Posted on 11/05/2005 8:34:14 AM PST by Eurotwit
AULNAY-SOUS-BOIS, France (Reuters) - With every night that France's rundown suburbs burn, officials grow increasingly convinced that drug traffickers and Islamist militants are using frustrated youths to challenge law and order here.
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Many people who watch their cars, shops and schools go up in flames, however, are not buying it. They blame unemployment, racial prejudice and widespread youth boredom for the outbursts.
Finding "hidden hands" behind the unrest seems like trying to catch the rioters as they rampage through the night. Some may get caught, but far more slip away in the darkness.
"Everybody is fed up seeing our town and our district trampled over daily by these organized gangs," declared Gerard Gaudron, conservative mayor of the northeastern Paris suburb of Aulnay-sous-Bois after an hour-long march against violence.
If the police don't crack down on these "hooligans," the embattled Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has warned, "who would give the orders? The mafias and the fundamentalists."
Fouzi Guendouz doesn't agree. "I don't think that's the real reason. It was just an excuse for kids to trash things," said Guendouz, 20, a French-born business student of Algerian origin.
"The politicians blame it on Islamists because the French are afraid of this religion. They think Islam equals bin Laden."
"Whoever knows who's behind this should come here and say it openly," shouted a defiant man in a Muslim prayer cap. "The problem is there's nothing for youths to do here."
Ahmed Hamidi, a white-bearded Moroccan electrician long resident in France, had no patience with politicians in Paris, which lies hardly an hour away but seems like another planet.
"All the politicians care about are laws for homosexuals and all those immoral things," he fumed. "They are against headscarves, against beards and against the mosques.
THEORY VERSUS REALITY?
Aulnay-sous-Bois was calm overnight, but there were still many charred cars and delivery vans along the way as the "march against violence" snaked in between the faded housing blocks.
Acrid smoke still rose from the smoldering ruins of a large carpet and floor covering depot set ablaze by arsonists two days ago. Deep in an isolated industrial zone, the depot was clearly the target of arsonists who went out of their way to hit it.
The growing frequency of attacks like this, in contrast to the car and trash hopper blazes set by marauding youths earlier in the unrest, prompted Paris prosecutor Yves Bot to join the officials blaming the rioting on organized gangs.
"This is done in a way that gives every appearance of being coordinated," he told Europe 1 radio. "For the moment, we see there is a movement against official institutions but it does not seem to be taking an ethnic or religious turn."
Another student in Aulnay-sous-Bois, Jeremie Garrigues, 19, doubted this was the case. "If those kids had been organized, they would have done much worse -- they would have used guns and bombs against town hall and the prefecture," he argued.
"Those are all politicians' theories," remarked an Algerian woman named Samia, whose main concern was how frightened her children were by the unrest. "We live here in reality."
NICE CARS AND EXPENSIVE PHONES
It's only on the fringes of the march, out of earshot of the multi-cultural crowd of concerned residents, that anybody tries to reconcile the opposing explanations.
"I'm sure there are drug dealers and Islamic radicals at work," said a middle-aged woman who requested anonymity. "Drugs are everywhere. They've arrested Islamic radicals nearby here."
A social worker who also withheld his name said some rioters seemed linked to the drug trade because they "drive nice cars and use mobile telephones I couldn't afford to buy.
"When the government is determined to fight this underground economy, there's bound to be resistance," he said. "There is no headquarters organizing this, but they seem to be coordinating their activities among themselves by phone."
The charge that Islamist radicals were trying to exploit the unrest was a difficult one for local Muslims to handle, he said, because many were working to prevent unrest and admitting there were radicals in the crowds would discredit their community.
"They can't say that, so they don't say anything," he added.
Well, he did tell Mohammedans to rise up everywhere and undertake Jihad.
I just now listened the 1600UTC RFI broadcast. Their reporter still blames the riots on the deaths of the 2 "youths," isolation and poverty. Violence is reported spreading to Rennes, Nice, Toulouse and Lilles. No mention of what, if anything, the French government intends to do.
They could try to memorize the whole Koran. Alternatively, they could build a raft, and float back to Algeria. If all else fails, they could practice being French.
They could clean up their neighborhoods, get an education, help little old ladies.
Just what are they burning, anyway?
If the neighborhoods didn't support it, they'd be turning in these hooligans.
As we watch France being flushed down the toilet, I hope the rest of the left-leaning Euro countries are taking notes...
I guess I should include the left-leaning PC multi-culturist multilingual pacifists in the good old US of A.
You're in good "hidden hands" with Islam.
---After THREE days of this, I'd have labeled them
Mad Dogs run amok, hauled out enough police/
military ammo to do some real damage, and let
the "kids" see some REALITY...their friends'
dead bodies.---
I agree. The feared explosion of violence would be preferable to being seen as toothless old women. The thugs are taking over.
No price is too high for my amusement.
There absolutely are "hidden hands" using local malcontents and those with their own causes as pawns in protests and riots against Western civilization around the world.
Is anyone so naive as to think that the protests going on in South America right now against President Bush are just a spontaneous expression by a bunch of locals without any outside organization and financing?
Believe that, and the liberal media has some swamp land you may be interested in investing in.
From: General Choltwitz's ghost
To: Der Fuehrer's ghost
Mine Fuehrer, although it is 61 years after your order, Paris is (finally) burning.
"Contradiction" is the closest thing to a one word description of liberalism as one can come up with.
There's no part of a the liberal belief system that is not contradicted somewhere else...and more often than not BLATANTLY contradicted.
Apparently there's nothing for Muslims all over the world to do. Does the 'holy Koran' say that good Muslims should burn their communities when they are bored? Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if it does.
The failure of post-modernism, specifically the French variety, is clear for all to see.
HA! My feelings exactly.
That's racist to equate Bin Laden and Muslims.
TROPAL
The biggest contradiction of liberalism/socialism is that between their good intentions and reality.
My personal experience is that the middle eastern youths in the Paris shantytown suburbs were ready to do something like this before anyone had ever heard of Bin Laden. At least they seemed like typical juvenile delinquints to me.
We need to send Moi Kerri over to nuance these miss guide Jihadist youths.
Send Moi Kerri, Killer Whale Kennedy, Boxer, Fineswine, Peloshi and Reid to nuance these fine Jihadist lads.
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