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	Frustration and Anger fuel Paris Riots by International Herald Tribune, agencies France   Nov. 2005   "France needs ethnic statistics". (BBC News)   French Equal Opportunities Minister Azouz Begag has urged the government to overturn a ban on collecting data based on ethnicity or religion. Government bodies and private companies are barred from gathering such data - which is deemed potentially divisive.  But Mr Begag told Le Figaro newspaper it was important to assess the presence of minorities in various professions. Job discrimination was a key complaint voiced by many youths who rioted in immigrant suburbs in recent weeks. "We need to see France"s true colours," Mr Begag said. "To do that, we need to measure the proportion of immigrant children among the police, magistrates, in the civil service as well as in the private sector." Mr Begag stressed such surveys could be used to overcome racial discrimination, which he said lay at the root of the rioting. He said he hoped to see more politicians from ethnic groups elected into parliament in 2007. At present not a single member of parliament from mainland France is of African or Arab origin - although an estimated 10% of people are. "The place of birth of the parents and grandparents could give us an idea of this diversity, and a basis for action," Mr Begag told Le Figaro. Levels of violence in France"s poor immigrant suburbs have decreased in recent days, following three weeks of unrest.   Nov. 2005.   France announces curfews to stop unrest. (Reuters)   French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin says local government officials will be given the authority to impose curfews in areas hit by rioting to try to halt almost two weeks of unrest. Mr Villepin says 9,500 police officers have been deployed across France to stop the spread of violence. He told Parliament. "Restoring order will take time," It demands in-depth work, long-term work." Acknowledging the hardships faced by many Arab and black immigrants and their children, he announced a series of confidence-building measures. They include - an allocation of $50 billion to help deprived areas, the creation of an anti-discrimination agency. 20,000 state-paid jobs for inhabitants of poor suburbs and more funding for apprenticeships and scholarships for young people.   Mr Villepin says he does not believe Islamic radicals to be playing a major part in the violence. "There are, of course, concerns about Islamism, about a radical trend," he said. "I do not believe that to be the essential element today. He said gangs of youths, some of them very young, who are alienated from society, family and schools " are taking part in the riots.   Youths predominantly from France"s large Arab-Muslim minority have rampaged through suburbs for the past 11 nights, torching cars, businesses and public buildings and attacking police officers.   The unrest was sparked on October 27 by the accidental deaths of two teenagers in an electrical sub-station in a northern Paris suburb. It has since fanned across the country in a ritual of copycat attacks by disaffected youths.   Nov. 2005 (AP/ Reuters)   French President Jacques Chirac has vowed to restore order as the worst rioting France has seen in decades broke out for the eleventh straight night in Paris and spread to several other cities.   Unrest has now flared in up to 200 city suburbs and towns across France, including Marseille, Nice, Lille, Bordeaux and Montpellier, police said.   From an outburst of anger in suburban Paris housing projects, the violence has fanned out into a nationwide show of disdain for French authority from youths and minorities, most French-born children of Arab and black Africans angered by years of unequal opportunities.   Youths have set ablaze nearly 1,300 vehicles and torched businesses, schools and symbols of French authority, including post offices and provincial police stations.   Nov 2005   Riots in Paris. (International Herald Tribune)   The suburbs of Paris, whether the faubourgs of the French Revolution or the banlieues of today, have a long history of violent uprisings by enraged citizens. But the nightly clashes in the grimy northeastern environs of the city over the past week were dismally contemporary: The rioters torching the cars and pelting police around the low-rent apartment blocks that abut the City of Light were the sons of African and Arab immigrants, most of them Muslims, who work for the lowest wages, who live in ghettos rife with crime.   Fortunately, nobody has been killed so far except for the two youths whose electrocution on Oct. 27, as they hid from police in an electrical substation, touched off the clashes. But the daily images of helmeted police and enraged youths silhouetted against blazing cars should serve as a reminder to the French that their major cities are ringed about with a society in urgent need of attention.   Like everything else that happens in France these days, the rioting has become embroiled in the political succession war between the prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, and the interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy.   