Paris is Burning

Julian Sanchez | November 4, 2005

As the Paris (and now beyond) riots continue, I'm noticing a fair amoung of kvetching from the right side of the blogosphere about how the dreaded "MSM" is failing to play up the Muslim identity of the rioters. The iron grip of political correctness, so the narrative goes, is preventing the press from calling the "Paris intifada" what it is. My friend James Joyner, who has a good roundup of coverage, argues:

The fact that these "youths" and "frustrated young men" just happen to be Muslim is hardly irrelevant to this story, yet it is ignored in most of these stories and relegated to the last paragraphs of others. It would be the equivalent of covering the 1960s civil rights marches in the United States without mentioning that the people fighting for their rights were black.

Well, maybe. On the other hand, it might be the equivalent of not mentioning that the marchers were Christian—which, of course, the large majority were, often spurred to march from the pulpit. Obviously, I don't think reporters should be burying any religious angle here. But is there one? You've got a bunch of young 20-somethings with dismal-looking job prospects (unemployment approaching one-third in their age bracket and neighborhoods) who already feel marginalized by poverty, race, and immigrant status. Put it this way: Given that most of the rioters are Muslims, is there evidence they're rioting because they're Muslims, or even really as Muslims? If it were a Cambodian immigrant community blowing up, would we find it weird if the press didn't refer to it as a Theravada Buddhist uprising?

Now, maybe they're all right, and the religious angle is important somehow. But most of the complaints seem to be premised on the presupposition that it must be important, and if the press coverage is mostly focusing on other explanatory factors, that's per se evidence of P.C. self-censorship. We have any Parisian readers out there who want to chime in?

Comments

|11.4.05 @ 2:51PM|#

Uh, no, it would be the equivalent of the press not mentioning that the people rioting in American cities in 1968 and 1992 were black. Is this really how your friend Mr. Joyner looks at Dr. King's marches?

|11.4.05 @ 2:53PM|#

Well I'm sure they'd be happy to see them referred to as Arab immigrants instead. Would that be ok, Julian?

|11.4.05 @ 2:54PM|#

It appears they are rioting as part of an effort to make their de facto independence from french authority official. As in, cops don't go to those places, and as radical Muslims, they feel that they aren't bound to obey the French cops and want their communities to be ruled as they see fit and free from French legal authority.

So, yeah, its not one of those "and my friend, who happens to be muslim" kind of things. The fact that they are Muslim is a key thing.

It's basically a minor rebellion. I suspect they'll suceed too, given Chirac's generally supine instincts.

|11.4.05 @ 2:57PM|#

"Well I'm sure they'd be happy to see them referred to as Arab immigrants instead. Would that be ok, Julian?"

Well, it would if it were accurate; they're not all Arabs. But actually, that is how a lot of the press accounts have been describing them: "Youths of African and Arab descent."

|11.4.05 @ 2:59PM|#

Julian Sanchez,

Ahh, the reason they are unemployed is in part due to the fact that they are immigrants and young, French labor laws discriminating (generally inadvertantly) against both. Since many immigrants in France are from North Africa, and thus Muslims by and large, the issue of whether they are Muslim or not is important.

|11.4.05 @ 3:00PM|#

Ah, but it's Paris in the Fall, right?

Actually, this reminds me of Green Day's "Holiday" lyrics:

Pulverize the Eiffel towers
Who criticize your governments
Bang, Bang goes the broken glass
Kill all the f@gs that don't agree
Trials by fire setting fire
Is not a way that's meant for me
Just cause, just cause, because we're outlaws, yeah!

I think the green Day lyrics are intended as an anti-Iraq deal, but it's a bit odd to see who's actually tearing up Paris.

|11.4.05 @ 3:01PM|#

Well I'm sure they'd be happy to see them referred to as Arab immigrants instead.

Ethnically, they aren't as a rule Arabs either.

|11.4.05 @ 3:01PM|#

Yeah, I have a few complaints on this one:

(1) I doubt the very contention, coming from the blogs, that the MSM is not noting the Muslim connection. Most every article I've read has noted it. A quick "Google News" search on "paris" and "riot" returns 1,740 articles, while "paris" and "riot" and "Muslim" returns 1,350. So, you lose about 25% of the articles.

(2) I agree these riots are predominantly class-based. The religious/ethnic angle may comment on the state of first- and second-generation immigrants in France, but I don't see the explicitly Muslim connection.

|11.4.05 @ 3:01PM|#

As a gentrifying urban pioneer in the belly of the beast of Sinincincinnati, I'm an expert, so let me tell what this is about.
Terrorists are my neighbors. They are your neighbors. They growing at an exponential rate.
They are a natural reaction to all the vicious, on-going government wars:
poverty
drugs
terror

Was that politically incorrect enough?

|11.4.05 @ 3:02PM|#

rob,

Paris isn't being torn up. Some blighted neighborhoods are though.

|11.4.05 @ 3:02PM|#

Toxic, I think a lot of your language conflates different things.

"as radical Muslims" Well, they're radicals. And they're Muslims. But when you put those two terms together, it adds up to something close to "Islamist militant," which might not be the case. The Black Panthers were radicals, and mostly Muslims, but they were certainly not jihadis.

"The fact that they are Muslim is a key thing." The fact that they are members of a Mulsim community is the key thing, but I've seen no evidence of religious motivation for these crimes. It looks a whole hell of a lot more like the people burning stuff in South Central.

|11.4.05 @ 3:03PM|#

The thinking seems to be "Angry Muslim men engaging in violence must be terrorists. It doesn't matter if it's they're rioting for reasons wholly unrelated to religion, they fit the profile. The MSM wants to undermine "Our war on terror", and is burying the religious angle toward that end.".

|11.4.05 @ 3:07PM|#

Hakluyt - True enough, I suppose. But the headline IS "Paris is Burning" so take that up with Mr. Sanchez.

|11.4.05 @ 3:07PM|#

I'm probably going to get creamed here, but this was bound to happen. The French let in a huge population of Muslims, who, frankly, are predisposed towards blind obediance to their theocratic lords (thus automatically making them hostile towards the secular state), and, globally, consistantly resort to violence to settle political/religious/social differences.

This nonsense has been going on for eight days? Peaceful citizens are being terrorized by these thugs (I've read that fucking ELEMENTARY schools are under attack)? Roll in the goddamned tanks already.

|11.4.05 @ 3:08PM|#

We have any Parisian readers out there who want to chime in?

I'm curious, myself.

|11.4.05 @ 3:09PM|#

A humorous spoof on the subject...

Jacques Chirac on Paris Riot: "Deport! Deport Them All!"

Jesse Walker|11.4.05 @ 3:10PM|#

[pedantry]

The Black Panthers were radicals, and mostly Muslims, but they were certainly not jihadis.

I don't think the Panthers were mostly Muslims.

[/pedantry]

|11.4.05 @ 3:10PM|#

I don't know if they're rioting because they're Muslim, or as Muslims or what have you, but there is a parallel going on here.

It's not a secret that most of the violence wrought on the world is done so at the hands of young men. Admittedly, every violent situation has its own unique features, histories, etc. and young men are not to blame for violence per se, but the overlaps are hard to deny. According to the IHT article linked below, local Muslims are complaining about the youth (this "youth" I am going to guess are mostly Muslim young men).

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/11/03/business/france.php

That suggests that Muslims in general may not be rallying. These violent acts, even if local Muslims sympathize with their feelings, are largely perpetrated by the young (and of them, mostly men).

But couldn't the same plausibly be argued about terrorism? That is, most Muslims are not in favor of terrorism, but there are some who are and those Muslims overwhelmingly tend to be young men. Does that mean these young men who committ terrorist acts are doing so as Muslims or because they are Muslims?

True, how Islam and terrorism are related is not a settled matter. But it's pretty hard to deny there isn't at least some sort of connection between them.

Shannon Love|11.4.05 @ 3:13PM|#

According to this story the primary driver for the riots is the attempt by French police to reestablish a presence in areas they had long since abandoned. The people of the areas have grown accustomed to running their own affairs along Islamic lines and are resisting the return of outside authority. If this analysis is correct, then the fact that the rioters are overwhelmingly Muslim is critical to understanding the dynamics of the events.

In that case, if the media is playing down the Islamic angle, then it suggest they either don't understand what is going on, their systemic biases are tripping them up again, or both.

|11.4.05 @ 3:15PM|#

Shoot, Walker, you're right. They were mostly Maoists. Or, rather, "Maoists."

OK, but Panthers aside, there were radical, black Muslims in the United States in the 60s and 70s, and they certainly weren't jihadis.

-(Bama),

"That suggests that Muslims in general may not be rallying." The right's determination to cast this as a Muslim vs. Christian fight, rather than a bunch of hoodlums making trouble, might change that.

|11.4.05 @ 3:18PM|#

I don't think the Panthers were mostly Muslims.

Correct. They were mostly criminals.

|11.4.05 @ 3:21PM|#

I thought the Black Panther was a cool Batman knock-off..

|11.4.05 @ 3:23PM|#

I think if the media's going to go so far as to identify the ethnic origins of the rioters, their religious/cultural identities are fair game. Generally when the media highlights an otherwise immaterial attribute shared by any number of "agitating" individuals, its meant to highlight the "alienation" or "ennui" or "oppression" or whatever-the-froofy-pseudopsychological-damage-du-jour shared by people with such attribute(s) in common. And since the media has been highlighting the duress under which muslims live in France (witness the headscarf ban), well, why not raise that issue here? Might something like that be material?

Of course, I raise this all as an academic argument. Frankly I just think a couple of young idiots who managed to get themselves electrocuted is a pretty lame excuse for trashing your neighborhood and making life harder for your friends and neighbors.

|11.4.05 @ 3:25PM|#

rafuzo:

I read an article where they claim the youths were so afraid of the pursuing cops that they willingly faced "electrocution" instead.

I don't even know where to begin with that assertion.

|11.4.05 @ 3:26PM|#

It's basically a minor rebellion. I suspect they'll suceed too, given Chirac's generally supine instincts.

I think you're mistaking French foreign policy with their domestic. France takes the whole melting pot concept a step further: new immigrants are expected to give up their immigrant heritage and adopt a French identity; the result of the outgrowth of nationalism during the Napoleonic era. However, this model is not working for the large numbers of arrivals from the Maghreb, and they're struggling to integrate that population. The gvmnt has been trying to clamp down on this group for some time now, partly through economic largess and legal dictates. Last year's headscarf ban was a sign of the latter. Don't expect Chirac-or any other French politician-to back down. Doing so would go against one of the founding pillars of the republic.

