Video of the Paris Riots

As I reported previously, last Saturday a Belgian company planned to stage ill-advised publicity stunt in the Champ de Mars in Paris. The organizers would have given away varying amounts of cash to members of the public on a first-come-first-served basis, but were forced to cancel the event at the last minute when far too many would-be beneficiaries showed up.

This left a large crowd of angry and disappointed “youths” in the Champ de Mars with nothing to do except overturn cars and beat up any unfortunate persons of French background who happened to wander by.

Vlad Tepes has compiled a video based on two TV reports. With the help of Gaia’s translation of the voice-over, Vlad subtitled the larger of the two segments. In the last eight seconds you’ll see the infamous machete-carrying culture enricher whose photo I posted on Tuesday:

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There’s an excellent series of photos, plus an eyewitness report in English, at the Take Out Photo blog, which reports that one police car appeared briefly on the scene, was rocked from side to side by the rioters, and then promptly left.

After that the youths had the run of the place until the riot police arrived a little while later.


Hat tips: Vlad, pistache (for the machete sequence), and Steen (for the photo blog).