The liberal media's blackout

[theloniusfleabag]

Dear August1991,

I think the Islamist aspect of this problem is inchoate.

Then it would behoove you to prepare for battle.

[Black Dog]

Talking sense to our right-wing friends.

The illegals aren’t legally allowed to work. There’s no way to survive in that case except welfare and crime. The only people who really have a stake in the welfare system are the bureaucrats who administer it. For everyone else, it’s a trap that might as well have been designed to keep people down.

Also, Euro-socialism makes jobs scarcer than they naturally would be on a free market — so little real chance exists even for the people who are there legally and not sans papier. French policies might as well have been planned to create a welfare dependent and/or violent criminal underclass.

Every action has a motive. Sometimes the motives are pretty shallow. As has long been demonstrated, in the face of widespread criminality and the breakdown in law and order - as we see in France, more and more borderline personality types, esp young men, will seize upon the "freedom" to go out and wreak havoc. Studies after the Rodney King riots showed most of those involved in riot-like behaviour were not particularly upset about King, or didn't even know about it. They were simply gleefully taking part in the general mayhem. In cities which cracked down hard and fast to re-establish the social order, rioting stopped quickly (notably San Francisco). In cities which were timid and hesitant, and allowed the lack of public order to continue, rioting spread and grew as more and more shiftless people took to the streets to take advantage

I was thinking about this and realized what was bugging me: it's the reference to the American experience with civil strife. Now, according to some, multicultralism is to blame for the civil unrest in France. Yet clearly, the United States (who's unofficial "melting pot" policy is the model for assimilationists) has experienced similar problems with its non-immigrant African American population. What that tells me is that state cultural policies are less to blame than a social system which creates and perpetuates the existence of a economic underclass. So the hubub about multicultralism (whatever its flaws) is a red herring in this case.

[Argus]

Every action has a motive. Sometimes the motives are pretty shallow. As has long been demonstrated, in the face of widespread criminality and the breakdown in law and order - as we see in France, more and more borderline personality types, esp young men, will seize upon the "freedom" to go out and wreak havoc. Studies after the Rodney King riots showed most of those involved in riot-like behaviour were not particularly upset about King, or didn't even know about it. They were simply gleefully taking part in the general mayhem. In cities which cracked down hard and fast to re-establish the social order, rioting stopped quickly (notably San Francisco). In cities which were timid and hesitant, and allowed the lack of public order to continue, rioting spread and grew as more and more shiftless people took to the streets to take advantage

I was thinking about this and realized what was bugging me: it's the reference to the American experience with civil strife. Now, according to some, multicultralism is to blame for the civil unrest in France. Yet clearly, the United States (who's unofficial "melting pot" policy is the model for assimilationists) has experienced similar problems with its non-immigrant African American population. What that tells me is that state cultural policies are less to blame than a social system which creates and perpetuates the existence of a economic underclass. So the hubub about multicultralism (whatever its flaws) is a red herring in this case.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You're mistaken on a couple of levels.

To begin with, I was speaking above, of the habit of people - especially young men, but we could also say especially in groups which are dissasociated from the central culture and its benefits, as well - to take advantage of a state of lawlessness. I was not speaking to any other motivation, ie, racial or whatever.

Second, there is no question that Muslims/Africans in France feel dissassociated from the mainstream and its opportunities and benefits. There is also no question that many Blacks in the US feel the same way there. That does not mean that both groups feel that way because of the same reasons. You cannot discount Multiculturalism as a cause in France because the US has also had riots.

In the US, Blacks have become an underclass for a variety of reasons going all the way back to slavery, what happened when it was abolished, the racism which followed, and then the way drugs particularly attacked them and caused the huge upsurge in Black crime we've seen since the sixties (which again led to alienation from the mainstream as Whites shrank away from them).

In France, the alienation was caused by people arriving in, for all intents and purposes, a completely alien nation (no pun intended), and not being afforded the opportunity and encouragement to fit themselves into that nation. Instead they were encouraged to retain their language and cultures, which OF COURSE, kept them seperated from the mainstream. They would have started as immigrants, from a position of poverty in comparison to the French, and with poor language skills (and probably education), passed on to their children, growing up in violent slums, they would stay in poverty.

So yes. Multiculturalism certainly bears much of the blame for the alientation Muslims born in France still feel about France. And the French are not alone in this. I've read the same sorts of attitudes from British, Dutch and Danish Muslims and, to a lesser degree (though we aren't asking really) from Canadian Muslims.

[PocketRocket]

There was a poll on aol.ca earlier today.  Apparently 49% of Canadians do not think we could have riots, like the ones in France, in this country.

Aside from the fact that these people probably live in the middle of nowhere it is extremely frightening to think that we could not be ready for this.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I believe our fellow Canadians who think we could not have riots are dead wrong.

