| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Fred Stone" |
| Date: |
06 Nov 2005 11:30:54 PM |
| Object: |
Quagmire, part deux |
http://www.suntimes.com/output/steyn/cst-edt-steyn06.html
Wake up, Europe, you've a war on your hands
November 6, 2005
BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
Advertisement
Ever since 9/11, I've been gloomily predicting the European powder keg's
about to go up. ''By 2010 we'll be watching burning buildings, street
riots and assassinations on the news every night,'' I wrote in Canada's
Western Standard back in February.
Silly me. The Eurabian civil war appears to have started some years
ahead of my optimistic schedule. As Thursday's edition of the Guardian
reported in London: ''French youths fired at police and burned over 300
cars last night as towns around Paris experienced their worst night of
violence in a week of urban unrest.''
''French youths,'' huh? You mean Pierre and Jacques and Marcel and
Alphonse? Granted that most of the "youths" are technically citizens of
the French Republic, it doesn't take much time in les banlieus of Paris
to discover that the rioters do not think of their primary identity as
''French'': They're young men from North Africa growing ever more
estranged from the broader community with each passing year and wedded
ever more intensely to an assertive Muslim identity more implacable than
anything you're likely to find in the Middle East. After four somnolent
years, it turns out finally that there really is an explosive ''Arab
street,'' but it's in Clichy-sous-Bois.
The notion that Texas neocon arrogance was responsible for frosting up
trans-Atlantic relations was always preposterous, even for someone as
complacent and blinkered as John Kerry. If you had millions of seething
unassimilated Muslim youths in lawless suburbs ringing every major city,
would you be so eager to send your troops into an Arab country fighting
alongside the Americans? For half a decade, French Arabs have been
carrying on a low-level intifada against synagogues, kosher butchers,
Jewish schools, etc. The concern of the political class has been to
prevent the spread of these attacks to targets of more, ah, general
interest. They seem to have lost that battle. Unlike America's
Europhiles, France's Arab street correctly identified Chirac's
opposition to the Iraq war for what it was: a sign of weakness.
The French have been here before, of course. Seven-thirty-two. Not 7:32
Paris time, which is when the nightly Citroen-torching begins, but 732
A.D. -- as in one and a third millennia ago. By then, the Muslims had
advanced a thousand miles north of Gibraltar to control Spain and
southern France up to the banks of the Loire. In October 732, the
Moorish general Abd al-Rahman and his Muslim army were not exactly at
the gates of Paris, but they were within 200 miles, just south of the
great Frankish shrine of St. Martin of Tours. Somewhere on the road
between Poitiers and Tours, they met a Frankish force and, unlike other
Christian armies in Europe, this one held its ground ''like a wall . . .
a firm glacial mass,'' as the Chronicle of Isidore puts it. A week
later, Abd al-Rahman was dead, the Muslims were heading south, and the
French general, Charles, had earned himself the surname ''Martel'' -- or
''the Hammer.''
Poitiers was the high-water point of the Muslim tide in western Europe.
It was an opportunistic raid by the Moors, but if they'd won, they'd
have found it hard to resist pushing on to Paris, to the Rhine and
beyond. ''Perhaps,'' wrote Edward Gibbon in The Decline And Fall Of The
Roman Empire, ''the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in
the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a
circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of
Mahomet.'' There would be no Christian Europe. The Anglo-Celts who
settled North America would have been Muslim. Poitiers, said Gibbon, was
''an encounter which would change the history of the whole world.''
Battles are very straightforward: Side A wins, Side B loses. But the
French government is way beyond anything so clarifying. Today, a
fearless Muslim advance has penetrated far deeper into Europe than Abd
al-Rahman. They're in Brussels, where Belgian police officers are
advised not to be seen drinking coffee in public during Ramadan, and in
Malmo, where Swedish ambulance drivers will not go without police
escort. It's way too late to rerun the Battle of Poitiers. In the no-go
suburbs, even before these current riots, 9,000 police cars had been
stoned by ''French youths'' since the beginning of the year; some three
dozen cars are set alight even on a quiet night. ''There's a civil war
under way in Clichy-sous-Bois at the moment,'' said Michel Thooris of
the gendarmes' trade union Action Police CFTC. ''We can no longer
withstand this situation on our own. My colleagues neither have the
equipment nor the practical or theoretical training for street
fighting.''
