Chirac up a tree

Lovely image isn’t it. The arch coniver, friend to the Troll of Ramallah, patron to Saddam Hussein, big fan of Hamas, - a guy who single handedly stopped the entire American armoured division from crossing Turkey to help with security in Iraq by threatening to withhold EU membership - has been completely powerless in the face of his own Muslim problem.

An early and forceful response to this unrest would have stopped it in its tracks. Now, however, the French have once again exposed themselves as ineffectual and uncommitted to their own defense. Their media now refuses to inform their customers of the continuing failure of their government in order to keep the vacillators from getting kicked out of office.

The peak of the rioting passed as the wannabes and the bandwagoners have gone back to their own lives. The core of this uprising has not left at all, and in fact appear to be once again gaining momentum despite more police in the streets. These riots have organization, resilience, and structure — and where those elements exist, so does strategic thinking. The media may chalk this up to youthful frustration over unemployment and discrimination, but that fails as an explanation more with each passing day.

When do the American media plan on reporting this again? Sometime after the Champs-Elysees burns?
captains quarters

Notwithstanding the semi official media blackout on reporting rioting in France, the suspension of various civil liberties, the arrest of hundreds of “insurgents” who are being sentenced to detention for three to six months in what can, at best, be described as summary proceedings, Chirac and his poet Prime Minister seem to be as clueless in the third week of rioting as they were in the first.

The initiative came as speculation mounted over a severely discredited Jacques Chirac’s ability to endure the last 17 months of his presidential term…..

Even his lieutenants in the centre-right governing team seemed to be putting the boot in. “Chirac looks stunned, almost overtaken by events,” Jean-Louis Debré, president of the national assembly, was quoted as saying.
times of london

At this point the non-elites in France, the ones who do not run media outlets, are not holding emergency meetings, are becoming more than a little fed up. despite the best efforts of the great and the good it is dawning on the average Frenchman that this rioting thing, the arson and all, is getting out of hand. Which might very well lead to the election of a center right (rather than center left) government and President whose agenda would not be to leave the “sensitive neighbourhoods” alone but rather to demand obedience to the law.

Chirac has played fast and loose with the law far too long to have any credibility on its enforcement - he was the crook in the line, “Better to vote for the crook than the fascist.”

This is a story which will be unfolding for months to come even if the riots end tomorrow.

Written by jay on November 13th, 2005 with no comments.
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