Wampum

This shows the conflict in its social dimension. The cités (aka "HLM", trans. "the projects") are largely abandoned by the French state, anonymous and experienced as "other", not as French neighborhoods, and the CRS/GM/police, also anonymous and experienced as "other", not as a French institution. Fixing the lifts, restoring funding to the social associations, moving work from the favored core to the unfavored periphery, and community policing. The program of the Mayors. The UMP Mayors, the PS Mayors, and the PCF Mayors. Inventing Islamo-boogie-teens-and-twenties and going to war against that danger-to-the-state is Sarko's [Nicolas Sarkozy] program. The location is Corbeil-Essonnes, in the "banlieue parisienne".

Lionel Jospin, the former PM (1997 - 2002), on France Culture:

"gouvernement qui s'était tant vanté de son savoir faire en matière de sécurité ... [government that vaunts its know-how in security (acerbic reference to the crypto-facism of the Sarko wing of the UMP)]

L'autorité doit être affirmée mais elle doit être calme, je dirais presque froide (...) Les mots violents n'effacent pas la violence des actes, parfois ils la provoquent. [Public authority must affirmed, but it must be done calmly, even dispasionately. Violent words do not prevent acts of violence, sometimes they provoke them.]

Nous ne nous sommes pas mis en situation de défi, de confrontation, de provocation. ... une politique globale: face aux actes délictueux, elle doit être répressive, pour les éviter, elle doit être préventive, et elle doit s'accompagner d'une action plus large, sociale". [We were never in a position of defiance, of confrontation, of provocation ... a global policy, in the face of acts of delict (small offences which are punished by a small fine or a short imprisonment) [authority] must be repressive, to end them, it must be preventative, and it must be accompanied by a larger social program.

There's been some talk of Jospin as a candidate in '07 also. Le Monde ran an editiorial on (against) the return to politics of two of the older figures of past elections recently, but not in the past 11 days.

Photo from Toulouse. I want to point out that burning trashcans, dumpsters (no longer even counted), cars and (very few) buses and trams is a lot of small offenses and a lot of small insurance claims. I've no idea how many "totaled" vehicle collision claims there are per reference period in France, but this is economic "noise" and a climate of nighttime sirens. The protests mock the pretention of control by authority, but do not contest authority. Serious opposition would take form as operations against targets other than trash and abandoned cars.

Le Soir (Bruxelles) has this rather interesting note: Il y a une compétition entre les cités, à qui brûlera le plus, expliquait dimanche Amine, 21 ans, qui habite un quartier déshérité d'Epinay-sur-Seine, près de Paris. Les jeunes agissent par petits groupes très mobiles, communiquant notamment par SMS. [There is a competition between the projects, who can burn the most, explained Amine, age 21, who lives in the slum Epinay-sur-Seine, close to Paris. The youths operate in small, highly mobile groups, communicating with each other using SMS.]

Oblig geek note: The youth mobile ops with SMS meme is common to the reform GOTV during the Iranian presidential election earlier this year, Iraqi resistance (not the faked up "foreign jihadis"), and other flash crowds. The technique seems oblig to master. The most politically important recent flash crowd in North America was Tom Delay's, which successfully intimidated the Miami-Dade canvassing board from performing a manual recount using threats of violence and physical intimidation on November 22nd, 2000. That FC was actually run out of a mobile home by Roger Stone, a former Reagan operative, using voice over cell tech for command and control, over a set of 200 paid operatives, some of whom were Congressional Staffers. End Oblig geek note.

The distribution of reported nuisance fires is as follows: Paris and the region: 426 vehicles, only18 actually in Paris (741 the preceeding night, 36 actually in Paris). Rest of France: 982 vehicles (554 the preceeding night).

The commune count is as follows: 274 last night (211 the preceeding night). The most affected were Marseille, Saint-Etienne, Toulouse and Lille, and in a smaller measure, Strasbourg and Nantes (some buildings and 200 vehicles in "la grande est"). Smaller communes also reported nuisance fires.

Thirty four officers are reported wounded by bird shot, two seriously, this evening at Grigny (Essonne). Another officer was wounded with bird shot at Draveil. Also, two pre-schools were burned. A dozen arrests are reported.
In Orléans there are more injuries and fires. The combats are between groups of twenty, police and protesters, with gas, flash grenades and battons used by one side, molotov cocktails, rocks and bats by the other. In Havre a car was used as a ram to breach the perimeter of a police station, similar to the use of a ram car to breach (and burn) a fast food outlet 24 hours ago.

A fire in Asnières-sur-Seine (Hauts-de-Seine) has 90 firefighters and 25 engines on a fire in a production facility just under 30,000 sq. feet. This is presumptively not part of the protests, as the fire in the furnature wherehouse was not part of the protests.

Update: A man died in hospital from injuries sustained by persons unknown. The victim's name, age or his attacker were not disclosed. The police spokesperson attributed the injuries to an assault upon the deceedant subsequent to a fire in a trashcan.

Final, though there may be corrections.