in a particular community. So how has it been possible to foment rage in one location and for that rage then to spread to other parts of the country?

It seems clear that only the state is in a position to trigger or restrict confrontation, a view borne out by recent events. Successive rightwing governments since 2002 have deliberately demolished all the real or symbolic firewalls, such as the youth employment scheme, which were introduced by their socialist predecessors to reduce social tension in underprivileged areas. Last autumn they began to pay the price.

Upholding law and order
In a country such as France only the government can incite officials to behave in a hostile or aggressive manner. Political leaders and the government have taken the place of popular antagonism, in the process reaping several indirect benefits. They can claim to be upholding law and order, whereas in fact they contribute to unrest. This may seem a dangerous political gamble, but it may also be seen as a last stand before some final acknowledgement of the Other, whose existence cannot be denied much longer without causing people to suspect that the political leaders and government have malicious designs, possibly against a wide range of citizens (7).

So there is no need to look far for the basic, recurrent cause of urban revolt, even among the young. It mostly results from a lack of respect. The authorities have failed to recognise people on the problem estates, particularly youths, as cultural and political subjects in the sociological sense. This is the fault of the representatives of the authorities, and is reflected in their indifference, implicit distrust and sense of superiority. This causes harassment by police or officials and deliberate attempts to make it difficult for the estate-dwellers to find work.

We know that a climate of official distrust inevitably provokes trigger events. There have been comparable outbursts in the US, and each time the pattern is strikingly similar, with a member of a “difficult” minority being wrongfully pursued, arrested or sentenced, or beaten up during a police raid. (Rodney King was assaulted in 1991 by Los Angeles police; boys running away from the police in Clichy-sous-Bois were electrocuted in a substation.)

Friends soon find out what has happened to the victims. The community quickly hears the news thanks to modern media, prompting an immediate response, particularly among the young. Their anger focuses on symbols of authority and economic power, rather than other groups or individuals. They cause considerable material damage, although serious injuries or fatalities are unusual unless the police deliberately provoke confrontation in a show of force.

There is a guaranteed ratchet effect. The more a repressive state consciously or unconsciously seeks vengeance, the more deaths there will be. The French state has so far exercised a certain restraint, avoiding mass confrontation and the risk of involving older members of the community, who would use the many firearms readily available but usually reserved for crime. Perhaps the authorities remember May 1968 or the Malek Oussékine affair in 1986 (8). It is possible that police on the ground now have a better understanding of what is at stake.

However, the more the government authorises educators, social workers and above all the police (or in future the army) to adopt the approach of controlling people, the more likely it is to cause humiliation, inevitably sowing the seeds of further urban unrest. Preparing for the worst with plans for armed occupation of estates would lead straight to what such measures are meant to prevent: civil war.

Keep the tower blocks
About the physical context of urban unrest, and drawing on the work of Loïc Wacquant (9) and other commentators, we should consider a few points which suggest that the wholesale demolition of the much-maligned banlieue tower blocks is not really advisable.

Contrary to the claims of some sociologists, the arrangement of the flats within each block hinders the formation of ethnic or religious ghettos. The film director Mathieu Kassovitz (10) noted that groups of young people were relatively mixed and research has since confirmed this.

Luckily, a melting pot really exists, which is not true in Britain, where poor whites seem relatively segregated from coloured communities. Nor is such exchange possible in segregated US neighbourhoods, where a fear of other minorities prevails (11). The 1992 riots in South Central, a poor suburb of Los Angeles, were partly due to friction between three “racial” communities - Latinos, Asians and African Americans (12); there continued to be an annual average of 300 murders until the end of the 1990s. Just as the American poor are lumped together in racially defined units, so the rich are self-isolated in ethnically exclusive gated communities (13). The spread of such estates is fuelling forms of racial hatred almost unheard of in France.

The tower blocks, which rise like medieval fortresses, are difficult to police, but do help discourage provocation by racist thugs, unlike the small terraced houses so common in Britain. The towers are also too visible for it to be possible to hide Albanian slaves labouring for the local population as has happened in Italy and Greece.

France’s large out-of-town housing estates are generally the preserve of people, with all the necessary permits, who have demonstrated their ability to support themselves; unlike the slum dwellings still found in town centres, often occupied by unofficial immigrants. Income on the estates is nevertheless 30% below the national average and youth unemployment two or three times higher (14). Many of those who want to find work must drive to a distant workplace without a licence or insurance. But thanks to government grants and subsidies, a range of public and community initiatives and a genuine local economy, people do not die of hunger in the banlieues.