Also, look at how hard they fought to keep Algeria and Vietnam, just because those "colonies" had the temerity to reject the concept of a greater French community.

|11.4.05 @ 3:26PM|#

Shannon Love,

As I noted on an earlier thread, much of the problem is related to that very thing. In turn, much of the reason why they are trying to re-establish their presence is due to the series of scandalous stories coming out of the banlieus concerning the anal gang rape of women, etc.

|11.4.05 @ 3:28PM|#

Deus ex Machina,

They aren't going to back down because the French electorate is pretty pissed about the situation in the banlieus and want that shit cleaned up pronto.

|11.4.05 @ 3:33PM|#

Also, look at how hard they fought to keep Algeria and Vietnam, just because those "colonies" had the temerity to reject the concept of a greater French community.


and I should add that many of the rioters are descended from Algerian immigrants who left after independence.

|11.4.05 @ 3:34PM|#

I agree with Mr. Sanchez. There is no direct evidence that being Muslim has anything to do with these riots, other than for the demographic fact that most(?) of these youths are from predominantly Muslim families.

Where rioters in Norhtern Ireland were mostly Catholic (and Irish), that may have been mentioned as a means of defining them in opposition to the British. However, that label was not used in the manner some xenophobes would use it now, to cite it as a reason/motivation for violent protests. Of course some haters did cite it as such, and I suspect the motivations now are the same as they were then.

I think the culprit is much more likely the vaunted French socio-economic model that stifles market-based enterprise and creativity. Young men permanently excluded from competition and meaningful participation in any society are simply liable to explode at the slightest pretext. So much for saving France from brutal Anglo-Saxon capitalism.

|11.4.05 @ 3:39PM|#

What most of you seem to be missing is that this is coming to a neighborhood near you... as surely as Paris fashions do.

|11.4.05 @ 3:39PM|#

Also, just to be clear, this is a Europe-wide problem. This could just as easily be happening in London (remember the Underground bombing), Amsterdam or Brussels.

|11.4.05 @ 3:44PM|#

Oh Hakluyt, lighten up, the girls are still virgins, aren't they?

|11.4.05 @ 3:46PM|#

I read (but can't find the link) that it is happening in some neighborhood in Denmark as well.

|11.4.05 @ 3:46PM|#

Banlieus punk,

I know you are being sarcastic, but the fact is that the French government is failing to undertake one of the primary duties of government - protecting its citizens from criminals.

|11.4.05 @ 3:48PM|#

"Young men permanently excluded from competition and meaningful participation in any society are simply liable to explode at the slightest pretext."

Actually, I'll open the whole can of worms with this statement:

Young men, freed from the necessity of providing for themselves and/or their families and fed a string of stories about how they're entitled to a billion different things, and most importantly generally lacking a familial or social control, tend to be restless and prone to thrill seeking, regardless of any great cause. Young women are similar, although their thrill seeking often finds different outlets.

I bet if the rioters were honest with you, most of them would say that it was just an excuse to do something exciting. There are probably a few hard-core "cause" types instigating, but I think kids are kids are kids. And the kids I know are generally "bored" most of the time, and would think such riots would be "fun". What holds them in line is their parents and to a lesser extent, social mores. And by holding in line, I mean that they commit only minor crimes in their pursuit of a thrill...

|11.4.05 @ 3:48PM|#

Useful background:

http://www.city-journal.org/html/12_4_the_barbarians.html

|11.4.05 @ 3:52PM|#

Nativ your Denmark link:

http://viking-observer.blogspot.com/2005/10/war-in-france-war-in-denmark.html

|11.4.05 @ 3:53PM|#

This "it doesn't have anything to do with it" stuff is asinine. Take off the blinders guys--- if you read the reports, the rioters are saying

1. that the rioting was largely planned
2. that they want autonomy for "their" areas

basically this is a political move. If you think that a 8 day riot that has spread from 1 place to 20, plus some other countries (Denmark for 1), if the reports are accurate, is just some angry teens overturning trucks...

There comes a time to take off the blinders and excuse-making. There is a major segment of the Mulsim population in western europe that is violently opposed to living under the governments of those countries. The number of honor killings in W. Europe is quite high--- they aren't integrating, and at this point they don't want to integrate. They want to seperate. And they will stab anyone who gets in the way.

1. Theo van Gogh
2. The Tube bombings
3. the madrid bombings
4. these riots

and that's just the stuff they've managed to pull off. At least 3 of the 4 incidents have nothing to do with Al-queda or were pulled off by locals.

I'm sure that unemployment and all the rest is a major player in the bubbling anger they show. But that doesn't change the fact that this anger has been channeled through their religious identity towards seperatist ends. Pulling the wool over your eyes because you don't want to make unpleasant connections is foolish. Religion isn't much of a big deal to most Americans, and that is certainly especially true for the people of the board. But it is a central aspect to the lives of millions of people. Trying to read their actions without acknowledging that their religion plays a major role is bound to lead to bad results.

|11.4.05 @ 3:53PM|#

quasibill,

Well, we know one thing about them. They hate cars, since dealerships seem to be one of their favorite targets. Of course it might also be that they are an easy thing to get whipped up into a roaring fire.

|11.4.05 @ 3:54PM|#

Beat me to it!

Andrew Sullivan has a bunch of links on this story

|11.4.05 @ 3:58PM|#

"Also, just to be clear, this is a Europe-wide problem. This could just as easily be happening in London (remember the Underground bombing), Amsterdam or Brussels."

Funny. Recently at TalkLeft I was arguing with a Londoner over her claim that America was likely the most racist country of any; a conclusion she reached after watching an hour long documentary on the flooding of New Orleans. After pointing out the disparate racial and economic divide in the UK she responded with ...

"The poorer areas are are equally filled with every race, if anything there is more of a class divide than anything."

Does this ease your concern?

|11.4.05 @ 4:00PM|#

Oh, it's obviously political, Toxic. People in a certain community, that is culturally, ethnically, and religiously distinct from the majority, don't want to be governed by that majority. They want to govern themselves. They see the forces of the government as interlopers and occupiers. I don't think anyone is disputing that.

The problem comes with the determination to link that motivation to their (nominal?) religious beliefs, and to the larger religious-motivated international jihad. There doesn't seem to be any evidence of that, other than "well, they're Muslims, aren't they?"

"But that doesn't change the fact that this anger has been channeled through their religious identity towards seperatist ends." Again, why their "religious" identity? Are they yelling "God is Great?" Are they proclaiming their solidarity with Mullah Omar? Where are you getting this certainty that they're openning a new front in the international jihad? Do you have anything, at all, to back up such a position?

Sandy|11.4.05 @ 4:02PM|#

Paris isn't being torn up. Some blighted neighborhoods are though.

So, they're basically practicing domaine �minent?

|11.4.05 @ 4:04PM|#

quasibill,

I agree, especially since I found out today that car burnings is a regular thing there. What we have here is just an extra special bunch of car burnings. Sounds like thrill-seeking teens wanting more kicks.

I wouldn't lump this stuff in with the assasination of Van Gogh. I wouldn't want the signifigance of that despicable act to lose any of it's weight.

|11.4.05 @ 4:04PM|#

joe,
Probably there's a lot of yelling of "MOFO"
What's that in French?

|11.4.05 @ 4:05PM|#

Sandy,

Yeah. :)

Most of the banlieus make places like Cabrini Green look nice. They are strips spiritless buildings only an urban planner would love.

|11.4.05 @ 4:10PM|#

First let me commend France for holding out so long in opposition to this latest siege. Keep at it, you can't lose them all.

Secondly, I think premarital sex and dope could ease a lot of the tension. Based on that alone, I would say that religion is an important factor.

Third, watch for the new xbox game titled after this very thread or followed by a whole series. Personally, I can't wait for "Burning IV: Bordeaux - The Grapes of Wrath"

|11.4.05 @ 4:12PM|#

The roof! The roof! The roof is one fire!

|11.4.05 @ 4:23PM|#

Get down! Get down, party people! The roof is on fire!

WHY ARE YOU STILL DANCING?!?

|11.4.05 @ 4:24PM|#

Remember during the LA riots in 92 the Koreans who were defending their store with automatic weapons? Do you think there is something similar happening in France?

|11.4.05 @ 4:26PM|#

"I was not angry since I came to France.
Until this instant."

|11.4.05 @ 4:28PM|#

curious,

With the copious numbers of hidden shotguns in Parisian shops? Maybe.

|11.4.05 @ 4:28PM|#

Julian:

Is that a Dokken reference in the thread title? Nice work if it is.

|11.4.05 @ 4:30PM|#

jf,

No, it refers to a 1960s film about the liberation of Paris titled Is Paris Burning?

|11.4.05 @ 4:30PM|#

"I'm noticing a fair amoung of kvetching from the right side of the blogosphere about how the dreaded "MSM" is failing to play up the Muslim identity of the rioters."

Regarding this identity BS, some of you may recall anarchy in the UK from the "asian" riots a couple of years ago ? I don't know much about Paris & her immigrants, but I do have lots of "asian" (translation from britspeak -> south asian, indian etc not east asian or chinese as over here) friends there and in general there was a great deal of unhappiness about the "asian riots" label since the rioters were predominantly pakistani and bangladeshi muslims (or so one gathers). They wanted the press to identify the rioters more narrowly than as "asians". Maybe that's unfair, but being stakeholders in the outcome they were much less probing & philosophical about being tagged with this rioting shit than Julian and some of the others here are being.

|11.4.05 @ 4:35PM|#

I sure hope this isn't the fun link!

|11.4.05 @ 4:38PM|#

Hak:

Ah. Could be to a 1990 drag queen ball movie.

|11.4.05 @ 4:43PM|#

They're lucky they're not trying this shit in the hellholes from whence they came. Those sort of places have a novel way to deal with this sort of thing, and it doesn't involve talking. Hell, even in the States this sort of behavior would net them a cracked skull. Difficult to feel anything but irritated at either side.

Would anyone care to speculate on how these riots might affect Turkey's bid to join the European Union? With a huge population of Muslims and borders that would be almost impossible to secure, I don't think things look good for the Turks.

|11.4.05 @ 4:47PM|#

jf,

Could be.

Shem,

Well, the French are already adamently opposed to Turkey joining, and since it is proposed that their joining be put to a referendum, and since any one state in the EU saying no means that no entry, it could get even worse for Turkey's prospects.

|11.4.05 @ 4:50PM|#

Hell, even in the States this sort of behavior would net them a cracked skull.

