And now for something not entirely different

I am sure we are all by now well aware that as the transit strike drew to a close - and leaving the university students who took to the streets just as that was happening without an interested audience (though I am sure there remain a few knots of Sorbonne-ers out and about) - the north-of-Paris banilieue, Villiers-le-Bel has been gripped by riots for the last couple of days/nights since the death on Sunday of two teenagers - deaths caused by an accident between the youths' motorbike and (of all things) a police cruiser. Thus far, the worst of it occurred on Monday night when clashes between young rioters and a platoon of riot officers reached a near unprecedented level of violence that saw more than a hundred officers wounded - some quite severely. In its most in-depth piece on the situation thus far, the New York Times on Wednesday insisted that while reference to the riots of late 2005 were common, two things set the latest skirmish apart: the riots have been localized largely to Villiers-le-Bel (though there were apparently some dust-ups outside of Toulouse on Tuesday night) and the "new tactics" being used by the rioters. Unfortunately, while the NYTs piece was nicely well-rounded with a scope that reached towards "the underlying causes of frustration and anger — particularly among unemployed, undereducated youths, mostly the offspring of Arab and African immigrants — remain[ing] the same" as those that motivated the 2005 riots, the catch of the work - and the new tactics they seemed focused on - was the use of firearms on the part of the rioters Monday night.

Indeed, that is a troubling development - more than 30 officers were wounded by shotgun pellets, with at least one losing an eye, while another had his body armor pierced and his shoulder nearly destroyed by a high-powered hunting rifle. Nonetheless, the concentration on weaponry beyond paving stones and brick bats is actually unfortunate and I suspect it was not (entirely at least) the reason for police spokesman, Patrice Ribeiro, insisting that “This is a real guerrilla war,” - though he did caution that the police (who have shown a fair measure of restraint thus far) will not be fired upon indefinitely without responding. Rather the real point of interest and concern should instead be the level of coordination that the rioters apparently exhibited through the night. According to eyewitness reports, kids as young as 10 or so acted as scouts and lookouts for the main "force" which was made up of youths from (roughly) 15 to early/mid-twenties who were, in turn, coordinated and directed by older men (apparently with some training) who focused efforts in specific places and towards specific actions with Le Monde reporting on the sighting of at least one "strapping man in a black track suit" wearing a walkie-talkie tuned to the police frequency and guiding teams of rioters. As opposed to the riots of 2005, headless hydra that they were with both random violence and lootings, those involved this past Monday were focused - rioters were stopped from burning the cars or looting the stores of "family" though a symbol of the state, the library, was gutted by molotov cocktails - and the brunt of their actions were directed specifically at the police with the "event" nearly culminating in riot forces being hemmed into an open intersection by coordinated "pincer" movements of the rioters where the bulk of the police injuries were suffered.

From the reports I have read, the level of organization was indeed quite high, waves and rough formations of the young rioters moved in concert, dodging and parrying the efforts of the police as they funneled them into the area they wished to truly engage them. The rioters wore scarves around their mouths and noses to not only obscure their identities but lessen the effects of the tear-gas that was fired to disperse them - and in what was likely an act of spontaneous support, from the surrounding apartment towers women screamed warnings down to their "sons" as they threw pails of water to wash the tear-gas from them and dampen the noxious clouds. To put it mildly, if this is to be the face of riots to come, Paris, if not all of France, is in for quite a time. I suspect things will get worse before they get better.

All of that noted, I actually see something of a Les Miserables silver lining in all of this. After the 2005 riots much was made of the occasional (if loud) shriek of "Allahu Akbar" that was to be heard among the rioters; but during this (more) violent skirmish, calls to the greatness of God were missing. Instead, it was, as was reported in Le Monde, invective hurled at the police as "pigs" and commands to stay grouped. In other words this was a call to arms, a manning of the barricades. Frankly, it was notice that for all else that has occurred, be it institutional neglect on the part of the state or "square-peg in a round hole" on the part banlieusards, this was a reaction française to a situation that for myriad reasons has been an issue since the end of WWII; one that was only covered over by Les trente glorieuses and that had the curtains pulled back on it by its end. In other words, the rioters were only and simply behaving as Frenchmen and in many regards, whether it be the unfortunate deaths of two teenagers that acted as the lighted wick, it is entirely appropriate that it came full on the heels of the transit strike - where the issue was of undoubtedly (with the wrinkled nose of Barthes when he discussed what was "natural" in France) French men and women striking in defense of their own slice of the welfare state pie - as here it was a matter of it is time that they in the banilieues get to taste the berries of said pie.

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