I Love The Smell Of Tear Gas In The Morning

Supposedly the black block was 3.000 deep in yesterday's G8 protest that escalated into an outright Battle of Rostock. That's quite a step up from the 30 followers of John Zerzan who started the Battle of Seattle eight years ago.

I guess this would be the time now to read up on neo-primitivists Zerzan and Kaczynski, throw in some Lewis Mumford, some Otto Reich and there we go. Although I suspect that reading's not so high on the Black Block's to do list.

Burn Baby Burn

It’s day 11 of the French riots and there is no end in sight. Quite the contrary. Rioting supposedly spread to 300 towns. Today a 61-year old man who had been beaten into a coma by one of the rioters was the first confirmed death. Last night the first cars went up in flames in the German cities of Berlin and Bremen. The politicians are at a loss. No wonder. '68 won’t work as a political reference. 1992 is more like it – the year of the Los Angeles riots, because it isn't a riot with a political aim. It’s not even fueled by some jihadist fervor, which would be as irrational as the current rage, but at least fit into some known political coordinates. It's true that being muslim has isolated many of the rioters from mainstream society, it's also true that islamic fundamentalists used that very frustration to recruit, but right now it’s pure nihilism sweeping throught the street of Europe.

The stories are quite similar. The LA riots might have been triggered by the acquittal of the four cops who had beaten up Rodney King. The true anger that had simmered in the city for months had been the killing of Latasha Harlin though, a black teenager who had been shot by a Korean grocer, who was only sentenced to a fine of $ 500.-.

In the US riots have been started by violence against minority youth again and again. In Paris the riots were triggered by the death of 15 year old Banou Traorés and 17 year old Ziad Benna in the banlieue of Chlichy-sous-bois. The two teenagers had been electrocuted in a transformer station, supposedly after they had been chased by police.
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If you speak French, there are quite a few websites that give you some insight from the streets:

Friends of Banou and Ziad started a condolence website that has hundreds of heated comments.

There is some debate on the rap-blog 9.3 Ghetto Star.

Other sites with lots of commentaries from the street are Chlichy Sous Bombesand les K1-FRY.The blog Violances Urbaines was closed by Skyblog, because of inciting commentaries.
There is some reporting from the streets on Indymedia Paris.
Three bloggers were arrested and charged with inciting riots on blogs they ran on the website of the radio station Skyrock

Paris Is Burning

Listen to their music - you don’t have to speak French to get the gist. Today on the ninth day the riots in the banlieues of Paris made page one of the New York Times above the fold. Like most English language reports the Times used the rather misleading translation of the word banlieue as suburb. Those are no suburbs. Those are massive Soviet style housing projects that the government erected for the mostly immigrant poor on the outskirts of town, so mainstream society woudn’t have to deal with what the French interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy yesterday called ‘scum’ and ‘troublemakers'.

In France the riots are seen as the worst civil unrest since 1968. The comparison doesn't quite work though. German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung called it a bit more poignantly an ‘intifada at the city gates’. Back in '68 it was the youth of a new middle class demanding their fair share of society in the form of education reform. Right now the rioters are the new members of European society who were never meant to be or stay there in the first place venting their frustration with the purest form of nihilism - burning down their own neighborhoods.

The riots didn’t come as a surprise though. In France the tensions of the banlieues are already so deeply embedded in the country’s fabric that they already rose to the very top of pop culture. Last year Luc Besson of 'Femme Nikita'-'Fifth Element'-'Transporter' fame produced the film 'Banlieue 13', which tells the story of gangs in a future, when the French government has erected walls between the ghetto projects and the communities of the affluent and rich. Being a Besson movie it's as authentic as if Joel Silver had produced a three-digit action movie about the L.A. riots, which is why the film is more ‚Escape From New York’ than ‚Boyz ‘n the Hood’. Still the soundtrack features some of the preeminent Hip Hop artists that came ouf of the banlieues and the song titles speak for themselves.

The so far best film about life in the banlieues came out ten years ago. Mathieu Kassovitz's ‚La Haine’ (The Hate) told the story of a skinhead, an Arab street kid and an African boxer trying to pursue some form of happiness in the projects near Paris, when a riot breaks out. It's not easy to track down the film, but the trailer gives a good glimpse of the atmosphere that lead to the events of last week.
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Film Trailer - Banlieue 13

Film Trailer - La Haine