To follow events in the French media, it often seemed as if the Villepin-Sarkozy duel was the more momentous of the raging battles. Sarkozy, who has emerged in the front ranks of French politics in large part because of his straight talk on the problems of immigration, integration and crime, drew considerable criticism this time for his tough talk. A week before the riots, he had vowed a "merciless war" on suburban violence, and when the troubles started, he called the rioters "hoodlums." These are not sentiments that will help soothe the suburbs.   The greater issue for the French is the validity of their cherished approach to integration, which stresses the equality of all citizens, no matter what their ethnic or religious origin, so long as they embrace the fundamental French values of "liberté, egalité, fraternité." The French have long regarded this as superior to the British and American approach, with its emphasis on diversity and ethnic pride.   Over the past week, many French officials publicly acknowledged that the state has done far too little for the suburbs. The rioting of the past week is not yet a revolution. But unless Sarkozy"s "zero tolerance" for crime is joined by better opportunities in jobs, housing and education for the new citizens, the suburbs will get a lot hotter.   Nov. 2005   "Frustration and Anger fuel Paris Riots", by Jim Bittermann. (CNN)   For five nights in a row, police battled stone-throwing youths in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois. And in recent nights, the violence has spread to other suburbs.   The rioting began with the accidental deaths of two teenagers, who ran from police after a tear gas grenade went off in a neighborhood mosque during prayers. Each day, authorities say they have tried to calm the situation. But in the streets, others insist that the authorities have not been forthcoming about the deaths.   And one of the dead teens" brothers - wearing a T-shirt that read "Dead for Nothing" - said the police were causing trouble, not stopping it. "The minister of the interior (Nicolas Sarkozy) must get rid of his troops. They are nothing but a provocation. If they go, I think the neighborhoods will remain calm," said the brother, Siaca Traore.   But many local leaders say more fundamental changes must be made if the government expects to maintain peace in places like Clichy.   Clichy, northeast of Paris, is crowded and impoverished and with a large Muslim population. Local officials claim the suburb is one of the poorest in France. About 60 percent of the residents of Clichy are immigrants who face discrimination and unemployment that runs to 25 percent - more than twice the national average.   Those who work in the community say young people are frustrated and angry. "There are no factories. There are no jobs for anyone. There are no job centers," said Mark Nadaud, a volunteer youth counselor.. And when you go to look for a job and you say you are from here and they don"t want take you."   A member of the city council agrees that something must be done or the situation could spin out of control. "If nothing changes it will explode," said Didier Ostra. "We hope that the government, after what has happened here and other cities, will realize that the policy must change."   Nov. 2005   “The violence in Paris is a warning to the whole of Europe that race issues have become central to politics”, by Trevor Phillips. (The Observer)   In the Caribbean, the phrase "nine nights" usually betokens a period of mourning. France"s nine nights of rioting started in the Paris suburbs and spread to other cities, including Marseille, Dijon and Rouen. They were triggered by the deaths of two French teenagers of North African extraction, who were fleeing the police, no doubt fearing the routine harassment meted out to black and Arab youths in France"s ghettoised banlieue   The hundreds of cars that have now been burnt in French streets are pyres that mark the passing of a French delusion - that the incantation of "liberté, égalité, fraternité" would somehow mask the réalité °of life for non-white French men and women: repression, discrimination, segregation.   The French establishment, which a generation ago exiled immigrant workers to the doughnut of miserable new towns around Paris, is in full panic mode. Prime Minister Dominique Villepin called emergency cabinet meetings, met the bereaved parents and urged a moderate response. His rival for the presidency, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, having denounced the rioting youths as "scum", ordered a police lockdown. Whoever wins this power struggle will instantly become the frontrunner for the top job.   France is not alone. The Netherlands, which most of the world had marked down as the ultimate in relaxed, progressive cosmopolitanism, is gripped by a vicious anti-Muslim backlash. Both reactionary Christian conservatives and anxious liberal secularists talk openly and sometimes approvingly of the virtues of "black" and "white" schools which inoculate the Dutch from the "toxin" of Islam.   Across the Atlantic, the issue of race, ghettoisation and neglect has also penetrated mainstream politics. The sight of thousands of poor, elderly African-Americans left to fester in a sports stadium, sheltering from hurricane Katrina, ripped away the mask created by celebration of black success in entertainment, sport and politics, to reveal a nation that remains deeply divided by ethnicity. The government"s faltering response marked the moment that George W Bush"s presidency started its slide into disrepute.   