France and the Weekend, I Do Hope Things Improve

[Annie]

contrary to what is being called for by militants on internet.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051112...YrgelIB;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

French police brace for possible unrest in Paris

By Matthew Bigg1 hour, 46 minutes ago

French security forces braced for possible unrest in the capital on Saturday, deploying thousands of police and imposing a weekend ban on gatherings that could threaten trouble.

The precautions were adopted for the Armistice Day weekend because of messages circulating on Internet sites and by SMS calling for violence in the capital, police said.

Central Paris has largely escaped more than two weeks of violence across France that peaked last Sunday but has fallen in intensity since President Jacques Chirac's government announced emergency measures on Tuesday including curfews.

The unrest has mainly hit poor suburbs around main towns and cities as youths who complain of high unemployment, racism and lack of opportunities have attacked property and torched thousands of cars.

In a 16th consecutive night of disturbances a primary school was attacked in Savigny-Le-Temple southeast of Paris and its creche destroyed and around 30 people attacked a transformer in Amiens, plunging the north of the town into darkness, police said.

By midnight local time (1800 EST) 205 vehicles were burned and 33 people arrested against 147 vehicles burned and 65 people arrested at the same time the previous night. Two shops in Rambouillet, a town southwest of Paris, were also destroyed.

"Things are slightly worse this evening compared to yesterday," a police spokesman said....

 

[Annie]

contrary to what is being called for by militants on internet.

Nope, just goes on. A bit in Belgium too it seems:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051113/ap_on_re_eu/france_rioting_fr1

French Police Clash With Youths in Lyon

By JOCELYN GECKER, Associated Press Writer 10 minutes ago

Thousands of Parisian police guarded the Eiffel Tower, the Champs Elysees and train stations on Saturday, as part of emergency measures enacted in response to text messages and Internet postings that called for "violent actions" in the capital.

In Lyon, France's third largest city, police fired tear gas to disperse stone-hurling youths at the historic Place Bellecour. It was the first time in 17 days of unrest that youths clashed with police in a major city.

Hours earlier, authorities had announced a weekend curfew in Lyon, barring youths under 18 from being outside without adult supervision between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.

In separate incidents Saturday night in the southern city of Carpentras, rioters rammed burning cars into the side of a retirement home and a school. A second school and linen store were also set ablaze there.

The violence started in the Parisian suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois on Oct. 27 when about 100 youths rioted to protest the accidental deaths of two Muslim teens who were electrocuted while hiding from police in an electricity substation.

The turmoil, marked by arson and clashes with police, quickly spread across France in housing projects plagued by unemployment and alienation. The unrest has forced France to confront its failure to integrate minorities and the anger simmering among its large African and Arab communities.

The emergency measures in Paris came a day after cell phone text messages and Internet blog postings called for "violent actions" in Paris on Saturday evening. Authorities banned public gatherings considered risky in an effort to keep the unrest from reaching inside the capital.

"This is not a rumor," National Police Chief Michel Gaudin said. "One can easily imagine the places where we must be highly vigilant."

No trouble anywhere in Paris was reported overnight into Sunday.

In the northern Paris suburb of La Courneuve, a police officer was injured after being hit with a metal ball dropped from an apartment building, said national police spokesman Laurent Carron, who also detailed the troubles in Carpentras.

Rioting has weakened in intensity since the government declared a state of emergency Tuesday, empowering regions to impose curfews and conduct house searches.

Some 40 towns, suburbs and small cities have imposed curfews on minors.

Paris police banned public gatherings that could "provoke or encourage disorder" from 10 a.m. Saturday to 8 a.m. Sunday. It was the first such ban in the French capital in at least a decade, said police spokesman Hugo Mahboubi.

Police counted 315 cars torched and said 161 people were arrested across France overnight before dawn Sunday.

Calls for peace and political change mounted.

Several hundred people demonstrated against the state of emergency in Paris' Latin Quarter, a gathering that police allowed because it was not deemed risky. Under tight police surveillance, the protesters called the new security measures a "provocation" that would not resolve the social and economic problems underlying the unrest.

The protesters, many from left-wing political groups and Communist-backed unions, called for the resignation of Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who has been accused of inflaming the violence by calling troublemakers "scum."

A similar rally in the southern city of Toulouse drew about 700 people.

In Blangnac, on the outskirts of Toulouse, arsonists set fire to an electronics store on Saturday night, the regional government said. No injuries were reported.

Late Friday, two gasoline bombs slightly damaged a mosque in Carpentras, a city grimly remembered for a 1990 neo-Nazi attack on a Jewish cemetery that sparked national outrage.

President Jacques Chirac called on investigators to find the perpetrators.

Some 2,503 people have been detained since the trouble started, with 364 of them convicted in expedited trials. Nearly 460 minors have gone before juvenile courts, 103 of whom were in the process of being charged, the Justice Ministry said.

In Brussels, Belgium, police detained about 25 youths near the Stock Exchange building on Saturday and the RTBF radio network said up to 50 were detained across the capital. Police were on high alert after Internet postings urging youths to attack downtown shops.

