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. "Well 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 ...
Can't speak to the other groups. I think the situation is very scary, and if I had family there, I would be very concerned.
In all due respect, your paradigm might have a faulty foundation. You have presumed the riots are unrelated to Islam. If you are incorrect, the 5-6 million muslims in France could produce an easy army of 500-600 thousand hardliners.
This whole thing pivots on one point...what is at the bottom of it? When a man concludes he knows and needs no new info...his growth has stopped. He is dead intellectually.
Open your mind. Chirac and Villepin are opening theirs...and I imagine it is quite painful.
"I have been discussing this with my French colleagues and I kept asking them why they just don't shoot about twenty of those bastards. Their answer is enough to give you gray hair.
They said,
"If we start shooting them, outside groups will start smuggling them weapons and then we're all screwed."
What they have to do is start shooting across the country at the same time. If they just do it in one place, it will only inflame those who weren't subjected to it, who won't expect it to be repeated. On the other hand, if they do it in about two dozen places at once, rather than it being something most of the rioters only hear about, it will be something they witnessed. I expect the "intifida" would quickly soil its collective pants.
I think a lot of freepers underestimate what the level of brute force the French government is capable of when its survival is at stake. If things do not calm down soon, I foresee the French resorting to measures that will make Abu Graib or Gitmo look like Club Med.
The French are perfectly capable of jetissoning European human rights law, International human rights law, and any and all other laws that might tie their hands against a general uprising. Of course the French, being the French, will later invent a "rationale" for why what they did was sanctioned by, and fully consistent with, all of these high minded rules, and once the heat is off, will go back to condemning the US as the evil empire for such imagined offenses as failing to embrace the Kyoto treaty, or eating GM food.
Wow! I imagine that would stop any would be looters.
00 is basically .30 cal shot, is it not? For deer, I just use a .30-30, never used shotgun.
Thanks for the info! This is a great site, I have learned a ton!!
I like a deer slug up in the 12 gauge, followed by three double oughts, another deer slug and three more double oughts in the tube.
Gastank opener, predator deterrent, predator deterrent, predator deterrent, radiator opener, predator deterrent, predator deterrent, predator defilement.
The metalworking tools double as predator deterrents, if no containers present themselves as targets.
Isn't it amazing that Appalachian people live in rough conditions and we don't hear about the Appalachian people erupting in violence? There is always a convenient excuse for violence.
First it was the worst violence "in a decade", then "the worst since 1968," and now "without precedent since the Second World War."
I guess, by tomorrow, they'll be saying the Frogs haven't had their butts kicked like this since Agincourt.
Good point on the money. I hope they saved some of those good old UN Oil for Food kickbacks to subsidize these new programs.
The early immigrants to this country, the Italians, Irish, Germans, etc. were poor, got no welfare or free housing yet they did not burn down their neighborhoods or destroy other people's property. If they had, the cops would have come in with billy clubs and reasoned with them.
Can you be specific about France's "brute force"?
I almost forgot the best thing (for the French): it's pretty widely believed by economic historians that the French monarchy bankrupted itself fighting Britain, leading rather directly to the crisis of 1789, the French Revolution, etc. The financial aid to our revolutionaries may have been the straw the broke the back of France's economic camel, and the example of our successful revolution inspired many in France, so the people of France can thank US for "liberte, egalite, fraternite" since they probably wouldn't have had their revolution had we not had ours first!
If the media were doing its job they would be telling the truth that is is Muslim fanatics doing the rioting...because they hate all things western..... it has ZERO to do with poverty as these immigrants in France would be even poorer in their native countries.
I think you missed my point. The problem we have isn't just with the rioters whoever they may be and whatever their reason is for rioting. The problem is the people that refuse to see who they are and make lame excuses for them.
I think these people are actually the biggest part of the problem because they are the people that empower the scum. If the media and the French government were truthful and told us who the rioters really were, then we would hear the same morons making different excuses saying that the French banned the headscarf and are keeping their Muslims in poverty and the rioters are just 'freedom fighters'.
I'm sick of having to put up with the lame excuses for rioters, looters and terrorists. There is no excuse for any of it and the people that are making excuses need to be called out and brought down, too.
France caving to Islam was always the most likely possibility in my mind. Spain caved and they actually had a dog in the Iraq war. France has less far to go.
No guarantees, and I don't see Villepin's comments as capitulation, yet, but odds are odds.
Look at it this way.
If France turns, there's nothing to stop us from invoking the "not with us, therefore..." clause.
Key question 1. What about the rest of Europe?
2. How quick can Al Qaeda call off the dogs if and when the French cave? Operational intel available there.
3. Does AQ "occupy" their new land, or are they content denying us the ally, vis-a-vis Spain? We don't know the answer to this one yet, but Ayman did, before he ever gave the go order.
and finally:
4. Does Turkey get into the EU now?
and
5. Do Muslim girls get to wear headscarves to school?
Exactly. No government payouts until they quell the riots.
thats not true.
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