(Paris – Rein de Chien) Today, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, tacitly acknowledged that France has failed to live up to its egalitarian ideals by introducing a stunning change in strategy to address the widespread unrest and violence in France. He said France will distribute puppy dogs to any and all youth in the troubled suburbs (banlieux) of France so that they will be made to feel that they belong in France.
"We must be lucid: The Republic is at a moment of truth," Mr. Villepin told parliament. "The dogs of Paris are famous, who doesn’t know the French Poodle? We are idiots for not realizing sooner the solution when it was shitting right there in front of us.”
In a startlingly change of behaviour, a notably hang-dog Interior Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, who previously advocated for law-and-order tactics, said riot police would, tout suite, be replaced with municipal workers from the Departments of Animal Control armed with 8-12 week old puppies. Wearing their easily identified green overalls, they will distribute thousands of puppies throughout the troubled suburbs to any and all disaffected youth who want them.
We fully expect to face "determined individuals, structured gangs, organized criminality," Sarkozy said, "but we are confident that rioters will quickly get the message out that we are welcoming them, finally, into French society. There is no better sign of French-ness that one’s dog. We expect word to travel fast given the way young people use text messaging and blogs,” referring to the recent arrest of two teenage bloggers accused of inciting other youths to riot.
In his speech to parliament, Mr. Villepin said the move is expected to trump problems of discrimination thought to be behind the riots. “When you are on the street with your Fifi, nobody cares what your name is or what colour your skin is or what religion you practice. They just want to talk about what she threw up yesterday or if her sweater is the right shade of red."
The move has caught jurists and bureaucrats equally off guard. “The French system,” said Jean-Christophe Lagarde, a lawmaker from Seine-Saint-Denis suburb of northeast Paris where the unrest started, is "no longer relevant if the solution to such a serious problem is so obvious, so, so... social."
The main opposition Socialists, through their parliamentary leader Jean-Marc Ayrault, said they did not oppose the use of puppies if it helps to quell the violence but also warned that the puppies could be ineffective unless “a proper pet infrastructure is established, including veterinary clinics, pet supply shops, dog walkers and doggie daycares. "If we expect these young people to work then we demand that they have daycare for their dogs,” he said.
Communist Party leader Marie-George Buffet warned that the puppy strategy could backfire. "It could be taken as an insult, like saying that the rioters are soft and ignorant, easily bought off by a little cuteness," but he admitted it will be hard to flame a car when your little one needs to do a pee pee.
French historians say the rioting has been more widespread and destructive in material terms than the May riots of 1968, when university students erected barricades in Paris Latin Quarter and across France. That unrest led to a general strike by 10 million workers and forced President Gen. Charles de Gaulle to dissolve parliament and fire Premier Georges Pompidou. About the new strategy they noted that France has produced many distinctive breeds and recommended the use of the poodle and French bulldog.
Meanwhile,
France’s reknowned intellectuals began, finally, this week to weigh in, with predictable negation. Philosopher Andre Glucksmann considers the disturbances to be not a sign of protest but its opposite, integration. "All parties in France, business, the workers and so on, believe that something can be achieved by violence,' he told the leftist daily, Franfurter Rundschau. Glucksmann believes that youth are emulating the global phenomenon of terrorism which they see on televsion to be the norm. It will be several months before the intelligentsia comment on the government’s latest strategy.
It is rumoured that the French government had been advised on the radical new strategy by controversial author Michel Houellebecq, whose book,
Elementary Particles, took French society by storm in 2002. Houellebecq denies that he has been consulted. Speaking through what could only be described as the fog of a hangover, Houellebecq stumbled through an apology for the number of vowels in his name and that “nasty” q before professing to have no understanding of the riots. "I have lived only in the countryside and in Paris,” he said.
There are
44 million dogs in France, more per capita than any other country.
The French treat their dogs inordinately well by all standards.
Sites that take this matter seriously... more:
www.preoccupations.orgor less:
Maureen Dowd caused the Paris riots
All fur is hair. Some animals are known for their "fur" however, a word that conveys something about softness or density, warmth, etc. but actually all coats are just hair.
From across the park I had to do a double take. Was that my dog waaaay over there? No, she's right here.
Dogs are plentiful in Paris.
How do they do it? The wierdest thing is that the dogs don't get all tangled up, are not barking, biting or otherwise making an impossible mess. Generally, they just walk and look happy.
