Not a single word in the press anymore about the ongoing vandalism in France’s lost neighbourhoods. Yesterday the French government officially declared the riots over. Police figures are at exactly 98 cars torched on Wednesday night. This, the police say, is “a normal average.” Consequently the 20th consecutive night of violence was declared the last one.

Last night probably another hundred cars were set ablaze – as will be the case tonight, tomorrow night, and the following ones. Before large-scale rioting started on 27 October the police had already registered 30,000 car-becues this year – an average of, indeed, 100 a day. What a boost this must be to the French automobile industry. In the same period there were 3,800 attacks on police officers – a “normal” non-riot average of almost 13 a day.

The world has had its fill of French riots, the press is looking for something new to write about, Europe wants to believe that the social realities exposed by the French riots are typically French and no concern of theirs. And France is impatient to return to business as usual and lull the French into a sense of security that can only be more fragile than it was before.

Things will never be the same, however. The fact the European Union is giving exorbitant sums of money to buy the peace of France’s Muslim population betrays that they are uncomfortable about the unrest spreading to other European cities. Not only in France but all over Europe, tensions in society are rising. Though issues of unemployment and inequality in the French suburbs may have contributed to the recent explosion of arson and aggression, they are not the only cause. The riots are not just a response to social injustice. One striking aspect of the riots was the hatred reflected in the faces and demeanour of the rioters.

Nationalist parties from seven European countries convened in Vienna last weekend to join forces. The “patriotic and nationalist parties and movements” signed a so-called “Vienna Declaration” calling for a stop to immigration in the entire European Union and the defence of Europe against “terrorism, aggressive islamism, superpower imperialism and economic aggression by low-wage countries.” The parties also reject the European Constitution and demand that “geographically, culturally, religiously and ethnically non-European territories in Asia and Africa” will be excluded from joining the European Union.

The participants were invited by the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) and included Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Front National from France, Alessandra Mussolini’s Azione Sociale from Italy, the Spanish Alternativa Española, the anti-Hungarian Great Romania Party, the openly anti-Semite Bulgarian party Ataka, and Belgium’s largest party, the Vlaams Belang. The Italian Lega Nord, the Danish People’s Party and Poland’s governing Law and Justice were not present but are said to have sent their greetings.

The media, including the news services, no longer report on the French riots. Almost 100 cars were set on fire last night, but according to the French police this is the normal daily figure across France’s no-go areas. Hence, the situation in France is back to normal.

There is some other good news, too. It appears British banks are not going to ban piggy banks after all. According to MediaWatch (MW) the story was hogwash. It was widely reported, also by us, but seems to have been based on an article in a regional paper in the north west of England, The Lancashire Evening Telegraph (LET) that was not checked properly. Or to be more precise: LET quoted bank officials saying certain things – and we did not check with the officials whether they were being quoted correctly – while MW quotes officials from the same banks saying opposite things – and, again, we are not going to check with the bank officials whether this time they are being quoted directly. As people cannot check and double-check every piece of information, a certain degree of trust is always involved: we trusted the facts given by LET to be correct, and now we trust those given by MW to be correct.

The riots in France have made the world suddenly aware of a reality which city dwellers in Europe have known for some years: that there are no-go areas surrounding almost every major European town. These have become virtually self-ruling enclaves, abandoned by European authorities and police. A case in point is the Swedish town of Malmö, which is said to be unique because creeping anarchy has spread to almost the entire town.

Another thing which many people have known, but which has never been said aloud, is the spread of polygamy across Western Europe. Since yesterday, when French officials, including one government minister, cited polygamy as a possible factor of social breakdown in the suburbs, the media are suddenly devoting attention to a phenomenon which many people have known existed for years: Muslim immigrants going home for a holiday and returning with an additional wife.