About 60 vehicles have been burned in Belgium in the past week, including more than a dozen already over the weekend, but the country has not seen rioting similar to that in France.

 

[Annie]

Following Night 17. Lots of links, from such right wing publications like BBC, NYTimes, and the Washington Post:

http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/005781.php

November 13, 2005
French Riots Continue Despite Ban On Assemblies

Despite a heavy police presence, the suspension of the right to assemble, and a curfew for nighttime hours, the French still found a way to riot overnight. While the major event police feared did not materialize, the show of force did not deter the rioters from torching hundreds more cars:

Violence has continued in deprived city areas of France with a tally of at least 374 cars burnt out and 212 arrests despite an official ban on public meetings in an attempt to curb riots that have rocked the nation.

In a 17th night of disturbances two police officers were injured Sunday, with one hospitalized after being hit by a metal object in the Paris suburb of La Courneuve.

Incidents involving the burning of cars also spread overnight to several towns in neighbouring Belgium. ...

Police said the situation in racially-mixed suburbs throughout France had been calmer than on previous nights. But cars were reported set alight in Lyon, Toulouse and St. Etienne.

The headline for the Agence France Presse story? "Paris clampdown amid uneasy calm in French cities." Having 374 cars torched and a couple of hundred people rounded up and taken to jail only sounds "calm" to the French, I would gather -- and probably not at all to one of the 374 car owners who will take the bus to work tomorrow.

The cars don't tell the whole story, either. The BBC reports that rioters also burnt down a nursery school. In a more dangerous mode, some rioters pushed a burning car against an "old people's home", in BBC parlance, causing a panic that could have killed more than a few of them itself, even without a building fire. Fortunately, it appears that no one got seriously hurt.

The American media finally noticed that the story has continued, however. The Washington Post offered its first reporting in days on the subject, using the Lyon attack at the city center as its hook. Molly Moore finally broke the silence, at least obliquely, on the "M" word:

No incidents of violence were reported inside Paris, though unrest continued Saturday in 163 cities and towns across France, according to police. On Saturday night, the 17th night of the rioting, a policeman was injured in a Paris suburb when he was hit by a metal ball thrown from an apartment building.

In the southern town of Carpentras in the Provence region, youths burned a school Saturday night. On Friday night, a motor-scooter rider threw two gasoline bombs at a mosque during prayers, causing minor damage. Police said it was unclear whether the attack was linked to the other violence around the country. Many of the youths involved in the rioting are Muslim.

One wonders how that last sentence managed to sneak its way past the editors at the Post. The New York Times manages two articles on the story it stopped reporting days earlier. The first, by Craig Smith, focuses on police success in keeping the riots out of Paris without mentioning the 163 cities and towns where it continued or the 374 cars that went up in flames. Instead, Smith reports that the violence "held steady at a reduced level" and that the low level of deaths came from -- get ready -- gun control:

Many French attribute the low level of injuries to the tight gun control laws here. The most serious incident involving gunfire was a series of shotgun blasts fired at police officers from a distance. Ten officers were hit, but only two were hospitalized, and their injuries were not life-threatening.

Perhaps if the citizens of France could arm themselves, Islamist riots wouldn't last seventeen days and show no evidence of abating. The second article, an analysis by Marc Landler, offers a facile look at the riots by reminding readers that torching cars is practically a national pastime for the socialist-oppressed French, who commit this arson an amazing 80 times a day even without rioting.

Meanwhile, the LA Times also wakes from its slumber on France, not to report on the continuing violence but to offer its analysis after ignoring the situation. The LAT does what it does best when reporting on riots -- it blames the police:

For years, the officers said, the police had warned that France's immigrant-dominated slums were on the verge of exploding, a slow-motion riot about to fast-forward. Culture clashes and economic woes had created a lost generation of mostly Muslim youths seething with hostility toward the state. Wrong-headed ideology had caused governments to pull back from low-income housing projects, or cites, allowing parallel societies ruled by criminal and extremist networks to flourish, officers said.

And several veterans agree with critics who say that France's rigid, paramilitary policing culture aggravated tensions between youths and officers. Even before the riots, an average of 3,500 cars a month were burned nationwide. ...

On the other hand, critics say flaws in French policing were among the fuses for the explosion. The French police excel at intelligence, investigations and crowd control, say academic experts and European and U.S. investigators. But in a hierarchical system, intelligence tends to flow up the chain of command, not to other officers in the field. And experts say police here are weaker at basic beat-cop patrolling, an area vital to the dramatic reduction of crime and unrest in U.S. cities in the last decade.

It's difficult to take this analysis seriously, when Sebastian Rotella includes this whopper:

The overall violence has declined markedly from its peak, but it continued this weekend, mainly in provincial regions.

Provincial? Lyon and Toulouse are provincial? I suspect they might object to that characterization. Rotella has not seen the wire services, apparently, since Wednesday.

Maybe we were better off when the American media didn't report
on this story. Except for Molly Moore at the Post, they've been uniformly terrible at getting the story straight.
Posted by Captain Ed at November 13, 2005 07:35 AM