Posted on 11/05/2005 4:47:47 PM PST by DogBarkTree
Paris - \'We burned 15 cars. How many do you have?\' A grim contest is under way in France as kids from disadvantaged suburbs vie with each other to see who can riot the hardest.
On Internet websites, young arsonists brag about their successes. Rioting, it seems, has become a trend sport, as youths in immigrant areas of provincial cities begin to rally to the call from Paris.
While political slogans hold no sway among these youngsters, hatred for Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy is palpable. \'Now we\'re the ones chasing you with the Karcher (high-pressure hoses),\' they say, referring to Sarkozy\'s pledge to clean the suburbs of \'scum\'.
What began as pitched battles has transformed into a nightly game of cat-and-mouse with the police.
Two or three people set out armed with mobile phones, crowbars and incendiary material. A quick hit with the crowbar on the windscreen of a police van, a Molotov cocktail inside - and they\'re off back into the sprawling housing estates.
The rioters have also started using motorbikes and mobile phones to trace the movements of police riot squads, in tactics reminiscent of urban guerrilla movements.
\'Each night we turn this place into Baghdad\', says one masked youth in Sevran near Paris. As a political statement, there have been better - but these riots seem to be more aimed at the television cameras than the National Assembly.
\'It would be better to go into Paris than break up everything here,\' his friend says, appearing to consider that the victims of the rioting are predominantly their own neighbours and friends.
\'Why did they set my car on fire, why mine?\' asks one young man as he watches it go up in flames. He knows the perpetrators, he says. They\'re neighbours of his, but he refuses to name them.
\'These are our kids,\' says Mohammed Rezzoug, vice president of Blanc-Mesnil football club.
Every night, Rezzoug is out on the streets talking to local youths in a bid to prevent his own sports hall going up in smoke. \'They answer me: \'Momo, we\'ll fuck them all\',\' he says.
Lurking behind the lines of burning cars is the knowledge that these riots could soon become a matter of life and death.
On Wednesday night, a disabled woman in Sevran barely escaped death in a burning bus.
Youths barricaded the road with burning tyres and threw fuel into the bus. All the other passengers fled, but the 56-year-old, unable to move, was sprayed with petrol and then a burning rag was thrown inside.
The woman survived the attack with second and third-degree burns on one-fifth of her body, after the bus driver managed to pull her to safety.
Yeah. WWI was a real tragedy. It set up WWII...the culture of appeasement...the feeling that there was nothing that was worth fighting for. They were so weary that Hitler and his gang were able to do their work with nearly no obstruction.
I don't know what the male population of France was in WWII, but I do know that it was a huge percentage of them that died. I read something that WWI averaged 230 men killed per hour for the entire duration of the war.
And the Poilu were tough, brave soldiers, amongt the best if not the best, sent to their deaths by incompetent, corrupt generals. Completely destroyed.
I can sympathize with the tragedy, but one would think WWII would make them realize there are things worth fighting for. But no, they lost their hearts.
That's what has my attention. I have no interest in wearing a burka in my dotage!
Funny, isn't it?
The French didn't want to go to Bagdahd...
So the muslims are bringing Baghahd to Paris.
Quite appropos.
Mark
Maybe the French are more patient with their government than we are. Four days to rescue Katrina survivors seemed like an endless, unsatisfactory delay to Americans, but Europeans ae acting as if this is no big deal after TEN DAYS.
An acquaintance of mine -- French, currently resident in North Africa -- sent a long post about the French riots to an email group I belong to. It is a fascinating post, but much too long to paste here. I did think, though, that the following passage would interest NRO readers, so with his permission, I pass it on.
It is from a passage headed: "Why an Intifada in France?" It is among a long list of reasons given as answers to the question.
"The Iraq war: as I had noticed very strongly in Tunisia a little more than 2 years ago, the opposition of France to intervention in Iraq has been perceived as a sign of weakness, and French are since considered as Dhimmis. The change of attitude from Arabs against French has been dramatic: now I know problems of security in Tunisia, and even in the French planes to go and come from there, and in Nice (French Riviera) Airport! This opposition, probably motivated by the money earned in Oil For Terror program and by threats from Saudi Arabia and Iran, has marked the end of France as a Western country (whatever one thinks about the Iraq war per se!)." a
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No, it's time to start reading the riot act to the little bastards, then shoot those who do not comply, then deport the rest of the horrible lot out of the country. I doubt the Frogs have the stones to do it, though.
No insurance payment for him. Sound fair?
"Sophisticated women?" In DC? Maybe at the Palm, but I think Par-ee AND DC are overrated in the sophistication department.
Same here, it USED to be a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there. Now I'm not even sure it's a nice place to visit.
Your post about "sophisticated women" makes me feel icky. Elitist franchophone crap. To most Americans, hairy armpits and boorish snobbishness aren't really considered sophisticated.
Perhaps your reference was meant to refer to the fact that France and Washington both are stomping grounds for the likes of that sophisticate we know and love as Valerie Plame.
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I saw that. Still don't believe it. France banned the burkha (in school) a short while ago. I provide that fact simply as a point of information, but it does deflate the dhimmi argument.
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