Schadenfreude and Le Pew

Chirac: "Mons. Le Pew is resting comfortably"

It's hard not to take some dark pleasure in all this:

PARIS (AP) - President Jacques Chirac promised Sunday to restore public order across France as unrest spread from suburban Paris to cities south and north, with rioters injuring ten police officers, throwing Molotov cocktails and ramming a car into a housing project during an 11th night of mayhem.

The violence reached the well-guarded French capital Saturday night. Police said 35 cars were torched, most on the city's northern and southern edges.

In the city center, gasoline bombs damaged three cars near Place de la Republique. Residents reported a loud explosion and flames.

For a second night, a helicopter equipped with spotlights and video cameras to track bands of marauding youths combed Paris suburbs, and small teams of police chased rioters speeding from attack to attack in cars and on motorbikes.

"What we notice is that the bands of youths are, little by little, getting more organized," arranging attacks through cell phone text messages and learning how to make gasoline bombs, Hamon said.

Unrest extended west to Normandy and south to Nice and Cannes on the Mediterranean coast, with attacks in and around Lyon, Lille, Marseille and Strasbourg. In all, at least 3,300 buses, cars and other vehicles have been incinerated since the unrest started Oct. 27, the police spokesman said.

French president [Chirac]...faced criticism from opposition politicians for not publicly speaking about France's worst civil unrest in more than a decade. His only previous comments came through a spokesman.

Yes, and Chirac has yet to even mention the nature of the riots -- the rioters are all muslim youths, protesting what they regard as police "brutality" and unfair treatment in general.

Not that you'll get to the truth in MSM accounts of the unrest. A totally anecdotal, unscientific poll of today's NYT and WaPo coverage show the rioters characterized only as "immigrants." Just one WaPo story mentions the muslim angle:

The incident incensed youths in the neighborhoods, where unemployment is high, particularly among the French-born descendants of Muslim Africans and Arabs who say they feel the government has abandoned them.

France has fawned over every muslim dictator in the world with hand-wringing obsequiousness and has proudly touted its multiculturisme, claiming that it has avoided the kinds of problems its cultural nemesis, the US, has had with assimilation. The MSM idolizes France, of course, precisely because of it's vocal and emotional cotempt for everything American -- a contempt that the left in this country shares.

Well, France is now reaping what it sowed when it decided that its own people were too precious to work more than 30 hours a week or take jobs that involved menial labor. Those jobs went overwhelmingly to muslim immigrants from former French colonies in North Africa and the Middle East. France has placated this community for years by being solicitous to the islamic "cause" in various manifestations across the globe and by spreading welfare largesse around the immigrant community. As France's economy has stagnated, however, these menials were the first to be laid off, creating a huge bachelor herd of disaffected, idle young men.

France is just now beginning to learn that what it imported was not just luxury for lily-white, Metropolitain Frenchmen, but an eight-million-man army, implacably hostile to Western civilization in any manifestation and willing to take advantage of any percieved signs of weakness, which France has supplied in abundance. The French should consider themselves lucky that they're getting a taste of what is to come in so mild a manner -- no deaths as yet, other than the two youths who were accidentally electrocuted in the incident that started the riots ten days ago. Widespread property damage and intimidation is the worst of it so far, but the violence is spreading to other parts of France and other nations in Europe (Denmark and the Netherlands reportedly have seen some violence).

Mark Steyn has it right, as usual: Wake up Europe, you've a war on your hands. The European intifada has arrived. Welcome it, France -- it is your cultural legacy to the 21st Century.

In related news, it appears that at least one French film star has been injured in the rioting. Seems le Gouveurnment solicited his aid; he was only trying to help:

PARIS - Former French matinee idol Pepe Le Pew was among the hundreds injured last night amid violent feline rioting in the impoverished Parisian suburb of Dans-le-Crappeur. Le Pew, 58, a former Warner Brothers studio actor turned Chirac government spokes-skunk, sustained severe scratches and concussions in the melee before nose-pin equipped EMT rescue squads could drag him to safety. He is expected to make a full recovery.

Seeking to quell the burgeoning Kitty-fada and restore public order, French President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin enlisted the help of Le Pew yesterday. It was thought that Le Pew - who led France's UN efforts to oppose US sanctions against the so-called "pussies of evil" of Sylvester, Tom and Mr. Jinks - would help establish a diplomatic dialog with the Gallic feline community.

Instead, the outreach effort appeared to backfire. According to witnesses, Le Pew's appearance on the scene last night caused a stampede as panicked crowds began fleeing the smell. More trouble ensued when Le Pew was seen as making "inappropriate contact" with a burqqa-clad female cat, which reportedly sparked a mob of feline activists to don nose clips and begin beating him. Youths also set fire to a street-stripe painting truck which was allegedly involved in the incident.

Monk