Calm Like a Bomb

The French riots are but a recent memory, but the rage still lingers. It needs only a spark to roar back into life. Too bad the French are doing their best to ignore the reality, and the media is doing its best to make like the riots never happened. And don't say that the riots had nothing to do with Islam - or that Muslims didn't make up a large component of the rioters:

They sing about the riots that erupted two months ago, about being Muslim and about not feeling French in France. For them the unrest is not over, it is waiting to break loose again.

"The quiet is deceptive," said Bala "Balastik" Coulibaly, 24, of nearby Clichy-sous-Bois, his eyes scanning the deserted parking lot from deep inside his sweatshirt as he took a break between two songs. It was in Clichy that the accidental death of two teenagers on Oct. 27 set off three weeks of rioting in immigrant neighborhoods across France.

Since then, the whiff of gasoline and tear gas has disappeared. But the calm is fragile, impatient and tinged with the cynicism of youths who fear being let down again by a political class that allowed mass unemployment and social exclusion to accumulate over three decades in the poor suburbs ringing France's big cities.

"The rage in the suburbs is only asleep," said Balastik, a French youth of Mauritanian origin who has been jobless since dropping out of school seven years ago and is dreaming of a career as a rapper with his band, Styladone. "It wouldn't take much to wake it up again."

Many in France wait with bated breath for the results into an investigation into the death of two teenagers who were electrocuted in a Paris surburb. It was their deaths that sparked the three week riots that trashed nearly 10,000 cars, hundreds of businesses, and resulted in countless injuries and thousands of arrests. If the investigation results in the exoneration of the police - many fear that the rioters will take to the streets once again.

Atlas Shrugs reports that the car torchings continue, but at the 'normal rate.' Is that the new normal? Nope - just the normal torchings that happen every Christmas:

National Police spokeswoman Catherine Casteran said Sunday that about 100 cars were reported burned overnight on Christmas Eve, which was equivalent to ''an ordinary weekend'' and the number of vehicles burned last Christmas.

UPDATE:
Erik at No-Pasaran notes that instead of France coming together in the weeks after the rioting died down to acceptable levels, we're seeing the recriminations and grievances unanswered. It's not going to end well for the French.

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