Riots of Passion and Blood in France
marcel o - 15.11.2005 02:36
The Riots Will Continue – Sporadically at Times – In The Face of Ignorance and Fascism – The Violence will Escalate – Dramatically at Times! – The Youth Need Heroes and More Martyrs – The Police and Sarkozy’s Soldiers Will be Happy to Comply!
They burn easily - alll 8000 of them
For a rare mainstream media article praising violence and riots and showing how they almost always make sense, see:
 http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1114-31.htm
Riots of Passion and Blood in France
A Four Part Review of the War of Poverty Against Ignorance in France 2005.
Part One: 1630, wordcount; The Heat of the Action – The Fire of Resistance Thought and Praxis:
A World Inferno From Paris to Baghdad to Shanghai to Rio...
Part Two: (1387 wordcount) Summary of Recent Events and the Statement From the Ghetto Group MIB
Part Three: (1855 wordcount) Cause And Effect vs. Destiny: France Lights Europe on Fire! November 15, 2005
Part Four: (337 wordcount) Demands of the French Youth – A Basis for Negotiation and Liberation
Part One:
A World Inferno From Paris to Baghdad to Shanghai to Rio...
By Marcel and Patricia, a French Canadian and an Algerian deporte from Marseille.
"Here is in heat all of that I think of it... It is only my opinion: Opinion of a prolo soon to be evicted from its home and so I live all of this inside.
EL PUEBLO UNIDO JAMAS WILL BE VENCIDO: No PASARAN No PASARAN!!
I would kiss France until she loves me!" - Patricia
Enough unpunished police crimes, enough controls in the ghetto, enough garbage can schools, enough programmed unemployment, enough insalubrious accommodation, enough prisons, enough hagra and humiliations! Rather these are a planned evil, a parallel justice that protects the corrupt politicians and that condemns the weakest to marginalization in a cruel and systematic structure.
"Our shouting was ignored, now it is being stifled. Though our mouths are sewn shut and your ears are plugged, still you can see – and the eerie light of the burning transports - you can not help but see!"
-- Francois DuBois, Pas-de-Calais
With the curfew, the government responds by collective punishment and a law of exception that gives full powers to the police. Just sealing the lid on the cooking-pot will mark the memories of our neighbourhoods for a long time. The extension of the emergency Laws is a slap in the face to sanity and respect. It is a call to war...
From Clichy-sous-Bois to the Gallows Where the Last Bureaucrat Will Be Hung by the Guts of the Last Capitalist
"We burn cars, monsieur, because cars are what burn best," other "precious" things burn well too...
The attitude of the World and the Left of France to the millions of poor people and excluded immigrants is just like the world and the left's attitude to global warming: Lies and denial... Neither issue is going away and the longer they are ignored or misrepresented the worse it will be for everyone and everything... If only it were summer or even September there would be plenty of time to burn every car in Europe until people got the message... But with Winter coming the more radical elements in the 2005 French Uprising will probably seek to escalate the struggle now – unless the broad left-greens mount a general strike and bring down the government more gently.
The choice waits. But not for long one imagines. It only takes a few handfuls of committed youth to escalate the violence (self defense of the poor) with bus, train and shopping bombs. France will be paralyzed and the EURO will crash. The holiday shopping season will be disrupted and recession will ensue as global trade shrinks and businesses go bankrupt.
A Call against Fascism, for Massive Disobedience, and for a General Strike
The State does not worry to satisfy the legitimate aspirations of the workers and young people, it defends capitalism. When no one any longer believes in the promises of the politicians and the lies of the media, when the bludgeons and the prisons are insufficient to maintain the order of the merchants of misery and death, when all that is not enough, then the spectre of Fascism draws itself up. Fascism ois always there in everything associated with large governments and capitalism. The defense of liberty and human dignity are too important to leave to the politicians. In fact the masses make the history, and either one is with them, or one is against them. One cannot marginalise this violence that lies inside our cities, our homes, our campaigns… our existence. It is necessary to become aware of the nonsense of our global system which does not have anything human that exists in it or is possible from it. The so-called modern system must perish – by sword, or pen or fire or strike.
Only violence and the images of burning materialism can express this deaf violence of our times and our sins…
Death to Cars and the Politics of Defeat!
The poor and the marginalized people of France are doing what all of us should be doing – rioting. Since politics is constrained and perverted into the nothingness of styling the free market gods – We Should All Say Non! – NO! – And we should organize – like the youth gangs surrounding Paris, Toulouse, Lyon, Marseille, La Paz and Bogota have.