I think the french riot cops can dish it out as effectively as ours can. This kinder-gentler France myth is just a fantasy that some people seem to have. Although I've heard a lot of their judges are stuck in some 60s "he's not a criminal, he's a victim of society" time warp, but I'm not really too sure of that.

|11.4.05 @ 4:51PM|#

Well, maybe. On the other hand, it might be the equivalent of not mentioning that the marchers were Christian�which, of course, the large majority were, often spurred to march from the pulpit.

I'm sorry, but this is the worst non-sequitur I've read on here. Quite shameful really.

|11.4.05 @ 4:57PM|#

I got this from a French friend when i e-mailed her asking "Why is paris burning"

"I don't even know, I'm not french anymore !!!
From what people tell me around is that the situation was bprder line in those "ghettos" and now the lid of the pan has openned and people are taking advantage of that to express themselves, and get out their anger, also for youngster they just want to have fun as they see the police having trouble to interfere."

I think the denial runs in all directions and the denial of the religious aspect is just one of many.

|11.4.05 @ 4:57PM|#

because...?

|11.4.05 @ 4:58PM|#

I imagine that just like there are multiple causes for these riots I think there are multiple players involved in the rioting. I'm betting some are just disaffected youths looking for thrills. Some are criminal gangs taking advantage of the mayhem. And some are Muslim extremists that are using the riots as a recruitment tool.

|11.4.05 @ 5:00PM|#

France has fairly strict gun control. Not as draconian as Great Britain (whose Olympic pistol team practices in France) but it's probably unlikely that the shop keepers and homeowners being victimized in all this are very well armed.

|11.4.05 @ 5:00PM|#

PM de Villepin to rioters: "Now stop rioting, or I shall taunt you a second time!"

|11.4.05 @ 5:02PM|#

Islam as practiced in the mideast and by its transplants is not a religion the way we think of religion in the west. It is still a civilizational theology* just as Chistendom used to be. There is no equivalent with what we'd call religion in America. So yes, the idea that they are followers of Islam is important.

Where is gaius marius when he could say something useful?

*Cut me some slack, I haven't had any coffee today, and can't think of the word for this.

Viking Moose|11.4.05 @ 5:03PM|#

"Most of the banlieus make places like Cabrini Green look nice. They are strips spiritless buildings only an urban planner would love."

so no "good times" there, either? (actually, you'd be pleased to see how most of the high rises there have been torn down. recently, they took down some of those DDR-gray ones, too!

danish references: yawn. the anarchists do krap like that every new years in the N�rrebro neighborhood. J-P is a newspaper that "out-fox'd Fox", in a country where most news is as ostensibly biased and sensationalistic as Mr. Murdoch's piece.

had never seen that viking blog before. looks like a bunch of fucking tools running it. typical dick-waving danes playing "tough". yar.

(new handle, same cheery person who references Noam Chomsky blow up dolls, heather has two mommies, and happy treefriends)

|11.4.05 @ 5:05PM|#

Pointing out that one aspect of an event is like another doesn't necessarily mean that isn't unlike the same event in other aspects. ...It is not a non sequitur that is.

...and "shameful" and "worst" are, "I'm sorry", hyperbole.

|11.4.05 @ 5:07PM|#

"actually, you'd be pleased to see how most of the high rises there have been torn down. recently, they took down some of those DDR-gray ones, too!"

Taken down, and the areas rebuilt, according to the efforts of urban planners, I'd like to point out.

Cabrini Green is to urban planners as the Irish Potato Famine is to property right free marketeers - the "damn, what were they thinking?" warning that later generations learned from.

|11.4.05 @ 5:09PM|#

I think the french riot cops can dish it out as effectively as ours can.

So...why aren't they?

|11.4.05 @ 5:10PM|#

"would be more like pointing out that the participants in a Black Panther riot were none of those things"

...would be like *not* pointing out that they were *any or all* of those things...

I'm going to make that coffee.

|11.4.05 @ 5:15PM|#

Chriso:

Dude, maybe the french cops need to roll in those cow catapaults. Y'know.. "pitch 'em the mush".

|11.4.05 @ 5:23PM|#

JDM,

Yes, Islam isn't just church on Sunday. Ummah is probably the word you are looking for.

|11.4.05 @ 5:25PM|#

So what happens when Ummah meets with ennui?

/probably not funny.

|11.4.05 @ 5:25PM|#

Correction:

"Faites chier la vache"

|11.4.05 @ 5:27PM|#

mediageek,

France has per capita something like 1/2 has many privately owned guns as in the U.S. In comparison to the rest of the world, that's a lot. For Europe, it has very liberal gun and hunting laws. Then again, it has a "Hunting Party" with over two million members. That's out of a country of ~60 million people.

Shem,

When they can catch the little fucks they are. These are small groups of kids doing these things right now, not massive mobs.

joe,

How many mistakes do you people get to make? That's right, limitless ones because you're from the government.

BTW, the Irish Potato Famine was more of an issue of how the law was applied in a discriminatory fashion to Catholics. Meaning the Penal Laws which stripped Irish Catholics for practicing their faith. Land concentration was high, but it had little to do with any markets, and everything to do with government action. Oh, isn't government so wonderful?

|11.4.05 @ 5:34PM|#

Well, we know one thing about them. They hate cars...

Possibly not so much that they hate cars, I suspect, as they envy those who own them and the mobility and ability to escape the miserable lives they have.

I doubt they'd hate cars nearly as much if they could afford their own.

|11.4.05 @ 5:38PM|#

Hak- My impressions of the French gun culture have generally been that it is fairly small, but very active.

It's my understanding that there are no regulations on suppressors whatsoever over there.

Still, it's probably unlikely that many have an AR15, or, I suppose, a FAMAS to defend their shops and homes with.

But hey, you run what you brung, as the old saying goes.

|11.4.05 @ 5:46PM|#

As I recall, during the Irish Potato Famine, Ireland exported food.

Because of the high rents charged by the British landowners, the common Irishmen could only afford to buy potatoes to eat.

|11.4.05 @ 5:50PM|#

"What most of you seem to be missing is that this is coming to a neighborhood near you... as surely as Paris fashions do." - Comment by: Ruthless at November 4, 2005 03:39 PM

Not likely, Ruthless. There are simply far too many Americans willing to play Dirty Harry. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing when societal order starts to break down...

Viking Moose|11.4.05 @ 5:53PM|#

"Taken down, and the areas rebuilt, according to the efforts of urban planners, I'd like to point out."

yes, Joe. good call. Mike Royko's article "a shovelfull of bad thinking" is an interesting read about that blight just west of the El tracks!

An acquaintance of mine did some of the forecasting for the renewal project. From the Univ of Illinois-Chicago urban planning/real estate group. Cool stuff. Professor Tom Bothan is a great guy there, too.

And, as you probably know, there were those who did accurately guess what actually played out from the river to Division st. terrible stuff. you're certainly correct that you get the "what were we thinking".

and everybody should be happy to know that this area and the area around Comisky -- errr "the Cell" have improved. And in a few years, there will be some other lesson learned that'll make us stratch our heads. trial and error. life as an iterative process. very postrelian of you :)

I don't know anything about the potato famine, so i can't comment on that :)

cheers and happy friday to you (with my Sam Oktoberfest in toast to you)

V.M. aka "drf"

|11.4.05 @ 5:58PM|#

Remember after hurricane Katrina when there was all that talk about the media's exagerations and how a lot of things were kinda overblown? Is that going to happen here? someone said something about elementary schools being under attack. Someone else mentioned this thing spreading across europe. Have any building been burnt? has this entered the affluent areas of paris? When this dies down are we going to find out that a bunch of cars and buses were burnt by some kids and that's it?

|11.4.05 @ 6:13PM|#

Kip,

Well, there has as yet (aside from the two kids who ran into the substation) to be any deaths that I know of. Also, outside of some very specific, limited geographic areas, you couldn't tell there was rioting going on.

Jim Murphy|11.4.05 @ 6:15PM|#

I'm no fan of the MSM, but CNN at least is clearly playing up the Muslim connection. Headline on the website right now is "Why French Born Muslims are rioting". Hard to be more clear about it than that...

raymond|11.4.05 @ 6:27PM|#

Probably there's a lot of yelling of "MOFO" What's that in French?

NTM.

And I doubt many of the rioters are immigrants.

|11.4.05 @ 6:38PM|#

But...But....I appeased you! I appeased you damnit! Now you're supposed to stop! It's common French knowledge that those are the rules!

|11.4.05 @ 6:40PM|#

What if I say some bad things about Bush? Will you stop then? Please!

|11.4.05 @ 7:35PM|#

To think that France was once the realm of Charles Martel. He would know what to do about this particular problem.

|11.4.05 @ 7:49PM|#

"I don't even know, I'm not french anymore !!!
From what people tell me around is that the situation was bprder line in those "ghettos" and now the lid of the pan has openned and people are taking advantage of that to express themselves, and get out their anger, also for youngster they just want to have fun as they see the police having trouble to interfere."

joshua corning,
Don't get me started quoting my almost underage Japanese penpal currently in China.

Yes, even China and Japan have this rioting to look forward to. In fact, they are probably having it as we speak, but it isn't "newsworthy."

|11.4.05 @ 7:58PM|#

raymond,
You have hit the nail on the "NTM."
I wish I could link like you do.
(Forgive me, fellow posters for I have sinned. And that ain't all. Momma's gonna make a little coffee too. Plus I am an old fart.)

|11.4.05 @ 8:20PM|#

And the movie was based on a famous book by Collins and Lapierre, which took its title from a question Hitler asked of a subordinate as the Allies advanced on the city... (Hitler had intended for Paris to be utterly destroyed if it could not be defended, you see.)

A factor to consider is how this will play in French party politics - Villepin (the PM) is quite moderate, but Sarkozy (Interior) is a real old-time hardass (ever read about the conflict with the OAS after the Algerian War?)... and they just happen to be the chief rivals to succeed Chirac. Believe me, if Sarkozy were calling the shots in this affair, there'd be bodies everywhere by now.

|11.4.05 @ 8:57PM|#

Viking Moose,

"I don't know anything about the potato famine, so i can't comment on that"

The long and short of it, the Irish population depended on potatoes to eat. Other food crops were grown on wealthy English people's land. When an epidemic of potato blight wiped out the potato crop, the English kept exporting food. They considered comandeering part of the export crop for distribution and funding relief from the public treasury, but being good free market capitalists, they decided to let a couple million human beings starve instead. After all, violating the property rights of the landowners, and stealing - stealing! - the tax dollars from productive people to benefit the poor might have had all the negative consequences, even unforseen consequences, that you all are so familiar with. So, America and Canada and Australia gained their Irish populations, and the mounds from the mass graves can still be seen throughout the Irish landscape.

