The riots may be running out of steam in Paris, after 12 nights of unrest, but they continued unabated in other parts of France in the early hours of this morning.
One person is dead, thousands of cars have been set ablaze and France's much-vaunted social model now looks highly frayed. In an effort to get a grip on the situation, the government has introduced emergency measures to allow local authorities to impose curfews. Such powers have not been introduced since the Algerian war of 1954-1962.
For the right-leaning Le Figaro newspaper, the tough measures have not come soon enough. The paper says: "After several days when the government and the rest of French society appeared paralysed by the outbreak of violence, this reaffirmation of authority is timely."
Nicolas Sarkozy, the interior minister, has been accused of inflaming the situation by using intemperate words such as racaille (which is closer in meaning to "rabble" than to "scum", the English translation used in early reports).
But in a comment for the Canadian paper the Globe and Mail, Tim Smith cuts the much-criticised Mr Sarkozy some slack. He argues that the interior minister is the only prominent French politician courageous enough to confront the French with the gravity of their economic problems by advocating affirmative action in recruitment and a weakening of trade union power in order to open up more opportunities for immigrants.
This argument echoes one of the most trenchant pieces on the unrest, in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, by Theodore Dalrymple. He also argued that Mr Sarkozy was the only senior figure to have suggested an approach to the problem other than building more community centres made of concrete and named after great French poets.
"As a result, he is both hated and feared," Mr Dalrymple wrote, "and the rioters must hope that if they burn enough cars and kindergartens he will be forced to resign and thus lose his chance of winning the presidency and letting the CRS - French police - loose. This will enable 'les jeunes' to return to the life they know and understand, that of criminality without interference by the state."
In Le Monde, however, the sociologist Marco Diani cautions us against taking a simplistic view of the events that have shaken France. The picture of innocent and oppressed victims on one side and a blind, powerful and oppressive state on the other is a caricature, he argues. A ghetto is not simply a creation of the powerful against the oppressed: the deliberate desire of some in those communities to create no-go areas transforms exclusion into "organised hostility".
