FRANCE SEES THE FIRST SIGNS OF SLOWDOWN IN VIOLENCE*
PARIS November 9, 2005 (AFP) - Attacks by rioters in France dropped sharply for the first time in nearly two weeks of rampages as a state of emergency took effect Wednesday, raising hopes the worst unrest since May 1968 might be receding.Though widespread unrest still flared around some 100 towns overnight, with 617 cars torched and 330 people arrested, police recorded "a very significant drop" in intensity, said a senior interior ministry official, Claude Gueant.
It came after president Jacques Chirac's cabinet gave rarely invoked powers to certain regional prefects, or governors, to impose curfews and widen police search-and-seizure tactics.
Now you may have the same question, could not one government solon have made the connection between nightfall and renewed rioting earlier? We think the government might want to explain why it didn't invoke the curfew provisions of the law at least after, say, day two? Like much of France, we are curious why this obvious action wasn't taken till day twelve.
As the rioting subsides, out come the hankies. Oh! BOO hoo hoo HOO! Someone's feelings have been scuffed.
FURY AS CHIRAC DECLARES STATE OF EMERGENCY*
PARIS November 9, 2005 (Telegraph) - President Jacques Chirac faced scathing criticism yesterday after his government declared a state of emergency in an attempt to crack down on rioters who have caused havoc throughout France.Political opponents questioned whether the measures were enforceable or said they would only deepen the crisis.
The Communist Party [PCF], which runs councils in some of the affected areas, raised doubts about how the curfews and other restrictions could be enforced while the police already seem over-stretched.
Marie-George Buffet, the party leader, said the government was "incapable of stopping these youths".
The leader of the main teaching union [la Fédération syndicale unitaire], Gérard Aschieri, condemned what he called a "message of war" in which the government was trying to reactivate remedies from a colonial age.
Le Monde accused ministers of sending a message of "astonishing brutality" to young people on the poor estates:
Exhuming a 1955 law sends to the youth of the suburbs a message of astonishing brutality: that after 50 years France intends to treat them exactly as it did their grandparents.The prime minister should recall that at that time the combination of misunderstanding, warlike posturing and powerlessness brought the republic to its worst ever moment.
[Emphases added.]
But what's a few hundred more torchings and another few weeks of lawlessness against the ginned-up pieties of the PCF and Le Monde. Since it is a safe bet that the unidentified "youths" are not legal scholars and not a one on his own knew when this or any French law had ever been enacted. What do you think clued their new-found indignation?
If the law is constitutionally sound, is not morally obnoxious in its means and effects, and benefits and protects French citizens, then what matter when it was enacted? If it is defective, then why hasn't Le Monde been beating its drum since 1955 -- or at least since 1984, when François "Rainbow Smiter" Mitterand made use of it to quell unrest in New Caledonia -- to have it abrogated?
Now a more astute and politic government might have re-invented this legislation and then passed it by some sort of extraordinary session of Parliament instead of invoking a law with a tainted history. But then, we are happy for the little the hapless Jack pack has managed at all.
* Absolutely no Muslims sighted during the writing of this report.
Nearly three out of four French people support the [curfew] powers, according to a poll published in the daily Le Parisien newspaper.
Now there's a surprise. With the benefit of the PCF's criticism and Le Monde's moral censure, you'd think more French would've opted for lawlessness.
PFFT (What is this?): Historical vapors 4 | Phony fellow-feeling 5 | Rayonnement français 0
