Posted on 11/08/2005 7:02:02 AM PST by Tolik
As the night falls, the "troubles" start; and the pattern is always the same. Bands of youths in balaclavas start by setting fire to parked cars, break shop windows with baseball bats, wreck public telephones, and, ransack cinemas, libraries and schools. Once the police have arrived on the scene, the rioters attack them with stones, knives and baseball bats. The police respond by firing tear-gas grenades and, on occasions, blank shots in the air. Sometimes the youths fire back, with real bullets.
The scenes described above are not from the West Bank but from 16 French cities, most of them close to the capital Paris, that have been plunged in a European version of the "intifada" which at the time of writing appears beyond control.
When the troubles first began in Clichy-sous-Bois, an underprivileged suburb east of Paris, a week ago France's bombastic Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkozy responded by sending over 400 heavily armed policemen to "impose the laws of the republic" and promised to crush " the louts and hooligans" within the day. Within a few days, however, it had dawned on anyone who wanted to know that this was no "outburst by criminal elements" that could be handled with a mixture of braggadocio and batons. By last Monday everyone in Paris was speaking of "an unprecedented crisis". Both the interior minister and his boss, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, had to cancel foreign trips to deal with the riots.
But how did it all start? The accepted account is that sometime last week a group of young boys in Clichy engaged in one of their favorite sports: Stealing parts of parked cars. Normally, nothing dramatic would have happened as the police have not been present in that suburb for years. The problem came when one of the inhabitants, a female busybody, telephoned the police and reported the thieving spree taking place just opposite her building. The police were thus obliged to do something that meant entering a city that, as noted, had been a no-go area for them. Once the police arrived on the scene the youth, who had been reigning over Clichy pretty unmolested for years, got really angry. A brief chase took place in the street and two of the youths, who were not actually chased by the police, sought refuge in a cordoned off area housing a power pylon. Both were electrocuted. Once news of their death was out, Clichy was all up in arms. With cries of "God is Great", bands of youths armed with whatever they could get hold of went on a rampage and forced the police to flee. The French authorities, however, could not allow a band of youths to expel the police from part of the French territory. So, they hit back by sending in Special Forces, known as the CRS, with armored cars and tough rules of engagement.
Within hours the original cause of the incidents was forgotten and the issue jelled around a demand by the representatives of the rioters that the French police leave the "occupied territories." By mid-week the riots had spread to three of the provinces neighboring Paris with a population of 5.5 million.
But who lives in the affected areas?
In Clichy itself more than 80 percent of the inhabitants are Muslim immigrants or their children, mostly from Arab and black Africa. In other affected towns the Muslim immigrant community accounts for between 30 and 60 percent of the population.
But these are not the only figures that matter. Average unemployment in the affected areas is estimated at around 30 percent and, when it comes to young would-be workers, reaches 60 percent. In these suburban towns, built in the 1950s in imitation of the Soviet social housing of the Stalinist era, people live in crammed conditions, sometimes several generations in a tiny apartment, and see "real French life" only on television.
The French used to flatter themselves for the success of their policy of "assimilation" which was supposed to turn immigrants from any backgrounds into "proper Frenchmen" within a generation at most. The policy of assimilation worked as long as immigrants came to France in drips and drops and thus could merge into a much larger mainstream. Assimilation, however, cannot work when in most schools in the affected areas fewer than 20 percent of the pupils are native French speakers.
France has also lost another powerful mechanism for assimilation: The obligatory military service that was abolished in the 1990s.
As the number of immigrants and their descendants increases in a particular locality, more and more of its native French inhabitants leave for "calmer places", thus making assimilation still more difficult. In some areas it is possible for an immigrant or his descendants to spend a whole life without ever encountering the need to speak French let alone familiarize himself with any aspect of the famous French culture.
The result is often alienation. And that, in turn, gives radical Islamists an opportunity to propagate their message of religious and cultural apartheid. Some are even calling for the areas where Muslims form a majority of the population to be re-organized on the basis of the "millet" system that was in force in the Ottoman Empire. Under that system each religious community is regarded as "millet" and enjoys the right to organize its social, cultural and educational life in accordance with its religious beliefs.
In some parts of France de facto "millet" system is already in place. In these areas all women are obliged to wear the standardized Islamist "hijab" while most men grow their beards to the length prescribed by the sheikhs. The radicals have managed to chase away French shopkeepers selling wine and alcohol and pork products, forced "places of sin" such as dancing halls, cinemas and theaters to close down and, seized control of much of the local administration often through permeation.
