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So the Islamofascist rioters are continuing to burn down all the cars, schools, gyms, etc. they can find, and in response President Chirac vows -- not new efforts to halt the riots -- but arrests and trials.
PARIS - French President Jacques Chirac on Sunday promised arrests, trials and punishment for those sowing "violence or fear" across France — as the urban unrest that has triggered attacks on vehicles, nursery schools and other targets reached central Paris.
With the riots continuing into day 11, it appears that Chirac is doing little that is effective to halt them.
Not surprisingly, Chirac's strategy hasn't cowed the rioters into submission. Instead it seems to be encouraging them to greater violence. Now they're shooting at police:
GRIGNY, France (Reuters) - Rioters fired shots at police in an 11th night of riots in France on Sunday, injuring 10 policemen, two of them seriously, police said.
What an indictment this is of the French approach to terrorism in Iraq and in their own home nation.
I'd like to know -- what makes Chirac think the riots are going to stop?
What are the French people saying about this pathetic inability of their own government to defend them?
Will the French people demand that the army be called in to suppress the riots?
From AP:
PARIS - Worsening urban unrest reached central Paris for the first time early Sunday and youths set ablaze shops, businesses, schools and nearly 1,300 cars from France's Mediterranean resort towns to the German border.
The ineptness of the French government in permitting the riots to reach central Paris, is unexpected.
Meanwhile MSM keeps repeating the profound, fundamental error that is impeding efforts by the French government to defend the country. From AP:
The violence — originally concentrated in northeastern suburbs of Paris with large immigrant populations — is forcing France to confront anger long-simmering in the neighborhoods, where many Arab and African Muslim immigrants live on society's margins, struggling with unemployment, poor housing, racial discrimination, crime and a lack of opportunity.
From Reuters:
The violence has been seen as the expression of pent-up anger by youths, many Muslims of North African and black African origin, at police treatment, racism, unemployment and their marginal place in French society.
This profound misunderstanding of the goals of the Islamofascists leads the French government to believe it can just wait for this to blow over. Look at this insane strategy the French government is using:
For the second night in a row, a helicopter equipped with spotlights and video cameras to track bands of marauding youths combed the Paris suburbs from the air and small teams of police were deployed to chase down rioters speeding from one attack to another in cars and on motorbikes.
You've got to be kidding me. Small teams of police, chasing down rioters? Helicopters videotaping the carnage? This is the minimum possible response. After ten nights of riots it is evident that this approach isn't working.
Some 2,300 police poured into the Paris region to bolster security overnight while firefighters moved out around the city to douse blazing vehicles. Police reported nearly 200 arrests nationwide.
Only 200 arrests? It appears that for the most part rioters are escaping adverse consequences.
The strategy of the French government is flawed. This isn't going to blow over. The rioters don't want jobs. What they want is France.
The Koran doesn't instruct people to have healthy, prosperous lives. It instructs them to kill non-Muslims wherever they find them, or to make non-Muslims into second-class citizens. (See this post for details).
I can see this playing out in a couple of ways:
1) The Islamofascists realize that they've proven they can burn cars and buildings at will anytime they want. They fall back to their original positions and start blackmailing the government. It is possible as well that in this case they would conduct an intifada against France, blowing up places all over the country.
or...
2) The rioters keep rioting until they either take over France or are driven back by the French army.
The French riots have gone into the tenth night:
Schools were torched and more than 600 cars set on fire in cities across France in a tenth night of rioting in poor suburban areas that went into the early hours of Sunday, the Interior Ministry said.
These quotes from French officials appear to indicate an absence of strategy for dealing with the rioters:
Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin also summoned eight key ministers and a top Muslim official to his offices on Saturday as he sought to chart an end to the violence.
"We are trying to be firm and avoid any provocation," Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said following the meeting.
Say what? France is trying to avoid provoking the rioters who are burning hundreds of cars a night? They're already burning down as much of France as they can. Isn't it meaningless to talk about avoiding provoking them?