Some of the estates are in a poor state of repair, but this is due as much to real economic difficulties as to banlieue culture. Vandalism owes much to impotent rage, a sentiment often shared by the young in more prosperous quarters with their streets of detached houses. This raises the issue of recognition. Ideas such as delinquency, anti-social behaviour and cultural disintegration do not much help engagement with the need for recognition. They tend to encourage observers to disregard the issue.

Ready for life outside the nest
Some commentators have suggested, groundlessly, that certain lifestyles are incompatible, citing the deculturation caused by transplantion to a new setting, especially for the youngest members of an immigrant community. Pre-adolescents in Africa enjoy considerable freedom and it is traditional for them to form gangs, grouped by gender and age group. But this does not mean families have lost control of their offspring, rather that it is an early trial period for life outside the nest (15), corresponding to ancestral practices designed to prevent incest.

There is no doubt that problems can arise when the chill control of European society replaces the village’s more congenial authority. But that should perhaps encourage us to consider the solitude and disregard for the law to which our own, supposedly superior, system leads.

Analysts have found many ways of describing the banlieue as an inferno where mental and moral decline is inevitable, but such terms only partly describe a material reality, and mostly fail to convey the perceptions of people actually living there. Such descriptions are often a part of the denigration of the homes of working people from distant countries by the prosperous, fashionable classes. The well-off like to believe the occupants of poor estates are overwhelmed by their afflictions and terrorised by their neighbours. The rich forget that a neighbourhood is often the only thing that the young can call their own. It is a place about which to complain and joke, a patch to defend and a base for petty crime. The young estate-dwellers long to escape, but surely anyone who is young dreams of leaving his or her childhood environment. Many French rap songs remind us how often such dreams are shattered, but they also stress the solidarity that prevails on the estates. They may want to leave but they are nevertheless proud of their concrete jungles.

Segregation in the US is far worse than in France, but even there it has been exaggerated by commentators and outside observers. Even today people live quite normal lives, sending their children to school in Watts, a neighbourhood of Los Angeles where just venturing out is supposed to be hazardous. Insufficient attention has been paid to the effects of automatic vilification, the way it helps destroy a sense of neighbourhood solidarity and fosters a gang spirit, provoking widespread antagonism and revolt, even if it does not contribute directly to the development of organised crime (16).

The unruly behaviour of gangs can be unbearable, but a distinction needs to be made between rebelliousness and the ordinary explosive energy of the young. Exuberant young people make a noise, but no more than they do in many middle-class homes. Nor is it unusual for the young to take less interest than their elders in the problem of employment, or the matter of work. Sometimes the authorities want to quell this exuberance (labelled as hyperactivity or lack of inhibition in repressive psycho-speak), thus provoking a spiral of hatred (17).

Some commentators have been irritated by the way that this turbulent vitality has produced an expansive culture which is much easier to share than the middle-of-the-road culture of the commentators. They implicitly attack not rootlessness or poor integration but the enthrallment of French youth and media by banlieue culture. The hip-hop movement, which came out of poor estates, is making banlieue culture into a force for integration, perhaps even more powerful, given its international inspiration, than the working-class culture it replaces.

The intrinsic value of rap music is uneven, as is the case with most other popular music, but it often contains political and philosophical comment, even moments of poetry, that make it preferable to the bland material that schools serve up as art. Cultural integration is speeding up, but it is moving in the opposite direction from that expected. Young people in remote French country villages pick up banlieue accents as the bourgeois youth of Paris used to imitate working-class speech. They listen to the misfortunes of Diam, take lessons from Doc Gyneco (particularly N’oublie jamais d’où tu viens), and hear appeals from Disiz la Peste, 113, Busta Flex, or La Brigade. There are even new versions of numbers from the mid-1990s by artists such as NTM, MC Solaar, Passi, Assassin, Menelik and IAM, whose rage has been sublimated in artistic and political expression.

A different French
No one will be surprised to learn that they do not speak the same French on the estates as they do on highbrow radio stations. Culture, especially in hard times, is not a top-down process, but may rise phoenix-like from suffering. The West Indies slave trade may have destroyed much of the original African cultures of its victims; however, the children of imported slaves, forbidden by their masters from speaking their mother tongues (18), invented a new creole language and culture from the scraps of what they heard around them, from orders shouted at them and conversations between the whites.

