Posted on 11/05/2005 2:54:50 PM PST by Daralundy
If Nicolas Sarkozy had been allowed to have his way, he could have saved France. Last Summer the outspoken minister of the Interior was Frances most popular politician with his promise to restore the law of the Republic in the various virtually self-ruling immigrant areas surrounding the major French cities.
These areas, which some compare to the millet system of the former Ottoman Empire, where each religious community (millet) conducted its own social and cultural life in its own neighbourhoods, exist not only in France, but also in Muslim neighbourhoods in Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and other countries.
The French establishment led by the corrupt President Jacques Chirac and his Prime Minister, the aristocrat Dominique de Villepin, an appointee who has never held an elected office, begrudged Sarkozy his popularity. The minister was distrusted. He was an outsider, a self-made man who had made it to the top without the support of relations and cronies, by hard work and his no-nonsense approach.
Sarkozy (whose real surname is Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa) is a second generation immigrant, the son of a Hungarian refugee and a Greek mother. I like the frame of mind of those who need to build everything because nothing was given to them, he said a few months ago about his upbringing.
The experience of his youth has made Sarkozy not only the most pro-American French politician, but also virtually the only one who understands what second generation immigrants really need if they want to build a future.
More important than the so-called social benefits the government alms provided by welfare politicians like Chirac, Villepin and their predecessors is the provision of law and order. This guarantees that those who create wealth do not lose it to thugs who extort and rob and burn down their properties.
Sarkozys decision to send the police back to the suburbs which had been abandoned by previous governments was resented by the youths who now rule there. That this would lead to riots was inevitable. Sarkozy knew it, and so did Chirac, Villepin and the others. Sarkozy intended to crack down hard on the rioters. If the French government had sent in the army last week, it would have been responding to the thugs in a language they understand: force. And the riots would long have ceased.
What happened instead was that Sarkozys colleagues in government used the riots as an excuse to turn on the immigrant in their own midst. Paris is well worth a mass, King Henri IV of France once said. Bringing down Nicolas Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa is well worth a riot, King Chirac must have thought. Contrary to the normal French policy in dealing with trouble makers, the authorities decided to use a soft approach. Chirac and his designated crown prince Villepin blamed Sarkozys disrespectful rhetoric such as calling thugs thugs for having detonated the explosive situation in the suburbs. Dominique de Villepin stepped in and took over the task of restoring calm from Sarkozy. While the latter was told to shut up and keep a low profile, Villepin began a dialogue with the rioters. As a result the riots have spilled over from Paris to other French cities. Do not be surprised if this French epidemic soon crosses Frances borders into the North African areas surrounding cities in Belgium and the Netherlands.
As for Sarkozy, the best thing this immigrant son can do is to resign and make a bid for the 2007 presidential elections as an outsider. His popularity with the ordinary Frenchmen has not been tarnished yet. But this could soon change if he remains a member of a Villepin government which is clearly unwilling to abolish the current millet system. French patriots do not like to see their country disintegrate into a cluster of self-governing city-states, some of which are Sharia republics.
Right here, watching and waiting...
Yep! Never look a gift-horse in the mouth.
Chirac is all talk, and no action. Here's what Chirac was saying almost 8 years ago, in 1998 when cars were being burned by mooligans in Neuhof, near Strasbourg.
French President Jacques Chirac, in his annual New Year message, denounced growing violence in France and urged people to help the police control the problem. He said: "There is too much violence in our country, too much insecurity - in the schools, on public transport. Every day new limits are broken beyond which our society will disintegrate."Cars are now burned annually, on January 1, in Neuhof.
PS. Vlad will have to stand on his own, get out of the party, right?
I was on that thread. Said my piece and got the hell off. Appeaser and apologist pi$$ me off and I don't want to get banned.
Zoot Alors!
It might be interesting to note that islam has attracted people who felt outside with respect to property ownership. This is especially obvious in Indonesia, which is far from being Arab, since only 7% of the land has clear property title. Those who are outcast might tend to join up with the first system of inclusion that comes along. So it is with islam, and so it was with Christianity way back when, and so it was with communism. It's a symptom, not a cause.
France needs to modernize and expand its land ownership system now, before it is too late. Whatever this requires, the process will probably have to be political.
Actually, Sarkozy is the president of the party (UMP).
Whoops! Shows you how little I know...
I'm having trouble getting my "sympathy meter" into gear. Right now it's registering "zero".
Car burning in particular seems to have become a popular form of expression. In the Strasbourg area, some 500 cars were torched in 1997, up from 400 the previous year. Other cities were not so hard-hit but have had increases."Burning cars has become a kind of ritual," said scholar Farhad Khosrokhavar, who studies young Muslims in the suburbs. "Through this violence, [young people] feel involved in society. They feel like stars.
Hmmmmmm
Got a link? Me wanna see this.
I am calling for the creation of a french-muslim state, with Paris as it's capital.
Me thinks that this is going to shut up a lot of finger-pointers.
Isn't he the one who gave Colin Powell such a difficult time? and basically was an arse over Iraq at every available moment he could find a camera? I think he could give Chuckie Schumer a run for a camera ( or could have back in 2002/03.
Ya think? I think Chirac is still in shock over the French voting against his beloved EU constitution... he was so anxious to use that to poke us with at every chance, take over the world currency from USA, etc... when will they get his to step down??
Perhaps this is the aim of continuing the "soft" approach.
He, we have our own Muslim population... if we go to war against Muslims to save France, Denmark, etc.. then we have a battle on the home front.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.