Riots, day 7

Seventh day of riots in Paris suburbs. The young immigrants and second-generation immigrants from north Africa are angry at France for the war in Iraq... oops, occupation of Palestine... I mean of Seine-Saint-Denis, and hope that France will withdraw its troups, police, firefighters, post offices, kindergardens, cars, trashcans and electrical substations from Clichy-Sous-Bois, Sevran, Aulnay-Sous-Bois and other ancient Muslim lands. At the same time they, or the kinds of newspapers that sympathize with them, complain about unemployment, bad schools and having to live in high-rise subsidized housing covered with graffiti and plagued with crime.

Schools, unfortunately, are usually only just as good as the student body. Having recently read the website put up in memorial of the two late teenagers, and the comments to it, I am not wondering about unemployment either. I wouldn't hire most of the people who write there either, at least not for any jobs where one can be ever expected to write French. I am no grammar nazi, but if a bunch of people who mostly grew up in France writes much worse French than my French class in high school it makes me wonder whether they are ready for the job market. And I am not even talking about the content. And what, pray tell, do they expect subsidized housing to be? The best apartments in the center of Paris? Or one-family houses in the suburbs somewhere? And I am sure all the graffiti appears there just because the cops sneak in at night and spray-paint it. Ditto for the crime.

Europe as a whole has failed its newest citizens, says Dominique Sopo, head of SOS Racism. Maybe I don't understand something, but to me it sure seems like these particular newest citizens are failing Europe. Not that I should speak for Europe, of course, what with having been here only for 11 years and not having burned a single trashcan.

The French media is still all about which politician said what about whom and whether the measures are too harsh or not harsh enough. And everyone is promising to investigate what really happened with the boys and the police.

I am not sure how that matters. The only surviving eyewitness, the boy who did not die after the electric shock, said that they started running, apparently from police, and he does not know why - the other boys yelled "run" and he ran. Either police were really chasing them, or not. In either case running from police "just in case" and climbing over a rather high wall into an electrical relay station is not a particularly good example of Europe failing its newest citizens. It's more of an example of evolution in action.