France has descended into chaos

The feckless Chirac is reaping their harvest. The violence is spreading across France, and is only growing, not subsiding. What is happening has the look of the beginnings of outright insurrection. If the French want to keep their country, they must act. Wretchard, writing at The Belmont Club, has the details.

It's getting real interesting. CNN is reporting that churches, schools and police stations are going up in smoke.

"In the northern city of Rouen, a police barricade was set afire and a burning car was pushed into the police station; and in Strasbourg, near the German border, a school was torched. A church was set ablaze in the southern fishing town of Sete and another in nearby Lens, Pas de Calais; two schools in the southeastern town of Saint-Etienne and a police station in the central France town of Clermont-Ferrand were torched, as was a social center in Seine-Saint-Denis, near the border with Switzerland."

Here's a map of the French towns affected so far compiled from the Europe-based blog No Pasaran!

Austin Bay writes about the situation in France

Austin Bay ("hook-em, horns!") writes about the situation in France. He has considered himself an optimist about Europe, while Mark Steyn has been a pessimist. Austin Bay writes:

Poverty exacerbates all problems, but poverty in and of itself does not produce violence. Migrants from France’s former Muslim colonies initially came for jobs, not to assimilate or “become French.” But the migrants stayed. Now France’s “Muslim neighborhoods” are permanent “cultural islands.” The French government’s own duplicitous policy towards Salafist/Islamist terror has backfired. France has fought Islamist terrorism. For 15 years the French government has been supporting the Algerian government’s battle against the Armed Islamic Group (GIA, the French acronym). In the mid-1990s GIA set off several bombs in and around Paris. However, the French government’s rhetoric has been appeasenik and enabling. Ah yes, the source of Muslim outrage is…America! France was following its Cold War strategy of snaking between Washington and Moscow. Remember, Reagan frightened the USSR. In 1983 Reagan was going to cause a nuclear war in Europe. Etcetera.

Appeasement and duplicity have once again failed as policy. Didn’t work for France in the Rhineland and at Munich, either.

UPDATE: A worthwhile article from Newsweek.

Here’s Mark Steyn on the “Eurarabian War” via radioblogger.

I also recommend readers look over the comments on my first French riots post. The level of denial exhibited by French readers is extraordinary…then again, perhaps it isn’t.

Here is some deep background, from the International Herald Tribune, October 17, 2005 — before the latest spate of riots. The subject: the decrepit, squalid living conditions European immigrants (legal and illegal) face.

Wretchard on the situation in France

Wretchard, writing at The Belmont Club, has a good piece on what is happening in France:

One of the frustrations about covering events in France is the lack of metrics. There are a few which can be used. The numbers of cars burned on a given night. The number of towns affected by disturbances. The numbers of persons arrested. But there is a lot of critical information that can't be captured in these figures. Here are two reports, one from a site in Brussels and another from a Dutchman which have been cool and collected in the past. Here is what they have to say. The titles are the authors and not mine. I have edited only to shorten the excerpts where necessary

The Brussels Journal

The Fall of France

From the desk of Paul Belien on Sat, 2005-11-05 13:41

If Nicolas Sarkozy had been allowed to have his way, he could have saved France. Last Summer the outspoken minister of the Interior was France’s most popular politician with his promise to restore the law of the Republic in the various virtually self-ruling immigrant areas surrounding the major French cities.

Peaktalk

France's Intifada

It’s hard to find some good reporting on the Paris riots, one of the newspapers here this morning claimed that the violence had abated somewhat. Well, that’s hardly the case. Below I’ve translated an excerpt from the Dutch public broadcasting organization’s report on night number nine, Friday night ... The term "Paris Riots" has become a complete misnomer. There's war going on in France and that is coming from someone who is not given to hyperbole, but the facts have made that conclusion inescapable. ...

Ann Althouse says that the Blogger outage was for a planned upgrade

I was bothered by Blogger being out of commission for several hours today, but Ann Althouse says that we shouldn't be bothered about what was apparently a planned outage for an upgrade. Upgrades are always welcome, so I guess that I can live with that.

This is bad

Ed Morrissey writes about the insurgent-like behavior at the CIA (my words). It makes sense that during the Clinton years, the power of the left within the CIA had grown. The nasty process had likely started during the 1970's when the Church committee had done its damage. A friend, who is rather into leftist and anti-business conspiracy theories, had said that the purpose of George H.W. Bush being President for a while was to fix the damage done by the left in the CIA. If that were true, it was immediately undone through the rest of the 1990's. Ed concludes:

Offered as further proof that it is the apolitical CIA that has our best interests at heart are stories of the draft-dodging, Zionist-loving, neo-conservative cabal based in the White House that set up its own intelligence apparatus to bypass the efforts of the CIA. The real story is actually the reverse: What is an administration supposed to do when those who are supposed to serve it fight, obstruct, and otherwise don’t deliver?

