Seine-Saint-Denis and dozens of Paris suburbs lit up by a fortnight of rioting "youths" of "North African Origin", looting shops, torching cars and shooting at firefighters and police, who concede thay cannot control the situation...

Arhus, Denmark has seen several neighborhoods blockaded by local "immigrant" "youths" who declare "this is our town, we decide what goes down here". Looting and torching of cars and property were allegedly planned weeks ago...

Birmingham, England has seen fighting between "youths" of "South Asian Origin" and local blacks for days...

And meanwhile, this also from Britain:

"6 to 13 percent of British Muslims -- that is, between 98,000 and 208,000 people -- are sympathetic toward Islamic terrorists and their efforts. Theoretical sympathy expressed in a survey is not the same thing as active support or a wish to emulate the ‘martyrs’ in person, of course. But it is nevertheless a sufficient proportion and absolute number of sympathizers to make suspicion and hostility toward Muslims by the rest of society not entirely irrational, though such suspicion and hostility could easily increase support for extremism. This is the tightrope that the British state and population will now have to walk for the foreseeable future."

And so it begins. Keep your powder dry, my European freinds. Oh, except that its against the law for most of you to have firearms for your own protection, what with living in a socialist utopia and all. So much more refined than us American neanderthal gun-worshippers.

Any predictions on what Spanish town will be the first to go up, and the likelyhood of Spanish authorities to control the situation?

And a Happy Ramadan to all...

P.S. Might I suggest a view to www.jihadwatch.org for more information for the curious?

Of course there's never been riots in Chicago or LA or Washington.

No, there never been riots in Chicago, LA or Washington where the rioters are sympathetic with Arab extremists who want to destroy the country they are rioting in. Would you help those you want to kill you, your children and family, your way of life?

The Arabs in the US, most of them anyway, will not shed their customs and tradition from the home countries but will make attempt to become integrated into American Society. They want to be added to the great melting pot of US that one of the great thing about my country. Even after 9/11, everyday I see plenty of Arabs working in New York City and no one is going to bother them!

This is quite different from the Arabs in France. From what I have read, the French Arabs want to be separate from the rest of the French society and have made no attempts to be part of it. Now they pay the price for being part of French society and the worst elements of France Arab society have benefit from it.

France should use any means necessary to take back these towns from these extremists!

Bill

It's simplistic in the extreme to see this as a "French Intifada". Much has to do with class and marginalisation. Not religion nor even immigration. The disaffected have taken out their anger in this way in all societies at all times through history. Few of those participating will have had a political agenda, ie destroyting the country they live in, or even known where to vent their rage. After all, they're burning their own cars not those of the rich. Yes, radical Islam is a worry in France as is the radical right-wing agenda of those such as that of Le Pen. But fortunately, in this case I think it's an old fashioned case of mob anger against the authorities rather than a directed, concerted effort by radical Islam to make a point.

Bill,

Do you think they might send in the French army to quell the riots?

No. The Paris police is what the French government should send in. Your ever taken the Paris subway? I have and the police are mean looking armed with machine guns.

Bill

Just an old fashion case of mob anger at the authorities, eh? Thank goodness for that. Just the disaffected here, folks, move along, nothing to see here. Heaven forbid they destroy the "country they live in."

Except they don't live in the country they seek to destroy. They live in an alternative society that France has no control over. They are not 'assimilated', they have no desire to 'assimilate' into the western world. Many of the "rioting" "youths" are Algerian. Here is an Algerian opinion about France:

PARIS, Sept 27 (AFP) - An Algerian Islamist organisation, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), has issued a call for action against France which it describes as “enemy number one”, intelligence officials said Tuesday.

“The only way to teach France to behave is jihad and the Islamic martyr,” the group’s leader Abu Mossab Abdelwadoud, also own as Abdelmalek Dourkdal, was quoted as saying in an Internet message earlier this month.

“France is our enemy number one, the enemy of our religion, the enemy of our community,” he was quoted as saying.

France was mentioned 15 times in the text, and the Algerian government was also targeted, the officials said.



Today a woman in a wheelchair was doused with petrol and set afire by these poor disaffected "youths". Really, how much disaffection can these poor misunderstood "youths" be feeling? This isn't an Anglo-American Cowboy Capitalist country we're talking about here. This is the enlightened socialist utopia of France, one of the most generous welfare states in the world. It doesn't matter.

This is not 'disaffection'. The lands and culture of Europe are being overrun, but that's OK because they aggressors have 'grievences' and are 'disaffected'. Of course, these grievences are completely justified, and western nations just need to apologize a little more profusely and cough up more 'reparations' to the 'disaffected' before they stop their murderous rioting rampages.

WAKE UP! Stand up and defend yourselves.

France has an extremely difficult problem.
This is not just a bunch of teenagers having a case of hormonal imbalance. It might have begun as a case of disaffected teens, but it is more than that now. It now includes those with other irons in that fire. those that want a separate France without the secularism that the French abrogate.

What can they do to appease this population? They sure as heck can't blame it on the U.S.; Chirac and Villepin saw to that when they led the opposition against the U.S. on Iraq, hoping that this act would appease their moslem constituency.

Of course the situation is grave but even French police believe that there is no central coordinator behind the violence. Rioters are communicating with each other, yes, tanks to mobile phones but this doesn't mean there's a jihadist conspiracy. As I said before, it's more likely the explosion of pent-up rage from an unintegrated underclass. That's not to say that this disaffection could not be exploited by those who wish to see it as a chance to radicalise the conflict - there has been an attack on a synagogue. But the riots should be dealt with as a grave social problem and not as a clash of cultures and intifada - or we're playing into the hands of the tiny minority of radical Islamic elements.
These should be identified if they exist and this problrm should be addressed in a different way to that of the rioting. It's probably unhelpful to deal with a complex isssue by labelling all those involved as jihadistas.
As to the allegation that France didn't support the Iraq war in an effort to appease it's Muslim population, well I find that hard to swallow. There were plenty of other reasons to oppose the US-led invasion. Remember, Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to President George H.W. Bush and in favour of the first Gulf War, opposed the war for lots of pragnmatic reasons and he surely wasn't worried about a Muslim constituency.
No, in this case the French have themselves to blame for decades of bad social policy on immigration and social disadvantage.I don't think they'll be pointing the finger at the US, somehow.

Hmm.
I would've found this an important discussion if I wouldn't have to resent the tone of the first messages: instead of discussing a problem, some people seem to be in some perverted way happy that France is experiencing these problems. And "they can't blame the US".. huh? Why would they?
Mr Ghost was also pointing out a couple of times that France is a "developed welfare state" and "socialist" like it would be the reason for the problems. I'm pretty sure what's been the problem is that there has ben a too fast, sudden inflow of immigrants without the needed measures having been taken to integrate these into the society. No income transfers prevent maginalization if not combined with appropriate policies.
This IS a problem there and I'm sure they are doing everything in their power to tackle it. How do you think this could best be done?