Watt were these people thinking, anyway?

You think you’ve seen French appeasement at its worst. Then they go and do something like this.
Last year’s French riots were triggered by the deaths of two “youths,” who fled a police ID check, broke into an electrical substation to hide, and were electrocuted when they touched something they shouldn’t have.
Last Friday officials and residents of Clichy-sous-Bois, scene of some of the worst rioting, dedicated a monument to these two disenchanted fleeing criminals: Silent march for dead youths in France’s suburbs. (Hat tip: Gateway Pundit.)
Relatives and friends of two French teenagers who were electrocuted as they fled from police a year ago have gathered in Clichy-sous-Bois near Paris. A plaque was unveiled in front of their school, and a wreath-laying ceremony was held at the power sub-station where the teenagers tried to hide.
The deaths of Zyed Benna and Bouna Traore sparked three weeks of violent riots in France’s poor suburbs as the young and unemployed vented their anger over what they saw as lack of opportunity and racial discrimination. The crowd gathered in silent prayer wearing t-shirts with the slogan “Dead for nothing”.
“It’s not by restricting them, or leaving them at home, or stopping them from going out - that’s not a solution,”

said Zyed’s father.

“The solution is to find them jobs, create training centres.”

An inquiry into the teenagers’ deaths could lead to charges of negligence against several police officers...


And it gets even more insane:

(Notice the warning signs all over that equipment)

















Socialist mayor of Clichy-sous-Bois in the northeast Paris suburb, Claude Dilain(C), lays a wreath at the entrance of an electrical sub-station where two teenagers, both of immigrant background, were accidentally electrocuted as they hid from the police a year ago.(AFP/Dominique Faget)

Wonder if someone would jump in front of the metro in London after breaking the law and get a memorial and wreath laying ceremony in their honor?

French embarrassing matter...

QUATRE MILLE CRS ET GENDARMES MOBILES EN RENFORTSUR TOUTE LA FRANCE POUR LA NUIT DE VENDREDI À SAMEDI[FOUR THOUSAND CRS AND ANTI-RIOT POLICE REINFORCEMENTSACROSS FRANCE FOR THE NIGHT OF FRIDAY TO SATURDAY]PARIS 27 octobre 2006 (AP)


AU MOINS DEUX AUTOBUS INCENDIÉS EN SEINE-SAINT-DENIS[AT LEAST TWO BUSES SET ON FIRE IN SEINE-SAINT-DENIS]BOBIGNY 27 octobre 2006 (AP)

BANLIEUES: UNE NUIT "RELATIVEMENT CALME",SELON LE MINISTÈRE DE L'INTÉRIEUR[BANLIEUES: A NIGHT OF "RELATIVE CALM",ACCORDING TO THE INTERIOR MINISTER (scil., Sarko)
























