Some recent video from Paris:
The New York Times perspective: the above events either didn’t happen or weren’t newsworthy:
BBC perspective: “Hundreds arrested and dozens of police injured after Champions League riots in France”.
A total of 219 people have been injured in clashes between football fans and police across France after Paris St-Germain (PSG) won the Champions League final against Arsenal.
It might have been the police who started the violence, in other words, and the only thing that we know about the non-police combatants is that they were “football fans”.
X perspective: the rioters were Muslims and/or “North African”.
Guess Greenspun is stopping by Paris during this year’s required Portugal residency.
This reminds me I need to get back to reading Houellebecq. I stopped during “The Map and the territory”. I guess I had started feeling that my life is becoming very sad, LOL!
> Jon de Lorraine
Nice music.
> Notice how they chant “Allahu Akbar.” This is a religious war, and this is their way of saying “we own the place now.”
“Allahu Akbar” can be like “hip hip hurray” for the religious folks, the religious intonation could be inadvertent. The Tweeter is trying to make the chant more sensationalist than what the chanters intend, so that he can get more likes/subscribes etc.
> North African PSG fans burned, devastated and looted Paris. If you import third world you become third world.
If you don’t have a good filtering mechanism, based on education, academic achievement etc., for importing from corrupt countries, it can lead to this. IMO, it wouldn’t be very difficult to come up with a set of people from one developed country such that when they are sent to another developed country, the other developed country wouldn’t want them there.
The Tweeter, inspite of knowing what I said, is making sweeping generalizations in order to incite emotions to leverage for likes and subscribes.
“The terrible predicament of a beautiful girl is that only an experienced womanizer, someone cynical and without scruple, feels up to the challenge. More often than not, she will lose her virginity to some filthy lowlife in what proves to be the first step in an irrevocable decline.”
― Michel Houellebecq, The Elementary Particles
True enough I suppose, and I lost more than one sweet girl to a filthy lowlife, but do we really need such cynicism in an age which already has a critical mass of it? (Look who’s talking. 🙂 ) I prefer W. Cowper and escapism during these times, to each his/her/herm own.
Filtering is tricky. By recollection of a Soviet mathematician I once knew, who taught in Algerian and Libyan universities back during USSR times, his students liked to stage political, religious and other riots to coincide with final exams. Their elite was not immune. Soviet doctor wrote that he became friends with either Algerian or Libyan ruling class when he saved one of college student son of elite who got a life threatening knife wound during a seasonal political/religious riot.
NH: That’s one of my favorite quotes as well. I didn’t grow up in the West so I don’t know, but wasn’t true about India, definitely, it was very traditional.
In the case of the elementary particles, Houellebecq’s alter ego, Michael, WAS looking for sadness, some of us unnecessarily find it cool. I still remember the scene from the book. Anabelle insists him to dance with him, and he doesn’t, and just smiles and walks away when she starts dancing with the other guy. That smile came from the ego, meaning “I know what’s going to happen now”, “I am too cool to dance with my girlfriend, which is common in France”, instead of understanding what the other person needs/wants/means, which comes from the spirit.
Furthermore, neither Michael nor the lowlife could really connect with Annabelle. Michael, who found himself way too cool to understand what Annabelle wants, and the lowlife found himself way too cool to stick to one girl’s virginity. Neither of them understood Annabelle.
I met a very smart and beautiful French girl in Sweden, whom I told that I like Houellebecq, and she thought that I am looking for sadness. What she was missing is that there are two common ways to connect via other humans, one via vices and the other via the spirit. Traditional dating in the West, from what I gather from films, had a balancing spiritual element, to the materialistic element, the present one doesn’t.
I haven’t read Cowper, will definitely try to read at least one of his poem.
> IMO, it wouldn’t be very difficult to come up with a set of people from one developed country such that when they are sent to another developed country, the other developed country wouldn’t want them there
So you’re saying that unfiltered (by skills etc) immigration, even from another developed country, is not safe, let alone from the undeveloped world? Much wisdom here
The Squirrel by William Cowper
Drawn from his refuge in some lonely elm
That age or injury has hollow’d deep,
Where, on his bed of wool and matted leaves,
He has outslept the winter, ventures forth
To frisk a while, and bask in the warm sun,
The squirrel, flippant, pert, and full of play.
He sees me, and at once, swift as a bird,
Ascends the neighbouring beech; there whisks his brush,
And perks his ears, and stamps and scolds aloud,
With all the prettiness of feign’d alarm,
And anger insignificantly fierce.
FR:
> So you’re saying that unfiltered (by skills etc) […]
Yes.
NH: Thanks, man.
> With all the prettiness of feign’d alarm,
> And anger insignificantly fierce.
Very well chosen words to describe squirrels 🐿️
I’ve heard the stench of urine at soccer matches makes them more aggro. Could that explain other antisocial behavior in Le Cité D’urine?
https://phys.org/news/2024-12-soccer-fandom-linked-violence.pdf
> Perhaps the most extreme case is the Soccer War (more commonly known as the Football War) of 1969, when World Cup qualifiers between El Salvador and Honduras inflamed existing political tensions. Clashes between fans added to the animosity, and within days, the two nations were at war. More than 2,000 people died in the brief conflict.
Soccer is extremely boring. Maybe we should encourage them to stay at home with a volume of V. Hugo. Reading about Waterloo 5 times is more interesting that 2 goals per game.
If you could convince any of those rioters to read a book, let alone V. Hugo, it would be a breakthrough in human psychology that would win you a Nobel prize.
Yet another shithole city and country in Europe! What was once a jewel of a city (as few as 25 years ago) has been destroyed to such an extent that it now resembles Kabul or Mogadishu. Utterly invaded by parasitic scum (particularly Muslim terrorists, child rapists and murderers) who despise Western Civilization. Stay the hell away from there.
We know that France, and Paris in particular, has faced significant changes related to immigration and integration. Many immigrants have not adapted to French culture and values, instead they have influenced French youth into becoming anti-French. I know this because I have family members who immigrated to Paris in 1978 and have witnessed these changes firsthand.
That said, I don’t think Philip’s post about the riot is really about the state of France itself. Rather, it is about what he sees as bias in news coverage. His point is that incidents like this get no attention because reporting on them could lead to uncomfortable questions about immigration policy, integration, and social cohesion — topics that many media organizations and political progressives will avoid because they know they cannot win, even when deep down they know their country is going to shithole.
> That said, I don’t think Philip’s post about the riot is really about the state of France itself. […]
I agree. American(?) news specifically:
https://www.france24.com/en/france/20260531-more-than-280-arrested-in-paris-as-clashes-erupt-on-psg-victory-night
To be completely fair it’s likely not many of the young rioters pictured are practicing Muslims. Not that it matters.
Dear Phil,
The NYT choosing to ignore these incidents is hardly surprising to either of us! These go against their narrative that all migration is good.