Everywhere, smugness about the state of race relations is being punctured. And this is no longer the patronising "be kind to blacks" territory with which politicians and minority leaders of the past may have felt safe. It is big politics, on which governments will stand or fall. In the 1970s and 1980s, industrial relations marked a tense dividing line in Western societies. Disputes periodically erupted into dangerous and even violent confrontation - remember Orgreave, Grunwick and Wapping? - that menaced and sometimes brought down governments. Race relations threaten to become a similarly potent battlefront in the first part of the 21st century.   In the UK, we passed, 40 years ago this week, the first serious anti-discrimination laws in Europe. A generation ago, we set up what has become a network of local race equalitycouncils, involving several hundred full-time workers and tens of thousands of unpaid volunteers. Their patient work at local level has often prevented tensions flaring into open conflict, but the face-off in Birmingham two weekends ago shows we still have to be smarter and work harder. We cannot afford to hope that everything will come right with time and goodwill.   There are two big mistakes we could make. The first is to imagine that racial conflict is caused only by the sort of foul white supremacists convicted last week, or by the sick bigots (who may have been white or black) who desecrated a Muslim cemetery in Birmingham. The million or so people who voted for BNP councillors last year aren"t all knuckle-dragging racist apes. Many are ordinary folk frightened by the pace of change in their communities who can be persuaded that somehow this must be the fault of people who do not look like them.   The other error is to believe that regeneration of areas in which poor minorities live will overcome all differences. Yes, the poor need jobs and better homes, but this will not be enough. In New Orleans, the left-behind blacks complained of being neglected. In Paris, when asked what they want, young people say: "Stop addressing us as tu", a bit like the French equivalent of being addressed as "boy" in pre-civil rights America.   In Birmingham, African-Caribbean and Asian community leaders talk about a lack of mutual respect. So, alongside equality of material things, we have to instil other kinds of equality, starting with equality of esteem between different communities.   Another missing equality is that of power: why is it that in all the countries involved there are still so few minority politicians who have clout? Even the much-vaunted American success story can only boast one black senator. We, who should be able to count more than 60 MPs from minority communities, can muster just 15.   Finally, we need equality of interaction. The far right thrives on our residential segregation, which allows them to scare people about communities they do not know and understand. And when we have the chance to mix with people not like ourselves, we increasingly fail to seize it.   At the CRE, our integration agenda - more equality enforcement, new targets for government, better scrutiny of new laws, more diverse public appointments - is designed to meet this challenge. But there is only so much we can do.   This is a job, above all, for politics. And so far, politics seems distressingly comfortable either fighting old race battles or celebrating our imagined happy diversity. Our French neighbours are giving us the loudest alarm call they can. Wake up, everybody.   (Trevor Phillips is chair of the Commission for Racial Equality in the United Kingdom)   Nov. 2005   “The riots now sweeping France are the product of poverty”, by Naima Bouteldja. (The Guardian)   In late 1991, after violent riots between youths and police scarred the suburbs of Lyon, Alain Touraine, the French sociologist, predicted: "It will only be a few years before we face the kind of massive urban explosion the Americans have experienced." The 11 nights of consecutive violence following the deaths of two young Muslim men of African descent in a Paris suburb show that Touraine"s dark vision of a ghettoised, post-colonial France is now upon us.   Clichy-sous-Bois, the impoverished and segregated north-eastern suburb of Paris where the two men lived and where the violent reaction to their deaths began, was a ticking bomb for the kind of dramatic social upheaval we are currently witnessing. Half its inhabitants are under 20, unemployment is above 40% and identity checks and police harassment are a daily experience.   In this sense, the riots are merely a fresh wave of the violence that has become common in suburban France over the past two decades. Led mainly by young French citizens born into first and second generation immigrant communities from France"s former colonies in north Africa, these cycles of violence are almost always sparked by the deaths of young black men at the hands of the police, and then inflamed by a contemptuous government response.   Four days after the deaths in Clichy-sous-Bois, just as community leaders were beginning to calm the situation, the security forces reignited the fire by emptying teargas canisters inside a mosque. The official reason for the police action: a badly parked car in front of it. The government refuses to offer any apology to the Muslim community.   