Riots in France

[August1991]

Some random articles and random thoughts:

PARIS, Sept 27 (AFP) - An Algerian Islamist organisation, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), has issued a call for action against France which it describes as "enemy number one", intelligence officials said Tuesday.

"The only way to teach France to behave is jihad and the Islamic martyr," the group's leader Abu Mossab Abdelwadoud, also own as Abdelmalek Dourkdal, was quoted as saying in an Internet message earlier this month.

"France is our enemy number one, the enemy of our religion, the enemy of our community," he was quoted as saying.

France was mentioned 15 times in the text, and the Algerian government was also targeted, the officials said.

Nine people detained in a series of raids west of Paris Monday are suspected members of the GSPC, officials have said. They were being questioned for a second day Tuesday at the headquarters of the DST domestic intelligence agency.

Interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy said Monday that the risk of terrorist attack in France is "at a very high level... There are cells operating on our territory."

AFP

On the Rue du 8 Mai, leading into the Mille-Mille estate, hairdresser Agnès Fréchon, 36, waits anxiously for electricity to be restored to her salon. The Crédit Lyonnais branch next door was rammed with a car in the night, then burnt, along with a kebab shop in the parade.

'If you look at the shops that have been burnt down, you can tell that the Muslim grands-fréres have had their say,' she adds.

'The halal butcher has not been touched, neither has the pizzeria, owned by a Moroccan. I try to stay neutral - after all, I cut everyone's hair - and I get the impression that, if my shop has been damaged, it is by accident because it's next door to the bank.'

Guardian

Photos

A handicapped woman was doused with petrol and set on fire by youths during another night of rioting in Paris.

The 56-year-old suffered third degree burns to 20% of her body in the attack.

Witnesses said a youth poured petrol over the woman and then threw a Molotov cocktail on to the bus she was travelling on in the suburb of Sevran.

Other passengers were able to flee but she was unable to escape because of her disabilities.

SkyNews

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For some reason, these riots have turned into a debate about the "French model" and the "American model" (whatever those terms mean). The Left blamed the US government for its ineptitude in New Orleans; now the Right blames the French government for its ineptitude in France.

Mark Steyn blames the "multiculturalism" of the French government but France generally has a strong history of melting pot assimilationism. One could possibly blame teh social policies of the French government, but we have those in Canada and they don't spark riots. (If anything, social welfarism encourages lethargy and its great weakness is that it leads to bankruptcy, not riots.)

Then there remains the Islamist jihad argument. Possible, except the US has had numerous race riots - as recently as 1993 in LA after the Rodney King verdict. I suppose race riots tinged with religious fervour are inherently worse.

Such riots typically involve young men burning stuff near where they live. I doubt the young men constitute more than 2-3% of their communities. When this is all over, there will be many charred shells of cars and buildings in poor neighbourhoods of France. The veneer of civilization is thin.

[Big Blue Machine]

Why hasn't France called in the army, and got them to start beating people?

[Argus]

Why hasn't France called in the army, and got them to start beating people?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Their army looks bad enough when it runs away from Germans. Imagine how bad they would look running away from teenagers with rocks.

[theloniusfleabag]

Dear Argus,

Their army looks bad enough when it runs away from Germans. Imagine how bad they would look running away from teenagers with rocks.

Lol. I was going to post something similar, pehaps there was a shortage of white flags in the army's weekly rations, but you beat me to it.

Mind you, the last time the Germans came to visit, they were indeed formidable. And the some of French still had blue frickin' uniforms.

[theloniusfleabag]

Dear August1991,

from Michael Coren today...

http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/...12/1303393.html

The beat of their thesis has been banged repeatedly on their ideological drum. The violence, they announce, is due to the influence of Islamic fundamentalism and Muslim separatism. The rioters, they insist, are motivated by religious extremism and a hatred for all things western and non-Islamic.

These explanations have come from rightist journalists in Canada, Britain and the U.S. and present cookie-cutter analyses of a profoundly complex problem. The articles are invariably accompanied by a bashing of French foreign policy and anyone who doesn't support the Iraq war.

One writer in the Chicago Sun-Times opined: "The Eurabian civil war appears to have started some years ahead of my optimistic schedule." (Eurabia, by the way, is a tendentious concept recently invented to describe the supposed attempt by Islam to conquer Europe.)

Coren is reputed to be deeply religious and a shade to the 'right'. However, he is willing to 'call a spade a spade', (just not to his face, lol). More stuff...

They're products of neglect, racism, unemployment and French cultural arrogance. They're also often lazy, anti-social and brutish. The culture they revere -- free-market neo-cons take note -- is less that of bin Laden than of 50 Cent. Gangster rap rather than Arab rebellion.

I don't think that this was meant to 'point fingers', but rather, put into perspective.

The veneer of civilization is thin.

Well said, and too true, everywhere.

[BHS]

FYI the writer Coren quoted from the Sun Times was Mark Steyn:

Steyn in Sun Times

[theloniusfleabag]

Dear BHS,

FYI the writer Coren quoted from the Sun Times was Mark Steyn:

Thank you. I had only heard of Steyn on this forum. I guess I am not surprised to hear he is making such a blatant call for open war against Islam.

[RB]

How come France allowed the Arab population to grow in poverty? I mean we are talking about generations born in France that is neglected. They are admitting to the practice of racism no?

Plus is Canada also guilty of neglect of the immigrant population - I mean among immigrants the rates of unemployment and underemployment is way over the national level

I feel fed up with this whole immigrant and multicultural problems