It takes very little to provoke a riot.

think back just a few years to the riots in Montreal outside the Forum.

I don't even remember what started it. A cancelled concert???

Oh yeah, Guns'n'Roses closed their show after only 20 minutes because their singer had a sore throat, or something like that.

Hardly on the scale we are seeing in France, but still, a lot of damage done for no good reason.

Imagine if Celine Dion cancelled a show in Quebec.

It'd set the nation on fire

[Argus]

Worth repeating, from David Warren today.

"The joke is completed because, except for the odd media savvy poseur, the rioters aren't asking for improved welfare arrangements. They are asking, for example, for Nicolas Sarkozy's head. They want French police officers dead. They are demanding that the French state recognize that parts of France are "Islamic territory". They want French laws replaced with Sharia. And their chant each night, in the hundreds of locations where the rioting continues, is "Allahu Akhbar! Allahu Akhbar!". It is impossible to imagine a more complete disconnect between them and the French society that is now looking for ways to appease them. ... It is anyway, too late to change the entire approach of the French state to the assimiliation of Muslim immigrants. Nor, had it been much different, do I think the results would have been different. For the deeper reality is that France has become a moral and demographic vacuum. It has become, in the main, a pagan, childless, hedonistic country in which there will be a Muslim majority within two generations. Already, at least 40 percent of the children born in French hopsitals are to Muslim parents.

... The same cultural death wish prevails in Spain, Italy, Germany, the Low countries, , Britain, Scandinavia, and Canada.

[Riverwind]

... The same cultural death wish prevails in Spain, Italy, Germany, the Low countries, , Britain, Scandinavia, and Canada.

You don't have to be a statistician to figure out that immigrants from certain places have trouble integrating into western society others have no problems. You can also figure out pretty quickly that the differences between groups cannot be explained by income or race: the difference occurs because of their cultural background. Seems to me that immigrants that grow up in countries with a functioning civil society should get more 'points' than immigrants who don't.

[Black Dog]

Argus, Warrena and his ilk, in their rush to create an Islamic boogeyman, are mighty quick to assign deep, political motives to a rabble of young, uneducated men who, as you would say are "gleefully taking part in the general mayhem". The best explanation I've heard is that this is an incoherent revolt by kids. There's no political dimension. No "intifada" on the streets of Paris.

[Argus]

Argus, Warrena and his ilk, in their rush to create an Islamic boogeyman, are mighty quick to assign deep, political motives to a rabble of young, uneducated men who, as you would say are "gleefully taking part in the general mayhem". The best explanation I've heard is that this is an incoherent revolt by kids. There's no political dimension. No "intifada" on the streets of Paris.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I think you are right, in large measure. However, a "rabble of young, uneducated men" are the heart and soul of Islamism. They are the ones who flocked to join Al Quaeda, who formed the Taliban, who turn out in the streets in Muslim countries to angrily demand Sharia law.

If 40% of the children born in France are being born To Muslim parents, that does not bode well for the future of that country. Two generation is not a very long time nowadays, and in two generations France will have a majority of Muslims. Try and think about that for a moment. France as a muslim nation - with those uneducated rabble in the streets still screaming for Sharia law - but now in the majority.

And other nations, like Canada, are not that far behind. We too are importing massive numbers of people who are clinging to their religious culture. They are NOT adapting to Canada. They continue to have a very high birth rate. They send their kids back home to find a mate. And that second generation then retains the foreign culture and raises THEIR kids in it.

You should really try looking long term. The way Islam looks upon the world today, it is violently opposed to almost every single thing you believe in. You must realize that the more Muslims in a nation, the more opponents of homosexuality, gender equality, and all the other tenets of secular, tolerant western mores there will be.

And the Muslim population of Canada has risen by what, about 10,000% in the last twenty years?

[theloniusfleabag]

Dear Argus,

I think you are right, in large measure

Very magnanimous, I salute you.

However, a "rabble of young, uneducated men" are the heart and soul of Islamism.

They are the fuel and fodder of any and every 'movement'. Of every race and religion, they are the ones who will most gladly kill and die, the most fervent and iron-willed, yet also the most malleable.

The way Islam looks upon the world today, it is violently opposed to almost every single thing you believe in.

I don't believe this to be absolutely true. Even the Taliban was unpopular in Afghanistan for their hardline interpretations. Not that I am hoping to live in a system mildly more tolerant than the Taliban, mind you, but I don't buy the rhetoric pushed by the US gov't that 'they hate freedom'.

You must realize that the more Muslims in a nation, the more opponents of homosexuality, gender equality, and all the other tenets of secular, tolerant western mores there will be.

This, however, is a more sobering thought. Just the way I like it, stark pragmatic analysis.

[Montgomery Burns]

Dear August1991,

Like the typical, old-fashioned North American Left, you're always looking for a victim to save and whose behaviour you want to excuse.