What to do? In Paris, while ''youths'' fired on the gendarmerie, burned
down a gym and disrupted commuter trains, the French Cabinet split in
two, as the ''minister for social cohesion'' (a Cabinet position I hope
America never requires) and other colleagues distance themselves from
the interior minister, the tough-talking Nicolas Sarkozy who dismissed
the rioters as ''scum.'' President Chirac seems to have come down on the
side of those who feel the scum's grievances need to be addressed. He
called for ''a spirit of dialogue and respect.'' As is the way with the
political class, they seem to see the riots as an excellent opportunity
to scuttle Sarkozy's presidential ambitions rather than as a call to
save the Republic.
A few years back I was criticized for a throwaway observation to the
effect that ''I find it easier to be optimistic about the futures of
Iraq and Pakistan than, say, Holland or Denmark." But this is why. In
defiance of traditional immigration patterns, these young men are less
assimilated than their grandparents. French cynics like the prime
minister, Dominique de Villepin, have spent the last two years scoffing
at the Bush Doctrine: Why, everyone knows Islam and democracy are
incompatible. If so, that's less a problem for Iraq or Afghanistan than
for France and Belgium.
If Chirac isn't exactly Charles Martel, the rioters aren't doing a bad
impression of the Muslim armies of 13 centuries ago: They're seizing
their opportunities, testing their foe, probing his weak spots. If
burning the 'burbs gets you more ''respect'' from Chirac, they'll burn
'em again, and again. In the current issue of City Journal, Theodore
Dalrymple concludes a piece on British suicide bombers with this grim
summation of the new Europe: ''The sweet dream of universal cultural
compatibility has been replaced by the nightmare of permanent
conflict.'' Which sounds an awful lot like a new Dark Ages.
--
Fred Stone
aa# 1369
"A thief is more moral than a congressman;
when a thief steals your money, he doesn't demand you thank him."
-- Walter Williams
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| User: "Divin Marquis" |
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| Title: Re: Quagmire, part deux |
07 Nov 2005 12:59:49 PM |
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On Sun, 06 Nov 2005 23:30:54 +0000, Fred Stone wrote:
http://www.suntimes.com/output/steyn/cst-edt-steyn06.html
Wake up, Europe, you've a war on your hands
You know what's interesting, I have only talked about this to *one* french
person, and that's because I work with him, he's muslim and know people
who live in the suburbs where that ***** is happening.
Other than that, nobody around me seems to give a *****. It's much less of
an issue or an inconvenience than, say, the average bus strike.
But, hey, call it Intifada if you will.
.
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| User: "Katt" |
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| Title: Re: Quagmire, part deux |
07 Nov 2005 08:42:04 PM |
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On Sun, 06 Nov 2005 23:30:54 +0000, Fred Stone wrote:
http://www.suntimes.com/output/steyn/cst-edt-steyn06.html
Wake up, Europe, you've a war on your hands
Ignore the drooling imbecile, people: he doesn't have the fucking brains he
was born with. If he had the slightest grasp of the *real world*, he'd know
that Europe's *real war* is against the shitbag pseudo-democracy he himself
lives in. My shy advice to the good folks: plonk him a.s.a.p. and read
something *illuminating* instead...
------
Fear & Loathing in France.
http://leninology.blogspot.com/2005/11/fear-loathing-in-france.html
As I suggested, the Muslim Scare is already being raised. Newsweek
wonders if the riots in Paris will increase the ranks of Jihadists.
This on the basis of some people reportedly saying "its Baghdad here"
and others uttering the word "jihad". World Net Daily brings news that
US Congressman Tom Tancredo thinks it shows "you can't integrate some
people into your society", while they cite bigot Daniel Pipes ("an
expert on Islam") saying that Muslims scorn European ways and conspire
to take it over. Similarly, the rightist website cites Lee Kaplan,
founder of an extreme Zionist outfit called Dafka, and head of the
United America Committee which strives "to educate more Americans to
the threat of radical Islam". Chronwatch, meanwhile, wonders how long
it can be before Europe falls. For The Observer, the real worry is how
come multiculturalism and "successive models of integration" have gone
wrong, especially as this is "frightening in the age of radical Islam".
Again, "France finds itself with more Muslims than it had reckoned
with. In the age of Islamic militancy, that is a worrying trend".
Indeed, there has been a torrent of this sort of drivel. Islamophobia
Watch has coverage here and here. Note how similar the reaction of the
mainstream right is to that of the neo-fascist BNP. (None of the
American stuff is surprising, of course, since the US allows the FBI to
arrest Muslims for merely praying).