Free market, laissez faire crime against humanity.

|11.4.05 @ 8:58PM|#

Here's a little follow-up to NTM:

They're rioting in Africa
They're starving in Spain
There's hurricanes in Florida
And Texas needs rain.

The whole world is festering
With unhappy souls
The French hate the Germans,
The Germans hate the Poles

Italians hate Yugoslavs
South Africans hate the Dutch
And I don't like anybody very much

But we can be grateful
And thankful and proud
That man's been endowed
With a mushroom shaped cloud

And we know for certain
That some happy day
Someone will set the spark off
And we will all be blown away

They're rioting in Africa
There's strife in Iran
What nature doesn't do to us
Will be done by our fellow man.


"There is nothing new under the sun."

Viking Moose (aka, "drf")|11.4.05 @ 9:21PM|#

gotcha.

thanks, Joe!

except i wouldn't exactly call it laissez faire, what with there not being private property, etc. (since land in england was still under inheritance laws, etc. and the land under control (government control) of a few), so i would not use those words to describe the happenings as you used them, but the long and short of a selfish tragedy certainly gets those involved a huge FUCK YOU! (and a raspberry)

but then again, i enthusiastically give all those "might makes right" types the gary, indiana cheer. :)

thanks for the answer. i appreciate it! have a great weekend!

cheers.
V.M. aka drf

|11.4.05 @ 9:26PM|#

Moose,

Land in Ireland was privately owned. Sure, the chain of title could originally be traced back to conquest and grants by the conquering power, but then, the same can be said of all the land in the United States.

|11.4.05 @ 9:35PM|#

Viking Moose, aka drf,
Can't quite discern if your moose hoof is up, down or whatever re endorsement of the joe.

Tonight is the first time I realized joe is but an apologist for the potato/mackerel-snappers.

"Free market, laissez faire crime against humanity."--quote from joe.

"Property is theft."--quote from Commies.

|11.4.05 @ 9:42PM|#

They considered comandeering part of the export crop for distribution and funding relief from the public treasury, but being good free market capitalists, they decided to let a couple million human beings starve instead.

While there's no question that something better could have and should have been done, there were significant contributing factors other than potato blight and the alleged capitalist hatred of the poor.

|11.4.05 @ 9:55PM|#

Land in Ireland was privately owned.

I hate to make comparisions here as so many others in this thread have been twisted around every which way...

...but while the famine was raging, the land here in the American South was also privately owned. I don't think it's fair to blame the treatment of slaves on capitalism.

From what wikipedia has to say on the subject, one of the largest contributing factors appears to be government interference in the economy.

"The Penal Laws had decreed sub-division among the conquered Catholic Irish, in the hopes of encouraging conversion to Protestantism. In its nineteenth century land-holding form, it meant that, over each generation, the size of a tenant farm was reduced, as it was split between all living sons, though by the 1840s, sub-division was increasingly only found among the poorest people on the smallest farms. ...As a result, holdings were so small that the only crop that could be grown in sufficient quantities, and which provided sufficient nourishment to feed a family, was potatoes."

...

"Below that level were mass tenancies, lacking rent control and security of tenure, many of them through sub-division so small that the tenants were struggling to survive in good years, and almost wholly dependent on potatoes because they alone could be grown in sufficient quantity and nutritional value. Furthermore, efforts of tenants to increase the productivity of their land was actively discouraged by the threat that any increase in land value would lead to a disproportionately high resulting increase in rents, possibly leading to their eviction."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_potato_famine#Irish_landholdings

|11.4.05 @ 9:58PM|#

joe,

Its rather unfortunate you know so little about events in question. Or rather, that you learned the history of the issue from a poem.

The primary problems with the famine were related to the system of land tenure in Ireland fostered by the British government as well as Irish tradition. Land was seized under the Penal Code and land was evenly divided between family members over time so that by the time of the famine most plots that the Irish lived on couldn't support a family. Such a land tenure system has nothing to do with free markets.

...the English kept exporting food.

No, the Irish did - Irish landholders who had large plots of land which had been built up over time by the Penal Laws. BTW, its very bizarre to see this sort of comment. Irish Protestants considered themselves as much Irish as did Irish Catholics.

...to let a couple million human beings starve instead.

Its unfortunate you engage in such hyperbole. The death toll was between 500k and a 1 million. The famine itself was no more worse than many famines which had struck Europe for many centuries; what had changed were senisibilities about such things.

They considered comandeering part of the export crop for distribution and funding relief from the public treasury...

Here you are writing of Lord John Russel's laissez faire decisions which had nothing to do with causing the blight, creating the tenure system in Ireland, or anything else. You have heard of Lord John Russel, right? (I doubt it.)

As to the comandeering issue, well, they didn't have to do that as Tory government of Peel had been dealing with the issue just fine with imported maize (this what I mean by you learning the history through a poem - poem leaners tend to buy into the line about them keeping exports flowing) up to 1846. The Whig government changed tactics and required that those who got food work; workfare we would call it. The government didn't simply abandon people, unlike how you claim. The policy turned out to be problematic, but the government hardly turned its back on the issue, and there was no need to actually comandeer food because the Peel government had no trouble supplying folks with food while not doing such.

Your attempt to blame this on free markets is ultimately rather bizarre I must say. Its unfortunate that you know so little about these events have persuaded yourself that you do.

|11.4.05 @ 9:58PM|#

This demonstrates one of the biggest blindspots of libertarians: open border lunacy.

When the world is without primitive thugs like these, then open borders will be possible.

If the French are not total idiots, they'll begin mowing these fuckers down with machine guns.

|11.4.05 @ 10:02PM|#

Tom Crick,

No, see, the government had nothing to do with it, it was the big, bad, evil capitalists. :)

|11.4.05 @ 10:04PM|#

Bill,
You are Real.
Which reel would you like us to dance next?

|11.4.05 @ 10:21PM|#

Please. Young males need little excuse to burn stuff, smash stuff, and steal stuff. Why? Because it's fun. No matter what one's religion is, this is a universal. Paris doesn't look all that much different than well, Paris in 1968, Madison in 1970, LA in 1992, Seattle in 1999, or Mar de Plata today.

|11.4.05 @ 10:26PM|#

Well, I hope that Parisian fellow who used to post here, and his wife, have not been harmed in these unfortunate events.

|11.4.05 @ 10:42PM|#

Well, we know one thing about them. They hate cars..

--------------------------------------------------

This guy HATES cans! Stay away from the cans!!!

|11.4.05 @ 10:47PM|#

Perhaps Jean Bart might take this opportunity to make a long awaited comeback. ;)

|11.4.05 @ 11:15PM|#

Kip-

That's a good point. I wonder how accurate the reporting is. Only time will tell.

If the French have a sense of irony, they won't actually unleash some whoopass on the rioters. They'll just coax the rioters to head east...towards Germany.

|11.4.05 @ 11:17PM|#

Deus ex Machina,

Hey. :)

|11.4.05 @ 11:29PM|#

There's a 1995 movie about immigrant youths rioting in French suburban housing projects: "La Haine."
http://imdb.com/title/tt0113247/

So I'm guessing this stuff has been going on for a while.

|11.4.05 @ 11:31PM|#

No, the Irish did - Irish landholders who had large plots of land which had been built up over time by the Penal Laws.

As somebody whose family lost a major estate during the potato famine as a result of trying to help their area peasants, I'd like to point out that the situation was a lot more complex than most people are willing to admit. There's just no way to point to one group and say "landowners/government/Protestants were responsible for the whole thing." It was a lot of bad decisions and greed stacking up over time to make a single, huge disaster.

That being said, if there was one actor who was responsible for a larger portion of the disaster than any of the others it was the government. Their land policies pushed peasants to the edges of starvation, and then their unwillingness to fix their mistakes properly was what finally pushed the entire mess over the edge.

|11.4.05 @ 11:33PM|#

qutta percha,

The first riot I know of any immigrant youths in France happened in ~1981.

|11.4.05 @ 11:38PM|#

Shem,

...I'd like to point out that the situation was a lot more complex than most people are willing to admit.

I thought that was my point. I guess I didn't articulate that well enough.

It was a lot of bad decisions and greed stacking up over time to make a single, huge disaster.

Well, that it was viewed as a cataclysmic disaster is more a change of attitudes than anything. Honestly, far more severe famines happened in India in the 19th century due to British government meddling than happened in Ireland, but the attitudes about both were far different.

As to the land policies, well, it was indeed government meddling and favoritism which caused the underlying weaknesses and rigidity in food production.

|11.5.05 @ 1:38AM|#

"Tonight is the first time I realized joe is but an apologist for the potato/mackerel-snappers."

C'mon, Joe has been an apologist for all sorts of liberal nonsense ever since I tuned into this blog. Read more carefully.

bbridges|11.5.05 @ 1:42AM|#

If I remember correctly, internal pressures from importers in Britain caused that government to pressure the Irish government to continue exports during the early parts of the famine. I do recall there were a series of misteps that contributed to the famine, included new policies originally designed (but poorly) to help.

I'm all for being sensitive to labeling but its silly to say there isn't a Muslim contributing factor to the events in Paris. At least the Iman's who are currently making demands about it would agree with me. Maybe somebody should point out that they have no role.

|11.5.05 @ 5:16AM|#

If I remember my history correctly, under the height of the Penal Laws, the system in Ireland could hardly be considered free market or "free" anything. Catholics had no voting rights, were denied education, were not allowed to own property, and were forbidden from entering the trades. While not explicity written into law, the result was that they were only allowed to work as farm laborers or servants. Combine that with the legal inability to vote, own land, or get an education, and you have slavery by another name. While some of these laws had been relaxed by the time of the famine, the fact remains that Irish Catholics were serfs in a market that was far from free.

Viking Moose|11.5.05 @ 11:26AM|#

Ruthless and Tom Crick:

while i disagree with Joe's classification, I appreciate sincerely that he responded. I admire Joe's willingness to mix it up here, oftentimes when he's the lone voice on once side. He does endure (also dishes out) some pretty nasty flames. But he remains. I've mentioned before that he has balls the size of church bells (to throw out yet another movie quote, this time from Dragnet).

There was one time i rudely snapped at him, but he was gracious enough to keep the dialogue open, and whenever he does respond, I do appreciate it.

There was a tangential point to the famine that he quasi mentioned: that is the might-makes-right reaction by some. "sexist boss? his 'right' get another fucking job you bum" reaction.

Now, I'm not taking a stance for more laws in this arena, but it does surprise me to see this type of reaction instead of the "what a fucking asshole boss. let's see how far we can jam this bose soundsystem up his ass" reaponse.

