Slashdot Mirror
French Riots Lead to Crackdown on Blogs
Browncoat writes "Wired reports that because of the recent riots in France, authorities have shut down a blog called Hardcore, whose participants have allegedly violating a French law concerning violent speech. Many bloggers fear there will be consequences for them if they are outspoken, even if it is in a nonviolent way. From the article: 'Ahmed Meguinia, a political activist who saw some of the Paris region's hardest-hit areas during the past week, said many bloggers feared prosecution for publishing even nonviolent content. While not condoning blogs that incited violence, he said that there was a lack of media coverage explaining why ethnically segregated inhabitants of some of France's poorest cities have been driven to riot. Instead, the world repeatedly sees CNN images of burning cars and shops, he said.'"
Here's a topic page with links to mostly right wing blog posts about the riots. Also, I recommend reading Jim Dunnigan In France, It's Not Jihad, and Never Has Been who's usually fairly insightful. And of course a link to my favorite blogger, Instapundit and finally The Belmont Club has a few posts about it, just scroll down.
"In the game of life, someone always has to lose. To me, if life were fair, that someone would always be Oklahoma." -DKR
That's pretty much it, folks.
If the American media want to blame this on their latest Islamist bogeyman, you might as well go the whole hog and blame the Watts and LA riots on radical Islam too...
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
I'm french. I live in Paris.
As I understand it from reading the news today, those blogs (ran by kids respectively 18, 16, and 14 years old) were taken down and their authors were arrested not because they expressed opinions but because they called for more violence and murdering of police officers (namely by setting them on fire).
Which is illegal according to french laws.
Law broken. Law breaker arrested. I fail to see what the big deal is.
Anything you do can get you slashdotted, including nothing.
Your comment about nationality is totally wrong. In most of the EU, being born in one country gives you automatically the nationality of this country (this is not the case for Germany, though). It is certainly the case for France even if both parents are not French.
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
The official islamic body in France has published a fatwa that condemns the rioters. It basically said that a good muslim should not participate in the riots and that several passages of Islam forbid to blindly destroy property.
Remember, the Bible and the Coran (not sure of the english sp.) have the same roots, you can find heinous passages in both of them. But both of them have proven to be able to be the basis of a viable morality.
We share more than most think.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
This is not true.
Until about a decade ago most EU countries gave you nationality/citizenship if you were born in that country, regardless of parents nationality etc. Definitely the UK was like that until quite recently. France certainly doesn't have that rule at least since early nineties - in practice most children of immigrants got french citizenship, but the right wasn't automatic.
Now citizenship cannot be acquired automatically through birth in any EU country. Ireland was the last to get rid of the right one or two years ago. Apparently since they were the only country in the EU to still have it, and since it's now pretty easy to travel anywhere in the EU if you have residence rights in one EU country, they were finding that lots of pregnant mothers were coming to Ireland specifically give birth and obtain EU-country citizenship for their child.
This definitely applies to the 15 'old EU' members, but i would imagine that the new member states have come in line with this since joining.
my password really is 'stinkypants'
http://www.juancole.com/2005/11/problem-with-frenc hness-readers-have.html
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Just go visit Democrat Underground or Daily Kos. You will find many articles that discuss violence against authority and the death of our President and Vice President. Heck Air America Radio between fundraising breaks and stealing money from poor children has had several commentators advocate the assassination of our President.
I am always amazed at the shouts from the left that they are being "oppressed" in this country. I am going practically deaf from their oppression. Its like a Monty Python sketch. If you want to see truly speech oppressive societies, just look at Europe and their numerous speech codes/laws.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
The perception of the "man in the street" and several national newspapers here in the UK is that Asians and Eastern Europeans are *entirely* reliant on the state. This is not of course true, but is about as valid a viewpoint as yours.
The beautiful irony is that French attitudes toward multiculturalism are exactly what the Republicans are pursuing over here.
What do I mean by that? The French implement the opposite of affirmative-action type policies; all of their policies are designed to be completely color-blind. The net effect of this, however, is that someone with an african-sounding name with the same qualifications has been show to be a fraction as likely to get the same job as someone with a traditional French-sounding name. This refusal to look at their multiculturalism in the assumption that everything will just work out fine if you ignore it is the fundamental problem.
Also, to attack some of the major myths underlying many people's arguments on here: these are hardly muslim radicals. Most of them, like most French, are not very religious. Most of them don't speak any arabic or any languages other than French. However, their French often isn't mainstream either - there is a "Beur" culture which is sort of the equivalent of American hip-hop culture. They're not immigrants, but the children of immigrants; they're as French as Jennifer Lopez is American. France simply isn't filled with some sort of "pure race"; even the Minister of the Interior is the son of immigrants.
He's just being nice so my real father won't freeze him in carbonite and sell him for spice.
The issue, as always, is more complicated
I live in France and know pretty well the psychology of these people, it's not complicated at all, sorry, it's actually pretty simple.
What you have are immigrant population from French colonies in North Africa who have entered France through their weaker immigration laws
Actually, France needed cheap labor at the time, and promised them work and home. So they came. Reality was hard work and cheap home.
The French are traditionally very nationalistic, and the immigrants were discriminated against and were not assimilated into mainstream cultures. Secondly, the middle-eastern culture itself is very prideful, mainly becase of their religious practices and family customs. The net result was that the immigrants self-segretated themselves into comminities of like-minded peoples
Nonsense. These people, with their hard work (far from their work location), just had no time to do anything other than work. When you're exhausted, it's way harder to integrate yourself (learn the language or educate your children). Immigrants were not self-segregated, they were all put together in the same cheap apartments.
So, the dominant european ethnics (through prejudice) resisted their assimilation, which had the net result of limiting the earning potential of the middle-eastern ethnics
Still true today.
The immigrants resist learning the French language and culture, and because of French law, are denied representation in their governments
Nothing to do with the law, it's a false secret, but access to high education is greatly influenced by where you live, which is greatly influenced by your income. It's nothing like the USA here in France, even for jobs and how they are paid.
When the government does try to "help" them with social programs, their culture see it as insulting / condescending
That's not true. They ask for more.
The net result of this is a hatred of a government that is constantly trying to patronize them and force them to give up their heritage
This is completely wrong. They have no more hatred for our government than other citizen. The problems are well known and here, it is the police forces. See the movie "La Haine" to have a good vision of what the problem is with some police forces (think Rodney King).
So, these neighborhoods tend to have less governmental police prescence than other suburbs of Paris, which tends to lead to more criminal elements
Not true either. Number of police force is dependant on your wealth and popularity (so, given what I said above, where you live).
It had gotten so bad, representatives of the federal government of France were claiming that they would "clean up the scum", which didn't go so well with the locals. In the latest chain of events, there were two youths who were fleeing police, hid in a utility station and accidentally electrocuted themselves. The immigrant cultures see this as police brutality & oppression, something denied by the authorities.
Don't know what USA TV relay, but this is all backwards and partly false.
Everything started when 2 youths died in an utility station. Still no riot. We DO NOT KNOW for now what actually happened. Accident ? Not sure. Pursuit by police ? Not sure. We don't know. But the day after this tragic accident, the very well-known president candidate Sarkozy (for now, think he is Chief of Police) makes a huge mistake. Without any prior investigation, he says : "police was not responsible for the death of these youths". When you know how the people having the same life of these youths think, what they endure, and the fact that these youths never did anything bad in their life, you can immediately see the riots coming. And that's what happened. Bad guys who love to burn and break things go in the middle, they are encouraged by TV which report they deeds, count the number of cars they burnt.
Others in other towns see that, and eve