Negro's Riot

I was the near nun. I don't get enough credit for that...



(smile)

Well, Little Lash, I've always thought I knew where you were coming from. I kind of think, though, that anyone that needed the explanation would disregard it anyway.

Oh, don't torture us, Lash. More of your story...

And if I may ask - in your fantasy, do you and your "negro homies" have dinner at each other's houses? Ooooh - this is better than "Desperate Housewives"!!!

And you wear sexy boots.

see what I mean?

Thanks, rog. I've always felt you gave me the benefit of the doubt, and I appreciate that.

I've always felt that once a person feels like they 'need to' divulge things like that, the response is irrelevent. It's like finding yourself on a witness stand, giving testimony to people who should have known. I've always been like that. It just negates any response.

snood--

I don't know how anyone so full of hate can take in a breath. Do you despise whites so deeply that you can't imagine a white person having close relationships with blacks? What's your problem? I used to really dislike you. I honestly pity you now.

Sometimes I wear Dan Post Lizard Skin boots in a light brown colour and when I'm driving the Porsche I wear Converse Canvas HighTops in lime green (With my Setson Renagade hat)

I shall challenge Diane to an arm wrestle; I fear you must be mine.

the green ones, exactly

<rethinking position>

My Dan Post lizard skin boots

OK. I'm in.

my Renagade Hat (the brown Stetson is for sunday go-to-meetings only)

Diane

<spits...I don't know, bubblegum juice...>

I'm a callin yew out.

Speaking of riots---

France edges toward martial law....

Paris escalates
its response
as riots persist

By CASSELL BRYAN-LOW and JOHN CARREYROU
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
November 7, 2005 4:30 p.m.

PARIS -- France's inability to quell the mayhem shaking its cities was thrown into sharp relief, as the government took the dramatic step of letting local authorities impose curfews amid mounting doubts about the effectiveness of the nation's centralized policing system.

In an interview on French television, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said France was invoking a 1955 law permitting local law-enforcement chiefs known as "prefects" to place communities under curfew "wherever necessary." He also said he was calling up 1,500 police reservists, to bring the total force mobilized on the riots to 9,500 officers.

Asked whether France was considering calling out the army, he said: "We're not at that point yet." But he added: "At each stage, we will take the measures necessary to restore order throughout the entire country."

Just before he spoke, the middle-class town of Le Raincy, which abuts some of the troubled suburbs northwest of Paris, was the first to announce a curfew, a move other municipalities indicated they might follow.

The highly unusual measures mark a turning point in the crisis, with the French state moving one step short of martial law. The 1955 law invoked last night was passed to impose a state of emergency during Algeria's war of independence from France, and hasn't been used in mainland France since that conflict. Mr. de Villepin said the curfews and call-up of reservists "mark the gravity of things."

Politicians in neighboring countries expressed fear the chaos might spill over France's borders. On Sunday night, five cars were set on fire in a working-class district of Berlin, and another five cars were torched outside of Brussels's main train station. German police said they couldn't rule out the possibility of copycat attacks, while Belgian authorities played down the possible link to events in France. Over the weekend, the Italian opposition leader Romano Prodi warned that Italy was vulnerable to French-style violence in its poor urban areas.

Bands of young men, mostly from Muslim neighborhoods in poor urban areas, have been rioting nightly for almost two weeks. France Monday reported its first fatality from the riots since two teens hiding from police were accidentally electrocuted Oct. 27 in a power substation. Scores of policemen were wounded in clashes Sunday night. The rioting had spread to 300 French towns as of early Monday.

So far, rioters have burned 4,700 vehicles, and 77 policemen have been injured. Two officers have been hospitalized, but their condition isn't life-threatening, said a spokesman for the national police. A total of 1,220 people have been arrested.

Some of the French media have been trying to exercise restraint in covering the violence in an effort not to fan the flames. For the past few days, TF1 has declined to air footage of burning cars, said Robert Namias, the head of the news division at the station, France's leading TV network.

"We know that it's the type of thing that provokes contagion," Mr. Namias said. The government hasn't tried to influence the network's editorial decisions, he added.

Frank Louvrier, a spokesman for Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, didn't respond to questions about the effectiveness of government measures so far.

Unlike many other European countries, France engages in little community-oriented crime prevention, preferring to call in national riot police when there is trouble. The spokesman for the national police said the forces mobilized as of Monday included almost 3,000 riot police.
Analysts point to this highly centralized police system as one factor behind France's inability to cope. While police forces in many other European countries seek to knit closer local ties and focus on preventing crime before it happens, the French police have a more "commando-intervention" approach, said Michel Marcus, a Paris-based representative of the European Forum for Urban Security, an association of 450 European towns.

Germany handles its troubled neighborhoods differently, said Rüdiger Holecek, a spokesman for the German Police Union. The German law-enforcement model is designed to keep local police in close contact with local people, he said.

France sought to shore up its policing methods a few years ago, when the government of Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin introduced a neighborhood police force, called "police de proximité," to build links with local communities and be better positioned to take preventive action.

But Mr. Sarkozy weakened that program during his first stint as interior minister in 2002, when he pushed through a security law that took funds away from the neighborhood police forces and allocated them to more hard-core aspects of law enforcement, such as riot police.

The new law did seek to address crime in France's ghettos. It forbade gatherings of more than three people in the hallways of buildings in difficult neighborhoods and stipulated that youths who disobeyed could be sanctioned with big fines or jail time. Some say the approach backfired. "Things became very tense between the police and youths," said Mohammed Ajir, a social worker in the poor Paris suburb of La Courneuve.

French authorities now have to manage a delicate balance. If they act too softly, they could be accused of caving in to the rioters. But if they take measures deemed too harsh, they risk alienating the parents of the youths and others in the French Muslim community who might interpret them "as being animated by racist spite," said Gino Raymond, a professor of modern French studies at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom.

Mr. de Villepin's television appearance last night was the first since the rioting began.

This evening's news, French officials did say plans are being discussed for improvement in minority neighborhoods, especially education.

The rioting is news to me, mostly, as I sure didn't know that Africans were discriminated against by the "real" French.

This is really some kind of thread. Reminds me of an Austin forum the year Clinton ran against Gore, (year 2000) where I think there was one monitor but nobody, no matter how nasty they talked, was ever reprimanded. Funny as hell, though.

BTW, I thought the word Negro became very baaad because the people in the southern region pronounced it "Nigra." As in "Our Nigras are happy."
I would NEVER call anyone by this word. I was at a backyard party at my husband's boss' home in about 1968 when this man (the boss) said that. "Our Nigras are happy." Thought I'd barf, would have it he hadn't been so connected.

I grew up in Texas, lived there until age 19, then spent the next 35 years in northern states where I would often wonder about all those odd crazy things I saw and heard back in my childhood.

Nope, I would never call anyone a Negro.

Okay, so you hate me. Fine, being now in one line with Muslims etc: Pax Domine, Lash!

I finished the dishes.

Hey if they want extra help I could go to France and help out. Problem is I wouldn't have a clue what the boss copper would be saying to me. Okay, bad idea.

You just don't have the modern kind of sympatico that Lash has with his "negro homies", that's all.

Lash is a man?