The Cool Blue Blog

The French intifada continues

According to Daniel Pipes, France has surrendered 751 French neighboorhoods to Islamists. They are listed here. And in keeping with cultural sensitivity, these areas are not called "territory ceded to the terrorists" nor are they called "lawless areas". No, they are Sensitive Urban Zones: Zones Urbaines Sensibles to be precise.

What happens when cops go into the Sensitive Urban Zones to attempt impose the law of the land on the residents? I'll tell you what:

Stoned, beaten and insulted, their vehicles torched by crowds of hostile youths, French police say they face an urban guerrilla war when they enter the run-down neighborhoods that ring the major cities.

"Our role is to guarantee the safety of people and property but the great difficulty today is that police are having problems ensuring their own safety," said Jerome Hanarte of the Alliance-Police Nationale union.

Bedside television interviews with officers hospitalized after beatings in "les banlieues," or suburbs, support statistics showing a 6.7 percent jump in violent crime in the 12 months to August.

Fourteen officers are hurt every day in the line of duty, unions estimate, and law and order is sure to feature prominently in next year's presidential election.

The head of the French crime statistics body told Reuters the rise in attacks on police was partly due to Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy's 2002 decision to order police back into tough areas, to disrupt the black economy that fuels crime.

Cut! Cut! Stop the film. I gotta say something here.

The crime statistics guy is blaming the Interior Minister for attempting to impose French law which, he claims so upsets the criminals that it creates even more crime, and, by the way, gets police hurt...

To the tune of fourteen a day sent to the hospital!

Is this guy serious?

And of course the criminals are more than willing to echo these sentiments

Some residents complain the move spawned constant police harassment which has only exacerbated tensions with local youths, many of whom come from ethnic minorities.

"You can see discrimination in ID controls," complained Kader Latreche, 36, an Algerian with his own photo equipment repair shop in the La Courneuve suburb.

"Why is it always people from the Maghreb or black people who are being stopped and checked? If it happens over and over again, it gets to you. People are frustrated, that's obvious."

Riiiiight.

How much those frustrations are driving the violent reaction to police is hard to gauge but Nicolas Comte, general secretary of the Syndicat General de la Police (SGP), said officers now face guerrilla warfare in the suburbs.

So even the presence of a cop in a Black (read: Algerian Islamist) neighborhood is discriminatory

"The simple presence of men in uniforms in some areas is no longer a provocation but a declaration of war in the minds of some louts," he told a recent police union rally.

As Daniel Pipes said

Things have reached a pretty sad state when the police have to demonstrate in the streets against the criminals.

If we are not careful, that will be us in a few years...

Being anti-American is more important than being anti-terror

One would think that a united front against terrorism was a no brainer. But clearly the United Nations is not the organization. Many member states are terrorist states, and as a result, the UN can not even agree on a definition of terrorism.

But since the West is the intended enemy of the Jihadists, it would seem that at at least NATO could come together to create a common approach to the problem of Islamist Terrorism. Unfortunately, this is not the case, because France is involved.

Plans to boost Nato's co- operation with countries such as Australia and Japan in an effort to forge a partnership against terrorism have been blocked by France....

The French opposition comes as a blow to the US, which spearheaded the proposal and which would like to see regular Nato "forums" with countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea. But while the idea won support from traditional allies of Washington such as the UK, France has made it clear that it opposes a move it sees as part of a campaign to extend US influence.

Paris has always been suspicious of Nato because of America's domination of the organisation. In an article in Le Figaro this week, France's Defence Minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, spelt out her country's opposition to efforts to expand Nato's global reach.

France's, of course, has its own problems with Islamists. There is a year-long intifada going on in the suburbs of Paris and other major cities. And many in France, especially the French Press won't even mention Muslims in the same context with the on-going car- and bus-bombings.

So it could be that France is just reluctant to anger Muslims.

Perhaps, it's appeasement.

