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EXTRA LEISURE HOURS
Cast your mind back to the faraway land that was France in 2002. The France that SMH columnist Adele Horin adored:
More than a year after France legislated a 35-hour week, the economy is flourishing, unemployment is falling, consumer confidence has hit a historic high and most French say their lifestyle has improved.
People are spending more time at the gym and more time with their kids; they dine out more often, take more holidays and spend extra leisure hours sprucing up their homes.
Euro lap-dog Adele is yet to comment on current French lifestyle improvements:
Gangs of youths torched 1,300 vehicles overnight in the 10th consecutive night of violence in Paris’s poor suburbs and major French towns, despite the deployment of thousands of extra police.
Cars were burned out in the historic center of Paris for the first time on Saturday night. In the normally quiet Normandy town of Evreux, a shopping mall, 50 vehicles, a post office and two schools went up in flames ...
“Many youths have never seen their parents work and couldn’t hold down a job if they got one,” said Claude Chevallier, manager of a burned-out carpet depot in the rundown Paris suburb of Aulnay-sous-Bois.
But authorities now say the rolling nightly riots are being organized via the Internet and mobile phones, and have pointed the finger at drug traffickers and Islamist militants.
Overnight, 1,295 vehicles were torched across France, the highest total so far, police said.
Torched cars = more walking = reduced need to visit gyms. French social policy triumphs again! Some quotes from citizens who’ve taken time out from sprucing up their homes:
“We feel rejected, compared to the kids who live in better neighborhoods,” said Nasim, a chunky 16-year-old with braces and acne. “Everything here is broken down and abandoned ...”
“We don’t have the American dream here,” said Rezzoug, as he surveyed the clusters of young men. “We don’t even have the French dream here.”
Not even the French dream? That might be the saddest line you’ll read all week.
UPDATE. Latest flourishing economy news:
Police last night found a petrol bomb factory in a southern suburb of Paris, on France’s tenth and worst consecutive night of violence.
Six youths, all aged under 18, were arrested in a raid on a building in Evry, south of Paris, where more than 100 bottles, gallons of fuel and hoods for hiding rioters’ faces were found.
Arrests to date: 800. Cars torched: 3,500.
(Via Astute Blogger)
It’s all about the cars. Once all the cars are gone, then peace will reign.
Uh, those pickup trucks need to go too. But once the cars and the pickup trucks go, peace will ring throughout France.
Well, the large trucks need to go too. And motorbikes, must rid the country of motorbikes. But once the cars, and the pickup trucks, and the other trucks, and the motorbikes go, peace will be supreme, throughout all the majestic and ancient nation.
Um, once those motorized scooters for the handicapped are eliminated. And ...
Posted by wronwright on 2005 11 06 at 11:04 AM • permalink“gallons of fuel”
Another Anglo-Saxon conspiracy!
Posted by Bruce Rheinstein on 2005 11 06 at 11:18 AM • permalinkMost of the reports I’ve read said the rioters are attacking police with baseball bats. This may be indicative of American subversion of the culture. I’m all for local content in the choice of weapons. How about stale baguettes?
Posted by Mystery Meat on 2005 11 06 at 11:29 AM • permalinkGiven current trends, they should reach 5,000 within 24 hours. It’s a quagmire!
Posted by Bruce Rheinstein on 2005 11 06 at 11:50 AM • permalinkI kept reading about those baseball bats and I keep wondering, just where the hell in France do you buy a baseball bat. I mean, they do not play the game at all. Their local version of a Target store sure wouldn’t stock them. (Target, pronounced “Tar-Jay”, I guess.) This would be like rioters in NYC using cricket bats. I wonder if they’re using Louisville Sluggers or some cheap Korean knock-offs?
Posted by David Crawford on 2005 11 06 at 11:58 AM • permalink“We don’t have the American dream here,” said Rezzoug
Well, because you’re in France. If you were in Belgium, Germany, or Sweden, you wouldn’t have the American dream either. You would have a Belgium dream (snorts), or a German dream (cringes), or a Swedish (hmmm).