Petit-fils et fils d’émigrés russes, je m’interroge sur les émeutes qui ont ces dernières semaines enflammé notre pays, sur cette haine de la France qui anime certains des jeunes manifestants, sur la difficulté de s’intégrer dont se plaignent les autres, eux aussi, fils et petits fils d’émigrés.Je note au passage que jadis on disait les émigrés et qu’aujourd’hui, pour désigner la même catégorie de la population, les journalistes utilisent plus volontiers le mot d’immigrés. Pour ma part, je préfère dire « émigrés ». J’y suis habitué depuis l’enfance, et en outre ça sonne mieux.Entre les deux guerres, c’est-à-dire dans les années 20 et 30, les étrangers qui émigrèrent en France, qu’ils fussent russes, ou italiens, ou arméniens, ou grecs, connurent, eux aussi, la misère, les logements insalubres, la xénophobie. A l’époque, il n’y avait ni les allocations familiales, ni la sécurité sociale, ni le RMI, ni le SMIG, et les conditions de vie étaient beaucoup plus difficiles qu’elles ne le sont aujourd’hui. Et si certains de ces exilés parlaient le français, l’immense majorité n’en savait pas le moindre mot, beaucoup moins encore que les émigrés d’aujourd’hui, issus des ex-colonies francophones d’Afrique.Oui, une grande pauvreté. Voilà quelques années, nous célébrâmes le jubilé de la paroisse des Trois-Saints-Docteurs, rue Pétel, dans le XVème arrondissement de Paris. A cette occasion le métropolite Antoine Bloom, cet évêque si souvent présent dans mon journal intime et qui m’a inspiré le personnage de Théophane dans Isaïe réjouis-toi, évoqua son adolescence (il était alors âgé de dix-sept ans), ces premières années d’exil en France :« Ce fut une période d’extrême misère. Cinq moines vivaient dans des cellules vétustes, l’argent manquait même pour se procurer de la nourriture. Le soir, on pouvait voir le vieil évêque Benjamin, couché sur le sol, enroulé dans sa cape de moine ; dans sa cellule, sur sa couche, il y avait un mendiant, sur le matelas un autre mendiant, sur le tapis un troisième ; pour lui, il n’y avait pas de place. »Aujourd’hui, on s’émeut de la pauvreté des mosquées, mais à l’époque, croyez-moi, personne en France ne s’émouvait de la misère des chrétiens orthodoxes. Les gens n’en avaient rien à foutre.Les jeunes beurs, les jeunes Noirs souffrent de la xénophobie française ? Je les prie de croire que les émigrés de la génération de mes grands parents, Russes, Grecs, Italiens, Arméniens confondus, en ont souffert, eux aussi. Quatre ans avant ma naissance, un Russe blanc nommé Gorgouloff a assassiné le président de la République française, Paul Doumer. Imaginez un instant qu’un Arabe ou qu’un Black émigré en France assassine Jacques Chirac, et vous aurez une idée de ce que pouvait être alors l’atmosphère concernant les étrangers avec des noms en off, en eff, en ine ou en ski.Les conditions générales étaient donc extrêmement défavorables aux émigrés et à leurs enfants. Néanmoins, chez ceux-ci, qu’ils fussent arméniens, italiens, grecs ou russes, on observait un désir d’utiliser tous les moyens que la France mettait à leur disposition – l’école, le lycée, l’université – pour échapper à la pauvreté, à l’exclusion, pour gravir les échelons de la société. Il existait chez ces jeunes d’origine étrangère un grand appétit de connaissances, un désir de faire de bonnes études et aussi chez la plupart d’entre eux un réel amour de la France, un sentiment de gratitude envers la France qui les avait, nolens volens, accueillis, et le nombre d’entre eux qui durant la Deuxième Guerre mondiale s’engagèrent dans l’armée du général Leclerc, ou à Londres auprès du général de Gaulle, ou dans la Résistance, en témoigne magnifiquement.Après la Libération, les enfants d’origine étrangère qui étaient comme moi nés en France, qui avaient la nationalité française, se rendaient bien compte qu’ils n’étaient pas semblables aux petits Dupont et aux petits Durand. Cela ne les dérangeait pas excessivement, même si porter un nom à coucher dehors, difficile à prononcer, qu’il faut toujours épeler peut à la longue être pour un enfant une source d’humiliation, de malaise. Cela ne les empêchait pas de faire de bonnes études, de lire La Fontaine et Alexandre Dumas, de voir les films de Marcel Carné et de Jean Renoir, d’aller au Louvre et au Palais de la Découverte.La question que je me pose est : pourquoi, contrairement aux adolescents d’origine italienne, ou russe, ou arménienne, ou grecque (pour ne rien dire des émigrations plus récentes, l’espagnole, la portugaise, l’asiatique), ces garçons d’origine africaine traînent-ils toute la journée, ne s’intéressent-ils à rien, s’ennuient, semblent n’avoir aucune curiosité intellectuelle, aucune soif d’apprendre, de s’instruire, de lire de beaux livres ? Mystère et boule de gomme.Ce n’est pas tout à fait exact, car j’ai un début d’explication. Lorsque j’étais enfant et adolescent, personne ne me parlait de la République, des valeurs républicaines, de l’engagement « citoyen ». Personne ne me parlait cet abstrait et ridicule charabia. On se bornait à me parler de la France et de l’amour de la France, c’était suffisant. Le baragouin idéologique et politiquement correct à la mode est si répugnant qu’il peut en effet donner aux plus pacifiques d’entre nous la soudaine envie de brûler des voitures.
Gabriel MatzneffAutomne 2005

Rayonnement français 2

PARIS October 20, 2006 (TimesOnline) - Owners of the country’s 200,000 eating and drinking establishments have been ordered to apply the 35-hour week that guarantees most French workers Europe’s shortest working time. The bosses must also pay retroactive overtime for the past 22 months.
The decision by the Conseil d’État, the highest civil court, was greeted with horror by owners and many of the trade’s 800,000 employees amid warnings that it could force small establishments out of business. They appealed for state action to soften the impact.
Under a 2004 accord, catering workers were allowed to work a 39-hour week. This had already led to restaurants cutting costs by such measures as turning away lunchtime customers who arrive after 1.30pm.
The court has annulled the accord. Applying the 35-hour week could force restaurants to close three days a week or refuse a second dinner sitting, owners said.
... André Daguin, President of UMIH [Union des métiers et des Industries de l'Hôtellerie], the main catering owners’ association, said that the council had “managed to transform a win-win agreement into a lose-lose situation” that would penalise workers as well as owners.
Steep payroll charges and tight regulations have caused a shortage of waiters and cooks in the catering establishments that help France to attract more visitors than any other nation.
The council took up the case on an appeal by the CFDT [Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail], one of the big three trade union federations, which was not part of the 2004 pact. The union insisted yesterday that waiting staff would be better off under the new regime, in which employers will have to pay overtime for work beyond 35 hours. Other unions disagreed, citing extra leave that staff will now lose.
Well, if the CFDT insists, well... What the CFDT objects to is not an accord that accommodates both employer and employee. The CFDT here objects to the impudence of a deal to which it was not a party.

