Magic Statistics

¡No Pasarán! has been all over this since the story first broke in France. (See here and here and here and here and here.) For reasons that are unclear, it went unreported in France for two days. The German newspaper Die Zeit was the first to report, whereupon French media had no choice but to follow. Now the story is finally surfacing in North American media.

On New Years Eve, a gang of 20 to 30 "youths" rode the train from Nice to Lyon, brutalising 600 other passengers on the five-hour trip. They went on a rampage, vandalising the train, beating and robbing passengers of cell phones and wallets, and sexually assaulting at least one young woman. Before the train left Nice, the youths announced their intention of making carnage (faire un carnage in French; pardon my rudimentary translation) and having a hala, North African Arabic for "party".

After the pillaging started, train staff alerted police, and the train stopped and waited at a station en route.

Trois gendarmes arrivent. Ils ont dû attendre une heure et demi un dépôt de plainte formelle de la SNCF avant de monter à bord. [Three gendarmes arrive. They have to wait an hour and a half for a formal complaint before they could board the train.] Pendant ce temps, les jeunes continuent leurs saccages: poubelles renversées, sièges et rideaux lacérés, vitres fendues. Des "mouvements de panique" sont observés parmi les 600 passagers du train, rapporte le procureur.

The translation in the middle of the paragraph was supplied by ¡No Pasarán!. Here's my translation of the last two sentences: During this time, the youths continue their ransacking: overturned garbage bins, slashed seats and curtains, broken windows. "Panic movements" are seen among the 600 train passengers, reports the prosecutor.

The train continued on after police reinforcements arrived and boarded.

The train resumed its journey with the heavy police presence on board but, just before Marseille, the youths pulled the emergency stop and many escaped. Only three — two 19-year-old Moroccans and a minor, all living in France — were arrested. Both men were being held for robbery and one also was facing charges of sexual assault. The minor was to be judged separately.

Why weren't they all detained when the police first arrived at the station? Now they have to find the youths who led the riot.

Another good question, it seems to me, is this: Let's see: 20-30 youths and 600 passengers. That's 20-30 passengers per youth. Did no one think to organise and overpower the delinquents? "Let's roll" and all that.

2005 was the third consecutive year of decline in the number of movie patrons, and Hollywood studios are worried–as well they should be. Why are people not going out to movie theatres as often as in the past? The always-astute cultural and political commentator James Bowman provides some analysis in a column entitled "The Hollywood Turkey Farm". Since the 1970s, Hollywood has increasingly insulated itself in an unreal world Bowman calls "movieland".

[T]he 2004 remake of The Manchurian Candidate, which purported to deal with the terrorist threat, ignored the actual terrorists and made the bad guys a large multinational corporation and its agents and hirelings in government. Hollywood’s latest fictional treatment of the war on terror, Stephen Gaghan’s Syriana, starring George Clooney and Matt Damon, does exactly the same thing, putting forward the bizarre contention that the major threat to the progressive forces of democracy, economic liberalisation and women’s rights in the Middle East comes not from terrorist jihadists but from — you’ll never guess — the CIA in cahoots with Big Oil.

Hollywood filmmakers: They have learned nothing and they have forgotten nothing.