Personally, I sure would like to know just what this American dream is. Does it include having to mow bushels of fallen leaves from the front yard of an Ohio homestead in freezing rain? After being given a plethora of very lame excuses from extremely lazy teenage sons? As I tell my sons, my god do something, pretend your a disadvantaged downtrodden French youth of possible Muslim affiliation and the pile of leaves is a brand new Renault. Burn it!
Posted by wronwright on 2005 11 06 at 12:02 PM • permalink“We feel rejected, compared to the kids who live in better neighborhoods,” said Nasim. “I am chunky and have braces and acne so it will be necessary to burn my neighbour, Mohamad’s, Peugeot 504 immediately. You say this is a bad thing but when everything here is broken down and abandoned, it must be done. Ask why I do this and hold my Nokia 3650 for a moment.”
wronwright—Anita Ekberg WAS the Swedish dream…
CHIRAC LIED!
PEUGOTS DIED!Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 11 06 at 12:45 PM • permalinkwronwright: Um, once those motorized scooters for the handicapped are eliminated.
No wonder this is spreading—I kinda have an urge to torch some of those things myself.
Not the ones used by the actual handicapped of course, but the ones used by the… well, by the non-handicapped. The fat, lazy and/or sympathy-addicted.
Probably an American thing. Nevermind.
Personally, I sure would like to know just what this American dream is. Does it include having to mow bushels of fallen leaves from the front yard of an Ohio homestead in freezing rain?
You have a “home”? With a “front-yard”?!? In the great state which gave the world great things like Devo and… and other great things?!?
“We don’t have the American dream here,” said RezzougWHAT did he say?!?
Out of the mouths of <strike>children</strike> “youths”...
Posted by zeppenwolf on 2005 11 06 at 01:30 PM • permalinkFrom Eurow-Horin:“the economy is flourishing, unemployment is falling”
Hey, it must have fallen to 11% as a result of the 35hr/wk. And the economy is indeed flourishing, what with all those new bomb factories opening up all over France, providing wages enough to buy cell phones and PCs and braces for those death rotting under the dental care provided in France. (Had the unfortunate experience to ask a dentist in Paris for a dental hygienist to clean my teeth. He didn’t know what I was talking about.)The lisping, fawning, boot-licking, fantasy laden Washington Post article quoting Rezzoug complaing in Paris that the Muslim youth (without using the word Muslim) don’t have the “American dream” is just another instance of the following: “It’s great to be a Muslim in the west. You can do literally anything you want, commit any crime, instigate murder and arson against Christains and Jews, etc., knowing an army of middle class liberals will come crawling out of the fever swamps to justify your actions and try and cover up your crimes.” Nothing mentioned here of the fevered burning of Jewish buildings and desecrations of Jewish and American cemetaries, the beating up of Jews and many Christains, etc., by these same “youths” over the last half decade.
“Many youths have never seen their parents work and couldn’t hold down a job if they got one,” said Claude Chevallier, manager of a burned-out carpet depot in the rundown Paris suburb of Aulnay-sous-Bois.
An exact description of the welfare state. I have a feeling that a lot of eyes are going to open in Europe after this. The “youths” think they’re going to make things better by rioting and burning, and they will. Just not in the ways they think.
Interesting take on the loss of the Left’s second Socialist Utopia here.
Also, a great quote:
(Of course they may not realize it yet. But I think these riots cannot be buried on page 8 of the newspaper forever.)
“If these ‘youths’ are ‘impoverished and unemployed,’ how do they afford cell phones?”
Tell me about it. I haven’t had a cell phone in over a year. I had to cancel my account. Then again, as I have a job and an apartment and am not on the dole, I have bills to pay. It must be great being an able-bodied person on the government handout line. All you have to discard is your sense of shame.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2005 11 06 at 03:40 PM • permalink``Rioters attacked us with baseball bats,’’ said Philippe Jofres, a deputy fire chief, told France-2 television. ``We were attacked with pickaxes. It was war.’‘
A police chief, Frederic Aureal, said his officers were encountering an unprecedented hostility from gangs, which he described as “prepared, structured, armed”.
“We have come face-to-face with people who have attacked us with picks, petanque balls, many Molotov cocktails,” he said.