"Violence is not a solution," said Sarkozy, accused earlier of stoking passions by calling troublemakers "scum."
Another astonishing quote. Violence is not a solution? I suppose he means to condemn the violence of the rioters, while promising them that they will not be met with any violence in return from the French government. Needless to say, this only encourages the rioters.
"Once the crisis is over, everyone will have to understand there are a certain number of injustices in some neighborhoods."
Appease, appease, appease.
An Interior Ministry spokesman said the government had called in reinforcements for police and fire services, adding in the Paris region alone, an extra 2,300 police officers and gendarmes have been dispatched.
Great -- more police -- in othere words, more of a strategy that has already permitted the crisis to extend to a tenth night.
In Aulnay-sous-Bois, a rundown suburb of 80,000 inhabitants northeast of Paris, several thousand residents, some singing the national anthem, marched past burned out vehicles behind a "No To Violence, Yes To Dialogue" banner.
"It's a sign that the laws of the republic apply to everyone and that we will not give in to violence," said Mayor Gerard Gaudron, a member of the governing UMP party.
That sounds like blanket permission to the rioters to do as much violence as they want, with the promise that they will not be met with violence in return.
The French are in danger of losing their whole country with this strategy.
Update 7:50 am: The French government seems to be saying to the rioters, "You've made your point. Declare victory and go home." But the rioters aren't trying to make a point. They don't want the government to help them get out of poverty. What they want is to take over the country.
The Koran doesn't instruct people to have healthy, prosperous lives. It instructs them to kill non-Muslims wherever they are found, or to make non-Muslims into second-class citizens.(See this post for details). The strategy of the French government regarding the riots, is flawed by a profound misunderstanding of the goals of the rioters.
From Michael Rubin, resident scholar of the American Enterprise Institute (via the Washington Post):
Iraq's economy is booming. Many Iraqis--denied employment under Saddam Hussein's regime for reasons of ethnicity, sectarian identity, or for refusal to join the Baath party, now have jobs. Iraqis' own private investment, aided with capital remitted from family members abroad, has enabled the private sector to boom. Banks, restaurants, and furniture stores occupy what just last year were empty lots or abandoned storefronts. In August 2005, new business registrations have topped 30,000; this figure does not include the number of start-ups which still ignore Iraqi-registration rules.
Ordinary Iraqis are financially better off now than they were at any time in the past two decades. According to World Bank and International Monetary Fund estimates, per capita income has doubled since 2003. Iraq's per capita gross domestic product is today almost twice that of Yemen and nearing that of Egypt and Syria, hardly a sign of failure in a country in which, just three years ago, antiwar groups insisted children were starving en masse. Statistics aside, the Iraqi economic boom is apparent to anyone who visits an Iraqi market. Not only are appliances and luxuries in the stores, but customers are actually purchasing them.
This underlines the giant win for the U.S. in Iraq:
Per Amir Taheri:
One solution [to the French riots], offered by Gilles Kepel, an adviser to Chirac on Islamic affairs, is the creation of "a new Andalusia" in which Christians and Muslims would live side by side and cooperate to create a new cultural synthesis.
The problem with Kepel's vision, however, is that it does not address the important issue of political power. Who will rule this new Andalusia: Muslims or the largely secularist Frenchmen?
If France permits the Muslims to successfully seize French lands, it is likely to find itself in the exact same position of Israel -- with a hostile population of radical Islamists on its new borders, constantly waging a war of terrorism against the remaining French territory.
It may be time for France to consider calling in the army to put a stop to the riots.
France would be well-advised to expel large numbers of radical Islamists.
From Amir Taheri, editor of the French quarterly "Politique internationale," in the New York Post:
President Jacques Chirac and Premier de Villepin are especially sore [re: the riots] because they had believed that their opposition to the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003 would give France a heroic image in the Muslim community.
That illusion has now been shattered — and the Chirac administration, already passing through a deepening political crisis, appears to be clueless about how to cope with what the Parisian daily France Soir has called a "ticking time bomb."
