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France: A time of soul-searching
http://www.mmorning.com/ArticleC.asp?Article=3025&CategoryID=7
In the wake of one of the worst crises to hit France since the disorders of 1968,
the government and the public are pondering the wider significance of the unrest, in
which more than 1,500 youths have been arrested and hundreds of cars torched in Paris
and other French cities. A marked downturn in the number of car-burnings last week --
coupled with a carrot-and-stick initiative combining emergency police powers with the
promise of more help for the impoverished suburbs -- provided the first hint that
calm could be returning. After the main focus of the riots shifted away from the
capital, the violence appeared to be spurred by a spirit of competition among
neighborhoods across the country, which police officials were hoping had now run its
course. However tensions remained high, and there was acute awareness that a
mishandled situation -- or worse the injury or death of a rioter -- could easily
plunge the high-immigration “banlieues” back into the abyss. Questions were being
asked over how long the state of emergency which the government declared last week --
invoking a 50 year-old law dating from the Algerian war -- should be kept in place,
if the downward trend in the nightly disturbances continues. The decision is a
sensitive one because to extend the state of emergency beyond the first 12 days would
require a government bill, which would itself have to be rubber-stamped by the
cabinet. But the government of President Jacques Chirac is worried that setting the
machinery in motion would send out a dangerous signal that the country is on a
permanent emergency footing — especially when the measure has been condemned by the
left as a provocation to the Arab minority
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20174
Despite a heavy police presence, the suspension of the right to assemble, and a
curfew for nighttime hours, the French still found a way to riot overnight. While the
major event police feared did not materialize, the show of force did not deter the
rioters from torching hundreds more cars:
Violence has continued in deprived city areas of France with a tally of at least 374
cars burnt out and 212 arrests despite an official ban on public meetings in an
attempt to curb riots that have rocked the nation.
In a 17th night of disturbances two police officers were injured, with one
hospitalized after being hit by a metal object in the Paris suburb of La Courneuve.
Incidents involving the burning of cars also spread overnight to several towns in
neighbouring Belgium. ...
Police said the situation in racially-mixed suburbs throughout France had been calmer
than on previous nights. But cars were reported set alight in Lyon, Toulouse and St.
Etienne.
The headline for the Agence France Presse story? "Paris clampdown amid uneasy calm in
French cities." Having 374 cars torched and a couple of hundred people rounded up and
taken to jail only sounds "calm" to the French, I would gather -- and probably not at
all to one of the 374 car owners who will take the bus to work tomorrow.
The cars don't tell the whole story, either. The BBC reports that rioters also burnt
down a nursery school. In a more dangerous mode, some rioters pushed a burning car
against an "old people's home", in BBC parlance, causing a panic that could have
killed more than a few of them itself, even without a building fire. Fortunately, it
appears that no one got seriously hurt.
The American media finally noticed that the story has continued, however. The
Washington Post offered its first reporting in days on the subject, using the Lyon
attack at the city center as its hook. Molly Moore finally broke the silence, at
least obliquely, on the "M" word:
No incidents of violence were reported inside Paris, though unrest continued Saturday
in 163 cities and towns across France, according to police. On Saturday night, the
17th night of the rioting, a policeman was injured in a Paris suburb when he was hit
by a metal ball thrown from an apartment building.
In the southern town of Carpentras in the Provence region, youths burned a school
Saturday night. On Friday night, a motor-scooter rider threw two gasoline bombs at a
mosque during prayers, causing minor damage. Police said it was unclear whether the
attack was linked to the other violence around the country. Many of the youths
involved in the rioting are Muslim.
One wonders how that last sentence managed to sneak its way past the editors at the
Post. The New York Times manages two articles on the story it stopped reporting days
earlier. The first, by Craig Smith, focuses on police success in keeping the riots
out of Paris without mentioning the 163 cities and towns where it continued or the
374 cars that went up in flames. Instead, Smith reports that the violence "held
steady at a reduced level" and that the low level of deaths came from -- get ready --
gun control:
Many French attribute the low level of injuries to the tight gun control laws here.
The most serious incident involving gunfire was a series of shotgun blasts fired at
police officers from a distance. Ten officers were hit, but only two were
hospitalized, and their injuries were not life-threatening.
Perhaps if the citizens of France could arm themselves, Islamist riots wouldn't last
seventeen days and show no evidence of abating. The second article, an analysis by
Marc Landler, offers a facile look at the riots by reminding readers that torching
cars is practically a national pastime for the socialist-oppressed French, who commit
this arson an amazing 80 times a day even without rioting.
Meanwhile, the LA Times also wakes from its slumber on France, not to report on the
continuing violence but to offer its analysis after ignoring the situation. The LAT
does what it does best when reporting on riots -- it blames the police:
For years, the officers said, the police had warned that France's immigrant-dominated
slums were on the verge of exploding, a slow-motion riot about to fast-forward.
Culture clashes and economic woes had created a lost generation of mostly Muslim
youths seething with hostility toward the state. Wrong-headed ideology had caused
governments to pull back from low-income housing projects, or cites, allowing
parallel societies ruled by criminal and extremist networks to flourish, officers
said.
And several veterans agree with critics who say that France's rigid, paramilitary
policing culture aggravated tensions between youths and officers. Even before the
riots, an average of 3,500 cars a month were burned nationwide. ...
On the other hand, critics say flaws in French policing were among the fuses for the
explosion. The French police excel at intelligence, investigations and crowd control,
say academic experts and European and U.S. investigators. But in a hierarchical
system, intelligence tends to flow up the chain of command, not to other officers in
the field. And experts say police here are weaker at basic beat-cop patrolling, an
area vital to the dramatic reduction of crime and unrest in U.S. cities in the last
decade.
It's difficult to take this analysis seriously, when Sebastian Rotella includes this
whopper:
The overall violence has declined markedly from its peak, but it continued this
weekend, mainly in provincial regions.
Provincial? Lyon and Toulouse are provincial? I suspect they might object to that
characterization. Rotella has not seen the wire services, apparently, since
Wednesday.
Maybe we were better off when the American media didn't report
on this story. Except for Molly Moore at the Post, they've been uniformly terrible at
getting the story straight. www.captainsquartersblog.com
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I intend to last long enough to put out of business all *****-suckers
and other beneficiaries of the institutionalized slavery and genocide.
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"The army that will defeat terrorism doesn't wear uniforms, or drive
Humvees, or calls in air-strikes. It doesn't have a high command, or
high security, or a high budget. The army that can defeat terrorism
does battle quietly, clearing minefields and vaccinating children. It
undermines military dictatorships and military lobbyists. It subverts
sweatshops and special interests.Where people feel powerless, it
helps them organize for change, and where people are powerful, it
reminds them of their responsibility." ~~~~ Author Unknown ~~~~
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