The scum always rises

[muckefuck]

So is everyone happy now that the riots in France are finally front-page news in the USA? Yesterday they were even mocked in The Onion! What more coverage could a body want?

Last week, when all the news outlets were abuzz with Sarkozy's "scum" remark, BBC was the only English-language news source to tell me that what he actually said was racaille (which is either better or worse depending on how you look at it). In verlan (French back-slang), it seems to mean roughly "gangsta"--at least judging from such such references as "le 'caillera' blanc" for Eminem.

Comments

[lhn.livejournal.com]

Given the recent experience wrt New Orleans, I'm guessing that the actual scale and nature of the French riots is only going to be clear after the postmortem, if then. Thus far, while it's clearly widespread (and not just in France), the level of the reported violence is surprisingly low: one reported death in almost two weeks, compared with more than 50 in the shorter and more localized 1991 Los Angeles riots.

But again, with New Orleans fresh in my mind, I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that the property damage is a tenth what's currently being reported, or conversely if it turns out that there are ten times as many deaths as we've heard about. And I'm really not sure that greater attention from the media right now would get us more actual knowledge (as opposed to speculation and thirdhand rumors reported as eyewitness fact) than we're getting as things are. (Though yes, it would be nice if it were easier to find out straightforward things like what the politicians have actually said.)

[arkanjil.livejournal.com]

At first blush, the riots struck me as economic class warfare at it's finest, but in that open source war blog i posted today (among other places), there were some intersting newslinks that dig deeper than even the usual BBC/NPR feeds i hew to. Points were noted about how the riots eppear to be orchestrated by a somewhat unholy union between criminal cartels (that run below the board economies scaled to match their imrpovished clients) and muslim fundementalists, each with thier own agenda. Strange things are indeed afoot....

[febrile.livejournal.com]

Hey, it's France, it's hard to tell. I think the theory for a while was that there was a North African touring company of Les Miserables takin' it to the streets a la the kids from Fame.

[goreism.livejournal.com]

Wikipedia had the info too. Wonderful site, that is.

BTW

[cpratt.livejournal.com]

http://www.slate.com/id/2130120/ should interest you, no?