Civil War?
Is France in the middle of a civil war and nobody will say it? We saw the riots break out almost a year ago in the suburbs by young muslims. I didn't realize how much of the unrest was still going on. From the Timesonline in London is this:
The figures are stark. An average of 112 cars a day have been torched across France so far this year and there have been 15 attacks a day on police and emergency services. Nearly 3,000 police officers have been injured in clashes this year. Officers have been badly injured in four ambushes in the Paris outskirts since September. Some police talk of open war with youths who are bent on more than vandalism.
Fifteen attacks a day, this doesn't sound much better than Baghdad. Maybe the US needs to send more troops to Paris, also. I had heard comments in passing that there was still unrest in Paris from time to time, but had no idea it was of this magnitude.
Why isn't this a much bigger story? We are seeing the beginning of a conflict that is going to spread across Europe in the coming years. The Dutch are afraid to show a stupid cartoon because they fear riots. Theo Van Gough was murdered for making a film critcal of Islam. (I think this last paragraph is leading into another bigger topic that I don't have time to consider fully, but is a very serious issue for the future of enlightened western culture).
The figures are stark. An average of 112 cars a day have been torched across France so far this year and there have been 15 attacks a day on police and emergency services. Nearly 3,000 police officers have been injured in clashes this year. Officers have been badly injured in four ambushes in the Paris outskirts since September. Some police talk of open war with youths who are bent on more than vandalism.
Fifteen attacks a day, this doesn't sound much better than Baghdad. Maybe the US needs to send more troops to Paris, also. I had heard comments in passing that there was still unrest in Paris from time to time, but had no idea it was of this magnitude.
Why isn't this a much bigger story? We are seeing the beginning of a conflict that is going to spread across Europe in the coming years. The Dutch are afraid to show a stupid cartoon because they fear riots. Theo Van Gough was murdered for making a film critcal of Islam. (I think this last paragraph is leading into another bigger topic that I don't have time to consider fully, but is a very serious issue for the future of enlightened western culture).
posted by hurtleg at 1:02 PM
5 Comments:
This is certainly alarming for Western Europe, and I'm sure it weighs heavily on the minds of those considering whether or not Turkey belongs in the EU (I say not). In fact, the recent French vote regarding Armenian genocide historical revisionism makes a lot more sense now that I know this is going on (I don't mean it makes sense in a positive sense; just that I now understand why it came up in the first place). I think states that are going to allow significant immigration from non-Western countries need to be committed to hardcore integration measures, like the ones the Dutch have recently adopted.
What Dutch measures are you refering too. The last I saw is that a Muslim who was moderate was kicked out of her housing because her neighbors feared that attacks on her might hit them. The person immigrated out of the country because the police would not even try and protect her. I wish I could remember where I saw this story so I could provide a link, but I don't have time to look for it.
If burning cars and injured cops are symptoms of existing or pending civil war, USA has been in several since our Original one in the 1860's.
"Some police talk of open war with youths who are bent on more than vandalism." Yeah, and many Americans - I'm talking about policy makers, not cops - talk with a similar seriousness about us being at war on all sorts of things, people, and ideas.
Charles Bremner's typically alarmist TimesOnline piece is meant to incite reaction. But I remain unconvinced that his snapshot of 17-year old Omar the Arsonist is really the portrait of an Islamofascist warrior.
Besides
this article suggests that the number of car burnings is actually higher than Bremner claims, "because when one car is set alight and the fire destroys surrounding cars as well, the statistics count it as only one car fire." So we're looking at dubious numbers right off the bat.
"Why isn't this a much bigger story?" Because it takes two sides to make war, and maybe, just maybe, the enlightened West is just smart enough to not be sucked into it. Maybe, despite what we hear from Action Police, "a hardline union," 17-year olds burning cars is a law-enforcement matter on order with meth labs, and not a global religious death battle.
"What Dutch measures are you refering too."
Here's a link to a good article on the new "civic integration" measures being taken to not only limit immigration and filter out undesirable immigrants, but also to force those who are in Holland to assimilate: http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/04/2752a95e-e5f6-4886-a65c-75618628a283.html
I think it would be helpful to add a test where the potential immigrant has to pee on the Koran (and since we're talking about the Netrherlands here, on the Bible and Talmud, too).
So Hurtleg, do you think such measures would be a net positive for the EU as a whole to adopt? If so, how does that square with your generally libertarian views on immigration? Is this a case of compelling public interest trumping liberty?
"Why isn't this a much bigger story?" Because it takes two sides to make war, and maybe, just maybe, the enlightened West is just smart enough to not be sucked into it. Maybe, despite what we hear from Action Police, "a hardline union," 17-year olds burning cars is a law-enforcement matter on order with meth labs, and not a global religious death battle"
I don't deny this is a law enforcement matter, but there's clearly some clash of cultures going on here as well. I'm not sure if it's necessarily between the Enlightenment and the Prophet, or if its between the French mainstream and the bored, dispossessed masses of unemployed young Arab men in the ghetto (probably many of whom are now more susceptible to radical Islam than they otherwise would be), but it's certainly a deeper problem than you seem to be suggesting it is. For one thing, the French police are famous for their brutal treatment and constant harassment of Arabs, and the French state has a history of imposing an almost absurd degree of secularism on society (banning the tchador in schools, etc.), which doesn't seem to go down well with Muslims there.
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