Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Is Paris burning? Oui, encore

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

"Rampaging youths threw Molotov cocktails and set fire to cars in a troubled neighborhood outside Paris on Monday, the second night of street violence after two local teens were killed in a crash with a police patrol car," says the AP.

It seems appropriate at the moment that the phrase déjà vu is French. The difference this time is that the euphemistically described jeunes are using live ammunition. On police and even journalists.
"Police officers were targeted with hunting weapons; a certain number of them were wounded by lead shot," said Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie. "This is totally unacceptable," she said, adding there were six serious injuries, "people who notably were struck in the face and close to the eyes."
Otherwise, the story might as well have been hauled up from the deep freeze where it was stored after the riots of a couple of years ago. "Youths, many of them Arab and black children of immigrants [how many were of some other description?], again appeared to be lashing out at police and other targets seen to represent a French establishment they feel has left them behind." "Two teens killed." "The depressed projects that ring Paris." "Tensions between France's largely white police force and the ethnic minorities trapped in poor neighborhoods with high unemployment."

Although the AP story predictably milks sympathy for the rioters, and does everything possible to leave religion and ethnicity out of it, let's be honest: these young Muslims are not terrorists, and they are trapped in high-rise slums. The indigenous French people have no use for them. The French, being French, have no use for almost anyone of any other nationality. But if forced to make a choice, they might prefer even Americans in their urban no-go zones than North Africans. You can call it prejudice, or you can call it people who feel they have a right to choose who their neighbors will be and what kind of country they will live in. Either way the situation is the same, and won't change because one-worlders lecture the French about how they need to pour a deal more resources into outreach to the banlieus.

Probably, the government will announce new programs, initiatives, and so on to encourage assimilation. But that's just kicking the can down the road, postponing the day of judgment.

The first time a flic is killed by a weapon wielded by one of the jeunes, the civil war will begin — quietly, under the surface at first, but in earnest. The police and military will believe they know what they need to do, and eventually will do it. Guaranteed.

There is only one way to stop that happening, and I wish that President Sarkozy and his acolytes would have the foresight and political courage to sign onto it. Here is what Sarkozy should say (only he should say it in French):

"My friends, Frenchmen of all races and religions, it is evident that past mistakes are now playing out in a much magnified form. Our predecessors in government heedlessly created policies that seemed right and just at the time, but are now seen to have been disastrous for the social fabric of our society.

"Where French citizenship is concerned, we know now that indigenous French and immigrants from Africa simply do not mix, any more than oil and water. I do not blame either side for this; it's human nature, which I'm afraid our ancestors understood better than today's intellectuals. But, without declaring any group of people wrong, we cannot keep on a suicidal course just to avoid admitting that a mistake has landed us in a situation where areas in hundreds of French cities and towns are reminiscent of no-man's-lands in '14–'18.

"I therefore call on our lawmakers to enact legislation to ensure the peaceful, orderly, and compensated emigration of our African population to homelands that are more agreeable to them, where no French people will look down on them, where they can live under shari'a law if that is their wish. There are of course many difficult details to work out, but the principle is clear: we will become once again the France of traditional ethnicity, while giving a helping hand to others who are currently so alienated, as they are repatriated to lands that are culturally amenable to them.

"Once this process — and I repeat, it is to be a peaceful process with due compensation for any property or business lost in the transition — is completed, we are going to tear down these goddamned suburban hellholes and turn them into green zones and low-density developments.

"Thank you."

Not nice? No, it isn't. But the civil war, when it comes, will be a lot not nicer. The French should spare themselves the worst.

UPDATE 11/28: Since the news media are so coy about reporting the ethnicity of the rioters, false assumptions are possible. Steve Sailer has found a UPI story that suggests the insurgents are mainly black, sub-Saharan Africans rather than North African Muslims. If so, it doesn't affect my point that France should divest itself from its incompatible population elements.

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

8 comments:

Dr.D said...

I wonder if just having Sarkozy make such a statement would have the desired effect. It will only work if the nation as a whole signs on to the idea, and that takes a lot more than having one politician make a statement.

