This afternoon I took E to Ikea out near Charles de Gaulle airport (universally called Roissy, not Charles de Gaulle) to furnish her new place. I noticed this cute banister for kids near the children's section. The highway to the airport was peaceful even though we paid a new attention to the exits for Aulnay-sous-Bois and Le Blanc Mesnil, where there has been a lot of trouble these past nights.
We brought everything back in the car to E's new apartment, close to Place Stalingrad, which many Parisians have assured me is dangerous, but that's relative; it's roughly comparable to a bustling immigrant area of Queens. In France the HLM, or projects, were installed in the suburbs of main cities, so that not Paris but Seine-Saint-Denis is burning. But every day the number of riots seems to increase, and I don't know how long Paris will feel safe. The people who actually live in Seine-Saint-Denis and the other rioting suburbs are mostly sick and tired of the violence. "The kids can't go outside to play. We can't go shopping. The storekeepers are losing money. People's cars are burning. Okay, I understand why there was violence for a few days. It's time to stop, now," said Samira, in her early 20s, to a Radio France Info reporter today. "Ça n'aide plus en rien." Muslim authorities in France, notably the Union des organisations islamiques de France, which is considered close to the Muslim Brotherhood, issued a fatwa on Sunday: "It is formally forbidden to all Muslims seeking satisfaction and divine grace to participate in any action that blindly strikes private or public goods or that could threaten anyone's life." It didn't seem to do much good: last night was the worst yet.
The mayor of Noisy-le-Grand, a suburban town near Paris Disneyland, has called for the army to step in. The head of SOS-Racisme has called for an end to the "over-mediatization" of the violence and asked for grownups in the quartiers sensibles to "descend massively into the street" tonight to prevent more copycat rioting. It is definitely partly imitation of what they see on television that is making jeunes in places like Alpine villages riot and burn cars and schools. (The mayor of La-Tour-du-Pin said, "All the same it's not Chicago here!") The first man died today from the riots. He was a man in his sixties who was standing outside his building in Stains, Seine-Saint-Denis, arguing to a neighbor when a jeune punched him; he fell, hit his head on the sidewalk and went into a coma.
They've just forbidden for gasoline to be sold in containers.
The French media is starting to talk about the effect of the foreign media coverage on the image of France. One person commented that the Americans seemed especially happy to "jump on" the story because of the one-sided French coverage of New Orleans. 
The Chinese media are also apparently fascinated by the riots: all these volatile suburbs include immigrant Chinese running businesses, and the people of Beijing are being treated to a nightly diet of terrified young women and children. It's very bad for France.
Dominique de Villepin, the Prime Minister, is giving a "much-awaited speech" tonight on television. I'm glad I'm not in charge of France.
The city looked as peaceful as usual today. I took these photos from the car on the way home. Nothing looks different and there are still lots of tourists.
Today I got the address in Iraq of my young cousin D. His mother asked us to write to him as much as possible.
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