But the spread of civil unrest to other poor suburbs across France is unprecedented. For Laurent Levy, an anti-racist campaigner, the explosion is no surprise. "When large sections of the population are denied any kind of respect, the right to work, the right to decent accommodation, what is surprising is not that the cars are burning but that there are so few uprisings," he argues.   Police violence and racism are major factors. In April, an Amnesty International report criticised the "generalised impunity" with which the French police operated when it came to violent treatment of young men from African backgrounds during identity checks.   But the reason for the extent and intensity of the current riots is the provocative behaviour of the interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy. He called rioters "vermin", blamed "agents provocateurs" for manipulating "scum" and said the suburbs needed "to be cleaned out with Karsher" (a brand of industrial cleaner used to clean the mud off tractors). Sarkozy"s grandstanding on law and order is a deliberate strategy designed to flatter the French far right electorate in the context of his rivalry with the prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, for the 2007 presidency.   How can France get out of this political race to the bottom? It would obviously help for ministers to stop talking about the suburbs as dens of "scum" and for Sarkozy to be removed: the falsehoods he spread about the events surrounding the two deaths and his deployment of a massively disproportionate police presence in the first days of the riots have again shown his unfitness for office.   A simple gesture of regret could go a long way towards defusing the tensions for now. The morning after the gassing of the mosque, a young Muslim woman summed up a widespread feeling: "We just want them to stop lying, to admit they"ve done it and to apologise." It might not seem much, but in today"s France it would require a deep political transformation and the recognition of these eternal "immigrants" as full and equal citizens of the republic.   Nov 2005   “Shake-Up of the Republic”, by Serge Truffaut. (Le Devoir - France)   First limited to the Paris region"s cités [French housing projects], the conflagration of violence has now reached several provincial cities. Up to now, over 1000 vehicles have been burned and close to 400 people wounded. Given the scope of the events that primarily oppose young North Africans and the forces of order, Prime Minister Villepin has decided to allow prefects [local representatives of the central government] the right to impose a curfew. This measure - allowed for the first time in ages - speaks volumes about the gravity of the situation.   This ruling, taken to re-establish order in the short term, is accompanied by a series of dispositions illustrating the failures of the republican model for integrating immigrants. Or more precisely, illustrating the cynicism of the country"s elites. Ten years ago - let us remember - Jacques Chirac got himself elected on the promise of all-out combat against the social fracture. Three years ago, he centered his campaign on security. And now today, here"s the president giving his approval for a host of measures that should have been taken in the course of the last ten years.   Prior to North African immigration, the Republican model was based largely, it was understood, on three fundaments: school, for the reasons one can imagine; trade unionism, because it promoted the political socialization of individuals; and military service, which, thank goodness, has been abolished, but which has never been replaced by the civic service envisaged when Lionel Jospin was in the Matignon [French prime Minister"s residence]. In short, these vectors of integration are a shadow of what they once were.   When you combine that with the high level of unemployment, and especially with the social ravages unemployment provokes, you get a cocktail of anger, violence, and revolt that - as we observe today - expresses itself with all the more force because there is practically no communication between these youths and the government. More precisely, there is an absence of political representation.   In a study devoted to that subject, Olivier Masclet from the University of Metz notes that "today, immigrants" children are largely absent from the factories, the unions, and the workers parties that have been at the heart of the political socialization of the working class for a century." The consequence, in part, is a political deficit which the present riots translate.   Yesterday, Villepin indicated that the public contribution to the world of associations would be restored! Think about it: one day one strikes up the song about the social fracture and the next day there they are, cutting the budgets for the network that does today what trade unionism used to do, that is, political apprenticeship. Which, above all, promotes involvement in the political debate.
