Hex on the Cite

6:39 pm, 11/7/05

Hex on the Cite

The suburbs have no charms to sooth the restless dreams of youth...

Day #11 of "France on Fire", and reader Rossputin gets his letter published in the Washington Times:

By making decisions aimed at snubbing the United States and at selling more weapons and technology to Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries, France abandoned any pretense of protecting its domestic tranquility, with last week's terrible consequences following necessarily.

Even now, the second loudest noise after the gunfire is French politicians squabbling for political advantage. Nero would seem to be Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin's political role model.

I cannot say I feel great sympathy for the French government or for the isolationist Muslims who are burning their own neighborhoods. They deserve each other. But Paris is one of the world's great cities -- maybe its greatest. It deserves better than this.

It's not just Paris anymore, in fact, it's not even just France: Minor car-b-q's have taken place in Berlin and Brussels, suggesting the threat of this crisis eventually consuming all the chocolate making nations, and a grim milestone, more than 1,000 have been arrested in France. Violence is turning "Braveheart" on the French, with rioters in the Norman town of Rouen using a car as a battering ram to smash into a police station. A 61-year-old man who was ambushed while putting out a trash can fire and beaten into a coma Friday has died. Quotes of the Day:

"They really shot at officers. This is real, serious violence. It's not like the previous nights. I am very concerned because this is mounting," one police officer said.

Local youngsters expected more violence on the outskirts of Evreux.

"It's civil war now," said one in a hooded top....

As Dr Jack Wheeler puts it, "The problem is not that these Moslem kids are unemployed, but that they are unemployable. They are illiterate, unskilled except in crime, don't speak French well, refuse to assimilate into French culture and think being Moslem is more important than being French.

Police officers are weary of fighting the rising tide (on the verge of... surrender?), and now fear that the horde will soon gain access to heavy arms. Meanwhile, some Parisians are Nero-like in their apathy:

"As long as it's not my car on fire," shrugged a 25-year-old French student outside Notre Dame Cathedral.

There was even some sympathy for the rioting youths, many of them the French-born children of immigrants.

"This is a problem of poverty, of misery," said Magdalene de Jiorjy, who said she wasn't scared even as she predicted that "things will get worse."

Attacks in the center city and in some swank Mediterranean coast towns in southern France were the work of "mostly neighborhood guys who wanted to just copy the ones in the [Paris] suburbs," said one man interviewed last night.

That student in twenty years: "As long as it's not my wife they're beating to death for making eye contact with a man. Shame they won't let her drive, though." Future headlines from Al-Monde newspaper:

100,000 DEAD CIVILIANS, MOSTLY BY PETANQUE BALLS

FRANCE FINALLY WINS WAR: AGAINST SELF

CALIPH OF PARIS TO JEWS: "DON'T RUN, WE ARE YOUR FRIENDS"

CHIRAC SEEN AT WINE-TASTING, BEHEADED

I was working today with a black Englishman, quite a cool guy really. He started talking, unprompted, about how obnoxious he found the French to be on his one visit to Paris, and I couldn't help but turn around and ask "What do you think about the riots?" He looked at me, deadpan, and said "They have it coming." I was a little shocked at his being that frank, but that seems to be a pretty widespread opinion, and, hey, if even many French don't care what happens to their civilization, we may as well make popcorn.

On the left sidebar, you'll find a shiny new poll to respond to in order to test this proposition.

Update: Good jokes, as usual, mark Tim Blair's comments:

"France is declaring a curfew. I guess after 12 days, Chirac finally finished the French edition of 'My Pet Goat.'"

"France declares its first night of curfew. All police must be off the streets by dark."

French Jews (those who haven't already left) fear for their lives, French government tells them to shut up. Meanwhile, Chirac desperately repeats himself: "STOP! OR WE'LL PUNISH YOU!"

France will impose curfews under a state-of-emergency law and call up police reservists to stop rioting that has spread out of Paris' suburbs and into nearly 300 cities and towns across the country, the prime minister said Monday, calling a return to order "our No. 1 responsibility."

The tough new measures came as France's worst civil unrest in decades entered a 12th night, with rioters in the southern city of Toulouse setting fire to a bus after sundown and pelting police with gasoline bombs and rocks.

Outside the capital in Sevran, a junior high school was set ablaze, while in another Paris suburb, Vitry-sur-Seine, youths threw gasoline bombs at a hospital, police said. No one was injured. Earlier, a 61-year-old retired auto worker died of wounds from an attack last week, the first death in the violence.

Asked on TF1 television whether the army should be brought in, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said, "We are not at that point."

My God, what do they have to do to reach that point, start eating people? One potential cause for concern is that 15% of the French military is apparently made up of Muslims itself, and in a fit of sheer brilliance, the French military reportedly has no Muslim chaplains, leaving the soldiers to seek religious guidance from the ghetto imams.

But "at each step, we will take the necessary measures to re-establish order very quickly throughout France," he said. "That is our prime duty: ensuring everyone's protection."...

France "has not done everything possible for these youths, supported them so they feel understood, heard and respected," Chirac added, noting that unemployment runs as high as 40 percent in some suburbs, four times the national rate, according to Vike-Freiberga.

I'd say they're feeling pretty understood, heard and respected right about now: Nobody's going to question a veritable army that has managed to cause the worst destruction in France since World War II.

"The multiplying acts of destruction, the destruction of schools and sports centers, thousands of cars set on fire, all of this is unacceptable and inexcusable," [de Villepin] said. "To all in France who are watching me, who are disturbed by this, who are shocked, who want to see a return to normalcy, a return to security, the state's response - I say it tonight forcefully - will be firm and just."

He says it forcefully, but so far the French state continues to appear completely incapable of doing it forcefully. Still, the French left manages to be even more idiotic than the French "right":

A Socialist opposition leader, Francois Hollande, said his party would closely watch to make sure the curfew law is applied properly.

"This law cannot be applied everywhere, and it cannot be long-lasting," Hollande said. He said Villepin should have put more emphasis on improving life in tough neighborhoods and said the premier's proposals were vague.

De Villepin has, in fact, laid out a $35.5 billion danegeld, er, I mean, "urban redevelopment plan" in the hopes that it will make the barbarian horde step back from the gate. Somehow, I don't think improving health care is quite going to address this issue.