While the UN debated how to end the fighting between Israel and Hizbollah, France volunteered to lead a new and improved UNIFIL force. One that would be capable of disarming Hizbollah and enforcing the resolution leading to the cease-fire. Of course, things didn't turn out that way. Not only did France scale down their contribution to the force, but the UNIFIL isn't even bothering to try to disarm Hizbollah and instead, France threatens to shoot down Israeli overflights used to monitor how the cease-fire is being implemented.

Which it isn't.

Anti-Americanism and Anti-Semites isn't just a sentiment of the Left, of which there are many in France and the French government (as is the case in the US), it is also a sentiment of the Jihadists. And with the Jihad so close to home, perhaps France thinks it can appease the enemy; an enemy that wants France destroyed as much as it wants the US and Israel destroyed.

I don't think appeasement will work, but I wish France luck.

Maybe the burning will stop soon.

 

Escalation

A year ago was the start of the month-long riots in France. The violence in the mostly Muslim suburbs of Paris and other cities never really ended, they just subsided a bit.

But in recent weeks, as I've reported here, they have escalted to ambushing police, then burning busses, now burning people on busses along with the bus.

A group of teenagers reportedly forced open the doors of the bus vehicle and threw a flammable liquid inside before fleeing.

A 26-year-old French woman of Senegalese origin was unable to escape and suffered burns to 70% of her body.

About 200 vehicles were set alight in incidents around the country on Saturday, and nearly 50 people were arrested.

While many in law-enforment are calling this year-long seige an intifada, many in France are in denial that it is Muslims, and not even first-generation immigrant Muslims that are to blame. They attribute these problems to the generic "poor immigrants".

France has seen a recent rise in such attacks, a year after a wave of rioting rocked its impoverished suburbs.

Gangs of youths, many of them of immigrant descent, torched cars and clashed with police during three weeks of unrest last year.

But clearly France does not believe these are random attacks. A new law will not only prosecute the perpetrators, but also those who encourage the violence

Existing laws would be broadened to punish all those who are "involved in and encourage" such attacks, not just the perpetrators, Mr de Villepin said.

And who would those instigators be? The government must have something in mind.

The 2005 Ramadan Riots, which saw some 10,000 cars torched and 300 buildings firebombed, have been followed by a yearlong, lower-grade rolling riot - what some in the French police are calling a "permanent intifada." Nationwide, this works out to 15 attacks a day on police and firefighters, and 100 cars set ablaze nightly. And for the first time, the police are being subject to well-planned ambushes.

So when the Oct. 27 anniversary of last year's violence was met with "only" 277 torched cars, the Interior Ministry declared it "relatively calm."

Vote wrong and we'll riot

In France, Jihadists who have taken up residence within the country are trying to blackmail voters to maintain the status quo whereby Islamic youths are allowed to wage war against the police unmolested

A year after one of the most traumatic episodes in modern France, the conditions that touched off three weeks of suburban rioting remain firmly in place and there is widespread fear that a new outburst is only a question of time....

"Has anything changed? Look around you -- we're all still here. Nothing to do -- no jobs, and the police still harassing us," said Kiko, 23, who has just emerged from serving a jail sentence for fraud....

"Sarko is the provocative element," said Kiko. "And if he is elected next year I warn you: people will be killed."

"Sarko" is Nicolas Sarkozy who is running for President of France on a law and order, anti-Socalist platform. He says

it is left-wing welfare policies of 30 years that have led to the crisis -- and that a liberalised economy combined with positive discrimination is the only way to provide jobs and hope.

The Socialist Party in France opposes Sarkozy claiming he is

part of the problem -- because of his poisonous reputation in the "banlieues" and his uncompromising line on law and order.

The "banlieues" being

the poor out-of-town neighbourhoods where black and Arab-origin communities are concentrated.

The fact is, Islamists have claimed certain parts of France, including the suburbs of Paris, as their own. And they are actively attempting to keep police out.

Police have raised the alarm over a recent string of ambushes in the Paris outskirts -- the latest on Sunday when a bus was torched -- and say they are increasingly the targets of physical attacks.

