July 6, 2023
Metz France – Ah, springtime in France. I was having a dinner with my friend Walter at the city of Metz. This was part of my regular visit to the World War II Maginot Line forts. Just as we were about to begin savoring a very fine ‘grey’ rosé, all hell broke loose.
Mobs of teenagers rampaged down the street right outside our restaurant window. Chairs, tables, cars, vans – all were smashed or burned by the surging mobs. Many were Africans, but plenty of Arabs were evident as were a sizeable number of young whites. Most of the rioters wore heavy helmets, goggles, thick clothing and carried either sticks or iron bars.
Screams and howls of fury dominated the evening as the mobs converged on Metz’s wonderfully Gothic train station built by the Germans before WWI. Businesses were warned to shut down and send their workers home. Heavily armed paramilitary police – notably the Gendarmes Mobiles – suddenly appeared. One very tall officer armed with a long iron bar stood guard over our eatery’s front door, to our comfort,
Riots also struck the French cities of Lyon, Marseilles, Nantes and, of course, Paris, which was wreathed in tear gas. Firefighters, who are part of the armed forces, massed men and equipment.
The uproar began when a 17-year-old boy of North African descent refused to stop for police and drove away at high speed. This is a not unfamiliar scenario in the violence-torn USA. A policeman apparently shot the absconding young men. As usual, the poor, run-down, slummy apartment blocks that surround most major cities (‘banlieu’ in local talk) erupted in violence. In short, your usual prison riot.
As per usual, politicians all blamed their opponents. The left claimed that poverty, police brutality, discrimination, anti-Muslim and anti-black hatred ignited the riots. It was the old ‘Black Lives Matter’ routine again. But not entirely without cause as Muslims suffer intense prejudice in France and are condemned to squalid lives. The ever-growing number of African immigrants flooding into France and Britain are often hostile and violent, not to mention unemployable.
I’ve seen it all before in my native New York City. In the last century, Irish politicians who ran Tammany Hall massively encouraged immigration. To no surprise, these newcomers (among them my relatives) tended to vote Democratic. Today, over a century later, the Dems in Washington are following the same strategy of importing voters. President Joe Biden’s key base is black African Americans. When they riot, the response from Washington is as wishy-washy as from Paris.
France’s five million Muslims largely originated from importing low-cost workers and from the offspring of the Algerian soldiers, known as harkis, who fought for ‘French Algeria’ then fled to France at the war’s end. Canada has just done something similar by bringing in sizeable numbers of Afghan collaborators who did service for Canadian occupation troops. That story will not end happily either.
It is heartbreaking to see France, one of this world’s most beautiful countries, torn about by young punks who think rioting is a national sport like football. There is no excuse in our day and age to rip up paving blocks and smash store windows with them, burn lovely old buildings or menace honest citizens.
France is one of the most advanced, best-run nations on earth. Unlike the former used-car salesmen who populate the US Congress, France has a more decent class of politicians with a mature sense of their duty. But we, like France, are being punished for sins more than a century old.
Copyright. Eric S. Margolis 2023
This post is in: France
It’s sad, but this is the way of governments of late. One of the few legitimate purposes of a government is to look after the long term interests of the citizenry. They are failing terribly at this fundamental purpose.
.
It’s not just France, but the UK, Canada, and the US are failing, too, among others. The US is failing in a major way. The rot starts at the top… even the US Supreme Court is rotten to the core. Authorities can murder un armed people with impunity. This flows downward and ‘infects’ the general population. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a country so divided.
.
BRICS is on the horizon and may cause the US to lose world financial dominance. We don’t know where this will lead to. This could have world wide implications… France is interested in joining BRICS, too.
.
My thesis includes global warming and the consequences. No one seems to be acting. The powers are using the fact the China is the leader (in total quantity) and it has to start there. No one seems to note that on the basis of population, China’s carbon footprint is half the US. They point at India as a major contributor, whose per capita output is 1/10 that of the US. Governments are failing due to their financial corruption and lack of focus.
.
France is in the same boat. Just a while ago, Macron increased the retirement age with similar results. When a people put their life effort into paying taxes to achieve early retirement, and this is taken away, expect to see some civil disruption. If the malaise doesn’t stop, the effects are likely cumulative.
.
The last instance, a police constable murdered an unarmed person, and the ’cause’ of the rioting. Happy content people do not riot. This not typically the French, but reflects their new way of life. There is nothing on the horizon to indicate this will change, and if the government continues on this path, the situation will likely get worse.
The prime motivation for encouraging mass immigration is not to provide small minded politicians with votes but to inflate the valuations of real estate. This pumps huge amounts of money from the pockets of citizens into the pockets of large property owners and debt mongers and speculators. In Canada just the residential housing sector is valued at around $5 trillion. A 5% increase year-on-year is $250 billion on the table in increased mortgages and asset valuation increases.
Mass immigration isn’t the child of bleeding heart leftists, it is driven by the ultra rightwing whose only agenda is growth. They buy politicians of all stripes and the only policy that counts for them is to keep the Ponzi scheme inflating. Mass immigration does this perfectly.