Chirac n'aimez pas les personnes noires

Or, "Chirac doesn't care about black people."
It seems that the rioting in the suburbs of Paris I wrote about some time ago is continuing and indeed increasing in ferocity. On November Second, day six of the riots, 250 cars had been burned in the entire riot up to that point. Over the last night, more than four hundred cars had been torched along with three warehouses. The French media has apparently decided to start down-playing the riots. The BBC reports that over five hundred vehicles were burned, and that the riots are spreading all over the country.
Where's the scandal? Apparently the Manchester Guardian is more concerned about Interior Minister Sarkozy referring to the looters as "scum". It also seems that the French Youths have managed to open fire at police with real guns, which are banned in France. So much for gun control laws.
The other big news (thought trumpeted by the media with much greater gusto) is the fact that apparently we're all doomed thanks to the birds. This may or may not be a huge public health risk. In any case, given the utterly uninformed state of most media coverage, I recommend highly the FluWiki, which has a great deal of real information about the bird flu problem.