(More on that here)

But is such voter intimidation in France any different than the sentiment here in the US?

... whether it is hubris, loony tunes, or both, the White House’s freakish calm about the elections makes me as nervous as the hell we seem to be headed for. Therefore we should all be on alert. If for whatever reason we don’t win back Congress in November the only real answer will be to take to the streets.

There is little difference between the Leftists here, who want to appease Islamists and the Socialists in France. And both only support the Democratic process when it results in the outcome pleasing to them.

Granted, the Islamists want more time to be able to fully secure their beachead in France. But in both cases, their contempt for Democracy is rooted in the firm belief that their ideology will fix all human suffering and this whole Democracy thing just messes things up.

Case in point:

The flag of Islam should be flown over Leinster House, an Islamic extremist said tonight.

Speaking in Dublin before addressing a Trinity College debate, Anjem Choudray also reiterated controversial views that Muslim violence is justified in certain circumstances.

The British-born lawyer, 39, angered the Irish Government last year when he said that Ireland risked becoming a target for a 9/11 style attack because it allowed US war planes to refuel at Shannon Airport.

Mr Choudray said: “As a Muslim, I believe Islam is superior to every other way of life and that it can resolve all the social and economic problems that Ireland suffers from.

“And as a symbol of that, the flag of Islam should be flown over the Dáil.

“This is symbolic of the fact that all societies will be run better according to God’s law.”

Remove the word "God" and these words could have been uttered by Socialists or Communists.

And they are.

European worries

The intifada continues in France

French police on Thursday arrested eight youths in a tough Paris suburb over the ambush last week of three police officers, one of whom suffered serious facial injuries.

The suspects, aged 17 to 21, identified by their fingerprints, were taken into custody and face possible charges of attempted murder with premeditation over the attack in the southern 'banlieue' of Epinay-sur-Seine, police said.

Friday's incident, in which a police patrol car was set upon by around 30 youths with stones and metal bars, was the third in as many weeks in the Paris area, prompting a chorus of alarm from police unions.

Serious clashes have also occurred at the Les Tartarets estate in Corbeil-Essonnes and at Les Mureaux, in the western Paris outskirts — sparking high profile police raids to root out the suspects.

Maybe it's France's "Tet"?

With presidential elections due in April, the resurgence of tensions in the 'banlieues' has major political implications — raising questions over the tactics of Interior Minister and presidential hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy.

Will the violence perpetrated by Muslims result in the election of politicians that will take back France, or ones that will surrender? This is a question we in the US will answer in November.

Meanwhile in Britain

Britain is the top target of the Al-Qaeda terrorist network, which now presents a bigger threat than ever before, a newspaper reported.

Citing unnamed anti-terrorism chiefs, The Guardian newspaper said that Al-Qaeda had regrouped and recovered its organisation in Pakistan, despite a more-than-four-year campaign by a US-led coalition to wipe out the network.

Actually the reorganization in Pakistan is due entirely to the surrender of Waziristan to al Qaida by Pakistani President Musharraf. The US has never operated on the ground in Pakistan.

In that time, the newspaper reported, the terror organisation has become a more coherent network with a regular supply of volunteers.

Islamic extremists "viewed 7/7 (the July 7, 2005 suicide attacks on London's transport network) as just the beginning," an unnamed senior source said.

"Al-Qaeda sees the UK as a massive opportunity to cause loss of life and embarrassment to the authorities," the source continued.

Meanwhile, another unnamed source told the daily: "Britain is sitting at the receiving end of an Al-Qaeda campaign."

Can't happen here.

Right?

Intifada in France

While American soldiers fight Jihadists in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush has said more than once that we do this so we don't have to fight them here in America.

The French now know what it is like to face the enemy at home. Though many there are in denial, the Jihadists are waging an intifada in many French neighborhoods including the suburbs of Paris.

Turf conscious bloggers in Paris' rundown, mostly Muslim, suburban immigrant housing estates rival in violent messages that threaten to beat senseless and even kill any intruder caught in "our ghetto." Almost every word is misspelled, in both argot slang and pidgin French. And these are not empty threats. An average of 14 policemen a day are injured in bloody clashes with jobless youngsters....

