Posted on 11/04/2005 12:32:54 AM PST by Southack
PARIS RIOTS SPREADING 4.11.2005. 18:34:50
Rioting around Paris has worsened with gangs attacking police and firefighters in defiance of a government vow to crackdown on the violence, which has plagued the capital for over a week.
Fresh rioting broke out on the outskirts of Paris — in the city's poorest and mainly immigrant suburbs — for the eighth straight night on Thursday.
Around 1,300 police officers were mobilised in the north-eastern suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis, while more than 30 people were arrested in the area.
Buses, fire engines and police were stoned and five policemen were reported injured.
Police said more than 160 cars were torched overnight in the Paris region and 33 in the provinces, a day after around 315 vehicles were burnt in the city’s Ile-de-France region.
One of the worst incidents took place at Neuilly-sur-Marne where police vans came under fire from pellet pistols, but nobody was reported hurt.
A fire was started in a primary school in Stains, as police were targeted by a group of 30 to 40 people near a synagogue.
Paris firemen were called to fight a blaze at a carpet warehouse in Aulnay-sous-Bois in Seine-Saint-Denis.
Traffic was halted on a suburban commuter line which links Paris to Charles de Gaulle airport after stone-throwing rioters attacked two trains.
The clashes have gained territory every night since they began last Thursday, exposing what critics say is a failure of the government to address the problems of low-income, high-immigration suburbs where crime and gangs run rampant.
In a worrying sign similar rampages broke out elsewhere in France.
Police said several cars in the eastern city of Dijon were set alight, while similar attacks took place in the western Seine-Maritime region and the Bouches-du-Rhone in the south of the country.
Government defiant
French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who cancelled a trip to Canada to tackle the crisis, said the violence was "unacceptable".
He vowed that authorities would not give in to the violence and would make restoring order their "absolute top priority".
"I will not allow organised gangs to make the law in the suburbs," he said.
President Jacques Chirac on Wednesday called for calm, warning that an escalation would be "dangerous".
The riots were sparked last week by the accidental electrocution of two teenagers who had hidden in an electrical sub-station to escape a police identity check in Clichy-sous-Bois.
A preliminary report released by the interior ministry on Thursday appeared to exonerate police of any direct role in the teenagers' deaths.
But as the unrest continued the opposition Socialist Party and many in the suburbs themselves blamed the hardline policies of Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy for fanning the violence.
Mr Sarkozy, who on Thursday said the total number of people arrested was over 140, vowed a "war without mercy" on crime and rebellious youths in the suburbs just before the rampages erupted.
The conservative minister, who has ambitions of running for president in two years, has drawn criticism for his tough rhetoric, especially for referring to delinquents as "rabble".
On Thursday, he claimed that recent rioting "was not spontaneous, it was perfectly organised — we are looking into by whom and how."
Low income suburbs
France has 751 neighbourhoods officially classed as severely disadvantaged, housing a total of five million people, around eight percent of the population.
The recent violence has exposed simmering discontent in those suburbs where African and Muslim immigrants and their French-born children are trapped by poverty, unemployment, racial discrimination, crime and poor education and housing.
Unemployment is these areas is often twice the national rate of 10 percent, and per capita incomes 40 percent below the national average.
Thursday night was the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, a night traditionally marked by feasts and family get-togethers.
Those were words from a blog, not my words. Believe me, you don't have to explain it to me. You're preaching to the choir. But, yes, you get it and you're dead-on.
Good luck to you and yours. Where in Europe are you?
African and Muslim immigrants and their French-born children are trapped by poverty, unemployment, racial discrimination, crime and poor education and housing.
Discrimination, in France.... against, dare we say... Moozlimbs.... Mon Dieu!
Say it is not so!
bump to self for later
The answer is to treat the suburbs of Paris like the IDF treated Jenin.
Yikes, do you have a link for that?
Meanwhile, the white flag is readied.
I have been praying very hard that the Lord would wake up what is left of the Christian church in Europe. Be brave and do not remain silent.
Perhaps the French better return all the Egyptian and Greek and Roman artifact so they can be kept for safe keeping before the Louve is burned as decadent.
I bet those Religion of Peace types would just torch the Mona Lisa.
When you go to bed with the dogs you wake up with fleas.
The liberals, comunists, socialists and media in France, the United Kingdom, and the United States have kissed the muslims' ass forward, backward, and sideways since the World Trade Center attack and even before that.
The French are getting what they deserve, nothing less.
Then it will be the United Kingdom's turn in the barrel.
over the last year FNC has gotten VERY weak.
They kiss but too much.
Weasley Clark is a perfect example of a waste of airtime.
Ferraro who apparently is not so sick after all, is a less interesting than a test pattern.
FNC needs to just cut the crap and say what EVERYONE on the planet knows. Islam is a BLOOD religion. The only practitioners who call it a peaceful religion are liars and/or useful idots.
Ciraq will not eat crow, Chiraq will be GONE soon, off to wherever his buddy Schroeder has gone.
French Jews have been making a steady stream of exodus for several years now.
Yes, but Chirac has until 07. Not leaving soon enough. Paris will be totally gone by then.
Of course it is. He has stirred them all up, made them angry, and turned Iraq into a huge terrorist training ground.
I don't blame them. In their place, I would leave too.
It's time to get out of Dodge.
"Their fear, and a root of the problem, is that they do not want, in any case, to be seen as anything like an American or America.
They have derided us for so long, and so vehemently, that they would truly fear that, and may very well rather be Muslim than to be seen having real significant common ground with our value system."
Exactly. I think various and sundry Euros would love to do what's needed but they're more terrified of proving us right. Maybe we could promise not to say "I told you so" or something.
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