Jon Henley (Extracted from " 'We hate France and France hates us' ", The Guardian, 9 November 2005)

". . . . Sylla summed it up. 'We burn because it's the only way to make ourselves heard, because it's solidarity with the rest of the non-citizens in this country, with this whole underclass. Because it feels good to do something with your rage,' he said."

[Ed: 1,000 blazing cars have become 6,000 since my posting of three days ago and eight major cities have become 40. It will die out soon because the rioters will run out of cars to burn in their own localities. They damage their own environments and prospects more than anyone's else's. The politicans still cannot get it into their heads that automation, rationalisation and computerisation are taking the middle-skills out of the job market, thus decreasing the prospects of status-advancement for all the population. Two separate populations are steadily emerging in developed countries as distinct from each other as Athenian citizens were from their more numerous slaves in ancient Greece. Theirs was a "democracy" too. If modern politicians wish to remain relevant in the coming years, they need a total re-think of the assumptions they made a century ago of what makes economies tick and societies contented.]