The Troubles Continue in France

Even the French police are realizing that they're not facing a sporadic and diffuse riot situation, but one that is highly organized and orchestrated.

On a routine call, three unwitting police officers fell into a trap. A car darted out to block their path, and dozens of hooded youths surged out of the darkness to attack them with stones, bats and tear gas before fleeing. One officer was hospitalized, and no arrests made.

The recent ambush was emblematic of what some officers say has become a near-perpetual and increasingly violent conflict between police and gangs in tough, largely immigrant French neighborhoods that were the scene of a three-week paroxysm of rioting last year.

One small police union claims officers are facing a "permanent intifada." Police injuries have risen in the year since the wave of violence.

One has to wonder why no arrests were made. Are the police concerned that making too many arrests might seem provocative and spur additional violence? That appears to be the case, and the consequences of inaction are that the rioters have become emboldened to engage in ever more violent acts.

The violence continues on an upsurge, and this has been going on for weeks now. We're fast approaching the one-year anniversary of the massive riots around Paris that resulted in nearly hundreds injured, hundreds of thugs arrested (and nearly all young Muslims), 10,000 cars torched in a month, hundreds of businesses damaged, and hundreds of millions in damages.

The situation that led to the riots in 2005 have not fundamentally changed since then(though that would suggest that the death of two teenagers wasn't really the precipitating cause - just an excuse for the thugs to rampage through the Parisian surburbs.

"The attacks of the last few weeks show (the gangs) are very well prepared and using military-like organisation," said Gaelle James with the Synergie-Officiers police union.

She said the gang members were getting "younger and younger, and more and more violent".

Le Figaro quoted the police General Intelligence (RG) agency as saying the conditions which led to the 2005 riots were still in place.

"Today, a certain feverishness is very noticeable amongst some of the young ... who are critical of the work of local organisations," said the report.

"(The violence) is no longer spontaneous but structured, aimed at ... striking out at one of the last institutional representatives still present in certain places, the police."

Rioters torched thousands of cars and destroyed hundreds of businesses in three weeks of nationwide rioting last year, which kicked off on October 27 after the deaths of two youths, who were accidentally electrocuted while trying to escape the police.

And if you thought that the 10,000 cars torched in the month were bad, consider that 21,000 cars were torched in the first six months of 2006. That's 3500 cars a month. More than 115 cars a day. That's an astounding figure, and it is not getting better. The thugs have realized that this is a level that the French government considers tolerable, so they're pushing the levels of violence up to see what they can get away with.

This is an entirely unacceptable situation for the French government, which is doing its best to avoid the subject and hoping that cosmetic changes to employment policies will solve the situation. They will not.

UPDATE:
Hot Air also notes the grim milestones and carnage in France.

UPDATE:
Gates of Vienna has an interesting essay on the anti-white bias and its relationship to the current situation in France.

Jihad Watch thinks that France is on the cusp of a permanent intifada. The problem is that the French do not appear willing or able to fight back, as compared to the Israelis who tried to contain the situation. Watch for similar tactics to be deployed by the Muslim thugs behind this - children being used as cannon fodder, hoping to take casualties so that more Muslims would be outraged and spurred to violence.

Atlas Shrugs notes the French government's failure to buy social peace. After spending hundreds of millions of francs on trying to buy their way out of the situation, the French government finds itself even more embattled because the thugs are even more dangerous and audacious now than last year.

Others noticing the violence in France and the fact that the French are doing their level best to avoid the subject: Screw politically correct BS (what a name - you can't get more anti-PC than that, but a good roundup), CheatSeekingMissiles, Don Singleton, QandO, and The Real Ugly American.

Technorati: france, riots, sarkozy, chirac, france, villepin.