Why These Riots Are Not Like Other Riots
The Australian says that comparing the riots and the Gaza Strip are “impossible to avoid”. Except, of course, for the whole “years of suicide bombers targeting women and children” thing, of course.
But one finds that there are similarities. In a typical riot, hundreds of people gather and get all worked up to the point where mob mentality takes over and they run wild, looting and burning everything in their path.
The rampaging Muslim youths of France are behaving quite differently, forming small bands equipped with Molotov cocktails, striking quickly to set a fire and then fading into the night before the police and fire fighters arrive. A bomb factory has been discovered in the city of Evry, a suburb south of Paris, with 50 Molotov cocktails ready for use, the materials to make 100 more and a store of ski masks to hide the identity of the bombers. The discovery, says Justice Ministry official Jean-Marie Huet, shows that the bombs “are not being improvised by kids in their bathrooms.”
Not exactly your typical mob riot behavior.
The attackers are learning to use cell phones to communicate police movement and blogs to assign targets in need of attention. On Sunday, 30 police officers were hit by buckshot and attacked by club-weilding youths in what appeared to be a coordinated ambush south of Paris.
Not exactly your typical mob riot behavior.
Over the past eleven twelve days, the rioting has spread. First it was in a suburb of Paris. Then several suburbs. By Saturday night there were cars burning in the heart of Paris itself . Riots have been reported in Strasbourg in the east, Toulouse in the south-west, Acheres west of Paris, Nantes in the southwest, Avignon, Nice and Cannes in the south and Evreux in Normandy to the north. Clashes have also been reported in Orleans, Saint Etienne, Rouen, Lyon and Rennes. Arson and confrontations have occurred in 274 towns.
Not to mention the riots in Denmark, going completely unreported by the MSM. A masked spokesman for the rioters (since when do mobs have a “spokesman”?) warned the police to stay away, saying, “This is our area. We rule this place.”
Not exactly your typical mob riot behavior.
The rioting has escalated.
In Pierrefitte, northwest of Paris, a synagogue was fire bombed. In Strasbourg, 18 cars were set alight in broad daylight. For the first time, a hunting rifle was used to fire on police. Rather than torching a car, one was used to ram a housing project.
Not exactly your typical mob riot behavior.
The French police have responded with escalating authority, arresting more youths each night and deploying more police. By Sunday night an additional 2,300 police officers were deployed to the streets of Paris while seven helicopters flew overhead. Police patrols are entering housing projects on patrol looking exactly like American soldiers “in the streets of Iraq’s Sunni Triangle”.
While most news accounts theorize that drug gangs are coordinating the attacks, one wonders why they would do so. What is the ROI (return on investment)? What benefit would a drug gang derive from stirring up social unrest? Indeed, one would think that the status quo would be perferable: the police afraid to enter the territories that the gangs control and lots of people needing a fix because they have no hope.
No, it is Islamic fundamentalists that are directing the activities of disaffected Muslim youth.
After welcoming Muslims to live among them, the French shunned them and shut them up in desolate ghettos — places so appalling that they were deemed “no-go zones” by the police. After promising Muslims “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!” the French gave them discrimination and hopelessness.
Yes, the French have created the ideal breeding ground for radical Islam. The French, in denying Muslims assimilation into the French culture have put into place all the elements for their own destruction: millions of disenfranchised Muslims imprisoned in sqalid conditions with nothing to do but listen to the radical teachings of Islamofascists. These “citizens” have no desire to become French; rather they would take France as their own and kill anyone who does not convert to their ways.
Thus I am appalled by the French militaristic response, failure that it is. The French have no more right to defend themselves than do the Isralies who (according to the French) have fostered an infatada through the building of security walls and deployment of troops to police lawless Palestinian villages.
Further, how dare Minister for the Interior Nicholas Sarkozy call the poor, disenfranchised Muslim youth “scum”? Why will he not apologize? Indeed,he takes the opposite tack, saying:
“I cannot understand why people make such a fuss about words, but ignore the reality of riots and crimes,” he said. He said the riots had been “carefully organised…by criminal mafias and by religious extremists.”
This, from the culture of nuance and appeasement? I think not!
There is only one solution to the unrest in France. Jacque Chirac must immediately grant statehood to all of the Muslim-occupied territories. The United Nations must deploy troops as soon as possible in order to ensure that far and democratic elections can take place. Charitable collections must be taken to pour money into these ghettos and build pretty new structures for the new “les misérables”.
I call on all of the nations of the world to put pressure on France to implement the trademark French solution: appeasement and surrender.
Update 7 Nov: chart updated to reflect 11th night of violence.
Update 8 Nov: chart updated to reflect 12th night of violence.
Also, ScrappleFace has the same two-state solution idea.
Update 9 Nov: Captain Ed, writing for the Weekly Standard, sees the Islam connection:
FRANCE–like much of the media–stood foursquare against Bush’s interventionist policy in Iraq. So if Islamists have targeted France as their next front in an attempt to establish “no-go” territories in the center of Europe, it might call into question much of the anti-Bush narrative. Instead of Muslim anger being caused by America’s policies of intervention, Islamofascism might really be a worldwide movement against Western interests.