"We are in a state of civil war, orchestrated by radical Islamists," [head of the hard-line trade union "Action Police" Michel] Thooris told journalists. Sarkozy, the leading center-right candidate for next year's presidential election, responded by dispatching cops in body armor, equipped with automatic weapons and rubber bullets, stun and teargas grenades into several Paris suburbs with orders to "restore control" from "organized crime." In one recent clash 250 cops dispersed a 100-strong Muslim gang armed with baseball bats.

The chaotic conditions in suburbs like Clichy-sous-Bois, Montfermeil and St. Denis have grown progressively worse since the nationwide Muslim riots in November 2005 that torched 10,000 vehicles.

This is what it looks like to treat the "problem" of Jihadists as a law-enforcement issue and not a war. Yet even under these conditions, you have those who think that appeasement is the solution.

Jean-Marie Le Pen's far right National Front appears to have opted for a can't-lick-'em-join-'em strategy, a rapprochement with France's large immigrant Muslim community -- with undertones of anti-Semitism. Le Pen's reasoning appears to be the recognition that Islamicization is in France to stay with 25 percent of France's under 20 population Muslim (40 percent in some cities), 2nd and 3rd generation North Africans. FN's tough stance on immigration is tempered by support for Arab and Islamist causes in the Middle East (Hamas and Hezbollah are two favorites). There are an estimated 6 to 8 million Muslims among France's 62 million and Islam is now France's second religion. Mosques are well attended on Fridays; churches aren't on Sundays. France's prison inmates are over 50 percent Muslim Le Pen's strategic advisers argue the FN must drop its founding mythology and forget about the once popular image of a modern Joan of Arc resisting the invasion of Muslim hordes. Americans and Jews are the new targets.

Jews mostly

  The metropolitan Paris police tabulated 10 to 12 anti-Jewish incidents per day in the past 30 days throughout the country....

Anti-Semitic incidents have proliferated in France in recent times, but the news seldom makes it across the Atlantic and when it does, it must still fight to be heard above the constant melodrama of constant trivia. A Jewish sports club in Toulouse attacked with Molotov cocktails; in Bondy, 15 men beat up members of a Jewish soccer team with metal bars and sticks; the bus that takes Jewish children to school in Aubervilliers attacked thrice in the past 14 months, synagogues in Strasbourg and Marseilles and a Jewish school in Creteil firebombed in recent weeks; in Toulouse, a gunman opened fire -- all ignored in the mainstream media in the U.S.

And, of course the police; those police that attempt to enforce the law, that is

Police had to use their firearms to escape from a gang of youths who allegedly ambushed and stoned a police car in a suburb north of Paris at the weekend - the fourth incident of its kind in recent weeks. One policeman was seriously injured by stones hurled by youths. His two colleagues fired their weapons over the heads of gang members in a housing estate in the normally calm suburb of Epinay-sur-Seine. Their patrol car was trapped when a driverless vehicle was rolled behind it by a group of up to 50 youths, according to police.

The incident is one of several serious clashes between police and youth gangs across Paris suburbs in recent weeks as the anniversary of last year's riots approaches....

In the most recent incident, on Friday night, a police car was sent to investigate reports of muggings in the Ogrement district of Epinay, a poor area haunted by drugs gangs and sporadic violence. The police car was attacked with stones and baseball bats and one policeman, Christophe Estève, 30, was hit in the face.

                                        

Ambushing police? That's not trying to escape after committing a crime; that is the crime. And it's a crime that likes more like a military maneuver.

Say what you want about the War on Terrorism, the War Against Jihadists, but it seems to me to make more sense than treating them as the Mafia because the Mafia never attempted to carve out whole cities for their own and battle the police as if they were waging a war.

I don't know about you, but I don't want America to become like France.

And I'm pretty sure I don't want France to become and Islamic state governed by Sharia.

Because those dominoes can fall both ways...