According to Gérard Larcher, France’s employment minister, polygamy is one reason for the large-scale rioting in his country. The minister told the Financial Times that multiple marriages among immigrants lead to anti-social behaviour among youths who lack a father figure. This makes employers wary of hiring ethnic minorities. “If people are not employable, they will not be employed,” he explained. Bernard Accoyer, a leading parliamentarian of the governing UMP, told French radio that children from large polygamous families have problems integrating into mainstream society. He said polygamy leads to “an inability to provide an education as it is needed in an organised, normative society like in Europe and notably France.”

Polygamy in France is illegal but authorities tolerate the existence of an estimated 30,000 families in which there is more than one wife. As these are large families, up to 250,000 people may live in such a family. Most of them come from North and sub-Saharan African countries such as Algeria, Mali and Senegal, where the practice is legal. The French authorities freely granted visas to family members of immigrants until 1993, when former interior minister Charles Pasqua, who was decried as a “hardline rightwinger,” banned visas for more than one spouse. Many wives, however, continued to enter illegally, while the government relaxed its stance after protests.

Angela Merkel

The congresses of the German Christian-Democrat Parties CDU and CSU, and the German Social-Democrat SPD have endorsed Germany’s new ‘Black-Red” coalition government, led by CDU leader Angela Merkel. One of the things the new coalition wants to do is to revive the EU constitutional treaty when Berlin takes over the helm of the European Union in January 2007.

Though the Christian-Democrats endorsed the new coalition, critics within Merkel’s own party feel uneasy about the party giving up so much of its program. The influential conservative newspaper Die Welt writes today that “Nobody knows [...] the direction in which Merkel wants to take the country.” The paper complains that Merkel is back-pedalling on all the free market reforms she promised during the election campaign.

Socialist states generate no wealth. In a socialist system the private sector, if allowed to exist, receives few incentives to create jobs. Hence, unemployment is high. The socialist “solution” to this problem, however, is easy: give the unemployed a government job. That is the way French President Jacques Chirac is going to “solve” the crisis in the French suburbs.

In his first direct television address to the nation since the large-scale rioting started on October 27, Chirac announced that a “voluntary civil service” will be created for 50,000 “youths” (read: mainly Muslim second and third generation immigrants). The French President sees no danger in multiculturalism. Nor does he think that the explicit refusal of some to assimilate into French society will lead to a “clash of civilisations.” On the contrary, Chirac lays the blame for the troubles on French society. The riots, he said, were caused by a “spiritual crisis, a crisis of orientation and an identity crisis” in France. Hence, France has to change: “We will not establish anything durable if we do not recognise and accept the diversity of French society.”

Hurrah! Last night was even “quieter” than the night before. According to French police statistics in the 18th consecutive night of rioting, there were violent incidents in 120 municipalities. In the whole of France 284 cars were set alight and 115 people were arrested, which brings the total number of arrests since the beginning of the riots on October 27 to 2,652. Five policemen were injured in Grenoble when a gas canister exploded in a dustbin that had been set alight. Paris was said to be “calm,” though other sources reported that a gas station had been set ablaze. The police announced that 68 cars were torched in Paris, compared to 76 the previous night. Michel Gaudin, the head of French police, said earlier that 86 vehicles burned in a single night is “about normal” in Paris. That, apparently, was more or less the pre-riot level in the capital of multicultural France.

The state is dead, but we are not allowed to know. Hence the following official statement released this morning by the Belgian Ministry of the Interior: “On Saturday night the Brussels police detained about fifty people. Here and there cars were set alight. Nevertheless, the situation remained quiet.”

On Saturday night the Brussels police clashed with rioting “youths” in the center of the city. The authorities describe the events as “a game of cat and mouse.” In the course of this “game” five cars, two buses and a number of dustbins were set on fire. In Liège, the major city of Wallonia, the French-speaking part of Belgium, nine vehicles were torched, including a truck. The rest of Wallonia was “quiet” too. In Charleroi nine cars went up in flames, in Louvain-la-Neuve three and in Binche one. In Colfontaine a kindergarten was set alight. In Moeskroen, a town bordering France, a truck burned out after being hit by a molotov cocktail. The fire brigade had to protect the surrounding houses, but could not prevent damage to a nearby school and a butcher’s.