We are a long way from creole culture. French schools do a good job and the media reach people on the estates as they do everybody else. Estate youngsters show considerable technical skill with mobile phones and the internet, and considerable organising ability, surprising and fooling police who try to predict trouble spots.

We must stop vilifying the estate adults, youths and children who draw on their predicament, sometimes unwillingly, to produce this dynamic part of modern French culture. They are part of the switch “from an atavistic culture to a composite one” along with the global market (19).

The events of October and November were unpleasant for the owners of the 8,000-10,000 burnt cars and for taxpayers who “own” the many wrecked public facilities. But we should perhaps consider the participants not as rioters but as the protagonists in a crisis of integration. By crisis we mean the upheaval that happens in adolescence, which is in fact a rite of initiation. We could see the changes in France’s relationship with its estate youth as a successful experiment, made possible here because ethnic and religious factors play a fairly minor role. If this experiment proves successful, it may offer a new way to achieve greater solidarity in society.

In which case tough talk about enforcing stricter, military-style discipline on difficult families makes no sense. It will only perpetuate the inability to accept the current osmosis, and underpin policies that turn the state into an agent provocateur (20).

Only a genuine integration policy can achieve both short and long-term results for those youngsters playing outlaw games with the police and fire service. But to succeed it has to fulfil two conditions. First it must coincide with a radical shift in attitude and discard any paternalism or unconscious denigration, acknowledging that the Other has a right to his or her place in a more unified world. We demand just that when we retire, en masse, to Morocco’s sunnier climes to make our pensions stretch further.

The second condition is not specific to the banlieue young. We cannot expect all French pupils to appreciate the process of going through state school to get a job some day, while aligning pay and working conditions with the lowest levels prevailing in emerging countries. As a wise old man suggested: “We must find an occupation for the young. But we have to give them jobs that pay. That way, one day they will become nice and friendly” (21).

Whence comes the phenomenon known as fundamentalist Islam or Islamism? Some French analysts from a range of disciplines (international affairs, Orientalism, security studies, journalism) have come to an agreement: it comes from. . . the United States. Despite the inherent implausibility of viewing a movement engaged in a sustained attack on Americans as a diabolical U.S. plot, this argument has considerable persuasive power. It presents Islamism as an American attempt to retard progress in Muslim countries and divide them from their natural allies in Europe. Such ideas come at once from the Right and the Left, representing both nostalgia for the French empire and a residual"Third-Worldism." They have as their common denominator a hatred of the United States and all it stands for. Although still marginal, these ideas about Islamism have spilled over into policy-making circles and have had a skewing effect on French policies toward the Middle East.

This is truely a sign of a civilization in decline. When reality seems too painful to confront directly conspiracy theories abound. These ones are reminiscent of the infamous forgery of"Protocols of the Elders of Zion" concocted during the last years of Tzarist Russia. France needs an intellectual revolution soon or it is doomed.

In any case, this morning the editors and the Danes are feeling better. Major European Paper such as The Welt and France Soir have also published them. France Soir headline is"Yes, we have the right to caricature God." Under it a cartoon of Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim and Christian gods floating on a cloud. The caption reads:"Don't complain, Muhammad, we've all been caricatured here."

I am informed that papers in Iceland, Finland, Italy and Mexico did the same. In Spain, ABC and the Catalan paper El Periodico also published the cartoons as did the Italian papers La Stampa and Il Corriere della Sera. In the Netherlands, the Volkskrank daily apparently had published them in November and will do so tomorrow.

Send me links to such publications, please. The media is beginning to understand that it has a dog in the fight for freedom. These ones are perfect: Cartoons in Czech MSMs:Aktuálně.cz (online only), Hospodářské noviny (economical daily) and Lidové noviny (published only in printed version)

Now how long will the American MSM remain behind? How long until it gets it?

Don't forget, Buy Danish!

This new Palestinian music video tries to convince both young men and women that the road to a rewarding relationship is to be found in Paradise.

The perverse sexual aspects of Islamist martyrdom is not new. As noted in Al Qaeda Women

The pressures of sexual frustration in this life and the lure of sexual as well as spiritual rewards in the next are exploited as part of a cynical spiel by jihadist recruiters looking for boys and men to be suicide bombers. Hizbullah in Lebanon, Hamas and Islamic Jihad among the Palestinians, and the various incarnations of Al Qaeda have all played on Muslim teachings that promise 72 houris—virginal beings with black eyes and alabaster skin—to attend the martyr's desires in paradise.