....A 61-year-old was also in a coma after being hit by an assailant in a public housing estate, and a South Korean female TV reporter was kicked unconscious by assailants in a northern suburb on Saturday
Considering the riots have spread to over 200 towns. France has everything under control.
And if we know what’s good for us, none of these flaming “youths” are going to get a chance at the “American dream” - not actually “in” America, at least (although our border security being what it is, who knows?). Idle young people tend to be aggressive and destructive, even without the spark of a “noble cause”; however, young people also tend to be what they themselves would call “idealistic”, and only too eager to cloak their unfocused belligerence in the mantle of “justice” or - especially worrisome given the global context - “religious freedom”. These young muslims are the ideal kindling for the fanaticism of the mad mullahs and their hallucinations of a new califate, perfect (and perfectly expendable) recruits for the jihad. The French government is going to get precisely nowhere pretending that this is just “The Blackboard Jungle” or “Rebel Without a Cause” writ large. I honestly don’t know what France can do at this late stage, beyond doing whatever is necessary to restore order in the short-term. As the estimable Cuckoo pointed out in another comment section, the will of the French majority may well be thwarted by the powerful French bureaucracy. Maybe Kim can offer some intelligent suggestions. It is your country, Kim; what do you think?
as an interesting comparison to the Fairfax’s Horin in 2002 you should read this and see who had it right.. go to Theodore Dalrymple “The Barbarians at the Gates of Paris” Surrounding the City of Light are threatening Cities of Darkness. in city journal Autumn 2002, link
http://www.city-journal.org/html/12_4_the_barbarians.htmlPosted by arnienelly on 2005 11 06 at 04:43 PM • permalink‘The Lancet’ is reporting over 100,000 cars torched so far.
Posted by Lucky Nutsacks on 2005 11 06 at 05:43 PM • permalinkIt’s nice to see that the BBC virtually ignored all this compared to its gloating over Katrina, and they haven’t been unnecessarily critical of Chirac for taking TEN days to respond as President-in-Charge.
But we all know how much France relies on UK tourism to keep its employment down..
And we know that the BBC is no longer allied to the USA.I very well might be in the minority here, but I get a feeling that the Muslim youths are just getting their kicks from this. This is fun for them. They know they can get away with it because they’ve gotten away with the same or worse for years.
So as long as they can keep the damage consigned to cars, busses, a few buildings, and the like, they know the French government will do little to stop them.
As Charles Barkley once said in a different situation, “it’s a ghetto thing, you wouldn’t understand”.
Posted by wronwright on 2005 11 06 at 06:24 PM • permalinkLast time I checked a molotov cocktial could kill.
Police shooting anyone holding or throwing one would take the fun out of that little game.
In addition the police need to be doing their best to work during the daytime, we had the same probs at detention centres, riots at night and sleep all day.
Searches and disrupted sleep takes a lot of steam out of the rioters, daytimes should be unbearably noisy in those areas for a few days.Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2005 11 06 at 06:32 PM • permalinkI read this at http://orbat.com/
Essentially: in France as in many other European nations such as Denmark and Sweden, for many years immigrant Muslim areas have become increasingly no-go for police. In France the situation is so bad that this year alone something like 6000 police cars have been attacked - in a country with a population 1/5th of the US. Apparently 60,000 cars have been burned this year in France, this being the preferred tactic of immigrant hoodlums.
In these areas, things have gotten so bad that white French people living alongside the Muslim communities are known to have converted to Islam to escape constant harassment. There is no police protection for the law abiding, immigrant or native, because the police have been under orders for years to show “sensitivity”. That means stay out.
It’s sounds like burning cars is something Muslim Youth’s have become very good at over the years. I wonder why this has never been reported in any of the major media.
#20, rhhardin: “I hope they keep the standard meter and kilogram in a safe place.
I’ve purchased two rulers just in case.”
That’s a good point with respect to the standard kilogram. I seem to recall that during WWII, the standard kilogram was sent into hiding. Nowadays, however, the standard meter is defined in terms of a certain number of wavelengths of a stimulated krypton-86 atom, making the kilogram the only fundamental unit still defined by an artifact.
In other words, how geeky can I get?