A reporter who spent last weekend in Clichy and its neighboring towns of Bondy, Aulany-sous-Bois and Bobigny heard a single overarching message: The French authorities should keep out!
"All we demand is to be left alone," said Mouloud Dahmani, one of the local "emirs" engaged in negotiations to persuade the French to withdraw the police and allow a committee of sheikhs, mostly from the Muslim Brotherhood, to negotiate an end to the hostilities.
President Jacques Chirac and Premier de Villepin are especially sore because they had believed that their opposition to the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003 would give France a heroic image in the Muslim community. That illusion has now been shattered and the Chirac administration, already passing through a deepening political crisis, appears to be clueless about how to cope with what the Parisian daily France Soir has called a "ticking time bomb".
It is now clear that a good portion of France's Muslims not only refuse to assimilate into "the superior French culture" but firmly believe that Islam offers the highest forms of life.
So what is the solution? One solution, offered by Gilles Kepel, an advisor on Islamic affairs to Chirac, is the creation of "a new Andalusia" in which Christians and Muslims would live side by side and cooperate to create a new cultural synthesis.
The problem with Kepel's vision, however, is that it does not address the important issue of political power: Who will rule this new Andalusia — Muslims or the largely secularist Frenchmen?
Suddenly, French politics has become worth watching again, even though for the wrong reasons.
This item is available on the Benador Associates website, at http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/18823
This has to be the understatement of the year!! Great article!
Meanwhile, the Muslims have literally surrounded Paris. GMA showed a great graphic this morning of Paris as the core of a charred circle.
For you bureaucratic hacks reading these web sites, read carefully. Inside every Muslim is a good person under the control of the Devil. Nuke Mecca and kill the Imams and the world will right itself. What religion combines the Ayn Rand's brute with the witch doctor? Islam is the only one I know. Kill the Imams. It's the short road to peace.
It is not a parallel at all other than both groups have warm bodies and each share their own common culture;
1) The French Muslims arrived legally and the French people/government accept their presence; the American Mexicans arrived illegally and 80% of the US population believe they should be extradited.
2) The religion of Islam primarily uses force to convert people to their faith. Christianity uses only the words of God, scripture, to appeal to converts. No man can force another man to convert to Christianity. The Holy Spirit comes to those who willfully and voluntarily accept jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour.
Note: Catholicism however is a hybrid religion. It combines Christianity with a cult. As such The US Hispanic illegal immigrants have a subservient nature and culture. They wait for other men to tell them what to do. When their orders conflict with the teachings of Christ then they become passive and indecisive. Protestant Christians can act independently according to their own spirit and their own relationship with God and Jesus Christ. They tend to view authority with suspicion and have confidence in their own personal decision and actions. [This is the spirit that won WWII)
3) The French people are disarmed. The American people are armed and will shoot to kill to defend property.
Good points. However - even though 80% of the US population believe they should be extradited our government is doing little to enforce the laws in this regard.
I'll still take a Hispanic illegal over an Islamic one any day
This thread is not the place and I don't really have the time, but no one should be able to say something this stupid without getting called on it.
Even worse, they never shut down the flow into the country of Arab/African immigrants.
&&
In addition, working French citizens continue to foot the bill for housing and feeding and health care for the islamos.
"I'll still take a Hispanic illegal over an Islamic one any day"
Hispanics have much more in common with us than do Islamics. Having said that, I still think we need to control our border.
Absolutely we need to control our border and return the illegals who are already here. Now!
Some people are hard to figure.
Anyone know where the French Foreign Legion is based these days?
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Try this website.
http://www.ambafrance-us.org/atoz/legion/index.asp
medicate = medicare
OK. France is lost. Now where do I get a good bottle of wine cheap?
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Try California.
Contemporary accounts report bodies in the rivers for months afterwards, so that no one would eat fish. Pope Gregory XIII's reaction was jubilant: all the bells of Rome pealed for a public day of thanksgiving, the guns of the Castel Sant'Angelo sounded a joyous salute, a special commemorative medal was struck to honour the occasion, and Gregory commissioned Giorgio Vasari to paint a mural depicting the Massacre, which is in the Vatican. In Paris, the poet Jean-Antoine de Baïf, founder of the Academie de Musique et de Poésie, wrote a sonnet extravagantly praising the killings.The savage bloodlust of Rome against the martyrs of France is being repaid. It was through many incidents like this that the authority of the Roman establishment was overthrown and the entire reputation of Christianity in Europe so damaged by Rome that the populace turned to atheism or paganism.
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