Chaos in France

[tango15]

One crazy person kills another...no sane person would visit Paris these days.
A British tourist is reportedly among several injured.

I note there are 3 dead in the bombing of a Catholic Mass in the Philippines.
Another customer of the Alloa Snackbar responsible.

It's not race - we have a fair few Philippinos working in the fish plants here, and there is nothing but friendship. All Catholics, of course, same as most here.

Agree 100% re Filipinos/Filipinas. I've me them all over the place, including the Philippines, and as a race they are, without exception, some of the nicest (and happiest) people I have ever met.

[llondel]

I have a meeting in February next year. What with terrorists, bed bugs, and ludicrous prices for travel, hotels, and food, I'm thinking twice about going.

Better than thinking about going twice...

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

some of the nicest (and happiest) people I have ever met.

Yup, they fit in right well here.
Polite AF too.

I donated a couch gratis to a couple of them setting up home. They get that a lot.

I think I'd like to visit the Philippines one day.

[OFSO]

The people in charge of Paris have just tripled the tourist tax as of January first. For top hotels it is now nearly €15 a day I believe. Bedbugs included.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Can I still get stabbed visiting the Eiffel Tower?
Wouldn't want to miss that!

[Dushan]

Don't know about stabbings, but better watch your stuff in the subway. My sister had her phone stolen on her birthday, a few days ago, and she is a "native".

[OFSO]

I am not going to my conference there in February. Dark, damp and depressing. My secretary there said to me "don't blame you !"

[Dushan]

Dark, damp and depressing.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. It once used to be known as the "City of Lights".

[G-CPTN]

Don't know about stabbings, but better watch your stuff in the subway. My sister had her phone stolen on her birthday, a few days ago, and she is a "native".

Are mobile 'phones so desirable? or does it depend on make and model?

Or are they stolen because of their content (banking details)?

[Rwy in Sight]

My sister a French literature graduate working in the IT payment sector (to connect with the posts just above and the thread) has lost her business phone value unknown. Her IT colleagues assured her, that given she uses a PIN lock her financial data security is practically assured 99.9% chance of no data breach. It seems mobiles block attempts to use devices to guess locking codes. And it is good to have the IMEI code (*#06# to display) handy to declare it to the police as to block it and render the mobile suitable only to be used as paperweight

[Dushan]

Don't know about stabbings, but better watch your stuff in the subway. My sister had her phone stolen on her birthday, a few days ago, and she is a "native".

Are mobile 'phones so desirable? or does it depend on make and model?

Or are they stolen because of their content (banking details)?

I can't se the value, as it was an older, small phone. It was locked so safe from getting into for data or even to wipe it and resell. Furthermore they can be "wiped" remotely, but that has to be set up properly.
The only value I can see for a stolen iPhone would be to sell it for parts, but that's a long term value. Can't see a pickpocket getting into that. Maybe someone gives him $20 for it.

[1DC]

The French subway has a bad reputation for pickpockets, the popular tourist spots have many organised young gangs working the trains and stations

[Dushan]

I once had two Gypsy punks try to get to my BlackBerry in a holster on my waist, under my jacket. Not even in the train but in the long tunnel between two trains in the Franklin D. Roosevelt station. They were unsuccessful. Unfortunately, for them, the tunnel is sloped a bit and it is easy to slip and fall.

[Karearea]

Hundreds of police officers are searching for a prisoner in north-west France, after he escaped from a van in a deadly ambush near Rouen
Mohamed Amra was being taken from court to a prison when a car rammed the prison van at a toll booth
Gunmen then attacked the prison officers, with two officers killed and two critically injured
Amra and his accomplices reportedly escaped in a car, with a burnt out vehicle found nearby
He was recently convicted of burglary and had been charged with a kidnapping that led to a death

BBC - Live: Prisoner manhunt under way in France

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

There had to be a point where the criminal gangs care so little about justice that they start murdering the police/justice staff.
It's been that way on 2 continents for a while, just a case of when it started in Europe and/or North America.
The question is, what will the politicians do about it?
Nowhere near enough, is my thought.
If they were to make the Law and enforcement swift and effective, it would have the result of shutting down all the mass immigration, leftist protests, etc, which they seem to want more than anything.
Not to mention that effective money laundering and corruption laws would probably trap more politicians and their mates than crime lords.

[Karearea]

More than 130 people have been arrested in New Caledonia, the government said, after violent protests rocked the French Pacific archipelago and Paris adopted the constitutional changes that angered pro-independence forces.

Protests against the changes turned violent on Monday night, with shots fired at security forces, vehicles torched and shops looted in the worst unrest the French overseas territory has seen since the 1980s.

In response, authorities deployed a heavy security contingent, imposed a curfew, banned public gatherings and closed the main airport.
“More than 130 arrests have been made and several dozen rioters have been taken into custody and will be brought before the courts,” the French high commission of the Republic in New Caledonia said in a statement on Wednesday morning.
Describing the “serious public disturbances” as ongoing, the high commission decried widespread looting and torching of businesses and public property, including schools.