Conservatives roll their eyes at the “moonbats” who shout about “no blood for oil” and join the ranks of ANSWER, but there is little difference in belief and outlook between the nut-jobs waving signs and their fellow-travelers in the intelligence business; except of course that intelligence officers can actually help bring about change. The CIA made a name for itself destabilizing regimes, only this time the leader of the regime they are aiming to change isn’t named Allende or Pahlavi.

Joe Six-Pack and Molly Homemaker should care about this stuff because even if they didn’t vote for the current administration, I’m fairly sure that voting is how they want such decisions to be made.

Speed limits and selective enforcement

The Dallas area has a phenomenon that I suspect that widely occurs. There are 4 to 6 lane roads, well graded, that have 30 to 35mph speed limits. They also have areas that go from 40mph to 35 and then 30mph in a short distance. On Northwest Highway, in north Dallas, the speed limit is is 35mph west of Preston Road, but traffic moves at 40 to 45mph. The Dallas Country Constables are out in the early morning hours, in these spots where the speed limit drops. They essentially can make as much money as they want for the county, as the number of drivers who obey the speed limits is small to almost non-existent. I have turned into a mobile traffic hazard, in that my goal is to drive the speed limit, or as close to it as possible, without getting run over.

If the speed limits were consistently enforced, you would find that drivers would adjust to the new reality, just as they have adjusted to higher gas prices. They change their behavior, as conditions change. The goal of the current traffic law enforcement seems to be to generate speeding ticket income without actually consistent enforcement that would change behavior. The nature of the enforcement seems to be catching people who have not previously been ticketed. For example, my manager on my previous employment and my wife's friend and coworker at school. Ticket prices seem to have been jacked up, as well, so that they are a big financial burden and a boon to Defensive Driving schools.

Ann Althouse has become a star

It was inevitable. With the rising prominence of bloggers, Ann Althouse has become a star. Now, our buddies in the AP are quoting her!

AP's Gina Holland quotes me in this analysis of how Alito's replacing O'Connor might change the Court:

The Supreme Court's middle ground is disappearing. If Samuel Alito is confirmed, he could almost immediately begin to erase the court's balanced rulings on contentious social issues like abortion, religion and capital punishment.

The New Donkey says that more is at stake than just Iraq

The New Donkey blogger says that what is involved is not just Iraq. He thinks that the celebration on the left side of the blogosphere over the Lewis Libby indictment is misplaced, in that the leftists need to focus on the rest of the Bush policy rather than just Iraq. In case you are not familiar with him, the New Donkey blogger is a Democratic Leadership Council kind of guy. He writes:

I've generally assumed that the one thing that unites all Democrats today is the overriding desire to drive the corrupt and incompetent and ideologically bent GOP from power. That's why I implore Democrats to keep their eyes on the big prize, and not get dragged off into the self-defeating blind alley of making future elections nothing more than a retroactive referendum on why the country, and many Democrats, supported the decision to invade Iraq.

We have a more compelling case to take to the country, which includes, but is hardly limited to, the administration's failures in Iraq, and we need to make it.

Marc Cooper on Harry Reid

Marc Cooper takes a dim view of Harry Reid's antics in the Senate yesterday. Marc probably agrees with Harry on a good bit, but Marc is not a Democrat and doesn't like them any better than Republicans. Marc writes:

The Senate Democrats are now feigning great indignation and demanding a series of answers from the Republicans about how we got into this war in the first place. That sounds like a reasonable demand. But in many ways it’s a self-serving ruse. The Democrats know damn well how we got into Iraq on manipulated and even non-existent “evidence.” Instead of waiting around for some sort of half-arsed Republican response, maybe Reid & Company could construct their own counter- presentation to the country – explaining to us why so many Democrats were just plain wrong to have voted for war authorization. Why not add in the Democrats’ own analysis of events based on the narratives that emerged from the Fitzpatrick investigation?

This, of course, would require the Democrats to take an actual definable position on the war, God Forbid. It’s what they need to do. And ought to do. So far, it’s easier for them to run around with their hair on fire claiming they and we have all been lied to. Ok, Harry… tell us clearly what those lies were and let us know what you plan to do about it. It’s great to ask the Bushies all sorts of tough questions, though they are never going to answer. How about if the Democrats came up with some of their own answers instead?

P.S. Max gets it.

The Democrats in the Senate

Democrats in the Senate forced the body into a two-hour closed session. Depending who you consult, it was either a dumb move or a cunning ploy. John Podhoretz thinks it was a clever move. The Powerline guys think it was a mistake. Paul writes:

The Democrats must feel that they are losing momentum now that the Republicans have their act together on the Supreme Court, and Fitzgerald did not indict Rove. That the Dems see throwing a temper tantrum as a way to regain momentum, rather than as reminder to the public that they are unfit to govern, speaks volumes.

In any case, it is part of the Democratic plan to damage President Bush and the Republicans by demogoguing issues like the war.