Rayonnement français 1

France -- which sued for a poorly provisioned cease-fire in Lebanon but insisted on not disarming Hizballah by force contrary to extant UNSCRs, then temporized on her commitments -- France wants you to know, though she will not discommode Hizballah, she is ready to shoot at any Israel overflights doing the UN's policing.

freedom of speech

10. No one shall be disquieted on account of his opinions, including his religious views, provided their manifestation does not disturb the public order established by law.
Nul ne doit être inquiété pour ses opinions, même religieuses, pourvu que leur manifestation ne trouble pas l'ordre public établi par la loi.

11. The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man. Every citizen may, accordingly, speak, write, and print with freedom, but shall be responsible for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law.
La libre communication des pensées et des opinions est un des droits les plus précieux de l'homme: tout citoyen peut donc parler, écrire, imprimer librement, sauf à répondre de l'abus de cette liberté, dans les cas déterminés par la loi.
Déclaration des Droits de l'homme et du citoyen
Articles X and XI approved by the National Assembly of France, August 26, 1789

FRENCH CRITIC OF ISLAM FLEES THREATS
PARIS September 29, 2006 (IHT/NYT) - A public high school philosophy teacher and writer who attacked the Prophet Muhammad and Islam in a newspaper commentary has gone into hiding under police protection after receiving a series of death threats, including one diffused on a radical Islamist online forum.

Robert Redeker, 52, wrote in the newspaper Le Figaro [Face aux intimidations islamistes, que doit faire le monde libre ? (In the face of Islamist intimidation, what must the free world do?), September 19] that Muhammad was "a merciless warlord, a looter, a mass-murderer of Jews and a polygamist." He also called the Koran "a book of incredible violence."
Redeker also compared Islam unfavorably with Christianity and Judaism and criticized the hostile reaction to a recent speech by Pope Benedict XVI that seemed to link Islam and violence.
That day's issue of Le Figaro was banned in Egypt and Tunisia and Redeker was denounced by a commentator on Al Jazeera television.
Immediately afterward, Redeker, who teaches in a high school near Toulouse and is the author of several books on philosophy, began to receive death threats by telephone, e-mail and [on the Al Hesbah] Internet forum. The forum published photos of him, his home address, directions to his home and his cellphone number.
M. Redeker, his wife, and their children have all been threatened with death by Muslims protesting M. Redeker's claims of Islamic hate and violence. We are always bemused after someone denounces Islamic hate and violence how Muslims protest the claim by exhibiting the very hate, threatening the very violence claimed.
M. Redeker makes this same point during a radio interview on Europe 1:
"I have given a lot of thought in writing this text, in which each word is measured. I researched a lot. I read. ... What is happening to me corresponds fully to what I denounce in my writing: The West is under ideological surveillance by Islam."

TEACHER IN HIDING: 'I'M ALONE AND ABANDONED'
PARIS, Sept 29, 2006 (AFP) - Robert Redeker, 52, is receiving round-the-clock police protection and changing addresses every two days, after publishing an article describing the Koran as a "book of extraordinary violence" and Islam as "a religion which ... exalts violence and hate".
He told i-TV television he had received several e-mail threats targeting himself and his wife and three children, and that his photograph and address were available on several Islamist Internet sites. "There is a very clear map of how to get to my home, with the words:
'This pig must have his head cut off'."
The government response has been a combination of real police work and political pieties.
The Paris state prosecutor's office Friday launched a preliminary inquiry for "criminal conspiracy in relation with a terrorist enterprise", asking the DST intelligence agency to look into the death threats.
But despite the government's assurances of support, Redeker accused the authorities of leaving him "alone and abandoned". Interviewed over the telephone from a safe house by Europe 1 radio Friday, he said that "the education ministry has not even contacted me, has not deigned to get in touch to see if I need any help."
On Thursday Education Minister Gilles de Robien expressed "solidarity" with the teacher, but also warned that "a state employee must show prudence and moderation in all circumstances." Redeker said that "if Robien is correct, then we would never have had any intellectual life in France. The function of politics is not tell us what we are allowed to think, but to defend our freedom to think and speak out."

... Speaking on RMC radio, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said such threats were "unacceptable".
"We are in a democracy, everyone has the right to express his views freely — of course while respecting others. That is the only restriction that is acceptable on this freedom."