It is now clear that a good portion of France's Muslims not only refuse to assimilate into "the superior French culture," but firmly believe that Islam offers the highest forms of life to which all mankind should aspire.
Would the riots be taking place if France had mobilized military strength on behalf of freedom and Democracy in Iraq?
Did the attempted appeasement by France of the Islamofascists merely demonstrate the weakness of that country?
It is likely that the answers to these questions would indicate the error of France's policy of attempted appeasement of the Islamofascists.
The whole world is witnessing an attempt by Muslims in France to take over large tracts of the country. From Amir Taheri, editor of the French quarterly "Politique internationale," in the New York Post:
How did it all start? The accepted account is that sometime last week, a group of young boys in Clichy engaged in one of their favorite sports: stealing parts of parked cars.
Normally, nothing dramatic would have happened, as the police have not been present in that suburb for years.
The problem came when one of the inhabitants, a female busybody, telephoned the police and reported the thieving spree taking place just opposite her building. The police were thus obliged to do something — which meant entering a city that, as noted, had been a no-go area for them.
Once the police arrived on the scene, the youths — who had been reigning over Clichy pretty unmolested for years — got really angry. A brief chase took place in the street, and two of the youths, who were not actually chased by the police, sought refuge in a cordoned-off area housing a power pylon. Both were electrocuted.
Once news of their deaths was out, Clichy was all up in arms.
With cries of "God is great," bands of youths armed with whatever they could get hold of went on a rampage and forced the police to flee.
The French authorities could not allow a band of youths to expel the police from French territory. So they hit back — sending in Special Forces, known as the CRS, with armored cars and tough rules of engagement.
Within hours, the original cause of the incidents was forgotten and the issue jelled around a demand by the representatives of the rioters that the French police leave the "occupied territories." By midweek, the riots had spread to three of the provinces neighboring Paris, with a population of 5.5 million.
But who lives in the affected areas? In Clichy itself, more than 80 percent of the inhabitants are Muslim immigrants or their children, mostly from Arab and black Africa. In other affected towns, the Muslim immigrant community accounts for 30 percent to 60 percent of the population
...Some are even calling for the areas where Muslims form a majority of the population to be reorganized on the basis of the "millet" system of the Ottoman Empire: Each religious community (millet) would enjoy the right to organize its social, cultural and educational life in accordance with its religious beliefs.
In parts of France, a de facto millet system is already in place. In these areas, all women are obliged to wear the standardized Islamist "hijab" while most men grow their beards to the length prescribed by the sheiks.
The radicals have managed to chase away French shopkeepers selling alcohol and pork products, forced "places of sin," such as dancing halls, cinemas and theaters, to close down, and seized control of much of the local administration.
A reporter who spent last weekend in Clichy and its neighboring towns of Bondy, Aulnay-sous-Bois and Bobigny heard a single overarching message: The French authorities should keep out.
"All we demand is to be left alone," said Mouloud Dahmani, one of the local "emirs" engaged in negotiations to persuade the French to withdraw the police and allow a committee of sheiks, mostly from the Muslim Brotherhood, to negotiate an end to the hostilities.
That's all they demand -- to be left alone. Left alone by the French government, so as to rule those parts of France as a separate territory, beyond control of the French government.
That's the deal. The Muslims want to take over the areas of France in which they live. For 30 years they've refused to assimilate because their goal was to impose Islam, rather than to integrate with the non-Muslim population. In following this path the Muslim population has just been doing what it says to do in the Koran and what Muslims have been doing for 1300 years.
Were the Muslims to succeed in taking over those parts of France, there can be little doubt that they would soon be launching attacks on the rest of the country.
The greatest strength the Muslim extremists had in today's world was the view by many in Western cultures that they could be reasoned with and accomodated. Now that they're threatening France's existence, that cover may be blown -- forfeiting that key strength.
