Another Hot Night in France

Once again, the rioters took to the streets and clashed with police and torched cars.

Once again, the media was underreporting the level of violence.

There were riots in Paris, Nantes, and other cities scattered throughout the country.

Le Figaro posts the carnage from last night, and it was widespread and violent. Teargas was required to disperse the crowds and the thugs damaged cars, businesses, and anything else in their path.

This article claims at least 500 cars were torched last night. Of course, the article also blames Sarkozy for the violence, and not the rioters and their agitators.

More than 500 cars were set alight in cities and suburbs across the country, according to police reports gathered by AFP, many more than the 70 to 100 vehicles that are attacked on an average night.

Socialist Party leader Francois Hollande appealed for calm, warning that the violence could trigger a heavy police clampdown.

“Those who are waging this violence are playing into the hands of those who want more order, who want to be tougher,” he told RTL radio. “There can be disappointment, anger, frustration, but the only way to respond is at the ballot box. There is no other way.”

France is holding legislative elections on June 10 and 17 that will decide whether the new president will have the strong majority needed to push through his programme of tough economic and social reforms.

Socialist Segolene Royal, whose hope of becoming France’s first woman president was dashed on Sunday with the Sarkozy victory, had warned that France could slide into unrest if the rightwinger won the election.

Sarkozy, a tough-talking former interior minister, is hated in the high-immigrant suburbs for calling young delinquents “rabble” and for his stance on law and order.

It was under his watch that the suburbs exploded into riots for three weeks in October and November 2005, in which hundreds of buildings were burned and thousands of cars torched across the country.

In the hours that followed Sarkozy’s victory speech on Sunday, police said 730 vehicles burned across France and 600 people were arrested. A total of 78 police officers were injured.

UPDATE:
This latest round of rioting isn't due to the same groups. This time, the rioters appear to be predominantly white thugs, not the foreign immigrants that were the bulk of rioters in the 2005 riots.

UPDATE:
Where is the media coverage of this? One has to wonder just what effect a law passed that bans citizens from videotaping these riots:

The French Constitutional Council has approved a law that criminalizes the filming or broadcasting of acts of violence by people other than professional journalists. The law could lead to the imprisonment of eyewitnesses who film acts of police violence, or operators of Web sites publishing the images, one French civil liberties group warned on Tuesday.

The problem is that the credentialed journalists aren't doing the job at all. They're missing in action. They aren't providing accurate or up to date information about what is going on in France, and citizens who might be inclined to videotape these riots are wondering whether they might face criminal charges themselves for capturing newsworthy events for posterity. The law makes little sense and stifles free speech, and it also means that journalists are free to ignore the riots because there isn't a legal alternative. That there are people still willing to flaunt the law and tape the riots is a credit to those who are doing so.