Paris riots

[anotheoldgit]

http://tinyurl.com/2cga3dy

Is there more to these riots than the fact that the French government are to alter the retirement age by 2 years?

Or regardless to this has it given the Far Left thugs an opportunity to vent their violent acts upon the streets of Paris?

[fredpuli47]

Nothing to do with "left wing" in particular.. There have always been louts who enjoy setting fire to cars (it happens every day in France), throwing rocks at police , looting if they get the chance and so on. A demonstration gives them an opportunity to indulge their passion. They really don't care and may not know what the demonstration is about.It's seen more in Marseille,and some of the Paris suburbs and environs than elsewhere. I see Nanterre and Marseille are running true to form this time!

Is the mass demonstration for more than the stated reason? No doubt. It's an opportunity to vent feelings in response to the current recession, to protest about Sarkozy and the world at large, and anything else which upsets the individual..
.
The presence of students is traditional. They'll disappear come the half-term holiday!

[jake-the-peg]

You know it's one thing I really admire about the French

They are willing to get off their backsides and actually protest when there's something they feel strongly about.

Over here there's a massed out break of tutting.

People writing strongly worded letters to the newspapers and posting provocative messages on websites has never actually changed anything.

We've not actually seen anything like that here since the Poll tax protests which brought down Margaret Thatcher.

Tell me AOG - what would it take to get you out on the street?

Obviously nothing Tony Blair or Gordon Brown did was bad enough to raise you above electronic griping!

What would it take?

[123everton]

Thank your lucky stars it wasn't 'the Muslims' who were demonstrating as we'd never hear the end of it.
It's unfortunate that France has banned the burkha just as French men have chosen to dress like cross dressing Muslims.
Perhaps Sarkozy's endeavours would be better spent dealing with it's criminal fraternities instead of criminilising a weak law abiding minority?

[fredpuli47]

Well, perhaps 123everton, we shouldn't say how many Moslems live in Nanterre, featured in the news as a place, together with Marseille, where there was serious rioting ! Marseile has a large Moslem community too. Could well be that a lot of the rioters in both places were, in fact, Moslem !

Nanterre is a suburb of Paris. It has just under 25% of residents born outside Metropolitan France [i.e. the 'mainland]. Some 20% are from outside the ' EU 15' and a large number of those are from Moslem countries, generally former French possessions. Many more are children of Algerians, who are then not counted as outsiders by the French government . Marseille is the nearest big French port to North Africa and has long had a substantial Moslem population in consequence. There's a lot of disaffection in suburbs like Nanterre.

But, of course, any Moslems were not protesting as Moslems, on a 'Moslem' matter, but more generally. .

[anotheoldgit]

/// Thank your lucky stars it wasn't 'the Muslims' who were demonstrating as we'd never hear the end of it. ///

Nor would we hear the end of it had it been a right-wing demonstration, it would have then been, "couldn't care less about the retirement age, let's get the Nazis off our streets".

You know the Left like a good scrap, no matter what the reason.