We need a similar statement/movement in the USA. We have not gotten to quite the dire straits that the French are in, but we are definitely headed that way. Rather than wait until we have that level of difficulty, we should begin deportations of all muzlims immediately as well. Izlam is totally incompatible with free Western society.

Rick Darby said...

dr. d,

Of course, Sarkozy saying something like I've suggested would not in itself create the desired result. But it would at least push the boat off.

Leaders are supposed to lead. Once the taboo on discussing out-migration of Muslims is broken, serious debate can begin to replace the useless cries for more affirmative action and social engineering.

Pastorius said...

Rick,

You right say the "youths" are not terrorists. However, they are being directed by adults:

http://ibloga.blogspot.com/2007/11/third-night-of-rioting-in-paris.html

Who are those adults being directed by.

These youths are not terrorists. They are foot soldiers in the beginning stages of a somewhat disorganized Civil War.

Advocating for the implementation of Sharia law in a Western nation is sedition.

Anonymous said...

Rick,
I suppose the title of your post has not been chosen at random....The same sort of people are indeed at work to destroy French culture ; they have just changed theur name ; nowadays they are called moslems (please note I have not forgotten the capital M).
Don't say "if" or "when" about the war : it has begun ; yet, it is absolutely not a civil war, as a civil war is supposed to oppose groups belonging to the same nation ! Our enemies are plain invaders, some of whom, I admit, have been invited by "the enemy within". Some nasty "r�glements de comptes" are bound to happen.

Rick Darby said...

Pastorius,

By saying they were not terrorists, I was trying to draw some boundaries around the discussion. If there is any hope of a fair and peaceful solution — and the only one I can imagine would involve separation of the incompatible population elements from the traditionally French majority — the issue needs to be distinguished from such endlessly debatable questions as how sympathetic Muslims are to violent jihad. Let's keep it simple: some groups aren't going to assimilate because of cultural differences, and a country has the right to insist that they leave.

Zazie,

Thank you for your comment, and I am glad that you continue to follow my blog.

As to whether it is or will be a civil war — I'm not especially concerned with verbal hair splitting, but most of the troublemakers are French citizens are they not? That makes deporting them legally complicated, as well as distasteful. But in a crisis, especially when the future of a nation is at stake, sometimes you have to do things that under ordinary circumstances would not be acceptable.

Whatever kind of war you describe it as, I'd like to see it resolved as cleanly and with as little violence as possible. I think repatriation of Africans living in France is the best of a bad set of choices.

Anonymous said...

There would need to be a state change in the zeitgeist. But such things have happened before. I was struck, when reading a history of the French Revolution, how at one period the sans-culottes and Jacobins were triumphant with an ideology of sans-culottism! But then, a rapid total reversal with the sans-culottes being reviled and even assaulted.

Anonymous said...

There will be a civil war in France. Call it a civil war or what you like, it will happen. France is a ticking bomb, it's too late to stop it.

Now, good and bad news.

The bad news is: there must be something like 60 nuclear plants in France. The really bad news is: this civil war will probably lead to a civil war in Europe (England, Holland, Belgium, etc.). The really really bad news is: the muslims could win, or at least get something big in exchange for their withdrawal. The good news is... well, there's no good news. Just get ready for something horrible, worse than your worst nightmare.

By the way, Rick: Sarkozy cannot say what you say he should say, because that would just be the start of the civil war. As I told you, it's too late. We said to our elite: stop this! We've been saying so for 20 years, since Le Pen polled so well, in 1986. Our ruling class chose not to listen. They knew better, right ?

Well, wait, and you'll see what's next. Believe me, it's going to be a hell of a show. Worse than your worst nightmare.

A friend of Zazie

Rick Darby said...

Palmer,

You are right: the insane excesses of the Jacobins did pass relatively quickly (not quickly enough for those who went to the guillotine). "Underground" public opinion can rise up and turn things around fast. There are no guarantees, but I think that there is a recessive but very strong toughness in the French -- considering what they were up against, the Resistance didn't do badly in World War II.

I have more hope for France than the UK.

Anonymous,

Surely, mon ami, you can have more confidence in your countrymen than to say it is hopeless. If nothing else, the police and army must have a fair number of Corsicans and southern French who won't stand for a Muslim takeover.