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It seems that the riots, some - like so-called left activists, call it uprising, even some, like Troskyist groups call it the "French Intifada" - in the suburbs of French cities, after Friday it was spreading out all across the country, now slowly are decreasing. Yesterday AP reported: France declared a state of emergency Tuesday to quell the country's worst unrest since the student uprisings of 1968 that toppled a government, and the prime minister said the nation faced a ``moment of truth'' over its failure to integrate Arab and African immigrants and their children. Rioters ignored the extraordinary security measures, which began Wednesday, as they looted and burned two superstores, set fire to a newspaper office and paralyzed France's second largest city's subway system with a gasoline bomb. Just over 600 cars were burned overnight Tuesday-Wednesday, about half as many as the previous night, Claude Guerin, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy's chief of staff, said. But today's mainstream media reported that the number of burned cars, for example, was complete decreasing. One of German's main newspapers, the Berliner Zeitung, had even no news about the riots in France anymore (in the last two weeks the new "developments" were always on the front page...). In the so-called leftwing media, such as Socialist Worker and other stuff like that, the authors described the riots, which started on Oct. 27 (I wrote already about it ..here), as the new proletarian revolution. But this is BULL SHIT. First of all this youths who took the streets to burn everything, what was/is on their way have nothing to do with the proletariat – they are not a part and even the proletariat don’t see them as a part... They are just a lost generation, without any future. The riot was/is just a measure to show that they still are existing. And a cry for help, but also an outcry of hate. People were asking in the last days why this kids are burning their own poor neighborhoods... And this kids were answering that "this is not our neighborhood - you, the state was forcing us to life here! We don't want this life! We just hate it!” Sylla, Sossa, Karim, Rachid, Mounir and Samir are the names they give. The oldest is 21, the youngest 15. One is an apprentice plumber; another is on work experience as a cook at a cafe in nearby Aulnay-sous-Bois; one is claiming benefit; two are (sort of) at school. Three are "known to the police". This estate, the Rougemont in Sevran, about 15 miles north of Paris, was one of the first to flare in France's outbreak of rolling urban violence, which has lasted 12 nights and in which nearly 6,000 cars have gone up in flames, dozens of schools, community centres and shops have been wrecked, and 1,500 people arrested. There are many reasons for the violence. "Because we hate, because we're mad, because we've had it up to here," said Rachid, parka hood up against the cold. "Look around you. This place is shit, it's a dump. We have nothing here. There's nothing for us." Sylla, 18, has a more specific target for his rage. "Les keufs, man, the cops. They're Sarkozy's and Sarkozy must go, he has to shut his mouth, say sorry or just fuck off. He shows no respect. He calls us animals, he says he'll clean the cités with a power hose. He's made it worse, man. Every car that goes up, that's one more message for him." The interior minister's forces, of which there are some 9,500 on duty around the country, are loathed. "They harass you, they hassle you, they insult you the whole time, ID checks now, scooter checks next. They call you nigger names," said Karim, 17. "I got caught the other week smoking on the train. OK, you shouldn't smoke on the train. But we get to Aulnay station, there are six cops waiting for us, three cars. They did the whole body search, they had me with my hands on the roof of the car. One said: 'Go back home, Arab. Screw your race'." On the streets after midnight on Monday, the measure provoked disbelief. "It's bad, it's really serious," said Djaoued, 21, a couple of miles down the road near the Chêne-Pointu estate in Clichy-sous-Bois, where the riots began on October 27. "On the radio they said the last time they used that law was in the Algerian war. Is that stupid or what? Ninety percent of the people who live here are Arabs. What does that tell them? Fifty years later, you're still different? We're not allowed outside, and everyone else is?" Back in Sevran, someone was attempting to set fire to George-Brassens college. Sirens wailed as half a dozen police cars and fire engines screamed along the Avenue André Rousseau. "It's so easy," said Ali, 16. "You need a beer bottle, a bit of petrol or white spirit, a strip of rag and a lighter. Cars are better, though, when the tank goes. One of you smashes a window, the other lobs the bottle." Ali's friend was an Arsenal fan: "Thierry Henry, man! But he never scores for France." Does he feel French? "We hate France and France hates us," he spat, refusing to give even his first name. "I don't know what I am. Here's not home; my gran's in Algeria. But in any case France is just fucking with us. We're like mad dogs, you know? We bite everything we see. Go back to Paris, man." Sylla summed it up. "We burn because it's the only way to make ourselves heard, because it's solidarity with the rest of the non-citizens in this country, with this whole underclass. Because it feels good to do something with your rage," he said. "The guys whose cars get torched, they understand. OK, sometimes they do. We have to do this. Our parents, they should understand. They did nothing, they suffered in silence. We don't have a choice. We're sinking in shit, and France is standing on our heads. One way or another we're heading for prison. It might as well be for actually doing something.", so a TV report in early Tuesday morning. Some days ago the author Birgit Vandeberke said in a interview that this riots are more like a "UPRISING IN A PRISON". There is no future, the struggle, the riots have no real aim, except to be heard from everyone and to be a hero, even just for two weeks. These youths have no ideas for a real aim, for a real future (because, perhaps they know, that there is no future!)... The so-called left also have no answer, except to repeat the "historic mission of the working class"... And the (capitalist) society, of course, has no answer (except more REPRESSION)... So because of that this was not the first riot and it will not be the last riot... and not only in France... In the last days the European (bourgeois) media was crying out "who will be the next?" (alone in the last two day in Berlin at least 11 cars were burned down...) "Is this our own future?"... Of course this is the future! Because...