Youth from all over Europe should rise up and travel to those regions or locales that are most militant and need help (money, bodies, expertise). Where are the French anti\globalization protesters who should be standing in the streets – as Chavez and some of the Venezuelan army did when they had their Caracazo – the first of the Anti-globalization and anti-neoliberal protests back in 1989.Twelve hundred poor Venezuelans were assassinated because not enough police or army units disobeyed orders or helped the protesters – and the world sat on its mouths!
Revolution is revolution and it usually aids the poor, the marginalized and the anarchists. Youth rebellion (France), liberal or communist revolution, even Islamic revolution, all are against control or the status quo, they disrupt, they challenge they inspire they make people think. Are the Left or the anarchists opposed to thinking that is not a mirror image of their own thoughts, beliefs and biases? Revolutions are almost always against the rich and challenge their system. In the case of France in 2005 the youth are attacking the symbols of privilege and wealth – Cars and the source of the institutional terror that they live in: Government Buildings.
Of course in a war many things get burned or bombed – some that deserved it some that didn't and some in between. It is interesting how this is an attack at the whole concept of capitalism and liberal enlightenment. The best example of capitalism’s friendly face and success in a large country is France and the French welfare and immigration systems. Less than half as many children in France live in poverty as in the UK. France does much better and kindlier than most of Europe - while the US still lurks in the Dark Ages in comparison.
Yet even the best that Europe can accomplish – in terms of the environment, foreign aid, welfare, equality or immigration/post-colonialism is an utter and a terrible failure. You would think that this clarion call would make US liberals stop – for a moment at least – since the whole aim of their project will be a failure even if it occurs through a miracle! (the only way it could). But of course why would the left debate about this if they have nothing else to offer and their cushy jobs are dependent on raising more money from the gullible masses.
The saddest reality of this uprising in France is that lives will be lost and effort expended practically for nothing because the Left, the far left, the anti-globalization people and even Chavez and the anarchists have no plan – or they have been weak and slow to get their ideas out.
"When you're an immigrant here, you're just stuck in your shit. Does it really surprise you it's going up in flames ?" Momo, Age 26, Aulnay-sous-Bois.
France is burning. The People are rising up in an insurgency against racism, the police, the state, capitalism, etc. The response from the political left has been mediocre at best. The events in Clichy-Sous-Bois and the Banlieues ghettos are not controlled, inspired or organized by The Left, therefore The Left has little to gain from them. There are no consensus based meetings to decide what needs to be done, what committees should to be set up, what demands should be made, and who should become spokespersons. There is no need for any of these things.
Go to any ghetto of the world and ask the people what they want, and the answers will be the same as those of Clichy-Sous-Bois. There is no need to beg the government to fix things. Only a profound moron would not realize what has led to the rioting. There is no need for proclamations or letters of solidarity. The best form of solidarity possible is being shown in Marseille, Saint Etienne, Toulouse and the 300 other towns to which the rioting has spread. When it spreads throughout Europe and the world – that will be enough!
The rioters have no need of The Left. The thing left-wing politicians care about is the same thing that right-wing politicians care about; power. While individuals within Left organizations may mean well, the organizations soon take a mind of their own. Like a corporation, whose only goal is to make profit, the only goal of these political organizations is to gain power. The claim being that power is needed to change the world. But all too soon, changing the world becomes secondary to building power.
The power of The Left is just as much threatened by these riots as the power of The Right. These riots show that the people do not need bureaucratic political organizations to revolt. This is May 1968 again.
We are near to the final battles – those on the streets and those in our minds. The situation reminds one of Weimar Germany or Spain in 1937, with brave idealists fighting against the whole world or its apathy and indifference. The right, the center, the Left, the far left, the moderate Imans – and the anarchists? – and the rest of the rich who control the world outside of France have no respect and no advice for the millions of French youth who are fighting since no one else does…
So... the youth just fight – they know how to do that. They are tired of begging – they just want simple dignity and something to work for... like the indigenous of the Andes who ask:
"Can we stop being slaves and just be poor?"
The Riots Will Continue – Sporadically at Times – In The Face of Ignorance and Fascism – The Violence will Escalate – Dramatically at Times! – The Youth Need Heroes and More Martyrs – The Police and Sarkozy’s Soldiers Will be Happy to Comply!
