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.
I disagree. They will not stop until they are stopped. If the Eiffel Tower blows up, the French may get a little perturbed, but all of Europe has already admitted through abortion and birth control that they have no interest in perpetrating the species. They were just hoping to live without working for the rest of their lives. I'm not sure France could win if they decided to fight. They're old, weak cowards who have no love for each other. The Muslims are young and enjoy hurting and killing people.
Wouldn't surprise me.
Of course we have a large muslim population as well...
How long until they do here what their prophet demands?
My knowledge of France isn't very good but it is very believable. God how I hate the French.
I think this is a possibility (however remote) if the rioting moves to Paris proper (or to other non-ghetto neighborhoods).
I think this is the one.
They very well could have suppressed this with military force. The international perception is what is driving the events now. I still say that they will tolerate this for months. The only downside politically, is if (BIG if) some cohesion develops within the French freedom fighters; and the unrest spreads to Germany.
It is rather odd that the rest of the world has such a muted reaction to these events. Rest assured that if this spreads to upper-class areas, there will be swift retribution. I believe that there have been such incursions on a small scale, and that news will filter out through the French Ministry of Information. So far they have downplayed the deaths pretty well. Imagine CNN sitting on a story of death and mayhem in America. CNNi has had to work overtime in putting a spin on these events. And the good old BBC is still playing it as an inconvenient "boys will be boys" episode.
They are terrified!
It's coming to a shire or provence near you very, very, soon and they are just about ready to soil their skivvies.
This time, let's ignore france. Better yet: send Carter over there - it looks like they're kicking the s**t out of anybody who gets in their way, so we might as well take advantage of that!
LOL, those are great!
When I went back to Europe September 20th, 2001; none of the everyday people seemed terrified. Several Americans freaked and would not go back. Frankly, I run across way more Americans that are terrified than Brits, Aussies, Italians, or Russians. And the French were not terrified at all. They have transit strikes that screw up their routine worse than this will.
Do not take this next comment as an endorsement of saving France, but if we nuked Detroit would anyone really notice?
It's hitting the fan. The question is what to do. The rioters, or most of them are citizens, just like the ones in LA (Rodney King) and La (Katrina.) So in that respect it's not much different. What have we done? We pretended and keep pretending that it never happened, and we flushed more money down the latrina (that, in this case, is not a reference to a female name popular in America's ghettos.)
The hapless owners of Chevrolet Cavalier would cheer, I guarantee!
No, they don't. Nobody needs a fascist.
Why wait for 2007? Sarkozy should stage a coup and declare himself in charge.
Actually, those are made in Lordstown, Ohio which is awfully close to the town of my birth, Youngstown, Ohio. Of course they were probably designed and engineered in Detroit.
No.
Does this mean there was no police presence prior to this? Who maintained the law and order in this place in the past? There had to be some kind of police presence to respond to the criminal activities, the traffic accidents, and such.
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