Discovered Today! 05/23/2008

• The Paris Intifada - Granta 101

  tags: paris, violence, granta

  • bougnole, a racist French term to describe Arabs that dates back to the Algerian War of Independence, 1954–1962, when the French military used torture and terror against Algerian insurgents. The term bavure also comes from the same period. (The most infamous bavure was the so-called Battle of Paris, in October 1961, when a skirmish on the Pont de Neuilly between demonstrating Algerians and police led to a riot that ended with more than a hundred dead North Africans. Their bodies were thrown into the Seine by the police, under the orders of police chief Maurice Papon. Papon had previously been involved in the deportation of Jews during the German occupation of the early 1940s but was not accused of his crimes until the 1990s.)