Monday, November 07, 2005

French Riots Continue

Riots continued for an eleventh straight night, and spread to 300 towns across France, and even outside French borders into Belgium.

Glenn Reynolds, writing at Instapundit, had this to say:
"CHIRAC VOWS ORDER AS FRENCH RIOTS SPREAD:" I was wondering if the blogosphere was making too much of this, but now I'm pretty sure the answer is no. Note the reference to other European nations being "unnerved." (Maybe they should offer to send troops. It's supposed to be the European Union, right?)
He offers a link-rich roundup of posts here, and includes some links to some interesting analysis pieces. So, is this a European intifada - or the collapse of French urban policy? Who knows? While many are eager to turn this into a racial issue rather than a religious one, what pictures I've been able to find don't show a lot of blacks rioting - rather, the rioters are of Arab descent. Not being up on French demographics, I could be wrong; but I think there is more to this than readily meets the eye. The French government's utter inability to deal with this says something else about its weakened state.

A good round-up of last night's events can be found at Outside The Beltway
here and here.

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