Posted by Bruce Lagasse on 2005 11 06 at 07:40 PM • permalinkAn unexpected side effect of France’s weak economy: at least the refugees will have fewer possessions to pile in their wheelbarrows as they flee to the coast…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 11 06 at 08:02 PM • permalinkPurplefox: The MSM mourn (or is it celebrate?) another grim milestone...
Posted by arrowhead ripper on 2005 11 06 at 08:26 PM • permalinkWe don’t have the American dream here,” said Rezzoug
It just happens to be the West Side Story version:
Everywhere grime in America
Organized crime in America
Terrible time in America
You forget I’m in America—Nora
Posted by The Thin Man Returns on 2005 11 06 at 08:42 PM • permalink#43
PS - Just substitute America in those lyrics for France and that pretty much sums it up for you Rezzoug.PPS - Get a job
—Nora
Posted by The Thin Man Returns on 2005 11 06 at 08:44 PM • permalinkMy partner is French and - speaking to her Dad on the phone on Sunday morning (Adelaide time) - he offered an explanation why the riots had not spread to their home city of Lyon. Apparantly, the local youths realise that the Lyon police are tough, actually arrest people who cause trouble and don’t care as much for the hurt feelings of the people lobbing Molotovs at them.
He explained that the French state has a national police but that the local police do most of the ‘on the ground’ work. It’s these local cops that have the youngsters in Lyon thinking twice and, hence, to this point there has been no trouble in Lyon. Despite living close to the Mahgreb Quarter, he is still parking his car on the street and doesn’t really think that the riots will come to Lyon.
In the suburbs of Paris, on the other hand, they are sending in the social workers…
Posted by Villeurbanne on 2005 11 06 at 08:56 PM • permalinkWhere is the French army? And why is the French govt. not using it to quell the riots?
This is a perfect opportunity to get rid of the Muslim scum they have so stupidly allowed to infest France, yet the govt. seem to be wimping out.
Send in the army, round up the rioters, arrest and immediately deport any foreign-born participants, then start investigating the rest with a view to stripping them of citizenship. At least, that is what I hope the Australian govt. would do if the same thing happened in Sydney or Melbourne.
#5 purplefox
Perhaps a “car-b-que counter” is needed. Every thousand car-b-ques would generate a “grim milestone”. What a grim milestone would look like, I’ve no idea though. Perhaps Jacques Chiraq’s face.
#9 David Crawford
Maybe they get the bats from the UK. I’ve read that they’re popular with the “youths” over there, and are used in much the same way they’re being used in France. It’s also possible the bats come from Holland. They do play baseball over there. It’s called honkball.
Why do these youths need jobs, doesn’t the welfare state take care of them? At least that’s what the wapo, nyt, cbs, nbc, abc, cnn have been telling us. What the “immigrants” want a job so they can consume mass quantities of consumables like here in the raging capitalistic USA, who would’ve thought?
anderson cooper needs to get over to france pronto and see if they’re any dead bodies floating in the Seine. Psst cooper, I hear the buttsecks is le terrific in gay Pari.
wadikitty,
Thanks for the clue.
Of course, what would look stupider:
1. A Frenchman or Englishman trying to swing a baseball bat, or
2. A hippo trying to figure skate.
My money’s on 1.
Posted by David Crawford on 2005 11 07 at 05:03 AM • permalink18 RebeccaH
I have a feeling that a lot of eyes are going to open in Europe after this.
Do you? I expect a distinct increase in the quantity (and who knows, maybe even in the quality) of glib rationalizations about how it’s not really a problem, and how even if it IS a problem, it’s not a {sshh} [m-word] {sshh} problem.
Posted by Stoop Davy Dave on 2005 11 08 at 03:15 PM • permalink36 insensitive PW
David Heidelberg’s unique insight into the oppressed Muslim mind would be invaluable.
Puh-leeze! Can’t y’all go back to calling him Mushtaq Omar? Damn!
Posted by Stoop Davy Dave on 2005 11 08 at 03:21 PM • permalink
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“We don’t even have the French dream here.”
The kid is wrong. They are living the French dream. Too bad it’s a nightmare.