Paris 2005

Money is the root of all evil.

France is being crippled - no, already crippled - by riots so terrible there are countless reports of its evil progress in the news every day.

Every night - and most probably tonight - youths descended from African immigrants torch cars, burn schools, and hurl Molotov cocktails and other projectiles a riot police.

All this was ignited on 27 October, when two teenage boys, aged 15 and 17, were accidentaly electrocuted when they climbed onto an electrical substation in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois, allegedly evading the police.

The police have denied that they were chasing the boys, but such is the height of mistrust, racism, and discrimination in the outskirts of Paris that the boys chose to risk their lives rather than be caught, searched, and humiliated by authority.

The rioters are mobs of angry deracinated youth who never thought of France as their home. They hate the French. The French hate them, which is why they are shunted off to run-down ghettos and are mostly unemployed - joblessness is double the national average at 19.6 per cent. More than 30 per cent of 21-to-29-year-olds are out of work, not because they are incompetent, but because they are ostracized and rejected by society. Incomes are also 75 per cent below average.

The brusque way that the government, especially maverick Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, handled the situation, made everything worse - he denounced the rampaging youth as "rabble" and "scum".
His rival for presidency Prime Minister Domonique Villepin has done better, calling emergency cabinet meetings and comforting bereaved parents.

The mayhem has spread far beyond the flashpoint of Clichy-sous-Bois to Marseille, Toulouse, Toulon, Draguignan, Strasbourg, Nantes, and other cities and suburbs of France. Even in Germany, there're 10 cars burned out overnight but police rejected suggestions that Parisian conditions have spread to the country.
This has sparked major countries like the US, Japan, and Australia to siiue travel advisories recommending caution when going to France.

However, according to a report in Today, Singaporeans are not afraid to travel to France, perhaps because things are calm around tourist attractions like Eiffel Tower and the Musée du Louvre - so far.

It is sad, really, how a cosmopolitan-yet-cultural city like Paris can be so easily reduced to cinders. But of course. Hatred can do terrible things, especially hatred that was sowed a long time ago. The bigotry of the French did not spring up yesterday. The cannot-stand-each-other attitide of both the rioters and the French is the result of a long-buried hatred, which, as everyone knows now, culminated in Paris 2005.

Racism, unlike bio-terrorism, is not new. Racism is age-old, and has existed since the beginning of time. Quite recently, there are already a few examples which I know of - the Holocaust, the London Underground bombings, the alleged neglect of Katrina victims, and right here in Singapore, the case of the two bloggers who slammed Malays and Muslims.

The movie The Interpreter reflects very vividly the state of unrest in Africa. It's a long story, but down there, corruption led to all the people living in poverty. The movie might not be based on a true story, but I think there are definitely real people out there in that terrible, terrible state where children, children are taught to hold a gun to your temple and pull the trigger without the slightest twinge of remorse. Now, if these aren't the future terrorists, then who are? These people have enough on their plates to worry about, and here we are being racist when we're supposed to help them. How bad is that?

So, back to France now. They teach the proudly-held French beliefs, the National motto of Liberté, égalité, fraternité in schools but do not put them into practice in life.

Well, let's just hope that this riot quickly ebbs awayand when the smoke clears and the dust settles, France and the world will wake up. Éveiller, la France.