Meanwhile six youths, all aged under 18, were last night arrested in a raid on a building in Evry, south of Paris, during which more than 100 bottles, gallons of fuel and hoods for hiding rioters’ faces were also found.
So far more than 800 people have been arrested and 3,500 vehicles torched, mainly in the working-class, high-immigration outer suburbs of Paris where unemployment is as high as 20 percent.
But Saturday night’s rioting was the most destructive so far as 1,300 vehicles were set alight and 349 people arrested.
Cars were burned out in the historic centre of Paris for the first time last night. In the normally quiet Normandy town of Evreux, a shopping mall, 50 vehicles, a post office and two schools went up in flames.
….
Authorities now say the rolling nightly riots are being organised via the Internet and mobile phones, and have pointed the finger at drug traffickers and Islamist militants.
telegraph
Amusingly, el-Reuters is still keeping an open mind about the religious affiliation of the rioters,
Many rioters are of North African Arab and black African descent and assumed to be Muslims.
reuters my emphasis
I can hardly wait for Reuters to switch from calling the thugs “youths” to calling them “insurgents”.
Now that the rioters have stopped burning their own neighbourhoods and started in on downtown Paris it is a pretty good bet that even Chirac will stir himself to call out the Army - likely the Legion. Want to bet that the loonier fringes of the left will start calling these troops occupiers and blather on about apartheid.
Sarkozy will look like a hero to everyone but the geniuses who allowed the rot to set in over the last thirty years…for the most part his Cabinet colleagues. Delightfully, arch anti-American, pro-Hamas, pro-Saddam peot and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, is looking rather vunerable as the mass of French citizens grow angrier at their cities being torched. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
Written by jay on November 7th, 2005 with 3 comments.
Read more articles on International and Terror and culture.
One of my favourite commentors on this blog is koby who write a propos my remarks on immigration,
Europe needs massive immigration. According to some estimates, if Europe continues on as it is, the median age in Europe will go from 37.7 today to 52.3 by 2050.
As Professor Charles Kupchan notes, “today there are 35 pensioners for every 100 workers within the European Union. By 2050, current demographic trends would leave Europe with 75 pensioners for every 100 workers and in countries like Italy and Spain the ratio would be 1 to 1.” Not only will there be a long and sustained pension crisis, but since the European population is on track to shrink quite rapidly, for that reason alone, prospects for economic growth do not look good. Despite having a high immigration rate by European standards (Germany has highest percentage of foreign born residents in Europe), according to a UN report at its current pace the German population will drop by 10 million. Italy, which has a much lower immigration rate, will loose 15 million.
This forms the backdrop of what Volpe is saying.
currie blog
I responded,
koby, it might be time for Europe (and Canada) to look at its future with and without immigration.
Japan, whose population is aging rapidly but which does not much like immigration, has been replacing workers with robots at a blistering pace.
In Europe several non-immigration solutions to the theoretical actuarial crisis might be implemented. First, the age at which pensions can be collected could be raised. Second, the work week could be extended and the number of weeks of vacation reduced. Third, the generosity of the “early retirement” schemes could be reduced.
More generally, the recognition that life extension technologies, as well as healthier living, is making 70 the new 50 (and not before time say I), needs to be reflected in social and pension policy.
The population of Germany and Italy may very well decline…So what?
Plus, and I’ve made this point before, what exactly is the moral status of importing what amount to “pension serfs” for boomers. In essence what we are saying is that we can deprive third world nations of their best and most skilled in order to ensure our boomers enjoy a cushy old age. How is that fair to the immigrants or the nations from which they are coming?
currie blog
In fact there is even less reason to import pension serfs when you begin to think about it. The boomers, as their parents die off, are inheriting trillions and trillions of dollars in capital. They themselves are socking away fortunes in RSPs and 10K plans and, in many cases, are the beneficiaries of the fifty year boom in the world’s equity markets. Why, exactly, should this, “most coddled generation” be looking forward to the level of pension which their parents earned?
The argument that immigrants are needed to do the work that Euros and Canadians turn up their noses at is silly. As with every labour market, people don’t want to clean toilets for a pitance. Especially if they can get 87% of that pitance from welfare or unemployment insurance or an early pension, without the bother of cleaning the toilets. Reduce that payment and cut back immigration and the price per toilet will rise to the point where it is attractive - financially - to muck out. (And, viz the Japanese, inventing the self cleaning nano tech toilet has already been done. It is just a matter of price.)
One answer to a stagnant or shrinking population is immigration. There are others beginning with government policy to encourage larger families. But kids from those larger families, even if they were started tomorrow, would not come to adulthood for twenty years.
Pro tem it makes sense to look at technological and economic solutions which do not require the mass importation of pension serfs at the expense of the existing culture. This is a fact which, of course, cannot be discussed in Canada by the current crop of politicians for fear of offending the current srop of ethnic voters. The only good news is that the coming destruction of the CPC may give an opening to politicians willing to grapple with the effects of mass immigration on a national culture. Which might not be a bad idea given what we are seeing in France as a direct result of trying to pretend that there is no problem.
Written by jay on November 7th, 2005 with 2 comments.
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