Part Two
Summary of Main Events (Week Two of Riots)
Rioters have been using mobile phone text messages and the internet to plan arson attacks and retreats. Everyone is marveling at the two youth who incited some of the riots on their web blog.
On Saturday, the heaviest concentration of police was around the residence of President Jacques Chirac. Dozens of police manned barricades around the ornate building and its grounds along the Champs-Elysees, Paris's most famous boulevard. In other areas, however, police remained discreetly inside their buses, cars and vans, mostly just out of sight of tourists lined up outside museums, galleries and other sites.
Arjang Ahmadpour, 20, a student from Los Angeles waiting in line in a cold drizzle to take the elevator up the Eiffel Tower, shrugged off concerns about the unrest. "People asked me, 'Oh, you're going to Paris ? Aren't you scared ?' " he said. His response, "They're not going after tourists." Will they ?
Youths set fire to 400 vehicles before dawn Sunday, compared to 600 the previous night, police said. A week ago, 1,400 cars were incinerated in a single night. Fewer cars are burned but they are more valuable ones and owned by richer people - "We are trying to get to the most fascist members of society - the rich," said a youth in Toulouse on Saturday night. Belgium had its worst night in a week of attacks, with 29 cars, trucks and buses torched, the government said. In the Dutch city of Rotterdam, youths burned four cars, police said. Two cars were set afire in the Swiss town of Martigny.
PARIS, Nov. 12 -- Dozens of youths threw trash cans at police and attacked sidewalk shops in a main square of Lyon on Saturday night in the first clash between rioters and police in a city center after more than two weeks of violence in France, according to news reports.
Youths stormed through the historic Place Bellecour in Lyon, France's third-largest city, located in the southeastern Rhone Valley region, even though the city had imposed a nighttime curfew on minors not accompanied by parents. Police fired tear gas to disperse the youths, and 10 people were arrested.
Island-of-France: 315 cars burned in the area
Seine-saint-Denis
The police force challenged during the night 41 people, of which 23 were then placed in police custody.
Many public buildings and trade were the target of attacks in the department, a score of communes on the 40 of the department having been the theatre of urban violences.
The police officers were the target of jets of stones and taken with part in the evening with the White-mesnil, the COURNEUVE, Clichy-under-wood, in Tremblay-in-France, in Livry-gargan and SEVRAN. Incidents were also announced to BONDY, in LE BOURGET, with VILLEPINTE.
Aulnay-under-wood
a car of journalists of France 2 is stopped, emptied its occupants then reversed and burned
the warehouse of a dealer-garage Renault flaring
a nursery school and a primary school burned
the police station of ransacked Gallion
two buses flarings
Saint-Denis
a shot against the police force
28 vehicles flarings
White-mesnil
a burnt gymnasium
degradation of a public house
a degraded college
Two oars of the RER "caillassés" with the White-Mesnil, entrainant the interruption of the traffic on all the line B of the RER during the day of Thursday November 3. About thirty people threw stones against two oars the RER, Wednesday evening towards 23h, and forced, without the molester, the driver of one of the trains to leave its cockpit, broke panes and stole at least two of the passengers.
RAINCY
70 cramées cars
BOBIGNY
part of the shopping centre Bobigny 2 was vandalisée by forty people. The window of a shop loan-with-to carry was broken and the contents of two cases of a catch hypermarket.
a car set fire to in front of the prefecture
attacked prefecture
79 cramées cars
THE COURNEUVE
The police officers wiped two shootings of weapons with fire
a room of Eurocopter taken for target by kingpins
Noisy-the-dryness
a real shooting with ball against the firemen
Clichy-under-wood
barracks of the firemen attacked
YVELINES
27 vehicles flarings mainly with the Filled Valley (Mantes-the-pretty)
the Top-of-Seine
32 vehicles flarings
The ESSONNE
33 cramés vehicles mainly with BRUNOY and EVRY
Valley-Of OISE
18 burnt vehicles
12 interpellations
Valley-of-marl
13 burnt vehicles
four interpellations
Seine-et-Marne
15 brulés vehicles
PAU (Pyrenees-Atlantic)
(reports unclear)
Novemeber 14:
Among the attacks overnight was one in which vandals in the southern city of Toulouse rammed a car into a primary school before setting the building on fire.
In northern France, arsonists set fire to a sports centre in Faches-Thumesnil and a school in the town of Halluin, regional officials said. A gas canister exploded inside a burning garbage can in the Alpine city of Grenoble, injuring two police officers, the national police said, adding that three other officers had been injured elsewhere.
