Posted on 11/07/2005 2:44:49 AM PST by Dane
French police made 395 arrests last night as riots intensified for the 11th consecutive night, with violence and fire engulfing towns from the North to the Mediterranean.
In the impoverished suburbs and satellite towns around Paris, where the unrest began on October 27, churches, schools and warehouses were set alight. At least 1,408 vehicles were destroyed, many more than on previous nights, and the random attacks have spread into the heart of the city.
In Grigny, south of the capital, a gang of around 200 youths are reported to have lured police into a housing estate before opening fire with hunting rifles. At least 30 officers were injured, two seriously with lead pellets in the legs and neck.
Riots broke out in beacons of disaffection across the country from Lille, on the border with Belgium, to Montpellier on the Mediterranean coast. In Toulouse, police used tear gas to disperse a mob. Cars were set alight on the streets of Nantes, Orleans, Rennes and Rouen, and youths in St Etienne forced passengers off a bus before burning it. Churches were set ablaze in northern Lens and southern Sete.
SNIP
In Strasbourg, youths stole a car and rammed it into a housing project, setting the vehicle and the building on fire. "We’ll stop when Sarkozy steps down," the defiant 17-year-old driver told an Associated Press reporter.
Police are calling for a night-time curfew in affected areas and some senior officers have demanded that troops are brought on to the streets.
Michel Gaudin, France's most senior police officer, said today: "We are witnessing a sort of shock wave that is spreading across the country."
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
French to Impose Curfews, Deploy Forces
PARIS - Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said Monday that curfews would be imposed wherever they are needed and 9,500 police officers and gendarmes are being deployed to stop rioting that has spread across France.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051107/ap_on_re_eu/france_rioting;_ylt=Ajw5qpgYFlB7HiiQIg2NsiR0bBAF;_ylu=X3oDMTBjMHVqMTQ4BHNlYwN5bnN1YmNhdA--
if just half the 15% turned on their comrades and took one out, they would lose 15% of their forces outright, half of that to casualties and half to desertion+joining enemy theoretically speaking. an army that loses 20% is no longer combat effective, in theory (the marines proved that wrong in iwo jima but this is the french, no offense intended)
"Those shots could have killed somebody, but clearly there's not a mass, armed movement going on here."
Stop this.
There was nothing disingenuous.
Cleary there is not a mass ARMED movement going on THERE.
I am not playing semantic games.
France is not experiencing a jihad.
She is experiencing a social explosion of disaffected French youth.
Arson is bad, and so is throwing stones at police.
But go and look at the coverage of farmer's protests that occur from time to time, when they close the borders and turn over and burn Spanish trucks filled with tomatoes or block the roads. Severe labor unrest is usually accompanied by property damage to vehicles and storefronts.
Nobody pretends that this is GOOD.
It is very, very bad.
What it is not is a civil war, or a Muslim jihad.
This is a French protest, unrolling in the pattern of violent French protests of the past.
Example of the difference:
In Israel, the terrorists blow themselves up and the bus.
In France, the hotheads stop the bus, make the driver get off, then they light it on fire.
These are not the same thing, at all.
Both are bad behavior, but the first behavior is much worse.
What is being watched in France most closely is to see the degree of violence. Blows and beatings and things burnt or some people cut: this fits the pattern of historical French riots and violent manifestations.
If armed battles begin to occur on the streets, if people begin to be murdered, if sniper fire begins to be taken up, things will be radicalizing and things will have turned Islamist.
But that has not happened yet. And the reason that the police do not simply massacre the rioters in the streets is so that it won't.
Speaking of which , I wonder how Tina Turner is holding up? She lives there last I heard with her French Puppy-Man.
all the more reason we need to keep our guns to defend our homes and families.....think the violence would've gone this far if ordinary citizens were allowed guns.....oh, wait, the liberals would hesitate to use them to protect their kids' lives....it would be unfair to shoot the murderous mobs that only got that way b/c of poverty and disaffection.....
In essence the dem establishment did the same thing in New Orleans...excused the behavior of criminals b/c of the dire circumstances, blamed the government and then started throwing money at the problem w/o ever addressing the real issues of moral decay in our society.
Sarkozy ain't going anywhere, and it seems he may have won the battle with chirac/de villepin, except de villepin gets to have his face on TV.
And this means it's okay? Nothing to worry about? Like the "violent manifestations" of the past? Nice way to spin a history rich in horrible mass murder. Gives me zero comfort.
But that has not happened yet. And the reason that the police do not simply massacre the rioters in the streets is so that it won't.
Would a normal French riot last for so long, cause so much destruction of property, and spread across the countryside? What about the 61 year old man who died, or the handicapped woman who was burned, or the 13 month old child who was injured?
If this is normal for them, that's truly frightening!
Ain't that the truth.
Well it seems that Sarkozy is in charge(that's if the French town mayor(most of them communist/socialist) asks for help).
We'll see around 3:00 AM EST(9:00 AM Paris Time) as the damage reports trickle out.
I bet Vellepin isn't looking so smug tonight.
"What I find interesting is the confluence of media ignorance.
The police were not shot at with 'hunting rifles' they were shot with a birdshot loaded shotgun. Huge difference....and the reason that there were wounds rather than fatalities"
The ignorance is caused by a translation difficulty.
In France, hunting weapons (I am chosing the word carefully) are not registered, and one does not need a license to have them. In American, a "hunting rifle" and a "shotgun" are different things. But in French, the standard word for a gun that is not a handgun or a machine gun, a rifle, is "fusil".
The French word for shotgun is also "fusil".
So, if one were reading a French report and saw that someone was hit with light pellets from a "fusil", and perhaps did an online translation, one would discover that the English said that he was hit with pellets from a hunting rifle. And indeed, in French that would be a "fusil" or a "fusil de chasse" or similar.
But so would a shotgun, and the distinction in French would simply be made based on what sort of shot were fired.
If someone just writes "fusil", one does not really know if he is speaking of a rifle or a shotgun. But any translation program is likely to simply translate fusil as "rifle".
And that is how one knows that the reports are translated from French sources. Because in English it is absurd to think of birdshot being fired from a hunting rifle.
Now, I will grant that an editor who understood the rudiments of firearms would arch an eyebrow at the notion of "light pellets fired from a hunting rifle", and would perhaps seek to make sure that "shotgun" wasn't mistranslated.
Looks a little like the late Maxwell Smart.
As I understand it, the rioters already have weapons.
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