Yes, Guy Millière did take Claire and me through many of the tougher neighborhoods of Paris in January 2015. Yes, we did have a good time. Yes, I have stopped using the phrase no-go zones. But Claire missed my final conclusion on this topic, which appeared in a December 2015 article:
"I call the bad parts of Europe's cities partial no-go zones because ordinary people in ordinary clothing at ordinary times can enter and leave them without trouble. But they are no-go zones in the sense that representatives of the state – police especially but also firefighters, meter-readers, ambulance attendants, and social workers – can only enter with massed power for temporary periods of time. If they disobey this basic rule (as I learned first-hand in Marseille), they are likely to be swarmed, insulted, threatened, and even attacked."
Claire again: An unfortunate episode in Marseille; I'm sorry to hear it. Of course, Marseille is unusually rough, although not known for producing outbreaks of Islamist horror: I've written about Marseille here: https://azure.org.il/include/print.php?id=200. I remain confident that nowhere in Paris or its environs is a no-go zone nor even a partial no-go zone. In the wake of the atrocity at the Bataclan, the French police abandoned what was indeed an indifferent attitude toward some rougher neighborhoods and began crawling through them, picking up anyone who so much as left a comment on social media that sounded like an "apology for terrorism" (this also became a crime in France, which obviously didn't impress the civil libertarians). Mosques were infiltrated (and many razed), imams of an unpatriotic bent were deported, and Muslims surveilled throughout France within an inch of their lives. Laws were passed to "ensure assimilation," to the point that the Interior Minister publicly mused about banning halal food sections in supermarkets. And famously, municipalities started passing bans on swimming in modest clothing: If you come to France, you better wear a bikini, or you'll be arrested. The New York Times went nuts: "France has become nakedly Islamophobic!" The French were enraged with The New York Times: Did they not think what happened at the Bataclan was a *problem?* (I was on France's side about this, but I did think arresting teenagers for making wisecracks about cops on Twitter was excessive, and the bikini policy--"Get your kit off, ladies, or go to jail!" ridiculous.) Whatever one might think about the rights or wrongs of the police strategy since the Bataclan--and even more so since the murder of Samuel Paty--we haven't had another Bataclan. At the time, many were predicting one after another. (Much the way Americans anticipated this after 9/11. )
The issue of terrorism is different from the issue of crime and poverty in ZUS neighborhoods, but for perspective, the crime rate in France--for every crime, both violent and property--is a quarter the crime rate in the US. Your chances of being murdered in the US are more than five times greater. I'd *much* sooner walk alone at night in France's worst neighborhoods than those of my native country. My odds of emerging alive and unmolested would be substantially greater. (Though I still wouldn't advise doing it.) Hungary's crime rate is right in the middle of the European pack, between Luxembourg and Germany.
Does it still count as O'Henry-esque if the barb occurs in the opening sentence rather than at story's end? Either way... Major style points, Claire! :-)
Update: Daniel Pipes wrote to me to say:
***
Yes, Guy Millière did take Claire and me through many of the tougher neighborhoods of Paris in January 2015. Yes, we did have a good time. Yes, I have stopped using the phrase no-go zones. But Claire missed my final conclusion on this topic, which appeared in a December 2015 article:
"I call the bad parts of Europe's cities partial no-go zones because ordinary people in ordinary clothing at ordinary times can enter and leave them without trouble. But they are no-go zones in the sense that representatives of the state – police especially but also firefighters, meter-readers, ambulance attendants, and social workers – can only enter with massed power for temporary periods of time. If they disobey this basic rule (as I learned first-hand in Marseille), they are likely to be swarmed, insulted, threatened, and even attacked."
The link to the article about Marseille: https://www.danielpipes.org/16322/muslim-no-go-zones-in-europe
***
Claire again: An unfortunate episode in Marseille; I'm sorry to hear it. Of course, Marseille is unusually rough, although not known for producing outbreaks of Islamist horror: I've written about Marseille here: https://azure.org.il/include/print.php?id=200. I remain confident that nowhere in Paris or its environs is a no-go zone nor even a partial no-go zone. In the wake of the atrocity at the Bataclan, the French police abandoned what was indeed an indifferent attitude toward some rougher neighborhoods and began crawling through them, picking up anyone who so much as left a comment on social media that sounded like an "apology for terrorism" (this also became a crime in France, which obviously didn't impress the civil libertarians). Mosques were infiltrated (and many razed), imams of an unpatriotic bent were deported, and Muslims surveilled throughout France within an inch of their lives. Laws were passed to "ensure assimilation," to the point that the Interior Minister publicly mused about banning halal food sections in supermarkets. And famously, municipalities started passing bans on swimming in modest clothing: If you come to France, you better wear a bikini, or you'll be arrested. The New York Times went nuts: "France has become nakedly Islamophobic!" The French were enraged with The New York Times: Did they not think what happened at the Bataclan was a *problem?* (I was on France's side about this, but I did think arresting teenagers for making wisecracks about cops on Twitter was excessive, and the bikini policy--"Get your kit off, ladies, or go to jail!" ridiculous.) Whatever one might think about the rights or wrongs of the police strategy since the Bataclan--and even more so since the murder of Samuel Paty--we haven't had another Bataclan. At the time, many were predicting one after another. (Much the way Americans anticipated this after 9/11. )
The issue of terrorism is different from the issue of crime and poverty in ZUS neighborhoods, but for perspective, the crime rate in France--for every crime, both violent and property--is a quarter the crime rate in the US. Your chances of being murdered in the US are more than five times greater. I'd *much* sooner walk alone at night in France's worst neighborhoods than those of my native country. My odds of emerging alive and unmolested would be substantially greater. (Though I still wouldn't advise doing it.) Hungary's crime rate is right in the middle of the European pack, between Luxembourg and Germany.
Does it still count as O'Henry-esque if the barb occurs in the opening sentence rather than at story's end? Either way... Major style points, Claire! :-)