...with rioters defying it. But look on the bright side: only 617 cars were torched last night. French Impotence Alert from AP, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:
PARIS — Rioters defied a state of emergency that took effect Wednesday, as they looted and burned two superstores, set fire to a newspaper office and paralyzed France's second-largest city's subway system with a firebomb.However, the number of car burnings — a barometer for the unrest — dropped sharply, suggesting the movement lost steam. Overnight Tuesday to Wednesday, youths torched 617 vehicles, down from 1,173 the previous night, national police spokesman Patrick Hamon said. Incidents were reported in 116 towns, down from 226 the night before.
President Jacques Chirac announced extraordinary security measures, which began Wednesday and are valid for a 12-day state of emergency, clearing the way for curfews after nearly two weeks of rioting that began in neglected and impoverished suburban neighborhoods with large Muslim communities....
Towns included on the list stretched from Nice on the Mediterranean to Strasbourg on the German border and Le Havre on the English Channel, giving an indication of how widespread the unrest has become.
Why are the French being so confrontational? Just follow appeasement, I mean the Swedish way:
http://www.thelocal.se/article.php?ID=2459
Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson has criticised the way the French government has handled the unrest in the country. "They have chosen a confrontational route and it is hard to see how it will become a dialogue," he said. "There is justifiable criticism of French society and you don't confront this with the sort of expression Sarkozy used," he continued. "It's clear that if you resort to emergency legislation then it's naturally very dramatic, the like of which I haven't seen in Europe in the last 30-40 years. It feels like a very hard and confrontational approach." Persson also rejected the idea of more local police as a "first step" in Sweden. "It could be a method that works, but I don't believe that's the way we would choose in Sweden. To start sending out signals about strengthening the police is to break with the political line we have chosen to follow," he said.
http://fjordman.blogspot.com/2005/09/sweden-shots-fired-at-police-station.html
Sweden: Shots fired at police station
A police station in Södertälje, near Stockholm, was hit by around fifteen shots from an automatic weapon on Sunday night, following a major confrontation between local youths and police. Apart from police staff, two civilian women were in the police station. They were being questioned about a reported harrassment earlier in the day, which had been the background to the rioting. The women had called the police and reported that they had been harrassed in the shop where they work. Police refused to reveal details of their allegations, because questioning had been broken off by the gunfire, but three young men who had been identified by the women were suspected of making illegal threats. The three men were released in the evening, but the arrests had provoked strong reactions among 20-35 other youths in the area. The group advanced on the police and attacked them with stones.
"The three men were released in the evening, but the arrests had provoked strong reactions among 20-35 other youths in the area. The group advanced on the police and attacked them with stones."
Oh no! "Youths" are advancing in groups all across Europe! What shall we do!?
"It's clear that if you resort to emergency legislation then it's naturally very dramatic, the like of which I haven't seen in Europe in the last 30-40 years. It feels like a very hard and confrontational approach....."But obviously a simple thing like the fact that young people in France do not have the option of a study loan means that a great many are shut out from what, today, is necessary for moving on in society, namely further education."
Why do I get the eerie feeling that there will soon be a mass Muslim migation to Sweden?
"Won't you take me to, Dhimmi Town, Won't you take me to, Dhimmi Towwn..."
I think it's now referred to as a "Car-B-Q"
Call me crazy, some kind of wild-eyed radical, but I actually think burning large businesses and critical infrastructure is more serious than torching cars.
Go ahead, lay into me. [flame suit on]
A small but telling point about the reporting is that the BBC reported Sarkozy as describing the rioters as scum, "racaille" in French. After a couple of days it changed the translation to rabble - no French speaker would use "racaille" in place of "cohue" if he meant to say rabble: Sarkozy meant scum. The BBC, as usual, is terrified of words specially real words.
The mention of his name may send off a sh!tstorm from Canadian posters, but I'd bet if there was rioting in the streets of any Canadian city of the like we're seeing in France and other European cities, Pierre Trudeau, one of the great liberal minds of the last century, would not have dithered the way the French government has today.
Where is General Jacques Massu when you need him!
http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/10/29/db2901.xml
Are there men like that in the French Army now?
It's too bad, he seemed like a tough guy, but his
loyalty to that (expletive deleted) DeGaulle seems
like it was misplaced.
Ah after two weeks the French finally DO something. They were probably trying to figure out a way they could surrender to themselves.....
Sweden is worse than France, the prime minister is very mistaken.
Finally.
The west needs to strap 12 gauges to rotating surveillance cams serving salt pellet for burning cars. Switch to buck shot when they start carrying arms. If France is the first western state to give in, why not use Iraq as the first Middle Eastern State to give in to perfecting our tactics in this new war. Create grids of surveillance cameras and let troops at home watch them. The troops could send important live feeds to priority screens thus enabling quick active response. If this did exist, how would the terrorists be able to bury bombs near roads and blow up our troops?? I don't get it. Or is this war good at keeping our enemies in the 1980s technologically? It's not fair for U.S. troops; their heads sticking out while driving their tanks down ambush alley when Israel has tanks that are completely closed and controlling weapons from the inside? Why is the U.S. failing to improve remote controlled warfare systems?