The directions for physical and spiritual cleansing that Muhammad Atta gave out to his fellow hijackers before the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States advise them to"feel complete tranquillity, because the time between you and your marriage [in heaven] is very short." Atta's own personal will, written in 1996, is a study in obsessive carnality."Women must not be present at my funeral or go to my grave at any later date," he wrote."He who washes my body around my genitals should wear gloves so that I am not touched there." In the mind of such a man, suicidal sacrifice is a path to ecstasy. There would have been no place in Atta's Qaeda for the women suicide bombers of today.

It should be noted that in this aspect too, Islamism is similar to Nazism. They are both part of a wish to "Escape from Freedom" so accurately described by Erich Fromm.

Every day that passes, more innocent men, women and children suffer in Darfur. Every day, women and young girls are raped as they venture from refugee camps to find firewood.

I suspect"moral authority" Kofi Annan who would rather visit totalitarian tyrant's Castro will never forgive him and neither will those who would rather celebrate post holocaust victimhood than lift a finger to stop the ongoing one (200,000 already).

If you wish to help visit the website set up by Bill Frist and make a call. For ongoing updates, visit Pam at Atlas Shrugs. No blogger cares more about the issue or worked harder to bring about the Bolton confirmation.

For example Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University, the leader of Sunni Islam used to tell his followers that the Koran considered Jews as"enemies of Allah [and] descendants of apes and pigs."

Now, he seems to have issued a new edict: declaring that it is now forbidden to describe"present-day Jews as 'monkeys and pigs'."

albawaba.com claims that the decision was the result of a request by Egypt's Foreign Ministry, because"there was objection among Americans to the use of this description of the Jews." Yes, indeed.

Perhaps the most significant victim of the new approach was Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, the former head of the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue, who was sent to Cairo as pro nuncio, a move seen as a demotion.

His department, effectively decapitated, was put under the care of the head of another office.

I first met the Archbishop, then the highest-placed Englishman in the Vatican and possibly its leading expert on Islam, about five years ago. On a blazing Rome day, we met in his office near St Peter’s Square and had lunch in a little trattoria nearby.

I found him a charming man, very modest about his status. An Arabic speaker and acknowledged scholar of Islam, he was often summoned by the Pope, sometime with very little notice, to provide expert advice.

Although he was understandably discrete, he was able to give me a flavour of the febrile atmosphere in Rome as Pope John Paul II was increasingly incapacitated by Parkinson’s Disease.

In other words, he used to call the shots. He also knew that Benedict is unlikely to let him continue to do so.

We next met between John Paul II’s funeral and the conclave to elect Benedict XVI at his well-appointed flat. He said that it was an odd experience, after such a long papacy, to feel job insecurity, as an incoming Pope was likely to reshuffle the Curia.

While he did not indicate that he would have a particular problem if that Pope was Cardinal Ratzinger, he did foresee that such a choice would result in a change of emphasis in his department.

"We might not have more events like Assisi," he said, referring to the spectacular interreligious prayer summits first hosted by John Paul II in 1986.

Many people in Rome believe that Archbishop Fitzgerald would have spotted the minefield into which Benedict XVI has now walked. Perhaps it is time to recall him from Cairo.

The man knew what he was talking about. Pope Benedict wasted no time and moved to reshuffle the Vatican in a manner more attune to his vision. Now, Fitzerald's forces see their opportunity to take back the Vatican. MSM and the Arab media are filled with calls for returning Fitzerald to his old post and for letting him vent future Pope pronouncements on Islam.

As the hilariously demonstrated in that excellent comedy series Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister (if you have not seen it rush to rent a copy, its priceless, it was Margaret Thatcher's favorite), bureaucracies believe that elected officials be they Presidents or Popes should preside over them not run them or, G-d forbid, make or CHANGE established policy. Hence, the appeasers who are the Islamists best friends will be found in the Vatican just as they were found in Foggy Bottom and the CIA. One thing is for sure, the Jihadists will show no more respect for the spiritual head of the Catholic church than they show to the American head of state, they compare both to Hitler. The pertinent questions are will Pope Benedict prove to be as tough as President Bush and will his Catholic constituency stand by him?