	Iranian President”s comments on Israel sparked by Domestic Political Struggle by Nasrin Alavi openDemocracy   Nov 2005   The speech of Iran"s president calling for Israel"s destruction is a sign of domestic weakness not international strength, says Nasrin Alavi.   Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran"s president, has again outdone himself with his vile comments calling for Israel to be “wiped out from the map of the world”.   Ahmadinejad’s speech on 26 October preceded the annual Qods (Jerusalem) rally in Tehran, where (as CNN reported) thousands of Iranians “staged anti-Israel protests across the country…and repeated calls by their ultraconservative president demanding the Jewish state’s destruction.” The Qods rallies have been held since the early days of the 1979 revolution, when Ayatollah Khomeini declared that the last Friday of the month of Ramadan would be marked as a day of solidarity with the Palestinian people.   Ahmadinejad and his ilk surely remember those early days when the gathering was called the “million strong march” – when hundreds of thousands of Iranians did indeed willingly turn out. But despite the headlines, the rally this year was a total flop with a low turnout –especially given the harassment and pressures to attend exerted on state employees, civil servants, members of the armed forces, teachers, factory workers and students.   “My word is the same as that of the Iranian nation”, Ahmadinejad now tells the outside world. In reality he is having difficulty speaking even on behalf of the regime"s inner circle. The latest evidence of elite divisions is a purge of Iranian ambassadors in important postings, including key regime figures such as Mohammad-Hossein Adeli in London, Saddeq Kharrazi in Paris, Shamsoddin Kharghani in Berlin and Amir Hossein Zamaninia in Kuala Lumpur.   It is known that these four ambassadors are politically aligned with Ahmadinejad"s defeated opponent in the presidential election, Hashemi Rafsanjani; all have been heavily involved in the nuclear negotiations of the last two years. Several other diplomats, like Muhammad Reza Alborzi at the United Nations, have been recalled to Tehran.   These abrupt dismissals are unprecedented, since traditionally Iran"s foreign-policy apparatus has been impervious to electoral change. The removal from office of such key figures would amount to declaration of war between the Ahmadinejad and Rafsanjani camps.   Even in Iran"s majlis, the hardline-dominated parliament, things aren"t going well for the new president. In August, the majlis rejected four of his proposed cabinet ministers; four ministerial posts are still vacant months after his election victory.   Ahmadinejad comes from and is endorsed by the hardline core of the regime that has ultimately controlled power in Iran since the revolution. His ability or otherwise to keep his campaign promises in the next four years will be a critical challenge for Iran"s revolutionary elite. Yet the president"s campaign pledge of social justice and distribution of oil money to the poor seems increasingly unrealistic.   The new parliament has announced plans to reduce subsidies on the sale of imported petrol, bread and cement. With “rising chicken prices during the holy month of Ramadan”, some observers are already reporting the the beginning of the end of Ahmadinejad’s “honeymoon period”.   The power of dissent   The sabre-rattling of fanatics (as ever) is also drowning out Iran"s pro-democracy voices. On 26 October at a gathering of over 1,000 people (including the elected heads of Iran"s largest nationwide student union, Tahkim Vahdat), Mohsen Kadivar made a speech directed at supreme leader Ali Khamenei: “a symbol of freedom is for your opponents and those that criticise you to be safe in this society; otherwise merely talking of social justice is easy...Why are Akbar Ganji, Abdolfattah Soltani and Nasser Zarafshan still in jail?” Kadivar added: “I ask the security officers who are at present amongst us to take my words to the leader...”   Amnesty International has again expressed grave concern about the safety of Akbar Ganji, Iran"s longest-serving imprisoned journalist. According to his wife, he was severely beaten by Iranian security officers who wanted him to apologise in writing for his books and letters, and to undertake not to give interviews in the event of his release from prison. It may be hard for outsiders to believe, but the one-time revolutionary guard Ahmadinejad fears the writings of activists like Akbar Ganji more than any United States threat. Indeed the two opponents are connected in his mind. Ahmadinejad beams triumphantly as he takes questions from the press about Israel and the United States, for he knows that conflict with these powers strengthens his power base as even those Iranians who oppose him are tempted to move to his camp in the face of foreign aggression. He also knows that such conflict gives him a pretext to crush dissenters with more force than before.   The writer and journalist Ahmad Zeidabadi, a former jailmate of Ganji"s, has said that Ganji is “a stubborn south Tehran (working-class) lad that will fight any force or harassment.” Ahmadinejad became president with the backing of the noble south Tehran poor. He has promised them prosperity and jobs. He is more fearful of a confrontation with the great and good lads of south Tehran than any dirty war with the west.   (Nasrin Alavi is the author of “We are Iran: The Persian Blogs”).
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