In France, too, the reaction of the political establishment has been
repellent. Alerted to the fact that Western correspondents miss the
connotive import of certain turns of phrase by Sarkozy, I asked my
transatlantic friend Doug Ireland - who lived for some years in Paris
and speaks the language fluently - for his thoughts:
One of the words Sarko used for the ghetto youth was "racaille," which
does indeed translate literally as "scum," but which has a much, much
nastier and aggresively perjorative flavor to it in frog than "scum"
does in English. It's a dreadful, dehumanizing word in French to use
about the young, and was absolutely like throwing kerosene on the
fire...
The other Sarkozy word that doesn't translate well is "karcheriser" -
"Karsher" is the registered brand name of a system of cleaning surfaces
by super-high-pressure sand-blasting or water-blasting that very
violently peals away the outer skin of encrusted dirt, even at the risk
of damaging what's underneath. Again, to apply this to young human
beings and proffer it as a strategy is a verbally fascist insult and,
as a policy proposed by an Interior Minister, is about as close as one
can get to hollering "ethinic cleansing" without actually saying so. It
implies raw police power and force used very aggressively, with little
regard for human rights. I wonder how many Anglo-American
correspondents get the inflammatory, terribly vicious flavor of the
word in frog? The translation of "karcherise" by "clean" just misses
completely the inflammatory violence of what Sarko is really saying.
Doug also notes that the rioting has spread well beyond this Parisian
suburb to places like Dijon and Marseilles - seeing Sarkozy dehumanise
and threaten the Muslims in Paris has infuriated residents of the
ghettos across France. Many French people blame Sarkozy for having "lit
the fire", and as a consequence the opposition parties are showing a
tiny little bit of backbone and saying things like "Well, zero
tolerance for Sarkozy then. Zero tolerance for verbal provocation, the
disappearance of neighbourhood policing and the absence of any
preventive policies". As I said, 'tiny'. That said, while France 2 (a
public television station) announces that several Catholic bishops have
denounced "repression and inciting fear", a poll taken lately shows
that 57% of French people approve of what Sarkozy is saying and doing.
Some nearby middle class residents are quoted by the BBC saying they'll
shoot anyone who tries to burn their car. One man said he was only
sorry these kids were born in France as he wished they could be sent
home so where "they wouldn't be allowed to cause trouble like this".
Quite so - back home in Algeria, for instance, trouble-making might get
you tortured, raped or killed by some of the security forces. And what
an interesting thing to pine for.
I should also point out that Sarkozy has not suddenly come to this
rhetoric anew, as if prompted by the riots into an intemperate fury. He
has been saying this stuff for months: he first used his 'Kärcherise'
expression some months back, and was rebuked by Chirac and Villepin for
it. Actually, he seems to get off on playing Clint Eastwood: when a
judge freed one of two men suspected by police of murdering Nelly
Cremel, he announced that the judge would "pay for his mistake". (That
kind of grandstanding and legislative interference with judicial
decisions might well have inspired our dear departed David Blunkett).
And if Sarkozy's rhetoric is not new, neither are blazes in Parisian
suburbs. Back in August, several Parisian apartments housing immigrants
caught fire - arson was believed to be involved (see here, here, here
and here. Sarkozy responded by shutting down the housing blocks and
suggesting that the real problem was that France had accepted these
immigrants in the first place. (France Inter, August 30, 2005). He has
pledged to permanently station riot police and mobile police brigades
in "difficult" estates.
Now, French imams have already denounced the riots, anticipating the
inevitable witch hunt. Sarkozy has been trying to claim in the last
couple of days that the riots are organised and systematic, (this would
involve a rather enormous plot across much of France by hundreds of
thousands of Muslims), which is transparent demagoguery. Some have
tried to claim that Islamic fundamentalists are involved - French
officials say not. The only story that obtains here is that unrest
began as a reaction to the suspicious deaths of two teenage boys who
were fleeing the police yet had done nothing wrong; it intensified
after a mosque was tear-gassed; and it has spread as Sarkozy has barked
out veiled threats and insults. Further, eyewitnesses suggest that the
police are deliberately provoking violence.
The backdrop is not mysterious either. These kids are growing up in
squalid banlieues, where their parents and grandparents were deposited
upon arrival. Doug Ireland notes that they are in France largely due to
state and industrial policy. During the 1950s and 60s, when France was
experiencing an economic boom, a policy was initiated to recruit from
the former colonies labourers for menial and factory work, because two
successive wars had killed off much male labour power and lowered the
birth rate. There was a similar policy in Britain: it was Enoch Powell,
he who later drowned in rivers of his own froth, who encouraged
residents of the Commonwealth to migrate to the United Kingdom and take
up roles in the NHS. Generations of largely North African Arabs were
abandoned to the banlieues, pushed to the bottom of every available
pile, blamed for being there, subjected to police repression and
spectacularly high rates of unemployment. Meanwhile, they know that the
French government has been complicit in mass murder in Algeria, and
that it has armed Israel. They know that it continues to kill people in
Haiti and the Cote d'Ivoire, and that it was ready to send 15,000
troops into Iraq before Chirac fell out with Bush over the timing of an
invasion, and has supported the occupation.