France would be well-advised to expel large numbers of these extremists.
Iraqi-American Fawaz Saraf emails:
Below is a link to an article in Elaf reporting on the news conference given by Ahmad Chalabi following the announcement of the Iraqi National Congress List for the upcoming December elections (List 569).
The program announced by the INC appears to represent the most enlightened prospect for the future of Iraq. Following are key elements of the INC program:
1 – Equal distribution of Iraq’s oil wealth and the adoption of the oil dividend concept wherein every Iraqi citizen is guaranteed his or her equal share of Iraq’s oil wealth. The INC program appears to support the progressive view that Iraq’s oil wealth should be distributed directly to the citizens of Iraq and not routed through grandiose government projects and spending programs.
((refer to the Wall Street Journal editorial of August 17, 2005 for additional details this concept as proposed by Chalabi).
2 – Fully supports the establishment of regional governments within Iraq and emphasizes that the newly adopted constitution guarantees the rights of the provinces to form regions. The program further emphasizes that a federal system for Iraq is the best guarantee for Iraq’s unity.
((in my view only a federal system with strong regional governments is capable of avoiding past pitfalls of (and massacres associated with) pursuing the ideology of Arab Nationalism or the parochial flag-waving Iraqi nationalism. Rather, a federal system guarantees the right of diverse groups within Iraq to freely respond to their emotions, regardless of whether those emotions are triggered by their religious of ethnic heritage)).
3 – Ahmad Chalabi praised Sistani’s highly positive contribution to the political process in post Saddam Iraq while emphatically rejecting the concept of an Islamic political system for Iraq.
In my view, the above key policy statements along with Chalabi’s proven anti-Baathist record, should make List 569 one of the better choices for consideration by the Iraqi electorate.
Fawaz Saraf
http://www.elaph.com/ElaphWeb/Politics/2005/11/102593.htm
Juxtaposing this with the current French riots leads to the astonishing observation that in the new millenium, war is waged by winning over the opposing public as much as by military action -- and France and Iraq are two fronts in the same war. Democracy moves forward in the heart of the Islamic world, even while Islamofascism makes headway in the heart of Europe.
Islamofascists seek to impose Islam on France through violence, intimidation, and by convincing the French people that they themselves are to blame for the poverty and unemployment of the Islamic population in France. MSM doggedly espouses that view, as seen in quotes such as this from CNN:
The rioting began last Thursday in Clichy-sous-Bois after two teenagers were accidentally electrocuted and a third was injured while apparently trying to escape from police by hiding in a power substation. Officials have said police were not chasing the boys.
But the original cause has been all but forgotten as residents of other communities -- weary of poverty, unemployment and discrimination against the large immigrant and Muslim populations -- have vented their frustration.
I've debunked that view in detail here.
Meanwhile, in Iraq, Democracy is winning the hearts and minds of the people, by providing them a way to control their own lives and their own destiny, and to seek prosperity and success.
I believe there is no doubt at all that Democracy will win, although this may be reasonably expected to take decades.
But we must make sure to minimize the loss of life to Democratic nations along the way. We must work hard not to get nuked by Islamofascists.
And we must work hard to control immigration to the U.S. from Islamic nations so as to avoid the sort of pain France is suffering at this time.
Radio Blogger posts this transcript of Mark Steyn interviewed by Hugh Hewitt:
Mark Steyn: ...this, I think, is the start of a long Eurabian civil war we're witnessing here.
...Hugh Hewitt: Mark Steyn, how do you account for the indifference or ignorance of the mainstream media in America?
