Most immigrants came from French colonies so they speak French to begin with. If your friends are journalists in Fox news, you should have noticed they are not very bright by now. History and geography is not their forte. :)
Yea, in French school, there are bullies. I was pushed around too. Whoa, I don't even lived in bad neighbourhood. About fake IDs, I have heard that a lot in the US. In France, I don't know but who am I to tell, I was born there and I just live there.
You can buy alcohol when you are 18 and it is easy to get anyway so young people
don't care so there is less binge drinking than in the US. Forbidding something
is always the best incitation.
I am French, lives in a mixed ethnic suburb south of Paris and knows well Paris, lived in silicon valley for three years too. In Paris, I don't know such a thing as non French speaking neighbourhood, meaning a place where you could speak French without the vast majority of people capable of answering you in perfect non accented French. There are places that you could call ethnic with a majority of (French) people of non european descent. I don't know about any nogozone contrary to the map presented by Fox. The original map was probably about something, but it's your guess. Places where housing is substandard, probably.
If you are a girl, expect cat calls from young boys. People lets their dog shit everywhere (that has been worse in the past). If you go in touristic places, watch your wallet and count your change. Touristic places are for tourists so you will find your
Mac Donalds and Star Bucks. Prêt à porter with sky high price, too. Boring. Expensive.
Like any town, there are places whee there are all sort of traffics. News at eleven. Stay away. Unlike many towns in the US, the regular police is not militarized. In fact, municipal polices are not allowed to carry guns. Better to be white or be a tourist with the police if you don't want you id often asked for, but beating to death are very rare.
There may place where cops don't go but that may have to do with real estate speculation and future gentrification. Forty years ago, Near Gare Montparnasse, they did let rot a whole area, so they could cheaply expropriate lower middle class people. The police station was 100 meters away. When construction started they dumped the squatters. I know for a fact, I rented a place as a student then. Now, you can buy a nice flat here with people like you, if you have the money.
But please don't listen on @cnn or @fox the crap from jewish supremacists like @pamelageller or @rabbischmulley who don't know anything about France, and probably never set foot there. Better for @pamelageller, because by French standards, she looks like a hooker.
Contrary to what @rabbischmulley said, there was no progrom avoided by police but a street fight initiated by jewish supremacists. This was provoked in a street with a synagogue but the rabbi of the said synagogue said it was never a target. French press
was not so forthcoming with the truth.
Contrary to what @pamelaGeller says, France is not surrounded by ennemies (supposedly arabs). Does she know that France is in Europe and only 10% of its population is originally from Maghreb.
Criminality wise, Paris is a very average town, except for disenfranchised population of arabic origin who have taken twice the street with French people against Israel exaction in Gaza.
I am fed up of the press that takes France in hostage because Israel chooses to systemically violates international laws and at the same time wants to portrays jews as victims and arabs as terrorists.
After the terrorist attack against the kasher store, there was a lot of incidents
against arabs. Usually not reported, excepted when a comic strike like a girl whose robe
was too long and was deemed ostentasiously religious. Every incident involved a jew
is reported. Police takes them very seriously. Too much maybe, some (very few) of them
have proven to be fake. A major incident is immediately deformed by people like
@pamelageller and @rabbischmuley. Apparently, @cnn is not even capable to run google
translate on a random french paper to confront them.
Recently a "grand Paris" project has been voted. If you see the map, almost a whole departement (county) has been left out except from the transportation for Charles de Gaulle Airport. Also, Minister of education accepts unqualified teachers for the same departement. That's a sad choice, and 20 years down the roads, we will blame the victims. We had institutions that worked and are slowly dismantling them.
As tourist, you can eat cheap and good in ethnic places. In touristic places, usually neither.
Unlike some americans and their stars and stripes, French people don't have a French flag on their windows. They know about their past in the colonies. But breeding racist in the name of security works pretty well here too. When the rich need people redirect their frustration. nothing beats an internal enemy. And it's cheaper than to wage war outside.
Not much left of the "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité". People don't know about Ayn Rand here. She is winning anyway.
But when I hear about France on the american media, I have no fucking idea of what fantasmed country they are talking about.