Then when we get these de facto defenses of such awful behavior, I think of how many of them self describe as "limited government libertarian capitalist" dudes. I'd suggest that the might-makes-right reaction (also the "tough shit" reaction) is somewhat limiting and is more mercantilist or protectionistic.

So, I guess this long, babbling post boils down to:
1) I appreciated greatly that Joe did answer. From how i snapped at him that one time, he's been gracious to respond.

2) I disagree with the classification of "laissez faire" and "free market" in his description - i'd put that under the heading "mercantilist", which i'd further classify as "anti capitalistic".

3) As someone who was bullied when I was young, and instead of getting support at the time by a simple "what jerks. you all will grow out of it. but it sucks now", I got "well, kids will be kids". I interpret that response and all other "might-makes-right" answers as bullying, so I still don't like that.

finally, i now have the bevis and butthead giggles from all the reference to "penal" here :)

cheers, all.
VM aka drf

|11.5.05 @ 11:34AM|#

Viking Moose,

The problem with his reponse is that it is completely erroneous. Anyone who looks at the situation in Ireland at the time and calls it a failure of capitalism or free markets is seriously out to lunch. It indeed would have been wonderful if free market economics would have been practiced from the time of Henry I to Victoria, but in fact it was not, and it was government actions along a wide area of fronts which created the system which created the famine. This is evidenced by recurring famines in Ireland over the centuries, a quite terrible one happening just eighty years prior to that of 1846-1849. What marked the difference with Ireland was the level of publicity.

|11.5.05 @ 11:37AM|#

Viking Moose,

In other words, I'd appreciate it (and most others would too) if joe would take the time to actually learn about the things he tries to talk about. All his uninformed bluster isn't all that terribly impressive.

Viking Moose|11.5.05 @ 12:13PM|#

yup.

to be honest, i chalked the particular "anti capitalist" schtick up to trying to mix it up and give a rebel-yell style of argumentation for the friday. joe does have a (i'd say for the most part very positive) way of engaging and getting people up off their feet and into the H&R mosh pit :)

(this enabled me to make sense of what i thought was a deliberate style: this schtick of going after some of the knee-jerk responses of many of us here, oftentimes to great success)

i had actually read his response as primarily trying to prime the pump and get the cockles on the rise. oh - i just looked it up. I have reverse Augsberger Syndrome. So the religion of the king is the religion of the country, and i take literal things figuratively. (heiter ohne zu verletzen)... heh!

but then again, yesterday was a strange day, so i was missing all but the top 0.000000000000000001% of the "totally obvious set". so, whoops (blush).

and from how rude i was to him that one time, i still appreciate that he did respond nicely and not in the spirit of how nasty i was that day. (sigh - it was a bad day. i still have no excuse).

(my my. this is a bit personal. time to get silly, below)

BUT! i'm not a fan of irish whisky :)

nor do i get all moist and bleary eyed when people rant and rave about how awesome ireland is. just come to chicago and see these morons try to "talk irish". it sux. hell, all the faux "germans" up in our neighborhood for the May fest etc is just as bad. :)

and the $^&*%*$($&%*$^*(&*%^&@ three tenors can stick it.

oh yeah! pigskin bus to tuna town!!!!!

(getting a little punchy because of this project)

cheers!

|11.5.05 @ 12:39PM|#

ireland is pretty awesome, though. except dublin kinda sucks.

|11.5.05 @ 2:42PM|#

For the Famine digressioners --

The famine became chronic thanks to a history of government discrimination in land ownership, welfare style interventions over prior period that inhibited responsive measures to periodic famines, possibly the Indian Corn (soome of which killed many people, one estimate from then was that half who died in 1845 was from the government supplied corn) provided by the government at the begininng reduced incentives to develop roads and alternative farming, there was no infrastructure (ie roads) thanks to prior measures which would have made food distribution difficult anyway, the Corn Laws had skewed the markets in grain previously, most overlooked -- the Navigation Acts prevented ships from coming in (1846-1847 the worst period) unless they were British, this drove up costs of food import; the Poor Laws (a welfare state measure) taxed landlords dry and forced them to evict en masse, mass labor welfare projects concentrated sick people in one place, more people died of disease than hunger; many many died of exposure due to winter evictions made necessary by landlords being squeezed to pay relief by the government, and the government hastened to seize land by changing bankruptcy law as part of a pro-merchant policy to selling farms to London agribusinesses.

Out of breath, So there.
The nationalist adage that God made the blight but the British made the famine is true (granting the theology for a moment) but it was their welfare measures as well as protectionist measures that made the difference.

|11.5.05 @ 2:57PM|#

From a non-pro-free market contemporary source:

http://vassun.vassar.edu/~sttaylor/FAMINE/ILN/Condition/Condition.html

When more food, more cultivation, more employment, were the requisites for maintaining the Irish in existence, the Legislature and the landlords went about introducing a species of cultivation that could only be successful by requiring fewer hands, and turning potato gardens, that nourished the maximum of human beings, into pasture grounds for bullocks, that nourished only the minimum. The Poor-law, said to be for the relief of the people and the means of their salvation, was the instrument of their destruction. In their terrible distress, from that temporary calamity with which they were visited, they were to have no relief unless they gave up their holdings. That law, too, laid down a form for evicting the people, and thus gave the sanction and encouragement of legislation to exterminate them. Calmly and quietly, but very ignorantly-- though we cheerfully exonerate the parties from any malevolence; they only committed a great mistake, a terrible blunder, which in legislation is worse than a crime-- but calmly and quietly from Westminster itself, which is the centre of civilization, did the decree go forth which has made the temporary but terrible visitation of a potato rot the means of exterminating, through the slow process of disease and houseless starvation, nearly the half of the Irish.

|11.5.05 @ 4:10PM|#

Julian -
My wife emigrated to Paris from her impovershed country. She too faced obstacles and discrimination. But she assimilated, learned the language (with such fluency as to be frequently mistaken for Parisian) and she worked. And she then fit in enough to realize she wasn't crazy about Parisians. At any rate, she'd be the first one to tell you that the rioting has everything to do with the rioters' Muslim identity, which is undoubtedly a factor in their being insular, conflicted, disenfranchised aliens with French passports.

|11.5.05 @ 4:27PM|#

OK Hit & Run commenters.

On this issue, here is the spectrum.

SCALE = 1 to 10.

1 = France riots are part of a campaign by Islamists to set up a European caliphate

10 = Riots are just troubled kids randomly enjoying mayhem

Where do you stand?

I'm an 8.

|11.5.05 @ 5:23PM|#

matthew hogan,

So far its a 9. It could (for some reasons I could detail) reach a 2 or a 3 over time.

|11.5.05 @ 7:27PM|#

"Riots are just troubled kids randomly enjoying mayhem"

The question is: What's troubling them?

The answer is: "Official" government programs and policies reaching out to them.

What these kids are saying is what we're saying here peacefully: Government is bullshit.

I don't usually make predictions, and I hate to be as gloomy as gaius marius, but this behavior will spread sooner and wider than bird flu.

Actually, what I predicted is not so gloomy to me. Governments' bluff needs calling.
As I've said many times here: Voting is a farce. In no way does it call governments' bluff.

|11.5.05 @ 7:56PM|#

Voting is worse than farce. Voting is calling our bluff.

Rich Ard|11.5.05 @ 8:03PM|#

Why is that gloomy? It got the Brits to leave us alone.

:)

|11.5.05 @ 9:09PM|#

> France has a grandly named High Council for Integration, a Directorate for
> Populations and Migrations and several commissions at regional level dedicated
> to assimilating immigrants. These and other initiatives are aimed at
> delivering France's policy of integrating ethnic and religious minorities into
> the country and its ways.

Politically correct government directorates and commissions are the disease, not the cure!

Thanks for the Amen, Rich Ard.
I thought I was going to be talking to myself... as if that put me off.

Peace, yet anarchy, and to all a good Eid!

gaius marius|11.6.05 @ 12:11AM|#

Roll in the goddamned tanks already.

the problem with this sentiment is that is the the reason for the problem, not its solution. the muslim/arab underclass in france has been sidelined and abused, inadvertently or not, in a manner quite similar to african-americans. living under a regime of threats is how they got so alienated in the first place, i suspect. confirm their fears by suppressing them with a yet heavier dose, and you simply plant the seeds for greater damage.

gaius marius|11.6.05 @ 12:20AM|#

new immigrants are expected to give up their immigrant heritage and adopt a French identity; the result of the outgrowth of nationalism during the Napoleonic era. However, this model is not working for the large numbers of arrivals from the Maghreb, and they're struggling to integrate that population.

this is really at the core of the problem. the french have put a far greater premium on maintaining their cultural distinctiveness in the face of a universalizing western vulgarization. as admirable as that sounds to any lover of particularity, the healthy engine of that distinctiveness is gone -- western culture, even in its seat, no longer radiates the attractive power that drew adherents to willingly assimilate into it.

left without that, and facing the migrations that come with the onset of western empire/"globalization", the french have adopted a policy of forced assmiliation -- ie, headscarf bans. these cannot work as they are hoped -- instead of attracting new members, the policy alienates and antagonizes them. disobedience among a disenfranchised proletariat is the inevitable result.

american "non-culture" -- the willingness to be completely without distinctive culture -- is, for all its vulgarity, an approach that insulates the united states and britain to some extent (although economic injustices certainly remain as fuel). while anglophone nations have yet less cultural charisma, they also do very little to compel conformity.

gaius marius|11.6.05 @ 12:25AM|#

they want autonomy for "their" areas

again, the desire for autonomy shows just how weak the power of western culture to assimilate has become. few immigrants see anything wrong with setting up islamic societies -- by which i mean not merely muslim, but societies of a islamic culture -- within the french society, and see yet less reason to be french.

gaius marius|11.6.05 @ 12:32AM|#

So yes, the idea that they are followers of Islam is important.

i think it is in the sense that most muslims have a healthier religious life than most westerners, mr jdm. but, in regards to this rioting -- it matters only to the extent that "muslim" sets them into an abused proletariat within france. it is this proletariat that is rebelling against the mismanagement (or rather, dismanagement) of a french bourgeois government.

it's really very little different than african-american rebellions here in the united states.

gaius marius|11.6.05 @ 12:34AM|#

These are small groups of kids doing these things right now, not massive mobs.

agreed -- but their dissatisfaction speaks for millions. crack down on the kids, and you're likely to see a movement coalesce around them.

