Posted on 11/06/2005 8:39:52 AM PST by Pikamax
French urban unrest hits new high Sun Nov 6, 2005 9:18 AM EST
By Elisabeth Pineau and Brian Rohan
PARIS (Reuters) - Urban violence scaled new heights in France as gangs of youths torched cars, shops and firms in the 10th straight night of violence in poor suburbs of Paris and provincial towns, despite heavy police reinforcements.
Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin was to meet police on Sunday afternoon and teachers from tough neighborhoods to discuss how to respond to youths who have defied all appeals for calm from top officials and exasperated residents.
Rioting started 10 days ago with the deaths of two youths apparently fleeing police. The deaths ignited pent up frustration among ethnic minorities over racism, unemployment, police treatment and their marginal place in French society.
The Socialist opposition chided the ruling conservatives over their law and order record and demanded President Jacques Chirac, who won re-election in 2002 on security issues but who has kept a low profile, speak out.
Residents in affected zones wept and vented their dismay.
"This is too much, stop! Stop, do something else, but not this, not violence," sobbed a woman in Evreux, a normally quiet Normandy town where a shopping mall, 50 vehicles, a post office and two schools were destroyed.
"My wife's out of a job now," fumed another resident. "I've two kids, a house to pay for and a car loan. What do I do now?"
Evreux mayor Jean-Louis Debre, a Chirac confidant who is speaker of the lower house of parliament, told reporters at the scene: "A hundred people have smashed everything and strewn desolation. Well, they don't form part of our universe."
GOVERNMENT RESPONSE
Authorities say the rolling nightly riots are being organized via the Internet and mobile phones, and have pointed the finger at drug traffickers and Islamist militants.
Across France, 1,300 vehicles went up in flames, with 32 cars destroyed in the city of Paris for the first time.
"Why would people do such a thing? You should go and ask them. Of course it's not normal -- it's pure vandalism," said one pensioner in the 17th district of Paris where the wrecks of six burnt-out cars sat surrounded by shards of glass.
Previously quiet towns like Dreux, to the west, and the western city of Nantes, were also affected.
Seven police helicopters buzzed over the Paris region through the night, filming disturbances and directing mobile squads to incidents. Police made 349 arrests and an extra 2,300 officers have been drafted in.
The violence has tarnished France's image abroad, forcing Villepin to cancel a trip to Canada, while Russia and the United States have warned their citizens to avoid troubled suburbs.
Authorities have so far found no way beyond appeals and more police to address a problem with complex social, economic and racial causes.
"Many youths have never seen their parents work and couldn't hold down a job if they got one," said Claude Chevallier, manager of a burned-out carpet depot in the rundown Paris suburb of Aulnay-sous-Bois.
WHERE IS CHIRAC?
As the government continued to struggle for a response to the crisis, Socialist Party leader Francois Hollande said the riots were a failure of government policy and leadership.
"I want to hear Jacques Chirac today," Hollande told reporters. "Where is the president when such serious events are taking place?"
Villepin has consulted widely but has released no details to date of a promised action plan for 750 tough neighborhoods.
"I'll make proposals as early as this week," the weekly Journal du Dimanche quoted him as saying.
Communist and Green Party officials demanded one symbolic measure -- the resignation of Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy.
Accused of stoking passions by calling troublemakers "scum," Sarkozy has ignored calls to quit. A survey published on Sunday indicated his public image was holding up, even if many disapproved of his strong language.
Villepin also has ambitions to be the right wing's presidential candidate in 2007 and has tried to position himself as a much more consensual figure than Sarkozy. The effect on the crisis on his ratings is still unclear.
Shame on you!!!!
NOWHERE in the article are the rioters identified as MUSLIM...
The closest they come, is to say that the riots are being organized by "drug traffickers and Islamist militants"..
MSM is attempting to mask the fact that this is ANOTHER anti civilization Jihad against the non-Muslim world.
France will fall.......within months, unless they start shooting and deporting the non-assimilatable bastards back to their Turd World homes.
Semper Fi
If you weren't French you'd probably get a gun or some other type of weapon and join with your neighbors to defend your neighborhood. Funny how riots and property destruction seem to detour around armed citizens.
Maybe I should go tell the DUmmies that eeeeevil Halliburton is behind it all. They hold the contract to rebuild Paris.
/sarc
Reuters now reporting that Islamist militants are behind this? It's only 10 days into the riots, why so soon? Must be getting harder to cover up.
With history as a guide, most Frenchmen will demand more social spending, and more "understanding" as to why these "youths" are acting this way.
Posts over at DU that even suggested the Rioters were Muslim were being yanked.
Anyone who called them Muslim would be attacked on subsequent pots.
Palestine on the Seine?
The historical ironies are just getting to be too much here.
For instance:
Will the French ask Isreal for help in dealing with the New Intifada?
Will the "insurgents" settle for a Two State solution?
Will an Arab country put forward a UN resolution demanding the withdrawl of French forces from "occupied" territories?
The French are paralyzed and the Muzzies know it. If they start shooting junior terrorists, er...I mean kids, there will be an international uproar and the big boys will show up with big bombs to "defend our children". Meanwhile France is being totally humiliated by the "B" team with the pending nightmare of being seen as another Isreal.
Osama and the Mullahs must be ROFL. In their dreams they couldn't imagine it would be this easy.
Kerry has a plan, he just won't tell anyone until he is elected.
Islam is the Devil's tool to destroy civilization, to bring man kind into a beastal age. No curse or plague has lasted as long as the 1300 years of Islam. Time to end it.
Here's the point: why should a nuclear armed nation give a damn what the rest of the world thinks? If you have nukes AND the ability to deliver them, screw the rest, do what must be done.
There is a powerful lesson here from people who sit around and watch thugs burn their cars, homes and businesses while they cry, wring their hands and plead for the government to come and save them. Unbelievable.
Where is the freakin' bodycount? I refuse to believe that only the two from the first night have perished. The bird flu body count (62 out of 1.5 billion) gets top billing. Perhaps Rooters and CommieNewsNet have an agenda. As well as Faux.
The fact that Chirac is the "Conservative" leader says a lot right there!
To Sarkozy: Why did you go and say something?
Europe is ruled by idiocy.
Well, nobody's died yet.
On one thread I read recently (who knows which one) there was the implication that the "yoots" who fried themselves were not, as stated, running from police who have stated they were not being chased. Since there have been statements that the riots were planned, there were a couple of hints here and there that the "yoots" were actually trying to sabotage the electric substation.
Why would "yoots" jump over an 8 ft high fence, emblazoned with warnings of high voltage and death, to escape from far away (I read 1000 feet or was it meters) who weren't even chasing them?
The man on the train incident was about two weeks after the London tube bombings (my son narrowly missed that, by over sleeping).
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