Police said 115 people had been taken into custody since yesterday.
The sensitive district of Ousse of Wood underwent a forth night of incidents. Two cars were burnt in the night of Wednesday to Thursday. The day before, another car had been burned and firemen and police officers were hit with rocks. In the night of Monday to Tuesday, had been damaged and the container post office of dustbins flarings in the medium of the streets of the district. The police force and fire engines had undergone jets of projectiles.
French Republicanism is under attack not only from within. Today the forces of globalization demand that the French State, the symbol of the Republic's commitment to all its citizens, withdraw its safety net, leaving them to struggle increasingly on their own against the vagaries of a market that cares little about the principles of “liberté, egalité, fraternité.” And it is here that the struggles in the long-abandoned banlieues intersect with the struggles of Muslim countries to integrate into a global system that for centuries has been predicated on their marginalization.
Indeed, just threat of exposure to the economic logic that has long defined French immigrant life led one million French citizens to take to the streets last month in nation-wide protests against the “neoliberal policies” of the recently reshuffled government. Standing on the Boulevard Beaumarchais watching hundreds of thousands of workers march past, I was struck by how few of them had come from the banlieues, whose African or Arab residents have long born the brunt of the economic restructuring against which the marchers were protesting.
This points to the third problem behind the violence: the French Left, which sees itself as the protectors of the highest ideals of the Republic, has largely failed to engage the poor minority communities who have long been excluded from the benefits of the celebrated “French economic model.” Instead, leading Leftists have attacked Muslims who've dared to point out the gap between their rhetoric and actions for being “not Republican” and therefore “not one of us” Like the government, the Left is unable to recognize that it is the Republic that has made it impossible for Muslims to be “one of them.”
Ultimately, the violence in France reflects a larger struggle between a “Euro-Islam” that is well-integrated into a globalized European Union, and a “ghetto Islam” that see little hope for such a future, turning instead to a closed and increasingly violent form of identity to resist a system that excludes, or at best exploits, the majority of them. In a nut shell, this is the struggle facing over one billion Muslims in the age of globalization
European and French Radicals Assist Unabated Rioting
Riots in France force curfews as civil unrest enters its 14th day. The violence spread to Brussels and Berlin, raising concern in other European capitals.
The Greek authorities are concerned that the violence in France could lead to trouble after some 30 youths on scooters today hurled petrol bombs and stones at a police station in the Zographou area of Athens.
Communique on the French riots from MIB, a group active in the banlieues around France and part of the No Border network.
From Minguettes (1981) to Vaulx-en-Velin (1990), from Mantes-la-Jolie (1991) to Sartrouville (1991), from Dammarie-les-Lys (1997) to Toulouse (1998), from Lille (2000) to Clichy, the message is clear :
Enough of these unpunished crimes of the police, enough of the suffering silence of millions of families, of men and women, who suffer daily from the social violence, so much more devastating than a burning car.
With the curfew, the government responds by collective punishment and a law of exception that gives full powers to the police. Just sealing the lid on the cooking-pot will mark the memories of our neighbourhoods for a long time.
There will never be peace in our neighbourhoods as long as there is not justice and real equality.
No pacification nor any curfew will keep us from continuing our fight for this, even when the cameras will have ceased rolling.
NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE !
MIB, 11/09/2005 ; MIB - 45 Rue d'Aubervilliers 7518 Paris - http://mib.ouvaton.org
Additional Thoughts from the Marcel and Patricia : (2194 word count)
Part Three:
Cause And Effect and Destiny: France Lights Europe on Fire! November 15 2005
What distinguishes the revolt currently taking place in France is not only the scale of it, sweeping across France from one ghetto to the next but that it reflects the fact that the legacy of colonialism and its benighted descendent, the 'neo-liberal' agenda of the IMF and the World Bank has finally come back to haunt the Western world.
Ultimately, it is the failure to recognise that the fundamental contradictions of capitalism that has seen firstly, the importation of cheap labour to do the jobs considered too demeaning by the white working classes of the capitalist world to perform and secondly, the export of industrial capitalism to the un-unionised working people of our former colonies. Add to this the assault by the IMF and the World Bank on the poor of the planet which has displaced millions who have in turn 'invaded' the metropolitan centres of capital in search of a living.
Failure of the imagination ? "Political exhaustion" on the part of the ruling elites ? I despair if this is what passes for a 'left' analysis when we have for decades experienced the results of the imperial mindset that affects all sections of capitalist society. Until we face the reality that we are the privileged of the world, living on borrowed time and on stolen labour, there can be no solution.