No, actually, this thread was started under the false pretences (by a fanatic-cum-troll) that the media is 'liberal biased' (which is farcical) and that therefore the riots were not reported.

There seems to be a common thread through much of the 'right wing', and yet they seem too scared to come out and say it.

War with Islam. I hope you are aware of what it will require to kill all 1 billion+ Muslims.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Despite study after study after study showing the liberal bias of the media, the DU rejects will continue to insist this is not so.

Just check out George Soros' Media Matters website; 80% of their whining is about the one news source that leans right; the Fox News Channel.

The radical left foams at the mouth at the mention of the FNC. Indeed, we all remember the oh-so-tolerant left protesting outside of the FNC's Manhatten quarters - during the RNC - DEMANDING that the FNC be taken off the air.

Why?

Because freedom of the press is the most dangerous thing to the ultra-left.

Kill all 1 billion plus Muslims?!

Typical hyperbole of the far left who only want to bend over and appease the Islamofascists.

[Montgomery Burns]

Argus, Warrena and his ilk, in their rush to create an Islamic boogeyman, are mighty quick to assign deep, political motives to a rabble of young, uneducated men who, as you would say are "gleefully taking part in the general mayhem". The best explanation I've heard is that this is an incoherent revolt by kids. There's no political dimension. No "intifada" on the streets of Paris.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

But seriously, it is very very frightening to think of someone like BD in charge of these going-ons.

I'm dead serious. You have Islamofascists screaming Allah Akbar while rampaging through France, doing every thing in their power to burn an entire nation to the ground, lighting 56 y/o disabled women on fire, beating 61 y/o men to death, but according to the appeasement monkeys, this is just "an incoherent revolt by kids" (named Jacques, Pierre, and Marcel).

It's scary. It's freaking scary. What if these kids (leftists) were in charge of the US? What if the grown-ups (Republicans) weren't in charge?

Think about it.....

[Montgomery Burns]

And why is the MSM liberal media ignoring the riots that have been going on for a week in Denmark?

Why do I have to get my info from the Viking Observer weblog?

Because the liberal MSM (although the BBC reported it) is reluctant to report this, because it just might make the Muslims look bad - which might make Bush look good - which is an absolute no-no to the leftwing media.

Shame. Shame on you bastards in the liberal media. You cannot get away with your lies anymore. There are blogs on the internet, AM radio and the Fox News Channel.

No longer can Walter Cronkite (from See-BS) lie about the US losing the Tet Offensive (which they won).

The left's stranglehold on information is weakening (the NY Times laid off 500 employees a couple of weeks ago); the public has been awakened to their lies.

[I Miss Trudeau]

Shame.  Shame on you bastards in the liberal media.  You cannot get away with your lies anymore.  There are blogs on the internet, AM radio and the Fox News Channel.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

[Montgomery Burns]

France imposed a curfew after 12 days. I guess that is how long it took ChIraq to read the french version of My Pet Goat.

The riots are still going on and they have spread to other European countries. However the MSM liberal media continues to downplay this very important story. I picked up the Globe and Mail on Nov 10 and they buried the France riots story on page A13.

[Yodeler]

France imposed a curfew after 12 days.  I guess that is how long it took ChIraq to read the french version of My Pet Goat.   

The riots are still going on and they have spread to other European countries.  However the MSM liberal media continues to downplay this very important story.  I picked up the Globe and Mail on Nov 10 and they buried the France riots story on page A13.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I don't think the French have a bloody idea what to do. They know what they SHOULD do, which is hose down the bloody holligans & pitch them all in jail. But this would put lie to their claims of tolerance.

And the Globe finally put the French riots on the front page yesterday. But of course they used the occasion to tell us how wonderful & multicultural Canada is & how the rioters are just poor French kids looking for a break.

Doug Saunders even had the gall to go on about how "the 60% of French citizens who live extremely well are realizing that their system is built on the shoulders of the deeply underprivileged" Hello?? How does one profit from a group of people who never work & live off the state?

Lefties are starting to lose braincells faster & faster every year.

[Montgomery Burns]

UK's Guardian: French TV boss admits censoring riot coverage

Jean-Claude Dassier, the director general of the rolling news service LCI, said the prominence given to the rioters on international news networks had been "excessive" and could even be fanning the flames of the violence.

Mr Dassier said his own channel, which is owned by the private broadcaster TF1, recently decided not to show footage of burning cars.

"Politics in France is heading to the right and I don't want rightwing politicians back in second, or even first place because we showed burning cars on television," Mr Dassier told an audience of broadcasters at the News Xchange conference in Amsterdam today.

Wow. Similar to Newsweek's Evan Thomas' "[we'll] be good for 15 points for the Kerry/Edwards campaign" statement.

The liberal media isn't even trying to hide their bias anymore.