Uh oh, now France is getting serious. Calling in the troops? Nope. Using real ammunition? Nope. Putting curfews up in a few places and calling in 1500 reserve cops, yup.
PARIS (AP) — France will impose curfews under a state-of-emergency law and call up police reservists to stop rioting that has spread out of Paris’ suburbs and into nearly 300 cities and towns across the country, the prime minister said Monday, calling a return to order “our No. 1 responsibility.”
The tough new measures came as France’s worst civil unrest in decades entered a 12th night, with rioters in the southern city of Toulouse setting fire to a bus after sundown and pelting police with gasoline bombs and rocks. Earlier, a 61-year-old retired auto worker died of wounds from an attack last week, the first death in the violence.
Asked on TF1 television whether the army should be brought in, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said, “we are not at that point.”
But “at each step, we will take the necessary measures to re-establish order very quickly throughout France,” he said. “That is our prime duty: ensuring everyone’s protection.”
The new measures followed the worst overnight violence so far, and foreign governments warned their citizens to be careful in France. Apparent copycat attacks took place outside France, with five cars torched outside the main train station in Brussels, Belgium. German police were investigating the burning of five cars in Berlin.
So instead of calling out the troops they send 1500 reserve cops….yeah, that will do it.
President Jacques Chirac, in private comments more conciliatory than his warnings Sunday that rioters would be caught and punished, acknowledged in a meeting Monday with Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga that France has not integrated immigrant youths, she said.
Chirac deplored the “ghettoization of youths of African or North African origin” and recognized “the incapacity of French society to fully accept them,” said Vike-Freiberga.
France “has not done everything possible for these youths, supported them so they feel understood, heard and respected,” Chirac added, noting that unemployment runs as high as 40 percent in some suburbs, four times the national rate, according to Vike-Freiberga.
And here we go, the lefts typical response to these issues. Don’t point the finger at those committing crime, those beating people, those burning peoples business’s, no…..explain it away, it’s the fault of the government, those poor rioting Muslims.
Vandals burned more than 1,400 vehicles overnight into Monday, as well as churches, schools and businesses, and injured 36 police officers in clashes around the country, setting a new high for arson and violence, said France’s national police chief, Michel Gaudin. Attacks were reported in 274 towns, and police made 395 arrests.
“This spread, with a sort of shock wave spreading across the country, shows up in the number of towns affected,” Gaudin said.
In terms of material destruction, the unrest is France’s worst since World War II – and never has rioting struck so many different French cities simultaneously, said security expert Sebastian Roche, a director of research at the state-funded National Center for Scientific Research.
The curfews being imposed to quell the rioting fall under a 1955 law that allows the declaring of a state of emergency. The law was passed to curb unrest in Algeria during the war that led to its independence from France.
Villepin said 1,500 reservists were being called up to reinforce the 8,000 police and gendarmes already deployed. The Cabinet will meet Tuesday to authorize curfews “wherever it is necessary,” he said.
Ok, lets do some math here. 9,500 police divided by 274 towns equals 35 cops per town.
I’m sure the rioting Muslims are quaking in fear, you know how tough those French police can be and you put 35 of em in your town, whoa nelly.
I’m taking bets now on how long it will take the French government to surrender, we all know how good at surrendering they are.
It also appears that they have arrested a few of the instigators who called for riots via blogs: (translated via Babelfish)
PARIS (Reuters) – a minor and two major young people suspected of having launched on Internet of the calls to the riot and the aggression counter police officers were stopped Monday in Aix-en-Provence and in Paris area, one learns from legal source.
The three “blogs” used, of Internet sites personnel, were lodged on the site of radio operator Skyrock, which decontaminated them during the weekend.
“the sites encouraged to take part in the general movements of urban violences and to attack police officers and police stations”, at Reuters a magistrate of the parquet floor of Paris declared.
The parquet floor was to decide in the day of the possible opening of legal information, an investigation being considered it necessary to determine the possible political fasteners of the suspects and to know if their step proceeds or not of an organized company.
The suspects will incur up to five years of prison if the qualification had a presentiment of for the facts, “incentive to make aggressions against people”, is retained.
The Telegraph has a map showing the progression of the riots: (h/t The New Editor)
Other’s blogging:
Logical Thinking
Protein Wisdom
Inside Larry’s Head
Donkey Stump
Stop The ACLU
I?m taking bets now on how long it will take the French government to surrender, we all know how good at surrendering they are.
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Is that what they teach you at school? To ignore underlying causes of everything and take the present as the starting point of history? Quite medieval don’t you think?
“The parquet floor was to decide in the day of the possible opening of legal information,”
I have found the problem with the french……they are having parts of buildings decide things…….ROFLMAO…….ya gotta love babel fish…..perhaps next time they’ll let a lamp decide a court case…..at least soem light would get shed on the ruling.
Idiots don’t even realize they’ve got an insurection on their hands rather than a “riot”. A military response was called for 5-6 days ago.