BB FANS

Thursday, 24 November 2005, 15:42 GMT
BBC

A French MP has publicly accused rappers of fuelling the country's recent riots with their songs.

It comes a day after 200 politicians backed his petition calling for legal action against seven rap musicians and bands it alleges have incited racism.

MP Francois Grosdidier told France-Info radio it was no surprise youths "saw red" after listening to violent lyrics.

Rapper Monsieur R, one of those singled out in the petition, rejected the idea, saying rap "is not a call to violence".

French authorities said the situation had returned to normal last week, following three weeks of unrest that affected dozens of towns and cities.

Nationwide, almost 9,000 cars were set ablaze and some 3,000 people were arrested. The French parliament last week approved a three-month state of emergency.

Banned

The petition, handed to Justice Minister Pascal Clement, has been signed by 153 members of the lower house of parliament and 49 senators.

The Justice Department has said it cannot immediately comment on its call for legal sanctions.

As well as Monsieur R, it names artists Smala, Fabe and Salif and bands Ministere Amer, 113 and Lunatic.

Mr Grosdidier, a member of President Jacques Chirac's conservative ruling UMP party, said songs like Monsieur R's FranSSe incite racism and hatred, and should be banned from radio play.

He told France-Info: "When people hear this all day long and when these words swirl round in their heads, it is no surprise that they then see red as soon as they walk past policemen or simply people who are different from them."

Monsieur R, real name Richard Makela, already faces a separate lawsuit for "outrage to social decency" over the song FranSSe, brought by another conservative MP and to be heard in February.

The rapper told LCI television: "Hip hop is a crude art, so we use crude words. It is not a call to violence."

Four members of the rap group Sniper were acquitted earlier this year in Rouen, northern France, in a case brought by the Interior Ministry over a song it alleged incited attacks on the police. An appeal is due to be heard next month.

yeah, blame the musicians.

Politician arranges gun sales to countries across the world, congratulated on trade sales.
"Rapper say the word gun in a song....congressional hearing"(Rock, C. 1994)

Makes sense

Friday November 25, 2005 10:01 PM
Associated Press Writer

PARIS (AP) - Thousands of French police, who came under fire from bullets, Molotov cocktails and rocks thrown by angry youths in France's worst civil unrest in decades, will receive bonus pay for their efforts to quell the violence, a top police union official said Friday.

National police chief Michel Gaudin told a conference of police Thursday that about 22,000 officers will receive additional payments of $350 each, according to Jean-Yves Bugelli, assistant secretary general of the Alliance police union.

The three weeks of car burnings, vandalism and clashes between youths and officers erupted in impoverished suburban housing projects that are home to many immigrants and their French-born children.

Police were stretched thin - often clocking overtime hours, working frequent shifts and being asked to hold off on vacations.

As the violence raged, more than 10,000 officers were deployed across the country through the night. Some riot police reinforcements were called in from the French Antilles in the Caribbean.

At least 3,200 suspects were arrested and more than 100 police officers were injured in the violence, France's worst civil unrest since the student-worker riots of 1968.

A spokesman for the national police did not return several telephone calls Friday from The Associated Press seeking comment about the bonuses.

Word of the payments came as French officials stepped up debate about how best to root out the causes of violence that erupted Oct. 27 after two teenagers were electrocuted in the northern Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois while fleeing what they thought was a police chase.

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, visiting the nearby town of Meaux on Friday, said it would be ``a mistake'' to punish the parents of delinquents without considering ``the reality of their problems.''

He was commenting on a measure that Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy was expected to submit to the Cabinet as part of a new crime prevention bill, one of the center-right government's responses to the crisis.

The bill will draw heavily on a parliamentary report on crime prevention, which recommends among other things that the government strip ``negligent'' parents of some state subsidies, handing control of welfare allocations to social workers.

Saudi prince changes Fox's Paris riots coverage

Fox News was ordered to alter its coverage of the riots in France after a Saudi prince with shares in its parent company News Corporation complained to Rupert Murdoch.

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdul aziz Al-Saud told a conference in Dubai he had telephoned Mr Murdoch after seeing a strapline on the news channel describing the disturbances as "Muslim riots".

"I picked up the phone and called Murdoch and said that I was speaking not as a shareholder, but as a viewer of Fox. I said that these are not Muslim riots, they are riots," Campaign Middle East magazine quoted the prince as saying.

"He investigated the matter and called Fox and within half an hour it was changed from 'Muslim riots' to 'civil riots'."

The prince said his intervention had been an example of how Muslim people can change the portrayal of their religion in the western media - although few Fox viewers will have his contacts.

It is not the first time he has admitted to trying to influence Mr Murdoch's coverage of sensitive issues.

In a recent Financial Times interview he said he did not wish to "intrude" into the management of companies in which he holds shares.

But he said he did talk to Mr Murdoch and Richard Parsons, the chief executive of AOL Time Warner, about where he believed the media had got things wrong.

"My job is to open their eyes to things they may not have seen," he said.

Last month's rioting marked France's worst unrest since the student riots of May 1968. Thousands of cars were set alight following the death of two teenage boys who were allegedly being pursued by police.

guardian