i assume you havent actually been to paris suburbs any time recently?, you make it sound like kosova.

well that would be most western governments then, recalling from memory, the national debt of the US in 2004 was $6 trillion, and has been steadily increasing since y2k
a more recent story shows it to be $8.5 trillion in 2006 far more debt than france has, and also hasnt lost any jobs, the US has lost almost 50,000 jobs a month from the period 2002 - feb2006, with a change in the trend onwards, jobs are now being created at an average of 24,000 jobs a month

Guess its not only socialism that causes unbalanced budgets and lack of jobs then?

Government in france has problem changing anything, the french are politcally militant and fight anything that changes the way things are, all peoples are like this to a certain degree but the french are extreme.

its perfectly acceptable to expect government to deal with problems in public services such as police. or do you advocate a private police force? now that would be a mess.

that said, theres no way illegal immigrants should get anything from the french government short of possibly a few nights in prison before theyre deported :P.

It takes me 2hours to get there by train, it's the next big city around, so I'm quite often in Paris.

How about some jails? They're there i l l e g a l l y.

Not everyone in the Banlieues is an illegal immigrant, you should at least give the French living there some schools.

Would you stop building schools, streets and wire in Texas because some Mexican crossing the border might use it?

No Mr. Strawman, I never said anything about the citizens, I'm talking about the illegals. Jail them and/or deport them - especially when they're caught rioting. As for the citizens, I really don't care what thier government buys for them.

I still don't believe its that bad. You've obviously never seen Sicko or you'd know these people have it great in France.

There are no unhappy people in France. Watch this video from the greatest movie ever and try telling me otherwise.

Sicko is like everything Moore does satirical.

Just stop the nonsense already talking about nannies and stuff.
The Banlieues are somewhat unique in that form in western Europe, it really does look ,dunno, like Romania there.

Someone should have stopped the mass production of cheap flats there. Now they have to face the consequences of not taking action in all these years.

That's a perfect example of what a free market can do to the people.

Yeah more prisons, because that worked for the US. 7 times more prisoners in the US, and still crime levels are above most of Europes'. Just putting a lot of people in prison just does not work.
(But at least they are 'though on crime'. BTW the 'war on drugs' is probably also an aspect.)

Besides how long do you think is right for people to be prison for illegally being in a country? When set them free, are they gonna be any less pissed when you set them free after?
Or do you think just dumping them in other countries is going to help?

What these people need is jobs(or rather participation), education, equal treatment.

About that ad-hominem, thought i was making an observation. I mean, you immediatly jump to the conclusion that it must be the evil socialism. (Or perhaps oligarchy)
Many countries have been over-spending in the past, and with aging populations, many costs are going up. The countries are in debt, but it is workable compared to the sizes of the economy.

No, it's not specifically socialism, and yes, I would agree that most of the Western world is bankrupt.

Collectivist forms of government inevitably lead to hardship. The "planners" can never efficiently distribute resources, leading to greater inequality and necessitating coercion. It's a progressive cycle.

I've been to France! There are obviously problems there like anyplace else, but all in all, it is a nice place to visit. The people there seem friendly enough.

I hope you aren't implying that Moore would misrepresent the truth in one of his documentaries?

Theres no such thing as perfect distribution of resources, but they clearly do a much better job in socialist france than in the capitalist US where the poverty rate is 17% compared to 6% in france and 4% in denmark (which incidently has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the world and one of the largest governments)

Poor people in America are fat, have cell phones, own cars, and watch television.

Being poor in America is far from the life of ease you imply. It's better than being poor in the third-world, true, but it's no picnic, I assure you.

Our capitalist system is broken. I certainly won't deny that, but it's not an indictment of capitalism. It's a symptom of our broken government.

What has socialism got to do with the subject of this thread? Yes, there are a good number of socialist things in place in France and yes they have problems - like all countries do. Their unemployment rate has dropped from 10.1% in February 2005 to ~8% in June 2007, which anyone can point out is a drop. No-one on here who is from the USA can make any derogatory comments as their country is quite simply going down hill. They have record deficit (which is still increasing)- whilst France has managed to decrease the deficit significantly (from about 4% to about 2.5 in 2006). Everyone in France is able to get healthcare, whereas in the USA a huge number of people can't. I could go on...

These riots are all to do with high levels of tension between the predominantly immigrant population of the suburbs and the police.