gaius marius|11.6.05 @ 12:55AM|#

blame this on free markets

on the irish famine -- it was of course very complex, but this much has to be said: british inaction in the face of a developing disaster with diverse root causes had one overriding justification, and that was the victorian obsession with laissez-faire. it was assumed by many civil servants until far too late that the markets would correct the problem without government interference. (the same was true in the even greater indian famines under the british raj.) in this sense -- and in it alone -- mr joe has a valid point. whether he meant it that way or not, i can't say.

more broadly -- the most common freemarketer evasion of disaster under laissez-faire is always "the government was involved". well really! no kidding?

news flash: free markets are predicated by laws. they do not operate without them (beyond the sicilian level, in any case -- anyone want that?). falling back on the utopian vision of a world of perfect outcomes if only there were no authority is ideological cowardice -- if free markets are to operate in the real world, they will be the product of law and government and will have to comingle with them.

too many times here it's said that "government fucked it up" as though that were the final and total word. never so. free markets do create disasters, indeed often encourage them by accomodating the worst in men, and any adherent of freemarket ideology is far better served by admitting this and saying that free markets are better in spite of it than denying that markets sometimes slaughter millions.

|11.6.05 @ 1:09AM|#

I can understand that the rioters are not satisfied with being unemployed and what not, but most of them immigrated to France to escape tyranny, not to find employment. Unlike, Mexican immigrants coming to the US to FILL in jobs, Muslim and North African immigrants are going to France to take advantage of generous welfare benefits and maybe FIND jobs.

|11.6.05 @ 1:10AM|#

I can understand that the rioters are not satisfied with being unemployed and what not, but most of them immigrated to France to escape tyranny, not to find employment. Unlike, Mexican immigrants coming to the US to FILL in jobs, Muslim and North African immigrants are going to France to take advantage of generous welfare benefits and maybe FIND jobs.

|11.6.05 @ 2:06AM|#

gaius marius,

Stay with Roman history please. I mean honestly, the Peel government didn't fall out of office due to some laissez-faire obsession of the Victorians. People don't realize this, but no one gave a shit about what was happening in Ireland - no matter what part of the political spectrum folks were on. If one examines all spectrums of the press from the period what one is struck with is just the simple lack of news about the events in question.

The Irish land market at the time was anything but laissez-faire and had never been such.

it was assumed by many civil servants until far too late that the markets would correct the problem without government interference.

Get a clue. The government created programs to deal with it. I have detailed these issues above. Read what the fuck I've written instead of blabbing on in complete ignorance.

free markets are predicated by laws.

News Flash! Guess what, the law didn't create any thing a free market. News Flash! Get a clue! Quit learning your history from poems!

|11.6.05 @ 2:18AM|#

gaius marius,

As a primer (since you are so woefully ignorant of the events in question) I suggest Cecil Woodham Smith's nice little history of the Potato Famine in her book on the Charge of the Light Brigade. She is a talented writer and one can get the gist of what actually happened from her narrative (yes, she and her are not typos).

Here is how the sequence of events went (roughly):

Peel government supplies the Irish poor with maize until they lose the election in 1846.

Russel government decides the best thing to do is to create what we would call a workfare program. Nice in theory, very poor in execution.

The background of these events are the oppression of the Irish by the English then British governments for hundreds of years, which widdles down the available land for Irish Catholics to small plots on generally marginal land. The potato is introduced which allows such small plots to provide enough food for a family, and in the 18th century their is a population boom. That boom was followed by a famine in the 18th century that no one ever acknowledges, freaks out about, etc. (thus indicating that all the outrage about the 19th century famine has more to do with good publicity than a general understanding of the narrow nature under which the Irish Catholics had lived under since at least the Battle of Burgoyne). Unfortunately, such a narrow and rigid form of agriculture was always going to be problematic and open to disaster. The blight simply proved this to be so. Government programs designed to make the Irish Catholics into Protestants are the heart of what happened, not anything even remotely resembling a free market. So endeth the lesson.

|11.6.05 @ 4:29AM|#

As I see it, the riots in France are like the LA riots that took place in 1992, subsequent to the acquittal of the cops charged with assaulting Rodney King.

Both rioting communities seem to be similarly bitter, poor, and alienated from the rest of the citizenry. More so than any other community in either time and place.

I think Ruthless is largely wrong, in that there is no chance of something like this happening here, at least not with Muslims. I think the US is probably a much better place to be Muslim. And with the exception of the blacks in the ghettos, I don't think there's any other group that has the right combination of bitterness, poverty, and alienation to spark it up.

Maybe I could see another big riot starting in black ghettos, although maybe less likely than before. That may be just wishful thinking.

In any case, it's interesting to see the parallels between the extent to which the US and blacks have failed to integrate, and the same for France and Muslims.

|11.6.05 @ 10:51AM|#

gaius,

"it was assumed by many civil servants until far too late that the markets would correct the problem without government interference."

Which they did. Once millions of Irish died by the side of the roads, and millions more fled for distant shores, agricultural production in Ireland became much more efficient. See, the market always works. Such thoughts were quite common at the time - nobody was exactly happy to see so much death and misery, but whattyagonna do? "Steal" the wealth of "productive people?" Interfere with the rights of landowners who created jobs - jobs! - for the stevedores loading ships with grain?

The Famine was merely a correction by The Market, and it did its work very well.

dhex|11.6.05 @ 11:18AM|#

you guys are fucking stupid sometimes.

"british inaction in the face of a developing disaster with diverse root causes had one overriding justification, and that was the victorian obsession with laissez-faire."

holy fucking shit gaius, do you think the hundreds of years of murdering the living shit out of them, keeping them in virtual slavery and outlawing the practice of their religion and language and education may have had anything to do with it? really? is croppy lie down a quaint british-ism for "no interference in the markets?"

|11.6.05 @ 11:19AM|#

joe,

Millions of Irish didn't die.

Dude, your comments have slipped into fantasy land.

|11.6.05 @ 11:19AM|#

On Saturday rioters began telling reporters they would not stop until Mr Sarkozy resigned. "We are not germs - he said he wants to clean us up," a young French Algerian, HB, told The Observer in a typical comment. "He called us louts and provoked us on television. He should have said sorry for showing us disrespect but now it's too late."

For want of a little respect, Paris burns.

"He's disrespected us, which is a declaration of war," one young man told the Sunday Telegraph as he surveyed one of Clichy's housing estates that was dotted with piles of ash and broken glass. "Those guys, our friends, died for nothing and we're being dissed. Someone has to say sorry."

Without an apology, Paris burns.

|11.6.05 @ 11:20AM|#

joe,

BTW, its really fun to watch you ignore my posts and see you write very erroenous crap. :)

|11.6.05 @ 11:22AM|#

Twba,

Their actions make Sarkozy likely more popular with the overall electorate.

|11.6.05 @ 11:24AM|#

dhex,

No flaming or insulting. Can't have that. :)

|11.6.05 @ 11:33AM|#

Don't disrespect me, that's a declaration of war. Don't make me burn down a car park. Everybody better walk on eggshells around me.

These little muslim princes are not satisfied running their sisters' lives. They want to control France.

verbosus magnus - I laughed when I read that you think these punks have a healthier superstitious life.

|11.6.05 @ 11:45AM|#

joe,

BTW, it is quite enjoyable to see you breaking your ban re: me.

gaius marius|11.6.05 @ 11:52AM|#

Such thoughts were quite common at the time - nobody was exactly happy to see so much death and misery, but whattyagonna do? "Steal" the wealth of "productive people?" Interfere with the rights of landowners who created jobs - jobs! - for the stevedores loading ships with grain?

precisely, mr joe. gg can revise history to fit his conceptions of market infallibilty if he likes -- including a disturbing desire to play off the famine as though it was wildly exaggerated -- though i find he prefers to create subtle strawmen, purposefully or accidentally, to avoid dealing with the statements itself (something we all do).

but the sad fact is that, while some succor was naturally offered, growing greater over time -- after all, many british utilitarians decried it from very early on -- and while the root causes had as much to do with the irish as the british -- the disaster was allowed to proceed unimpeded on many fronts due primarly to the popular belief among the management class that -- regardless of how much the conditions were a result of laws and incentives that had been put into place -- the situation needed to resolve itself. indifference to the abject suffering of ireland was relentlessly justified by the management under the rubric of laissez-faire.

the market cannot be said to have caused the famine -- but it surely was allowed to aggravate and perpetuate it as the government decided to do precious little.

gaius marius|11.6.05 @ 11:53AM|#

a healthier superstitious life.

there's nothing healthy about what's going on there in any quarter, mr twba. you misunderstand me.

gaius marius|11.6.05 @ 12:01PM|#

The background of these events are the oppression of the Irish by the English then British governments for hundreds of years, which widdles down the available land for Irish Catholics to small plots on generally marginal land. The potato is introduced which allows such small plots to provide enough food for a family, and in the 18th century their is a population boom. That boom was followed by a famine in the 18th century that no one ever acknowledges, freaks out about, etc. (thus indicating that all the outrage about the 19th century famine has more to do with good publicity than a general understanding of the narrow nature under which the Irish Catholics had lived under since at least the Battle of Burgoyne). Unfortunately, such a narrow and rigid form of agriculture was always going to be problematic and open to disaster. The blight simply proved this to be so. Government programs designed to make the Irish Catholics into Protestants are the heart of what happened, not anything even remotely resembling a free market. So endeth the lesson.

i don't see that i disagreed with any of that, gg. nor did i ever disagree with

The Irish land market at the time was anything but laissez-faire and had never been such.

nor

People don't realize this, but no one gave a shit about what was happening in Ireland - no matter what part of the political spectrum folks were on. If one examines all spectrums of the press from the period what one is struck with is just the simple lack of news about the events in question.

you retort this to me as though you addressed my point. i'm not ignorant of anything you said here -- but you've misread my statements and are arguing against a strawman (with your typically entertaining barbarity of manner, i might add :) )

i concede all of that as fact. it doesn't alleviate the truth that british management did very very little to provide succor to their irish charges, and that inaction was justified under the rubric of laissez-faire -- one can make a strong case that privately starving the irish was seen by some as a sort of beneficial industrial land reform that would boost economic efficiency in the kingdom by consolidating familial plots into industrial farms.

|11.6.05 @ 12:07PM|#

gaius marius,

Dude if you are going to blame the Potato Famine on free markets or laissez-faire economics, then you'd have to have a free market in situ in the first place. Whatever the Russel government did or did not do had nothing with free markets.

...one can make a strong case that privately starving the irish was seen by some as a sort of beneficial industrial land reform...

Which is flat out hogwash fisked by every historian who has ever dealt with this matter.

|11.6.05 @ 12:12PM|#

gaius marius,

you retort this to me as though you addressed my point.

I have addressed your point. You sir, no nothing of these events. The only person revising here history is you.

