Posted on 11/07/2005 2:44:49 AM PST by Dane
French police made 395 arrests last night as riots intensified for the 11th consecutive night, with violence and fire engulfing towns from the North to the Mediterranean.
In the impoverished suburbs and satellite towns around Paris, where the unrest began on October 27, churches, schools and warehouses were set alight. At least 1,408 vehicles were destroyed, many more than on previous nights, and the random attacks have spread into the heart of the city.
In Grigny, south of the capital, a gang of around 200 youths are reported to have lured police into a housing estate before opening fire with hunting rifles. At least 30 officers were injured, two seriously with lead pellets in the legs and neck.
Riots broke out in beacons of disaffection across the country from Lille, on the border with Belgium, to Montpellier on the Mediterranean coast. In Toulouse, police used tear gas to disperse a mob. Cars were set alight on the streets of Nantes, Orleans, Rennes and Rouen, and youths in St Etienne forced passengers off a bus before burning it. Churches were set ablaze in northern Lens and southern Sete.
SNIP
In Strasbourg, youths stole a car and rammed it into a housing project, setting the vehicle and the building on fire. "We’ll stop when Sarkozy steps down," the defiant 17-year-old driver told an Associated Press reporter.
Police are calling for a night-time curfew in affected areas and some senior officers have demanded that troops are brought on to the streets.
Michel Gaudin, France's most senior police officer, said today: "We are witnessing a sort of shock wave that is spreading across the country."
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
I mentioned her.
No, billions of francs of property damage is NOT "ok".
What is going on is terrible, a national disaster.
But we must be realistic about what is happening and see it for what it is, and not generate fantasms of the mind and turn it into what it is not.
People are destroying property. They are not willy-nilly destroying lives. That is not a minor distinction. Both the Common Law and the Civil Law make a fundamental distinction between the two, and should. If someone is destroying your car (assuming you are not in it) and you are not personally in danger, if you walk out of your house and put three bullets in his back you have committed a homicide in Lyons and in Louisiana. Most people are jealously protective of their property, and yet law recognizes a sharp distinction between destruction of a car, which will get you a year or two of prison, and killing a person, which will get you life in prison or, in some parts of the United States, a death sentence.
The distinction between destruction of lives and of property is quite sharp. How many people have heaved a sigh of relief when they escaped their burning home. They lose all of their possessions, but "At least we are all safe and sound."
There is a frenetic desire on this site to bootstrap property damage into murder, and thereby justify cutting loose with carronades to kill thousands or ten thousands of rioting people (and deport the rest). Some people are more honest about it: they believe that the destruction of an automobile warrants the death penalty, and they look forward, in their posts, to meting out that death penalty.
Even American law is far, far from that. Put three bullets into the back of a man burning your car, and you will go to prison for years and years, even in Texas. The Anglo-Saxon Common Law does not prescribe the death penalty for destruction of property, and it does not let people kill other people in defense of property, only in defense of life. I do not speak of the law in France (although it is the same). I speak of the law in El Paso, Texas, and Montgomery, Alabama.
It is not OK that youths are destroying cars. But it does not rise to the level allowing one to fire at will and kill them for committing property damage. Damaging property does not carry the death penalty in either America or France, and the rioters have been very careful to distinguish the two, for the most part.
There was the man killed and the woman burnt. There were cops shot with birdshot. Considering that riots are rampaging across France entire now, the lack of deaths that one would expect tells us that the overwhelming majority of these rioters do not (yet) have murder on their minds.
Some do.
There are Islamist elements who desperately want to radicalize these riots and turn them into a jihad. They have not thus far succeeded.
I am not CONDONING the riots and violence. They are asinine. These people are burning out their own sustenance, and hardening the minds of all of France against them. (This is why I predict that Philippe de Villiers will take up the mantle of Jean Marie Le Pen, and will become prominent in the aftermath.)
But I nevertheless do make the clear and sharp distinction between a riot that is restrained to property damage by rioters looking for trouble, and a riot whose participants feel so free of all restraint that they can go hunting down and killing other people, or gang-raping women. Note, please, that gang rapes have not been the norm either.
Riots are a breakdown of order.
What is happening in France is not a TOTAL breakdown of order. The rioters are not killing people, and not bursting into houses and raping women in their beds. They did in Louisiana.
Seeing realistically what is happening and describing it accurately so that a proper response can be fashioned to it is not saying that property damage is ok. It is saying that the application of force must be proportional.
A suburban bus burns in Reynerie, near the southwestern city of Toulouse, after youths set fire to it and three cars on the 12th night of violence November 7, 2005. France announced plans on Monday to impose curfews on rundown suburbs hit by violence to try to halt almost two weeks of unrest in which one man has been killed and thousands of cars have been torched. REUTERS/Stringer
Stop.
You are incorrect. I am a Texan. Try it.
Frenchman Jean-Pierre Moreau weeps as he hugs a woman at a gathering in Stains, north of Paris, to honour the memory of his neighbour Jean-Jacques le Chenadec who died in hospital November 7, 2005 from injuries received after being attacked by a hooded youth last week. Rioters shot at police and torched more than 1,400 cars in the worst violence since unrest erupted in France's poor suburbs 11 days ago, and le Chenadec became the first fatality on Monday. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau
Also, if I'm on the street and someone is armed with a "lethal" Molotov cocktail, I may use lethal force.
But...but...CNN just had a reporter on from NPR who said you really have to look hard to find the damage done in the Paris burbs. It's nothing like it's portrayed on television and it's perfectly safe to come to Paris.
Bonsoir.
Islam is the problem you must surely agree....
When the rioters burn schools, throw petrol at handicapped people,kill a man who is extinguishing a fire in a trash can..... with the shouts of ALLAH EST GRAND...I have not been to la SORBONNE to study, but it has a flavour of ISLAMISM, don't you think ?
How surprising that you would live in America and have family liing just where the troubles are.
Or you are lying or antagonising people. I think the former.
Il est evident que ces emeutes sont organisees par les Imans......
So typical of Muslims, send the kids to create havoc , when one gets hurt start screaming for vengence.
Pathetic.
Kristopher.
Kristopher.
We have that same death sentence in Ohio, too. Carried out every year by law-abiding citizens.
You are so much kinder in your response than I would have been. I've been trying to word a response but have not been able to, due to my worry of being banned.
I stand in agreement with you and thank you for your thoughts.
Not to worry, the French court system is working overtime to get the perps back on the streets...
People attend fast track trial appearances at the Bobigny courthouse, northeast of Paris, Monday, Nov. 7, 2005. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
California? M1 Garand
France agrees to terms of their surrender:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4416454.stm
Someone on Fox this afternoon said that this is part of a Ramadan Jihad which began in Bali. It is set to go 'round the world. Sorry, I don't remember his name. Anyone catch this?
As people have repeatedly stated, I think this right to bear arms has a strong deterrent factor.
I loved the photo and story of that one neighborhood in NO after Katrina. All these men and their guns telling rioters to pick another neighborhood -- and for the most part, they did.
I can't believe what I just read at that link. You are right... they are waving the white flag.
how freaking sad
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