Six nights of riots in Paris ghetto split Chirac cabinet | Henry Samuel
http://tinyurl.com/cx86n
“The French government was reeling yesterday after six nights of rioting which have exposed a split in the cabinet over how to deal with poverty and immigration in the dilapidated Paris suburbs. As authorities cleaned up the debris of another bout of violence, including the wrecks of 250 cars burned out on Tuesday night, both the prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, and the interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, put off foreign trips to deal with the rioting. ‘We sure showed it to them last night,’ said one youth in Clichy-sous-Bois, a grim suburb of high-rises some 15 miles outside Paris.”

The Barbarians at the Gates of Paris | Theodore Dalrymple
http://www.city-journal.org/html/12_4_the_barbarians.html
“Where does the increase in crime come from? The geographical answer: from the public housing projects that encircle and increasingly besiege every French city or town of any size, Paris especially. In these housing projects lives an immigrant population numbering several million, from North and West Africa mostly, along with their French-born descendants and a smattering of the least successful members of the French working class. From these projects, the excellence of the French public transport system ensures that the most fashionable arrondissements are within easy reach of the most inveterate thief and vandal. Architecturally, the housing projects sprang from the ideas of Le Corbusier, the Swiss totalitarian architect—and still the untouchable hero of architectural education in France—who believed that a house was a machine for living in, that areas of cities should be entirely separated from one another by their function, and that the straight line and the right angle held the key to wisdom, virtue, beauty, and efficiency. “NOTE: article date August 2002

Neither whores nor submissives | Rebecca Hillauer
http://www.signandsight.com/features/288.html
“Young Muslim women in the working class suburbs of France have two choices: slut or servant. Fadela Amara is trying to offer them a third option: respect. Fadela Amara has a mission. One sees it in the intensity of her eyes and feels it in the passion of her speech. A good two years ago, the daughter of an Algerian immigrant family in Paris, she founded the organisation ‘Ni putes ni soumises’. This is also the title of her book, which won the ‘Prix du Livre Politique’ of the French national assembly last year. In the book, Fadela Amara tells in a simple and direct style the story of her fight against the growing violence and social disintegration in France’s suburbs.”