...including a disturbing desire to play off the famine as though it was wildly exaggerated...

It has been wildly exagerrated. Now you tell me why the famine of the mid-18th century gets no press while that of the mid-19th does.

...but it surely was allowed to aggravate and perpetuate it as the government decided to do precious little.

If a free market didn't cause it, the how could it aggravate or perpetuate it?

|11.6.05 @ 12:13PM|#

gaius marius,

BTW, claiming that this was an act of genocide (which is what you have done) is a sure sign you don't know what you are talking about.

|11.6.05 @ 12:18PM|#

gaius marius,

BTW, I'd like for you lay out in detail exactly what you thought was wrong with the Russel government's effort. No more vague allusions. Tell me specifically what the problem was. You can of course compare it to the Peel government's buying of maize.

|11.6.05 @ 12:25PM|#

gaius marius,

Oh, and the only maker of strawmen here is you. I have never claimed that the market is infallible. I am a rule utilitarian you moron. Did they teach you philosophy in college?

Sudo Nym|11.6.05 @ 12:31PM|#

Coming so late to the party probably means that my comment won't be noticed, especially since this Paris-riots-thread seems to have been hijacked by a discussion about Ireland, famine, and the old score. (Full disclosure: my maternal grandfather fled the emerald isle in a late 19th century exodus - cue Bob Marley)

That being said here's what generally is not:

1) The muslim angle is second to the fact that these are BROWN PEOPLE (meaning shades from blackest black to lightest brown but not the hue of the stereotypical frenchman) which has plenty to do with the marginalisation and separateness of the population in question. They could be athiests for all it matters here:

2) These youths have been corrupted by the street thug rap culture that plagues many an urban environment (and more recently the leafy suburbs) and have adopted its nihilism and love of crime and violence.

3) read this three year old and extremely prescient article http://www.city-journal.org/html/12_4_the_barbarians.html

|11.6.05 @ 12:55PM|#

"the market cannot be said to have caused the famine -- but it surely was allowed to aggravate and perpetuate it as the government decided to do precious little."

Precisely my point. To which I'll add, regardless of how many non-market causes can be found for the situation - and they are legion o- their existence in no way changes the fact that the response to the natural disaster was guided first and foremost by a commitment to laissez faire capitalism.

|11.6.05 @ 1:00PM|#

joe,

That wasn't your point at all.

...their existence in no way changes the fact that the response to the natural disaster was guided first and foremost by a commitment to laissez faire capitalism.

There was nothing "natural" about the disaster, unless you consider the hundreds of years of oppression, etc. "natural."

|11.6.05 @ 1:05PM|#

joe,

And the response came in varying forms, depending on who was in government, etc. One has the Peel government buying maize, the creation of road gangs by Trevelyn, the Soup Kitchen Act, the creation of workhouses in 1848, etc.

What no one understands here, especially gm, is that there were many and diverse efforts to deal with the problem. The problem with all of them was that British government simply did not appreciate the diminished economic capacity of Ireland to create revenues to pay for the various welfare programs put in place. If the creation of not properly funded welfare programs is laissez-faire capitalism, then I'm a monkey's uncle.

|11.6.05 @ 1:06PM|#

Do not discount Islam's role in the miserable banlieus.

|11.6.05 @ 1:13PM|#

Twba,

Most of these kids don't identify that much with Islam. They may eventually if French society continues to paint them as if the problem though.

gm,

BTW, Russel's government was right of course. Food prices dropped to 1/3rd their original value in Ireland and there was plenty of it sitting at the docks as well by 1847. Now what kept people from earning proper wages, etc. in order to pay for that food? Could it be, I dunno, the clusterfuck of an economic system created by the English and British governments in Ireland that had nothing to do with having a free market but instead resembled Apartheid? Maybe. The point is that the market did in fact respond, but there was a basic failure on the ground in Ireland due to the problems created by the long history of Irish opression.

|11.6.05 @ 1:25PM|#

Hakluyt, it is difficult to understand how Islam fucks up people, since I'm an atheist. But I think I see a pattern. Islam is important even though the punks are not devout koran thumpers.

|11.6.05 @ 1:29PM|#

Twba,

Well, the question is a chicken and egg one. Is the middle east, etc. fucked up because of Islam, or is the middle east fucked for a whole host of reasons and Islam provides a locus around which some groups of people in or from a region where it is predominatnly practiced can rally? Or is a bit of both depending on the person?

gaius marius|11.6.05 @ 3:16PM|#

If a free market didn't cause it, the how could it aggravate or perpetuate it?

lol -- now you're simply being obtuse, gg. the free market didn't create communist economic systems either -- but it surely did aggravate the destruction of same in many cases, did it not?

Russel's government was right of course.

perhaps -- yet perhaps a million or more starved.

The point is that the market did in fact respond, but there was a basic failure on the ground in Ireland due to the problems created by the long history of Irish opression.

i don't disagree -- but this is exactly to my point again. i'm not arguing that the market caused the famine. i'm saying that the government policy of laissez-faire was a means of justifying doing very little when very much more could have been done to keep people from dying. that's very far from the position you accuse me of holding. you and i are arguing the same thing on some level, whether or not you're aware of it. there's an important distinction getting blurred between free markets (an economic tool) and laissez-faire (a government policy).

on that broader topic of market benefice, however: the ends of markets are not necessarily good ends, gg. they are efficient ends (in most cases). as i said above, this is what any freemarket advocate must admit to be credible, imo. markets facilitate and encourage human disasters -- it's why they call it "creative destruction", after all. one must argue that they are better than the alternative in spite of this fact, not deny the fact.

and all that is short of exploring the irrational components of the market -- the fat tails. it can be argued that markets sow the seeds of their own destruction more assiduously and completely than any other economic system.

The problem with all of them was that British government simply did not appreciate the diminished economic capacity of Ireland to create revenues to pay for the various welfare programs put in place.

this actually counters my point, but i think you are downplaying the compulsion of laissez-faire in the british managerial mind at this point. the responses were limited, not out of an ignorance of the appalling nature of the situation -- many knew it was very bad -- but because as little interference as possible was seen to be the proper management technique. it was therefore very difficult for those who did feel a need to rescue ireland to get the necessary actions undertaken, and that which did happen happened at a diminished level.

you can argue if you like that laissez-faire was, in this way, a mask for english racism. but that's a differnet argument.

gaius marius|11.6.05 @ 3:25PM|#

I am a rule utilitarian you moron

lol -- gg, what is it in your person that makes you so vitriolic and sensitive to other views and (god forbid) criticism? you seem educated enough to understand the multiplicity of the world and be beyond this sort of childish lashing-out against misidentified "threats". i don't mean this as an insult -- but you demonstrate a base of knowledge that might be accorded to a 40-year-old -- but the emotional reactivity of a 14-year-old. or is it simply that the unaccountability of the internet unleashes the scorned child within?

how old are you, anyway? i'll guess 24 as a reasonable median. :) and feel free to analyze me -- i'd be interested.

|11.6.05 @ 3:34PM|#

gm,

perhaps -- yet perhaps a million or more starved.

At least you aren't hyping the carnage. There is no perhaps about it. The ships with food showed up. Then again, as Russel's government actually forbade ships full of food bought by charity groups Russel's government ended up spiking whatever free market hopes they might have had.

i'm saying that the government policy of laissez-faire was a means of justifying doing very little when very much more could have been done to keep people from dying.

This is ultimately the source of your error. There wasn't a laissez-fair effort by Russel's government. If there had been they wouldn't have been blocking charity ships, increasing taxes to create make work road building projects, etc. If it were indeed laissez-faire, none of the numerous make-work porjects that ended up bankrupting landowners would have been undertaken. What one had wasn't laissez-faire at all. Don't you know these things?

A true laissez-faire policy wouldn't have blocked charity ships or charitable efforts, wouldn't have created make-work programs that ended up bankrupting local land owners, wouldn't indeed have created work houses which added to the already over the top tax burden (in 1847 the British government wanted something like ~10 million pounds from the landowners).

Again, there was nothing laissez-faire about Russel's response, nor about the underlying problems.

...but because as little interference as possible was seen to be the proper management technique.

|11.6.05 @ 3:37PM|#

gaius marius,

I am not interested in your psycho-babble.

The last two statements of my last post should not be in italics. They should read:

Dude, you are just so wrong its not even possible to describe how wrong you are. The Russel government was quite robust in its response, and undertook the sort of "moral reforming", anti-laissez-faire approaches that were commonly part of the Victorian mind. Goverment-mandated "moral reform" efforts were common throughout the Victorian, and bespeak not a laissez-faire approach, but a meddling nanny-state one.

Unless you can tell me how these particular actions of Russel's government are indeed laissez-faire, then I'll attribute your rantings to ignorance and whatever moronic meme you've latched onto lately.

|11.6.05 @ 3:40PM|#

gaius marius,

More to the point, what exactly is laissez-faire about creating a huge road building project which local taxpayers are forced to pay though the decision is made in London, where hundreds of thousands of laborers are forced to build "roads to nowhere?" That was the primary initial scheme of the Russel government for dealing with the problem. How is that laissez-faire? It isn't. I'd say the fucking taxes they raised to pay for it could have been better spent by the landowners themselves. Bankrupting them so that they could create make-work roads hardly seems laissez-faire to me.

|11.6.05 @ 3:45PM|#

gaius marius,

Oh, and to just give you one more clue, much of the taxes for the projects came from the poor themselves - if they were involved at all the money economy at the time. Oh yes, government squeezing poor people for taxes is so "laissez-faire."

|11.6.05 @ 3:48PM|#

gaius marius,

Another thought just rattled through my head. The reason why Russel's government forbade the charity ships is that they didn't want charitable offerings competing with for profit offerings. Oh yes, that sure was a laissez-faire approach, certainly it was.

|11.6.05 @ 3:57PM|#

gaius marius,

As to the Victorian coerced moral reforming (nanny-state) mind-set, there is a whole slew of literature on the subject matter. Whatever can be said of the Samuel Smiles of that era, the fact remains that Victorian Britain was never how Thatcher described it.

Viking Moose(aka drf)|11.6.05 @ 4:05PM|#

hi Gaius! how's baby minimus?

did you survive the flood of SOXuality here? ha ha. (it's the same drf, new handle)

actually, I have nothing to report, am still working on the friday stuff - won't mention the c-word in deference to Hak and Thoreau, either.

Just wanted to break up the six in a row. As someone who also posts and forgets something, it becomes all too easy just to add posts.

think of this post as a little musak interlude in between the potatoE, benign neglect, laissez faire, Hobart Heever, panties (damn what a giveaway)... ahem.

i'll just go over there... and... look for something...

