I know the riots of last year were a disaster for France, I also think it is probably reasonable to categorize them as race riots that revealed unrest stemming from long-standing problems with the way immigrants have been integrated, or not, into France. If this viewpoint is considered, I think there may have been better responses to it than a massive police raid launched for the media using 1000 policemen, many of them wearing black hoods, to arrest 35 people.

The rioting began when two teenage boys were killed in an accident with a police car and no one believed it was an accident; does this really sound like a situation that will be improved by 1000 police in black hoods? All of this caught my eye even more than usual because the article mentions Arnouville as one of the suburbs that was in the police raid. For any of you who have known me for a long time and heard the some of the really strange stories that I pull out very rarely, the French-Moroccan voodoo sisters that I spent a summer with in Myrtle Beach were from Arnouville. That was also the summer when somebody tried to start teaching me to belly dance. It was a very long time ago.