NO FUTURE!

...but it is our own fault! French newspapers wrote in the last days: Editorial in Le Monde (bourgeois): "A country that regards itself as the birthplace of human rights and a model of social welfare has shown itself, in everyone's eyes, to be incapable of giving its young people the opportunities they deserve... If France wants to avoid another electoral catastrophe like the one in 2002, when Jean-Marie Le Pen reached the second round of the presidential elections, it is time for those who aspire to govern to stop grandstanding and apply themselves to the task of rebuilding part of society." Editorial in Le Figaro (bourgeois): "France is paying for its arrogance. In the eyes of the world, our famous model of social integration is going down the drain... Vengeance is a dish best served cold. America will never forget the criticisms of its society during the Iraq war and after the hurricane in Louisiana. "But their criticism is not entirely unjustified. It underlines 40 years of political failure... Too often, ideology has trumped pragmatism in dealing with the problems of the suburbs. Plans to rebuild and renovate have not been followed up with money. In particular, it is misguided to think that tweaking around the edges would give pride and hope to the descendants of French immigrants, who have too often been soothed by speeches presenting them as victims rather than responsible citizens... "Is Islam at the heart of the current violence? Not as far as one can tell. The solution seems to lie in reaffirming everyone's rights and responsibilities." Editorial, L'Humanite ("Communist" Party): "Nicolas Sarkozy's arrogance evidently has no limits. Questioned on television about his attitude to the crisis, the interior minister declared calmly: 'I don't have the right to overreact. Nothing can be achieved by agitation and tension. The most difficult thing for me is to stay lucid, to get out of the cauldron and to find the time to reflect on what should be done.' Get out of the cauldron? If only he could! After having deliberately lit the fuse, he happily surveys the damage, and wants time to think about it. The residents of Seine-Saint-Denis and the politicians and educators who live there will appreciate that. "Whatever the government says, the events of recent days do not reflect an isolated problem of suburban crime, but a terrible failure of the policy of urban and social segregation that has been imposed for years on the people of these districts. The suburbs are not a special case. The suburbs are France, the France that suffers at work, is unemployed ... the France of discrimination, bad housing, poor public services. Unless we give the suburbs hope, the whole country will be unable to develop and the equality that republican principles are founded upon will be nothing more than a piece of paper. The future of the French model of social justice - of all our futures - lies in the suburbs. That is why Nicolas Sarkozy wants to break them... Rather than endless images of burnt cars, we must give a voice to the suburbs. And we must listen to them!" Communique from the “Mouvement de l’immigration et des banlieues”(here you can read the French version): “Die in peace my brothers, but die in silence, that we perceive but the distant echo of your suffering” Wednesday, November 9, 2005. “Those who do not understand today the causes of the riots are amnesiacs, blind or both. It has in fact been 30 years that the suburbs have struggled for justice. 25 years that the revolts, the riots, the demonstrations, the marches the public meetings, the cries of anger with precise demands have been formulated. 15 years since the Minister of Cities was created to respond to the exclusion and the social misery of the so-called disadvantaged neighbourhoods. The ministers come and go with their promises: Marshall Plan, Zones Franches, DSQ, ZEP, ZUP, emploi-jeunes, Cohesion Sociale, etc… The suburbs serve as a escapist release for the ministers, the elect and the media, fevered with little murderous phrases on the “no-go zones”, “the parental irresonsability”, gangsterism, and other “Islamist derivaties”. The inhabitants of these neighbourhoods, and notably the young, are stigmatized and designated as responsable for all the problems of society. It is all too easy to give a lesson in civics and to point the finger at the ‘scum’ or the ‘savages’, thus throwing them to populist vindictiveness. And this strategy is all too profitable. The suburbs become an isolated problem, which we leave to the police and the courts to solve. Today, we are presented these ‘suburban youth’ (signifying black and arab) who are seen as having come to destroy like foreigners laying siege to France. Nevertheless, from Minguettes (1981) to Vaulx-en-Velin (1990), from Mantes-la-Jolie (1991) to Sartrouville (1991), from Dammarie-les-Lys (1997) to Toulouse (1998), from Lille (2000) to Clichy, the message is clear: Enough of these unpunished crimes of the police, enough of the suffering silence of millions of families, of men and women, who suffer daily from the social violence, so much more devastating than a burning car. With the curfew, the government responds by collective punishment and a law of exception that gives full powers to the police. Just sealing the lid on the cooking-pot will mark the memories of our neighbourhoods for a long time. There will never be peace in our neighbourhoods as long as there is not justice and real equality. No pacification nor any curfew will keep us from continuing our fight for this, even when the cameras will have ceased rolling. NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE! MIB, 11/09/2005

Just try to see the movie La Haine (The Hate)!!! And you will understand more about what was/is going on in France...