And they know that Sarkozy wishes to impose an even more vicious
neoliberal agenda, while scapegoating some of its principal victims. He
wants to slash the welfare state, cap taxes at a maximum of 50% (that's
all taxes combined) of revenue for whatever income bracket (the rich),
and stop all benefits to anyone who refuses to take whatever shitty job
in Buerger King Muslim is offered to them. Congruent with this plan to
restore profitability to French capital, he has indicated that he wants
to impose quotas on immigration so that only those skilled workers that
the French economy needs are allowed in - and, of course, when they are
no longer needed, they will be left on the shitheap and blamed for
their condition.
Just as French Algeria never accorded full citizenship to the Arabs who
lived there, those now living in France are not visible. When they
become visible, they are despised - as in the case of young Muslim
schoolgirls, disporting themselves while being so noisome as to wear a
hijab. The very sight, these days, thanks to the efforts of the
Republic, is proscribed: "Off with it!" (In a market society, you must
display your wares). Despite the large number of Arabs and Muslims
living in France, there is not a single Arab or Muslim politician in
the French parliament. The French left, as I noted before, have largely
been abysmal on the question of Islamophobia. It is a particular
failing on their part since the intersection of racism with class
politics could hardly be more obvious in this case. The LCR demo
organised the other day perhaps indicates a growing willingness to
engage with this issue. As Le Colonel Chabert points out, what these
kids need and demand, before all else, is respect. That is the basis
upon which solidarity can and should be built.
------
Katt.
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| User: "Fred Stone" |
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| Title: Re: Quagmire, part deux |
07 Nov 2005 08:55:14 PM |
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"Katt" <kahgfghttt@t.com> wrote in
news:w_Obf.3790$c66.2148@newsfe3-gui.ntli.net:
On Sun, 06 Nov 2005 23:30:54 +0000, Fred Stone wrote:
http://www.suntimes.com/output/steyn/cst-edt-steyn06.html
Wake up, Europe, you've a war on your hands
Ignore the drooling imbecile, people: he doesn't have the fucking
brains he was born with. If he had the slightest grasp of the *real
world*, he'd know that Europe's *real war* is against the shitbag
pseudo-democracy he himself lives in. My shy advice to the good folks:
plonk him a.s.a.p. and read something *illuminating* instead...
------
Fear & Loathing in France.
http://leninology.blogspot.com/2005/11/fear-loathing-in-france.html
LENINOLOGY? And you complain about *my* sources. No wonder you spout
Marxist crap. Look where you get it from.
--
Fred Stone
aa# 1369
"A thief is more moral than a congressman;
when a thief steals your money, he doesn't demand you thank him."
-- Walter Williams
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| User: "Fred Stone" |
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| Title: Re: Quagmire, part deux |
07 Nov 2005 02:22:12 PM |
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Divin Marquis <postmaster@127.0.0.1> wrote in
news:pan.2005.11.07.12.59.48.548854@127.0.0.1:
On Sun, 06 Nov 2005 23:30:54 +0000, Fred Stone wrote:
http://www.suntimes.com/output/steyn/cst-edt-steyn06.html
Wake up, Europe, you've a war on your hands
You know what's interesting, I have only talked about this to *one*
french person, and that's because I work with him, he's muslim and
know people who live in the suburbs where that ***** is happening.
Other than that, nobody around me seems to give a *****. It's much less
of an issue or an inconvenience than, say, the average bus strike.
I hope you're right, but I wouldn't necessarily count on hearsay from a
Muslim to get the whole story.
But, hey, call it Intifada if you will.
Maybe the media is blowing it out of proportion?
Nah, they wouldn't do that!
--
Fred Stone
aa# 1369
"A thief is more moral than a congressman;
when a thief steals your money, he doesn't demand you thank him."
-- Walter Williams
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| User: "Lars Eighner" |
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| Title: Re: Quagmire, part deux |
07 Nov 2005 02:35:58 PM |
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In our last episode,
<Xns97075F7146A34fstone69@213.155.197.138>,
the lovely and talented Fred Stone
broadcast on alt.atheism:
Maybe the media is blowing it out of proportion?