Mark Steyn: Well, I think this is now basically becoming a willful effort at misleading. It's not just the United States. Other countries, too, are reporting this as their youths, or their French youth. And it isn't until you get thirteen paragraphs into the story, and they're quoting one of these youths, and you realize he's called Mohammed, that it occurs to you that there might be an ethno-cultural religious component to this situation. And this is absolutely grotesque, because the one...I'm sometimes accused of being terribly pessimistic when I speak in North America. And I always tell Americans and Canadians, that the one great advantage people have, you know, everything may...there may be a lot of bad news in the world, but the one advantage North Americans have, is that Europe is ahead of you in the line. And you have to learn what's happening. You have to confront honestly what's happening with these disaffected Muslim populations in Europe. I mean, most of the September 11th bombers, the Millenium bomber, a lot of these people all passed through various parts of the European welfare state. It's relevant to U.S. security, too.
Mark no doubt has been reading the same reports I've been quoting from here in recent posts on the French riots. The quotes documenting that the rioting communities are Muslim are found at the very end of the articles.
On Wednesday I posted that the rioting of Muslims in Paris looked to me like "It could become a revolt by the Muslims against the non-Muslims of France." Now, after two more days of riots, MSM is saying it too. From AP:
Since then riots have swelled into a broader challenge against the French state and its security forces.
AP appears to have looked for a Muslim to condemn the rioting. Here's the Muslim they quoted:
Rioters also set fire to a gym near the Les Tilleuls housing complex in the Seine-Saint-Denis region. It burned and smoldered Wednesday night as residents looked on in despair.
"Where is she going to practice now?" asked Mohammed Fawzi Kaci, an Algerian immigrant whose 8-year-old daughter took gymnastics classes at the facility.
...Police have made 143 arrests during the unrest, Interior Ministry Nicolas Sarkozy said.
Residents and opposition politicians have accused Sarkozy of fanning tensions with his tough police tactics and talk — including calling troublemakers "scum."
"Sarkozy's language has added oil to the fire. He should really weigh his words," said Kaci, whose daughter lost her gym. "I'm proud to live in France, but this France disappoints me."
Kaci condemns, not the rioters, but the French official, Sarkozy, who dared to call the rioters "scum." He also condemns France. But Yahoo quotes no condemnation from Kaci for the rioters themselves. This is the party line of Islamic jihad: "we attack you and you are to blame for it." "You offend us by not showing us enough deference. Who cares if we're burning your towns down: how dare you call us scum?" As noted by Yahoo, Kaci's view reflects that of other "residents and opposition politicians."
The timing of the riots coincides with Islamic holy days. From AFP:
Many of France's estimated five million Muslims live in those suburbs. Thursday night was the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, a night traditionally marked by feasts and family get-togethers.
News flash for France: They're not going to assimilate. You have to deport them.
From CNN:
PARIS, France (CNN) -- Police are bracing for another night of violence in the suburbs of Paris after officers and fire crews faced gunfire as they battled rioters who attacked a commuter train and set buses, a school and a car dealership ablaze.
Ministers were under growing pressure Thursday to deal with the unrest in the impoverished areas north and east of the French capital. The violence was triggered last week by the electrocution deaths of two teenagers.
"It's a dramatic situation. It is very serious and we fear that the events could even get worse tonight," said Francis Masanet, secretary general of a police union, according to Reuters.
The rioting is doing great damage:
More than 1,000 police were deployed to quell the unrest Wednesday night and early Thursday. Rampaging youths torched 177 vehicles, including two public buses, in at least nine towns.
In the northeastern suburb of Aulnay-sous-Bois, a Renault dealership was set on fire and at least a dozen cars were burned. A supermarket and local gymnasium were also torched, The Associated Press reported.
Here's CNN's description of the causes of the riot:
The rioting began last Thursday in Clichy-sous-Bois after two teenagers were accidentally electrocuted and a third was injured while apparently trying to escape from police by hiding in a power substation. Officials have said police were not chasing the boys.
But the original cause has been all but forgotten as residents of other communities -- weary of poverty, unemployment and discrimination against the large immigrant and Muslim populations -- have vented their frustration.
In some areas, unemployment runs as high as 20 percent -- more than twice the national average, de Villepin told lawmakers.