A suffocating myopia has descended on the West, one that ignores the reality of a world that outside the metropolitan centres is based on sheer brute force of arms and repression whether in Colombia, Iraq, or Palestine, where the uniting factor is an imperialism increasingly desperate in its attempts not only to hold onto what it has stolen but to absorb the fact that the policies of centuries has finally come to a head.
That it explodes in the face of a smug and comfortable intelligentsia, whether of the 'left' or the right should come as no surprise to us, it is but our just desserts for the centuries of oppression we have inflicted on Fanon's Wretched of the Earth and for ignoring the reality of life in our own 'backyard', even as we speed off up the M-25 to some cathedral of consumption to get our fix of fixtures.
In the 17 days of rioting, more than 8,000 cars have been torched, some 2,550 people have been taken into custody and held for at least 24 hours and nearly 300 cities and towns have been touched by the unrest, police said. Most of those arrested are young, French and have never been arrested before. The government keeps lying about this and claims that only a few habitual criminals are causing all of the problems, while the rest of the poor are happy and feel well respected and integrated!.
In eastern France, bands of youths hurled Molotov cocktails at cars, buses, schools, a church and a library, while in Strasbourg a German television crew was attacked, and two Italian journalists suffered the same fate in Clichy near Paris. Rioters burned about 60 cars late Monday in the greater Lyon area, as 12 people were taken into custody in sporadic violence in France's second-largest city, police said.
In the southern city of Toulouse, bus drivers walked off their jobs Tuesday after a bus was commandeered by youths late Monday and set on fire. More than 30 cars were torched, and hooded rioters hurled Molotov cocktails and rocks at riot police, who responded with teargas.
The often-heard complaint among mainstream and even many "far left" "political people" that these youth are "apolitical" is one-sided and mainly nonsense, although these youth have not gained the conscious understanding that would be necessary for them to go further, even in the limited sense of having a clear understanding of the nature of their enemies and seeking allies against them. It is not "apolitical" to reject the only life the system can offer them - it is breaking with the bourgeois definition of what politics are allowed and whether the starting point of politics is, as another article in Libération said, the "recognition" that the present system is the only possible one. In fact, not only have the youth refused to accept the circumstances in which they themselves are imprisoned, they pay more real attention to key world affairs such as in Iraq and Palestine, or at least feel them more deeply, than many of their elders who have let their opposition to imperialist crimes go soft because "their" government tries to appear uninvolved.
These youth are neither "victims" nor "offenders". They have become makers of history, taking action on a scale that no one else has in a country where the majority feel ground down at best. They have stormed onto the stage of political life that has been forbidden to them. There is a consensus among mainstream political parties and the tolerated opposition that this outbreak should be stifled and/or crushed, but above all ended - quickly. These youth are struggling to awaken, in a country full of sleepers, and it's about time.
"Do you think it's normal," they demanded, "for a whole town not to have a library or even a cinema ?" A major complaint, heard everywhere in the suburbs, is that these housing complexes were deliberately located far from everything, from any place people might want to go, with public transportation only to where they're supposed to work and practically no good way to get around at night - certainly not to Paris. "Even if you have a car, department 93 plates are like a signal to the police to humiliate you," the youth said. "Why did they build blockhouses to keep us in, instead of normal housing ?" one young man insisted. They call the cité a ghetto, not in the American sense of being inhabited almost exclusively by one or two nationalities but in the original sense of a place where certain people are forced to live and barely allowed to leave.
"It's because of who we are - foreigners - from Algeria, Morocco, Mali and Turkey." As the Portuguese, Spanish and other white kids who live in the cités will tell you - the bartender, for instance - the cops don't like anyone who lives there.
Youth talk about the killing of Zyed. They remember the recent police raids on buildings occupied by immigrant squatters and Sarkozy's pledge of mass deportations. These things showed what they are up against, signs that official society sees them all as less than human - in fact, worse than animals because they are considered dangerous. They were all French citizens, but that made little difference. "If they say our communities have to be cleaned out, that means they think we're filth, that we should be gotten rid of," one of them explained bitterly. Another added, "If you have a certain kind of name, most companies won't hire you. And if your address is in department 93 and someplace like Clichy, you'll never even get an interview. The only place most of us can work is in an illegal garment sweatshop in somebody's apartment, and now there's even less of that. Besides, we don't want those jobs." Some of the older among them did have jobs ; the younger ones weren't eager to discuss how they got by.
