Paul from Paris

Three noteworthy incidents have punctuated this summer in France:

• On a Sunday afternoon at the Parc Astérix theme park, a couple and two friends from Gisors were relaxing after a wedding, waiting in line for the Tonnère de Zeus ride. A group of youths from the Val d’Oise –boys and girls, minors and adults– chose not to wait in line. They cut in line. Protest from the group from Gisors was answered by blows, leading hospitalization. (Seven youths were subsequently convicted of assault.)
• On the A13 highway near Paris, two motorists have a fender-bender, a minor accident. Instead of filling out an accident report, as is customary, one of motorists telephones for “reinforcements” from the nearby town of Les Mureaux. A group soon arrives and beats to death the brother of the other motorist. (Seven people have been indicted for murder, battery, and other offenses.)
• In the city of Grenoble, a man robbed the casino at gunpoint. The robbery went badly; police responded, gunfire was exchanged, and the robber was fatally shot. The robber was acting alone (or as part of a small group), but his death set off large numbers of area youths, who went on a rioting spree. Over two days, they set ablaze dozens of cars and shot at police with firearms.

I see these incidents as something other than a decline in law and order, or of deterrence. What I think ties them together, and speaks most to these times in France, is a lack or absence of civic-mindedness or fraternité. French life traditionally has witnessed plenty of grumbling, but also of living-together, of getting-along. These incidents turn their back on this tradition, replacing words –not even heated words, not necessarily debate– with egregious violence.

The postman brought a curious document in my mail.

It was from a company called Pages Jaunes 712 (in French “pages jaunes” means “yellow pages”).

It looked like an invoice. It mentioned (in boldface type) a total payable amount of €297.80, indicated (in ALL CAPS) instructions to make payment by check, together with a payment stub (much as you would receive from an electric or other utility), in a helpfully provided return envelope.

Did I send money? No.

I never contracted with Pages Jaunes 712. I’ve never contacted them; and before this mailing, they had never contacted me.

How did Pages Jaunes 712 choose me? I set up a company earlier this year, creating a public record that Pages Jaunes 712 consulted. (I’ve copied the mailing and attached it to this post, after redacting this information, less from privacy concerns than from unease about copycat mailers.)

What relation does Pages Jaunes 712 have with Pages Jaunes, the publicly traded company that publishes the yellow pages directory in France?

So far as I can tell, none whatsoever. The company that solicited payment asked that I send a check to a Paris address that acts as a domiciliary for many companies. It is not Paris-based, but registered in Nice, on the French Riviera. It’s actually called Webtel (although, like Pages Jaunes 712, this name may suggest connotations that are unreal), its registered offices are at 5 rue Victor Hugo in Menton (another domiciliary service), and its manager is Maximiliano Burgisi, at Via Giovanni XXIII N° 1 in Vallebona, an Italian town across the border from Nice (as reported in the company filing published in the 11 December 2009 edition of the Tribune Bulletin Côte d’Azur).

I’ve asked the authorities to look into the matter. From forums on the web, I do not seem to be alone. I’m still a bit surprised, because in this case, spam:

• was not web-based. It was physical, demonstrated sophisticated production values, and reached me by the postal service.
• was not sent from Nigeria or a Tijuana mail-order pharmacy. It instead came from a French company that sought a reply to a Paris address. Its authors strove to suggest legitimacy.

Steeped in cynicism, Old World merchants craftily defrauded a family-owned New World business. Alerted by the odor of turpitude, investigators exposed the foul play and brought those responsible to justice.

This dramatic story happens to be true.

From 2008 to 2008, a group of cooperatives in the Languedoc-Roussillon region (in the south of France, the westernmost territory that faces the Mediterranean) sold wine to Ducasse, an intermediary working for Aimery Sieur d’Arques, a large French wine conglomerate. This French group then sold the wine to a family-owed business based in the United States, E&J Gallo Winery, which sold it under the Red Bicyclette label.

Gallo and its customers were enchanted with the “warmth and charm” of wine from the “sun-drenched” Languedoc-Roussillon. Indeed, the Languedoc-Roussillon region calls itself the “world’s biggest vineyard”.

The problem: the French producers claimed the wine was pinot noir. As investigators found, it was not; the wine was actually merlot or syrah (shiraz).

The fraud was perpetrated over 135,000 hectoliters of wine. That’s more than 3 1/2 million US gallons. Put differently, that’s enough wine to fill 18 million bottles.

That’s a lot of wine. Especially when the Languedoc-Roussillon region produces, in total, 50,000 hectoliters of pinot noir annually.

Carcassonne court

Money provided both a motivation and an important clue for investigators. The wine passed off as pinot noir sold for €58 per hectoliter. That’s more than the €45 local varietals command. But it’s significantly discounted from the lofty €97 price that genuine pinot noir commands.

The Carcassonne court imposed fines up to €180,000, and a six-month jail term (suspended) for a ringleader.

Saint-Gratien is a town on the outskirts north of Paris. It has been in the news lately because of a terrible family drama.

