The riots started back in 2005 when your hero Chirac was still in office.
Oh......and Chirac is no hero of mine, he's a conservative just like you.
"His performance as a zero-tolerance, law-and-order interior minister for former President Jacques Chirac was much criticized by residents of France’s working- and lower-class suburbs, and during his presidential campaign he stayed away from the tough neighborhoods in the suburbs that were consumed by three weeks of violence in late 2005.
"During the campaign last April, for example, he abruptly canceled a visit to a neighborhood of the eastern city of Lyon as 100 protesters gathered there. Some brandished signs that read, “Sarkozy, you are not welcome here,” others shouting, “Scum,” and “Karcher.”
The words “scum” and “Karcher” have come to be both identified with Mr. Sarkozy and emblematic of his difficult relationship with France’s ethnic Arab and African populations. In 2005, he vowed to clean out young troublemakers from one Paris suburb with a Karcher, the brand name of a high-powered hose used to wash off graffiti, and also pledged to rid poor neighborhoods of their “scum.”
He has never fulfilled his promise to return to Argenteuil, where he used the term “scum” and was pelted with bottles and rocks in 2005."
nytimes.com |