The youth think of themselves as Islamic, in the sense of that background being part of their identity and especially the identity by which the world judged them. But their thinking is more secular and their goals in no way religious. Many people all over the region were especially angry about the tear-gassing of the mosque. More than an attack on their religion, they considered it an insult to their humanity. Youth explain it like this : "There are two or three churches around here and a synagogue. No one has ever attacked any of them. That's because we respect people no matter what their religion. If they attack a mosque, it's to show us that they have no respect for us at all."
"If they don't give us what we want," one said, "it's war." That the other side has a real army and can't be defeated by stones and Molotov cocktails is irrelevant. The youth don't see it that way. The government couldn't deal with them especially not all of them all over the country. The police would have to back off eventually. The threat of facing the army, that question remains.
"We'll make them listen to us!" said Zyed's neighbor. When you go home, turn on the television - you'll see all of France is burning."
What is best about these youth? They are determined to rebel against injustice by any means at hand, they feel they have nothing to lose and sometimes they are fearless. But they also need revolutionary science so that they can understand more clearly what they were up against and what would have to be done to bring about radical change. Mao said that the most basic truth of Marxism is that it's right to rebel. When these two elements come together, proletarian rebels and a scientific outlook, the future of France, and of the countries like it all over Europe, will look very different.
Night after night, the uprising has spread from Paris suburbs to other parts of France : to Rouen and Lille in the north, Marseille and Toulouse in the south, Rennes in the west, and Dijon and Strasbourg in the east. France has more than 700 working class suburbs like Clichy-sous-Bois with the endless rows of aging apartment buildings, as shown in the film La Haine (Hate).
For decades, millions of immigrant workers were drawn to France to perform hard and degrading work for the lowest wages. And then, as the economy changed, many were simply thrown out of work and abandoned in these rundown housing projects outside the major cities. Unemployment among immigrant communities have risen to 30 percent. The youth in particular face constant beatings and worse from the police. And the abuse has intensified because of a growing anti-immigrant climate in Europe, and in France in particular--where harassment and repressive laws are encouraged by government leaders and reactionary parties, often under the guise of protecting the country from "terrorism" and "Islamic extremism."
The response of the government officials and much of the media to the rebellion has been to escalate their calls for a crackdown on working class immigrants and the youth. The youth have been demonized as "gang members." The conservative newspaper Le Figaro claimed that the current rebellions "are the consequence of an uncontrolled immigration policy", echoing the demands of the fascist politician Jean-Marie Le Pen that France be "cleansed" of immigrants.
Arab and Muslim people are treated like criminals and unwelcome strangers--after their home countries were colonized by France, after their labor was exploited in France for decades, and even after many of the youth were born and raised in France.
This righteous rebellion is their answer : that they will not accept this mistreatment and that they demand profound changes in the direction France has taken.
Part Four: DEMANDS OF FRENCH YOUTH
***** "When you're an immigrant here, you're just stuck in your shit. Does it really surprise you it's going up in flames ?" Momo, Age 26, Aulnay-sous-Bois
As is always stifled the silent suffering of the millions of families, men and women, which are subjected daily to more destructive acts of violence than a car which burns. Across the curfew, the government answers it by the collective punishment and a law of exception which gives full powers to the police. They put the cover on the casserole and it will mark memories of our quarters for a long time.
Paris Uprising 2005 - C'est l'economie, stupide
Now we have the power and the world stage,
We demand:
A doubling of the economic and social aid promised by the government;
AMNESTY for all those arrested in the disturbances in last 2 weeks;
USA must join the ICC and give up its security council veto;
EU must withdraw from WTO and develop closer ties with Arab countries;
EU must formally state that the USA must withdraw from Iraq and all military bases in the region;
redirect economy and budgets away from war and weapons production and BUILD INSTEAD a Europe and a region open to all and pursuing social equity and social harmony as equals.
*( First posted in English at: http://mostlywater.org/node/3542)
Everyone – the poor of the world – agree to all of these demands and more!
We also have agreement that there must be a new form of governance in the regions of poverty. We call for a continent wide discussion on novel forms of democratic participation. At this time we can only say that local councils should be formed through elections with the people deciding whether to have a participatory structure or to organize on the basis of the ‘millet’ system where the community (millet) would enjoy the right to organize its social, cultural and educational life in accordance with its religious beliefs
For Liberty or Chaos - le capitalisme est fini
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