Note that CNN blames France for the riots, saying the communities are "weary of poverty, unemployment and discrimination." This statement by CNN exemplifies:
In fact, it is the Muslim tradition that prevents these Islamists from working and integrating into the community. From a Freedom House report on publications distributed in mosques in the U.S.:
...the Saudi publications state that Muslims are not to work for the infidel. For example, the Saudi government high school textbook collected from the Al- Farouq mosque in Houston states:
“For a Muslim to be employed in the service of an unbeliever is something forbidden. The reason is because it gives authority to control and demean the believer to the unbeliever.” [Document No. 32]
The Saudi publications also instruct Muslims that it is preferable not to hire non- Muslims, especially within the Arabian Peninsula, but, if they do, they have to hate them. In fatwas on the “Treatment of Servants,” published [Document No. 36] by the Saudi Embassy to Washington and collected from the Islamic Center in East Orange, N.J., the late Saudi Grand Mufti Bin Baz states the following about how to handle an infidel domestic worker:
“The women in your household do not have to stay away from her, but they should not treat her as they would treat a Muslim woman. They have to hate her for Allah’s sake....” [Document No. 36]
In his best-selling book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), Robert Spencer discusses the Koranic underpinnings for this refusal to work. The first reason is the Koran's requirement that Muslims kill non-Muslims, or make them second-class citizens, resulting in the instruction, quoted above, not to work for non-Muslims. The second is a Koranic instruction that God is not bound to be good, and therefore the universe is not bound to be rational or comprehensible. From Spencer, page 94 - 96:
"No one is good but God alone." -- Jesus (Mark 10:18)
"The Jews say: 'Allah's hand is chained.' May their own hands be chained! May they be cursed for what they say! By no means. His hands are both outstretched: He bestows as He will." -- Qur'an 5:64
The idea that Allah's hand is "not chained" is a reflection of his absolute freedom and sovereignty. If God is good, as Jesus says, His goodness may be discernible in the consistency of creation; but in Islam, even to call Allah good would be to bind him.
...[Islamic scholar] Al-Ghazali and others took issue with the very idea that there were laws of nature; that would be blasphemy, a denial of Allah's freedom. To say that he created the universe according to consistent, rational laws, or that he "cannot" do something ... would be to bind his absolute sovereignty. His will controls all, but it is inscrutable.
Thus modern science developed in Christian Europe rather than in the House of Islam.
CNN blames France for the poverty and unemployment of France's Islamic population, as if it was invented in France. CNN's memory doesn't even go back to the mid-1900's, when (per Spencer, page 92) Winston Churchill said:
How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.
...Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen: all know how to die. But the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science -- the science against which it had vainly struggled -- the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.
The poverty and unemployment of France's Islamic population are not due to policies or behavior of the French. They are due to Islamic traditions against work.
Max Boot makes the same point I made earlier this week:
But with his investigation all but over, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has found no criminal conspiracy and no violations of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which makes it a crime in some circumstances to disclose the names of undercover CIA operatives. Among other problems, Plame doesn't seem to fit the act's definition of a "covert agent" — someone who "has within the last five years served outside the United States." By 2003, Plame had apparently been working in Langley, Va., for at least six years, which means that, mystery of mysteries, the vice president's chief of staff was indicted for covering up something that wasn't a crime.
Per AP, the rioting is taking place:
...in the poor suburbs, where police hesitate to venture and which have proved fertile terrain for Islamic extremists.
Having gone on for so long, it appears to be more than a brief anomaly:
PARIS (AP) -- French President Jacques Chirac, intervening after six nights of rioting in housing projects outside Paris, called Wednesday for calm and said authorities will use a firm hand to curtail what may become a "dangerous situation."
Note that Chirac says, "may become" a dangerous situation. In other words, six nights of riots in a place where the police "hesitate to venture", isn't yet the kind of dangerous situation Chirac is concerned that this could lead to. This is no doubt correct. It could become a revolt by the Muslims against the non-Muslims of France.
It's already extremely dangerous; it could serve as a practice run for such a revolt.
