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Posted on 11/05/2005 8:37:35 PM PST by jb6
WHAT IS behind the Paris riots? Organised gangs of criminals or even Islamic radicals out to undermine the state - or failure by successive governments to give millions of immigrants a chance in life?
Rampages that have gripped the poorer immigrant-populated outskirts of Paris since October 27, spreading for the first time on Thursday night to other parts of the country, have left most struggling for an explanation.
The rioters are young, overwhelmingly Muslim men, second-generation immigrants from France's former Arab and African colonies, who claim they are protesting against economic misery, racial discrimination and provocative policing.
This argument has been widely echoed in the press, by Muslim and community representatives and by the leftwing opposition, which accuses the centre-right government of slashing budgets for social work in these communities.
Hard-line new law-and-order policies implemented by Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy have also been widely accused of fuelling anger in the high-rise, mainly immigrant estates where the trouble has spread.
Sociologist Michel Wierviorka, speaking in Le Parisien newspaper, charged that Sarkozy had "stigmatised entire communities" by arguing that crime-ridden areas should be "cleaned with a power-hose".
But the interior minister - while recognising more must be done to haul the suburbs out of poverty and exclusion - insists the violence was being orchestrated by unknown ringleaders.
Police union leader Bruno Beschizza described the riots as "urban terrorism", led by small knots of criminals as well as Islamic radicals.
"This is a form of urban terrorism led by a minority of kingpins, who have a financial interest - such as drug trafficking - or an ideological one - such as Islamic radicals who have been seen by our colleagues."
These ringleaders were a "tiny minority", the head of the Synergie union said yesterday, adding that his view was backed by many social workers and lawmakers in the worst-hit Seine-Saint Denis region northeast of Paris.
The role, if any, of Islam in the recent upsurge in violence, which has affected mainly Muslim neighbourhoods, is a highly sensitive issue in France.
Paris's Socialist Mayor Bertrand Delanoe has warned against lumping together "a religion, Islam", with "a handful of extremists" and with "criminal networks". In many cases Muslim community leaders have been acting as mediators between youths and the authorities, going door-to-door to talk to the families of young rioters, or stepping in at night to stop the clashes.
Most observers searching for the root causes of the riots accuse successive governments of turning a blind eye as immigrant ghettos, synonymous with unemployment and social deprivation, swelled outside France's big cities.
Today, some 750 areas are classed as "Sensitive Urban Zones", where unemployment hovers at 20 percent. - Sapa-AFP
Sure, blame it on the short minorities! It's always a few bad eggs that spoil it for everybody.
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You might be right. I don't know how tightly-knit a muslim community is in France, so I can't judge. I would think by now, however, they've started rioting in parts that aren't entirely muslim, and the youths from these areas have joined in.
Bush->rush->rust->must->most->moot->root->riot
Seen earlier on FR
One can speculate all sorts of things. For all we know Catholic choir boys have joined the rampage. But that brings me back to my initial question: Has a single non-Muslim rioter been identified?
looks like 'A Clockwork Orange', French Style. I disagree with you, I think it is the moslem extremists ratcheting up the bored, idle, rage-filled 'Yout' (think Vinny).
Anchor babies that were never assimilated?
Nahhhhh...
Bored anarchists with a mission.
If not the Amish maybe the Quakers,
Rabblerousers all!!!!!! (sarcasm intended)
Waiting for them to blame President Bush. I can see it now, the Democrats worrying about the civil rights of rioters, saying their relatives were kept at Gitmo. There will be a claim that there will be no rioting if we paid the United Nations Sales tax that would go to poor people in other countries to even out the wealth. Such a poor country like the US should be sharing our wealth with them so they don't riot and have money to do good things like blow themselves up. Well you get the idea! I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale!
The first night muslim mauraders
The second night Chirac
The notion that Muslims could be behind any violence or savagery is just absurd. And they’ll kill anybody that says otherwise.
Who's to blame?
According to the MSM, celebrities and elitists everywhere probably George Bush (maybe FEMA.)
Muslims aren't responsible for this, they're a peaceful people (or so the French told me.) The only violent people in the world are all found in the current US Administration. After all according to a French Best selling book, Bush crashed planes into twin towers then blamed it on Middle Easterners.
I wonder how they're going to solve this problem....maybe they'll do what good lefties do in a crisis and either tax the rioters or censure them...
As much as we all like to dislike the French, the fact that there are parts of the Paris area that are ungovernable, is frightening. It looks like Europe’s Western Civilization is very close to chaos and defeat at the hands of hostile Muslim immigrants. Decades of pantywaistism has done them in.
Let them eat cake.
Even though I am, like many of us here, indulging in a some schadenfreude at the fall of France, your basic point is a valid one. It's not as if the underlying situation in the rest of Europe is actually any different - the UK included.
The ruling elite, and the apparent pluralities that put them in the driver's seat, have rejected their own heritage of faith, culture and nation (all of the French huffing and puffing about their great culture is just that). If the Muslims take control, Notre Dame's windows and statuary will ne destroyed and minarets will go up, just as they did with the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. Yet, the ruling elite continues to insist that a Muslim can be Frenchman. Faith, patriotism, and loyalty have been replaced by utopian leftist dogmas like feminism and multiculturalism in France and in all of Europe.
The whole egalitarian enterprise of leftism, whether in the form of frothing Marxist feminism or the slimy corporatist neo-Jacobinism masquerading as "conservatism" has met its match in Islam. If the west is to defeat Islam and survive as the west, it must utterly reject leftism in all of its incarnations. Failing this, the west falls and the Caliphate arises. Leftism, despite seeing its great goal [the destruction of western civilization] achieved at last, will die anyway, for it is ultimately parastical and cannot live without its host.
Like Theo Van Gogh, the nihilistic, self-described "piece of shit" who rejected his own culture and heritage, the left will expire on a filthy decaying street at the end of a jihadi's dagger - pathetically begging for mercy - realizng only too late that the very thing they rejected and destroyed was the only thing of real value.
I am frequently astonished by the determination of deep thinkers to place the blame for crime on persons other than the ones who are committing it. There is a very large number of people without jobs who manage to refrain from torching automobiles. It isn't as if the young men doing so have no choice. They're doing it for fun, and because they know they're going to get away with it.
Bravo!
BTTT! READ HIS COMMENTS! PLEASE!
Well said, especially your conclusion.
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