A 16-year old girl was discovered chatting on MSN, for which she was severely punished. Her two older brothers, ged 28 and 32, beat her. Her father and mother did nothing to stop the beating and enforced an all-hours curfew against the girl, who was kept at home for a month.

The teen, bothered by eye trouble, finally saw an ophthalmic specialist. The eye doctor’s assessment was grim: either the teen will lose an eye, or will recover with only extremely limited vision. The specialist noticed that his patient had been beaten, and signaled this fact to the authorities, leading to the arrest of the brothers and parents.

When French news reported this sad story about a week ago, it always emphasized two points:

1. The girl and her family were Muslim, her father usually described as a “rigorous Muslim”;
2. The story began with online chatting on MSN.

I appreciate the difficulty of doing in-depth reporting when a criminal investigation is pending, but these questions have been in my mind the past week:

1. What did the teen think? Does she consider herself as having been sequestered, or simply forbidden from going out? Does she have an exaggerated view of modesty or family discipline? Does she believe that punishment was merited (which would be especially worrisome)? In media reports, she is reduced to silence. In following French crime stories, I’m disturbed by the fascination the French often have with the victim, especially child victims; and I can’t help but wonder whether some of that fascination is at work in this story.
2. Is the a story of religion or of poverty? News reports consistently –religiously– reported on the faith of the victim and her family. But they tended to downplay or delete mention of the family’s residence: the cité des Raguenets, a public housing project that is probably the poorest part of an otherwise diverse town. Just as people today rush to conflate Islam and violence, people have similarly seen in poverty a culture that breeds violence. But in this case, are any sociological factors –religion or finances or even the age difference among siblings (suggesting to my mind a possible remarriage by the father)– at work, or is this just a freak incident (all the more tragic because it just happened, without being the product of another factor)?
3. Does anyone really chat on MSN today? Why? For my pzrt, I’d like to be able to interview the teen to ask what and with whom she was chatting. I’d also like to interview the police to have some idea of why the teen’s family got so worked up about this form of Internet use.

Last week, a trio of young men zig-zagged along the avenue Foch, in front of the town hall in Woippy, a town in eastern France. It was about 1:30 a.m.

The men weren’t in a car; all three were riding a single motorscooter (a lightweight, lower-powered motorcycle, usually able to carry, at most, one driver and one passenger). None wore a helmet.

The police took note, turned on the patrol car’s flashing light, and moved to stop the scooter.

Rather than pulling over, the scooter headed down a one-way street (traveling in the wrong direction) and accelerated. The driver lost control and missed a turn.

Malek Saouchi, age 19, died on the scene from head trauma. Nabil Bouafia, 19, and Joshua Koch, 20, suffered severe injuries and were hospitalized. None of the three men carried identification. The scooter had been reported stolen last December.

Why didn’t the scooter pull over? This is a question that I’ve been asking myself. The answer turns out to expose a huge divide –a chasm– in cultural expectations between Americans and at least some French people.

I grew up in the United States, where pulling over and stopping is the evident response to pursuit by a police patrol car. Doing otherwise invites trouble. Even Hollywood movies, with their customary high-speed chase scenes, follow that lead.

What is a serious rule in the United States seems in France (or among certain French people) to be akin to a game, specifically a game of cat-and-mouse, where the mice are expected to take flight. The cats might give chase, but the game allows the mice to flee. When things go wrong, fault lies with the cats, as much or more than as with the mice.

Metaphorically, this explains the Woippy incident, and the surprise and alarm that the incident provoked, the morning after. The same pattern was shown in the 2005 riots in Clichy-sous-Bois, near Paris, after a couple of youths fled from police, only to be electrocuted in a power transformer yard where they had hidden.

What happened next? The Woippy incident occurred in the early hours of the morning. At the end of the same day, Woippy –a town of less than 15,000 people– was the scene of rioting. Rioters pelleted police with stones and a few molotov cocktails (bottles set afire). During three hours of violence, rioters set fourteen vehicles on fire, including: cars, a bus, a truck, and a backhoe.

What about the police? In the United States, everyone knows that there are the police and the sheriff, and that the two are somehow different. Likewise, in France, everyone knows that there are the police and the gendarmes. The police are national, under the authority of the interior ministry, and tend to work in towns; the gendarmes are under defense ministry command, and tend towards mobility, often deploying in rural areas or trouble spots.

The French law enforcement landscape includes a third category: the municipal police, who are under the authority of the mayor and have a limited set of responsibilities. In France, the municipal police are widely suspected of being: subject to political control by the mayor; staffed by over-zealous but under-prepared personnel; and prone to racial profiling or ethnic discrimination.

In an offhand way, Fadela Amara, the junior minister for urban policy, gave voice to these suspicions when, in the wake of the Woippy incident, she commented that “Today, we have a police that’s diverse, extremely respectful of citizens, even if there have been some slip-ups, abusive checks that tensed relations between urban youth and the republican [national] police.”

For this reader, the key word in Amara’s comment is: respectful. Many French people seem to harbor an expectation that authorities will show deference to citizens, even those suspected of criminal conduct.