Well, you know, maybe because social unrest is so-o-o
completely unknown in French history and so completely
unprecendented, it seems especially newsworthy. I mean
if there had been something like, say, weeks of riots in
the '60s, really bitter strikes and general strikes every
few years, I mean if stuff like that had ever happened before,
or if there had been a history of even more alarming events like
... like - oh, I don't know - something like a reign of terror or
something - if stuff like that had ever happen among certifiable
French people, then all this new Muslim stuff wouldn't be such
big news.
Nah, they wouldn't do that!
--
Rev. Lars Eighner, UCL http://www.larseighner.com/
The Mint Jelly of GodŽ -- The World's Best Atheist -- Unholier Than Thou
First Church of Electro-Baptism ***Atheist #1965*** One Short Circuit to Jesus
"Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis."--Sigmund Freud
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| User: "David Jensen" |
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| Title: Re: Quagmire, part deux |
07 Nov 2005 03:50:12 PM |
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On Mon, 07 Nov 2005 08:35:58 -0600, in alt.atheism
Lars Eighner <usenet@larseighner.com> wrote in
<slrndmupim.1hv.usenet@goodwill.io.com>:
In our last episode,
<Xns97075F7146A34fstone69@213.155.197.138>,
the lovely and talented Fred Stone
broadcast on alt.atheism:
Maybe the media is blowing it out of proportion?
Well, you know, maybe because social unrest is so-o-o
completely unknown in French history and so completely
unprecendented, it seems especially newsworthy. I mean
if there had been something like, say, weeks of riots in
the '60s, really bitter strikes and general strikes every
few years, I mean if stuff like that had ever happened before,
or if there had been a history of even more alarming events like
.. like - oh, I don't know - something like a reign of terror or
something - if stuff like that had ever happen among certifiable
French people, then all this new Muslim stuff wouldn't be such
big news.
I wonder if they have a memory hole that the send their past to each
time they give themselves a new Republic?
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| User: "Divin Marquis" |
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| Title: Re: Quagmire, part deux |
07 Nov 2005 03:06:30 PM |
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On Mon, 07 Nov 2005 14:22:12 +0000, Fred Stone wrote:
I hope you're right, but I wouldn't necessarily count on hearsay from a
Muslim to get the whole story.
Huh?
What do you mean? I live *here*.
But, hey, call it Intifada if you will.
Maybe the media is blowing it out of proportion?
Nah, they wouldn't do that!
The French media currently talks more about the US/UK media talking about
the events than about the events.
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| User: "Fred Stone" |
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| Title: Re: Quagmire, part deux |
07 Nov 2005 03:36:09 PM |
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Divin Marquis <postmaster@127.0.0.1> wrote in
news:pan.2005.11.07.15.06.30.497906@127.0.0.1:
On Mon, 07 Nov 2005 14:22:12 +0000, Fred Stone wrote:
I hope you're right, but I wouldn't necessarily count on hearsay from
a Muslim to get the whole story.
Huh?
What do you mean? I live *here*.
You said you asked a Muslim friend of yours who said he had heard about
it from somebody else.
But, hey, call it Intifada if you will.
Maybe the media is blowing it out of proportion?
Nah, they wouldn't do that!
The French media currently talks more about the US/UK media talking
about the events than about the events.
But our US/UK media is so *objective* about reporting, I mean, they
*never* exaggerate stories about violence in places like Iraq, so how
can they be doing that about France?
<irony alert!>
--
Fred Stone
aa# 1369
"A thief is more moral than a congressman;
when a thief steals your money, he doesn't demand you thank him."
-- Walter Williams
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| User: "Divin Marquis" |
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| Title: Re: Quagmire, part deux |
07 Nov 2005 04:46:39 PM |
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On Mon, 07 Nov 2005 15:36:09 +0000, Fred Stone wrote:
You said you asked a Muslim friend of yours who said he had heard about
it from somebody else.
No, I just said he's the only person I talked to about it.
Did'nt mention the content of the conversation.
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| User: "Uncle Vic" |
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| Title: Re: Quagmire, part deux |
07 Nov 2005 04:55:42 PM |
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on 07 Nov 2005 in alt.atheism, dear sweet Divin Marquis
(postmaster@127.0.0.1) made the light shine upon us with this:
Dang, I thought this was a "Family Guy" thread.
--
Uncle Vic
aa#2011
Supervisor, EAC Department of little adhesive-backed "L" shaped
chrome-plastic doo-dads to add feet to Jesus fish department
----
"The world is only 5-6 thousand years old does not mean the planet
earth is only 5-6 thousand years old. There have been many worlds
created and destroyed on this planet. The creation of the planet is
described in Genesis 1. The creation of the world is described in
Genesis 2. Two different kind of creations." --Eric Brze
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