Oh my, could this be the beginning of a Coup d'état? France becoming a Muslim state? BWA HA HA HA HA!
Posted on 11/04/2005 5:13:25 PM PST by F14 Pilot
"THIS is a war." It is late in the evening marking the end of Ramadan when 13-year-old Souhail, a French Muslim of Moroccan origin, makes his bellicose declaration.
On a residential street crowded with onlookers, we are trying to shield ourselves from the blaze and foul smell of another car set alight in the outer Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois.
Nearby BeurgerKing Muslim is doing a brisk trade in Halal fast food and mothers wearing headscarves are pushing young children around in strollers.
But tonight the poor, North African immigrant neighbourhood is also crawling with hundreds of police officers brandishing guns, batons and teargas canisters and there are fire trucks and sirens blaring.
Clichy-sous-Bois is only 20 minutes' drive from the storybook centre of the capital beloved by tourists and immortalised in film and song as the City of Light; the grand French republican ideal of beauty and equality for all.
But the northeastern Paris suburb may as well be another country.
This is the flashpoint satellite town, rife with unemployment and overshadowed by a huge, rundown, council housing estate where France's worst race rioting in years began a week ago.
The violence that spread across Paris's troubled outer suburbs was sparked by the deaths of two teenaged boys electrocuted as they took refuge in a substation, believing they were being chased by police. A local mosque was later attacked with teargas canisters yet Souhail says he has no fear.
"This is a war between the police and the young people and it is the police's fault," he says. "The police and (Interior Minister Nicolas) Sarkozy, because he uses words like 'scum' to describe us.
"There are too many police here. They go after the young people all the time."
A man walks past, muttering that Mr Sarkozy is a racist. "There are problems to be solved but not by provocation, not by such inflammatory words," he says. "These are racist words.
"The police treat young people like scum. But they are in despair -- they have nothing."
Just behind us, Claude, a 63-year-old retiree who looks like he has stepped out of a stereotypical French film about Gallic bourgeois life, is furious. He turns his hose on the journalists and teenagers gathered near the blaze until we run up the street.
"Where are their parents?" Claude asks later. "There are children as young as 12 -- at midnight, they are still in the streets. Their families must take responsibility. There should be a curfew."
Unlike Souhail, Claude applauds Mr Sarkozy's tough-talking stance towards the gang violence that is engulfing Paris's poor immigrant suburbs.
"Sarkozy bravo! He says everything out loud that people are thinking. I am scared for my grandchildren."
A police officer says the young people roaming the streets in small gangs are not afraid of anything. "They have no fear and nothing to lose," he said. "They believe the state offers them nothing.
"Last night, people were firing live rounds from windows of apartments. They are like snipers ... I think they actually want to kill someone like a police officer or firefighter."
Earlier in the day at Bobigny, a bustling suburb at the end of the Paris Metro line not normally known for gang violence, the people were on edge.
On Wednesday evening a gang of about 40 youths burst into the local shopping centre, next door to the police station, armed with baseball bats.
They broke shopfront windows and hit sales assistants before making off with cash.
It was only 6.30pm and the invasion "panicked" customers, according to the shopping centre's director, Alex Mussawy.
"This is not normal for Bobigny. We are almost in Paris. We are on the Metro line. This is the sort of thing that you hear about from the other more troubled suburbs."
Abdel Maleck, a 37-year-old father of two girls, is a second-generation Frenchman whose parents, like so many thousands of their countrymen, emigrated from Algeria in the 1950s.
They came from the former French colony to rebuild France and stem an acute labour shortage.
Maleck says his parents were law-abiding people who worked hard and demanded their children behave well.
"Today it is so different," he said. "The young people -- they are so rude, there are drug problems and they have no respect. But they have nothing to live for -- there are no jobs. The only answer to this violence is jobs for everyone."
Maleck's anxieties about France's record high unemployment -- it is sitting at just less than 10per cent and can be as high as 50per cent among young people in the urban ghettoes -- are echoed by a group of teenaged boys milling about near the local McDonald's.
A 16-year-old asks me if I am with the police before launching into a sarcastic tirade against the Interior Minister.
"Oh, such a great man. He does so much for us young people. We love him," he says with a cynical smile.
His friend prefers to return to the unemployment problem.
"I have a friend, he has a baccalaureate (high school diploma) and he works at that McDonald's. Is that fair, is that what France should be about?"
"I have a friend, he has a baccalaureate (high school diploma) and he works at that McDonald's. Is that fair, is that what France should be about?"
Ah, what do they expect?
Ya think?????
These darlings should show the West how great they are by heading back to Algeria and begin creating utopia there, I dare them.
Naw, it's not war. I bet it's not even happening. At least I wouldn't be surprised if it's getting even less play in France than it is here.
time is time
Choke on it Chirac! Your cowardly police that would not even go into these Muslim slums to enforce your laws, built this gross disrespect for your laws. These people are rioting because you will not let them break the law anymore -- sounds like a bunch of slum-dwelling liberals to me!!!
If this little 13 year old piece of Muslim s$%& wants a war, come on down to my neighborhood. We're ready. I pray that the American public wakes up soon enough to this scourge of humanity and pushes them all back into their respective s$#^holes from which they sprung.
Americans are slow to anger; however once we get going, it ain't over 'til it's over. Our first enemy is the home enemy, the liberals, the academicians and the MSM; we need to generate greater influence by conservative radio to drown out the leftist, defeatist, wimps that were mentioned previously.
But, but, how could this happen in a liberal utopia like france?
Doesn't Souhail know that the Frogs only surrender to those at least 16 years old? :-)
My wife just spit out:
"French Muslim"
What's that? Someone too afraid to suicide bomb?
..."BeurgerKing Muslim is doing a brisk trade in Halal fast food..."
Please torch my super-sized onion rings.
"we need to generate greater influence by conservative radio to drown out the leftist, defeatist, wimps that were mentioned previously."
Look around at the liberal's success at the ballot box. It is happening as we speak.
Scum is an operative word.
It is what it is, rat-boy. Get a job.
Yep, this is war. It's your own fault, and y'all gonna lose.
For chrissakes, pull up your pants and start shooting back with real bullets!
Brave Polish Man! Do not trust the Hun nor the Goth nor the Visigoth! Nor the Prussian nor the Saxon nor those to the East. Especially do not trust the Gaul nor the Moor. Trust No One! Stay on your Guard. Stay Brave. Stay Alert, Brave Polish Man! May God Be With You!
Depends... does unemployment pay more than working at Le McDonald's? Destroying other peoples property is not a career builder or resume enhancement...
Oh my, could this be the beginning of a Coup d'état? France becoming a Muslim state? BWA HA HA HA HA!
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