Viking Moose the Obtuse|11.6.05 @ 4:07PM|#

DAMMIT. i fergot one thing. hrumph.

the title has kept the Bad Religion song, "Los Angeles is Burning" in my head all weekend.

it sure beats the Chicago Fire chant against the NE revolution... hrumph. now that's in my head again.

on to replicating Stokes, Neuberger (1979).
'later :)

|11.6.05 @ 4:13PM|#

Viking Moose,

I'm still waiting for thoreau to take me up on my very serious offer. Of course, I have a new pastime now. You'll be witnessing it soon enough.

Of course you can talk about coding all you want to and that won't under ine any potential agreement. :)

Herbert Hoover?

|11.6.05 @ 4:20PM|#

For those of you looking for more info, I recommend http://no-pasaran.blogspot.com/ , a blog that focuses on French topics.

|11.6.05 @ 4:38PM|#

matthhew hogan,

I do think there were privately expressed opinions at various levels of British government that felt the Famine was a "correction" against Irish cultural flaws and overpopulation...

Well, I think its more correct to say that many in British society saw it as a means to reform Ireland, or rather that they saw blight as such. They didn't anticipate such a wide death toll nor did they want it anyone to die of hunger either.

|11.6.05 @ 5:14PM|#

Viking Moose-

I'm just about to start working on my code again.

|11.6.05 @ 6:31PM|#

Larry Edelstein said:
"And with the exception of the blacks in the ghettos, I don't think there's any other group that has the right combination of bitterness, poverty, and alienation to spark it up."

Sudo Nym said:
"These youths have been corrupted by the street thug rap culture that plagues many an urban environment (and more recently the leafy suburbs) and have adopted its nihilism and love of crime and violence."

Has anyone here bought the latest issue of Calypso Louie Farrakhan's newspaper, "The Final Call"?
Just wondering.

Viking Moose|11.6.05 @ 6:41PM|#

Hak:

I had to endure a lecture once where the person who couldn't say "laissez faire" consistently was talking about how hoover has been accused of pursuing some sort of benign neglect strategy after the stock market crash (i really wasn't paying much attention. i don't know where the speaker was going from that suggestion). i was channeling basic silliness with that reference. :)

can't wait to hear of your new hobby.

Thoreau:
i ended up with decent goodness-of-fit statistics, but my transfer function looks funky, and the confidence interval of the forecast is rather wide. One attempt had the lower bound go into negative territory. negative M1 (not growth or change. negative M1!!!)!!!! imagine!

SAS didn't do me any better than the program i'm using (imagine a more user friendly version of RATS but behaves like sas - less persnickity on the syntax but less like matlab - that's what i'm using. it can keep sig figs out seven sigmas! as if that were ever needed. hrumph.). stata can't even do this stuff. but then again, that's the Microeconometrician's best friend. fixed and random effects, etc. that's for later :)

Hak:
I'll join in the no code, if it'll help. see:
proc arima data=res_79;
identify var=y(1) crosscorr=x(1,12)
... etc etc etc
d'oh! i mean: "READ MY LIPS"

Otherwise I can walk around in a circle. Or start quoting "History of the World"

"GET ME AN ICE PACK"


or i could start whistling "Tea for Two" from that movie with Louis de funes... la grande vadrouille... (1966).

|11.6.05 @ 7:05PM|#

Out of the mouths of babes (Jennifer Aniston):
"Everything is imploding. It all seems to lead back to our dear president."

|11.6.05 @ 7:25PM|#

Ruthless,

Ha ha ha (the comment about Farrakhan). :)

|11.6.05 @ 7:34PM|#

Isn't it funny how Chirac, who refused to sign on to Dubya's War on Terror, is himself on the same slippery slope what with his internal War on Terror?

|11.6.05 @ 7:39PM|#

All I want to know is... if Mr. Joyner is smart and observant enough to notice that the youths in question are predominantly muslim and of North African descent, why does he assume that everyone else who reads the news is too stupid to notice it!?

Hey pretentious jackass! The total dumbasses are the people that don't know about the riots BECAUSE THEY DONT EVEN READ THE NEWS not those of us that do!

|11.6.05 @ 8:01PM|#

Viking Moose-

Solved it! Simple problem with how I was handling array indices! Tomorrow I'll try more complicated cases, and by the end of Tuesday I should know if I've done something cool or not.

|11.6.05 @ 8:20PM|#

thoreau,
As this seems to be a catch-all thread, I do hereby predict thoreau done did something cool.
Sheeiit! Bro!

|11.6.05 @ 8:47PM|#

Isn't it funny how Chirac, who refused to sign on to Dubya's War on Terror, is himself on the same slippery slope what with his internal War on Terror?

The hell they haven't. They've actually been one of our more helpful allies in fighting terrorism. The fact that they refused to get suckered into a ground war in Asia doesn't mean that the hype about them sitting on the sidelines is correct.

|11.6.05 @ 9:09PM|#

Dave,

"All I want to know is... if Mr. Joyner is smart and observant enough to notice that the youths in question are predominantly muslim and of North African descent, why does he assume that everyone else who reads the news is too stupid to notice it!?"

Could it be that mau-mauing someone he's defined as an enemy for being inisufficiently excited about his kulturkampf is the actual goal, and the point about the labels used in press accounts is merely a means of doing so?

You know, sort of like the "Why don't Muslim leaders denounce terrorism? OK, why don't they do it MORE?" game.

|11.7.05 @ 6:44AM|#

If the French people would just be more tolerant this would not happen. I do not think at this time it is a problem. The French government will only take serous action when downtown Paris starts to burn. But, you know it reminds me of how the French revolution started.

|11.7.05 @ 9:29AM|#

From a French friend of mine:

The last count this morning is 1400 cars torched. A kindergten school was torched as were a church door, a priest's house, a car dealership, etc... It's way beyond Paris now and has reached Strasbourg, Mulhouse, Toulouse, Nancy... The casseurs (literally, "breakers") are torching cars in quiet neighbourhoods as well. The Muslim population is generally outraged by the destruction, but it's interesting to note that the "intermediaries" calling for peace and orderare now essentially members of the Muslim Brotherhood a.k.a. as les barbus (the bearded ones). The Council of Muslims has just issued a fatwa condemning the destruction.

|11.7.05 @ 1:59PM|#

OPUS,

So when was the Estates General called recently? :)

|11.7.05 @ 2:12PM|#

Anyway, its good to see that matthew hogan and I stopped joe's ahistorical commentary. I'm still awaiting gm's response.

|11.7.05 @ 4:25PM|#

matthew hogan,

The "private charity was stopped" point is a dodge. Given the scope of the disaster (an entire agricultural country's main staple food gone, and most of the rest of its produce being exported), the scope of the relief effort would have been beyond the capabilities of Quaker relief missions alone.

As far as the "public works" projects - efforts by the Crown to take advantage of the situation to carry out projects to enhance the profitability of the tenant farmer system by exploiting desperate labor at starvation wages - the people who showed up had an odd habit of keeling over and dying within days of their arrival. Meaning, these people would have keeled over and died regardless of whether the work gangs had been organized or not.

The cost imposed by the capitalist determination not to introduce outside subsidies into the equation, but to require starving Ireland to pay for its own relief, certainly had a deleterious effect on the remaining Irish economy, but regardless, the country did not have the food available for purchase, even if the Irish peasants had collected adequate wages. Up to half the Irish population had consumed potatoes almost exclusively prior to the Blight, and perhaps another quarter relied on them for most of their sustenance. The starvation didn't happen because wages were too low to purchase available food, but because food simply was not available.

In such a situation, charitable relief - the importation of food to a country whose remaining crops are being sold for profit - was a pipe dream.

|11.7.05 @ 6:46PM|#

joe,

Ha ha ha. You are so committed to your silly ahistorical analysis I can't but laugh at you.

Given the scope of the disaster (an entire agricultural country's main staple food gone, and most of the rest of its produce being exported), the scope of the relief effort would have been beyond the capabilities of Quaker relief missions alone.

There were dozens of ships attempting to land food from all over the place, including from the U.S. It wasn't merely the Quakers alone. See we teach you, then you use that limited knowledge in a way that demonstrates that you don't know what you are talking about. Its very, very comical. Again, the point is, if the approach was so laissez-faire why would they banning charity ships? Because the approach wasn't laissez-faire.

...efforts by the Crown to take advantage of the situation to carry out projects to enhance the profitability of the tenant farmer system...

Dude, roads to nowhere didn't enhance anyone's profitability. Its so bloody obvious that you are talking out of your ass and trying to save face. Again, what is lassaize-faire about these work projects? Nothing, hell, even if we accepted your "interpretation," it necessarily undermines your claim that the British government took a laissez-faire approach to the crisis. Laissez-faire necessarily means leaves something alone, which British government didn't do.

...but to require starving Ireland to pay for its own relief, certainly had a deleterious effect on the remaining Irish economy...

It was one of the main problems with the relief effort. Everyone agrees on this.

...the country did not have the food available for purchase, even if the Irish peasants had collected adequate wages.

Sure it did. You do realize that by this time there were these things called, you know, ships, which plied the seas with grain from the New World and Russia, right? By 1847 warehouses full of grain sat on docks in Ireland. But the British relief efforts had sapped what disposible income folks had dry.

In such a situation, charitable relief - the importation of food to a country whose remaining crops are being sold for profit - was a pipe dream.

Given that you didn't even know that charitable relief was being blocked until yesterday, your judgments on what were and were not possible should be treated with the incredulity that they deserve.

matthew hogan,

joe can be a pretty bright fellow, unfortunately, well, he must save face at all costs.

|11.7.05 @ 7:01PM|#

Anyway, suffice to say that tha causes of the Irish Potato Famine were as follows: protectionism, government welfare/public works projects, theft of land, cultural traditions which honored the division of land among siblings, etc. The famine of the 1820s, where over a 1/4 of a million people died, showed that disaster was waiting in wings.

|11.7.05 @ 8:15PM|#

Of course, matthew hogan, I'd be interested to hear if you think otherwise.

|11.7.05 @ 8:57PM|#

joe,

What, so you can accuse him of dodging again? Heh. Glad to see that you are still reading my posts.

gaius marius|11.8.05 @ 8:08AM|#

with violence now on to a 12th night, what was the last violent civil disorder of this scale in any western european nation? 1968?

|11.8.05 @ 9:46AM|#

I have a vague memory of a similar rioting episode in Britain in the early eighties. Anyone remember that? I remember that there were a couple of kids that died. I was just a kid at the time and found the whole thing fascinating, but my knowledge of it ends with what I picked up way back then.