It added that classes will be postponed until further notice and that the main airport was closed to commercial flights.

The unrest flared as lawmakers in France debated a bill that would expand voter eligibility in local elections to include French nationals who have lived on the island for more than 10 years, a change critics fear could marginalise Indigenous people.

After lengthy and at times tense debates, the National Assembly in Paris voted for the change shortly after midnight, by 351 votes to 153.

Afterwards, French president Emmanuel Macron appealed for calm on all sides.

In a letter to New Caledonian representatives, he urged them to “unambiguously condemn all this violence” and “call for calm” as discussions over the territory’s future resume.

Macron has been seeking to reassert his country’s importance in the Pacific region, where China and the United States are vying for influence but France has a strategic footprint through territories that include New Caledonia and French Polynesia.

Lying between Australia and Fiji, New Caledonia is one of several French territories spanning the globe from the Caribbean and Indian Ocean to the Pacific that remain part of France in the post-colonial era.

In the Noumea Accord of 1998, France vowed to gradually give more political power to the Pacific island territory of nearly 300,000 people.

Under the agreement, New Caledonia has held three referendums over its ties with France, all rejecting independence. But independence retains support, particularly among the Indigenous Kanak people.

The Noumea Accord has also meant that New Caledonia’s voter lists have not been updated since 1998 – meaning that island residents who arrived from mainland France or elsewhere in the past 25 years do not have the right to take part in provincial polls.

The French government has branded the exclusion of one out of five people from voting as “absurd”, while separatists fear that expanding voter lists would benefit pro-France politicians and reduce the weight of the Kanaks.

Simmering protests over the planned changes to voter eligibility took a violent turn on Monday night, with groups of young masked or hooded demonstrators taking over several roundabouts and confronting police, who responded with non-lethal rounds.

One business group said about 30 shops, factories and other sites in and around the capital Noumea had been set ablaze, while an AFP journalist saw burned-out cars and the smoking remains of tyres and wooden pallets littering the streets.

Firefighters said they had received about 1,500 calls overnight and responded to 200 blazes.

Even after the curfew was put in place on Tuesday, there were acts of vandalism overnight, with the store of a major sports brand ransacked.

A prison rebellion involving 50 detainees in the Camop-Est facility subsided after security forces regained control, local officials said.

“Violence is never a solution,” prime minister Gabriel Attal told reporters during a trip to eastern France. He said the government’s “priority … is to re-establish order, calm and serenity” in New Caledonia.

Pro-independence party leader Daniel Goa asked the youths to “go home”, and condemned the looting. But he added: “The unrest of the last 24 hours reveals the determination of our young people to no longer let France take control of them.”

The main figure of the non-independence camp, the former minister Sonia Backes, denounced what she described as anti-white racism of demonstrators who burned down the house of her father, a man in his 70s who was exfiltrated by the security forces.

“If he was not attacked because he was my father, he was at least attacked because he was white,” she told BFMTV.

Guardian: New Caledonia protests: Macron urges calm as 130 arrested amid anger over voting change

[OFSO]

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/fra ... f-control/

[Karearea]

^ Interesting, if bleak, article, OFSO.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

If the justice system is ineffective, i.e. not a sufficient deterrent compared to the benefits of crime, then things will continue to get worse.
But try telling that to a bunch of former lawyers and finance wizzes-turned-politicians, who fly everywhere on private jets and have zero chance of being caught in the crossfire.
The same applies to international relations, i.e. conflicts and the military.
We are at the stage where nowhere near enough people whom you would want as police and armed services personnel are applying for those jobs, and the good people are leaving in droves or keeping their heads down until retirement.

Even the stuff in this article about a partition is just another symptom, not a cause.
The cause is the ineffective justice system.
I think it is ineffective in 3 respects.
Firstly, it is being applied differently to different groups in society, and thus breaking the fundamental principle of everyone being equal under the law.
Secondly, the cost and effectiveness of the justice system is way out of balance, and no effective deterrent in itself.
Thirdly, the justice system itself has loss respect among the general populus because of the above.

All of the above are down to the politicians.
And since there are representative democracy/republics in the West, it is ultimately down to the average voter.
We are running up against the limits of such political systems, where it is not in the short term interests of a majority of voters, or the governing politicians, to make the significant changes needed.
And the prospect of long term solutions, especially with the current governments and bureaucracies, is nowhere near certain enough for human nature in a majority of voters to trade short term pain for long term gain.

[OFSO]

Must say that in the past 48 hours I saw very few police in Paris, far fewer than in London where these days armed police are not unusual. The International Government Establishment where I work in Paris has built a separate screening office inside the main entrance. Invitation (by e-mail after security check) and ID security checks there, then one crosses the forecourt to a third check, ID inside the main building. Taking terrorism very seriously.