The 11th Night
Just hours after French President Jacques Chirac publicly condemned violence and rioting in Paris ... police were fired on by rioters. Ten officers were wounded ... two of them seriously, when police clashed with about 200 youths who were hurling stones and other projectiles ... The incident came only a few hours after Chirac made his first public address since the riots began.
This report from CTV could mean that certain "youths" -- to use the charming nomenclature of the press -- have decided to lead the events of the past eleven days into deeper waters. It may compel the police, firemen and rescue workers to increase their force protection measures, to travel in better protected packages, reducing the area they could cover in a more permissive environment. Although the timing of the police shooting in the immediate aftermath of Chirac's speech may be coincidental, the attacks may also be a conscious defiance, the proverbial cream pie thrown in the French President's face.
On Sunday ... business owners called on Chirac to summon the military ... before arsonists begin to attack buildings as well. ... Police said ... nearly 1,300 vehicles were burned across the country. Some 2,300 police officers were ordered into the Paris region ... on Saturday night.
What isn't known, what the public can only guess at, are the preparations the French government have made to carry out Chirac's pledge to restore order. "The law must have the last word," Chirac said, and vowed those sowing "violence or fear" will be "arrested, judged and punished." The French government must demonstrate that it can deliver, for nothing incites contempt so much as to be all hat and no cattle; to bluster and to bluster impotently.
Commentary
It will be a tough challenge to shut down riots, which are not so much assemblies of unruly crowds, but small groups of operators burning property in hit-and-run attacks. My own guess is that these guerilla groups can be easily neutralized in neighborhoods where their ethnicity stands out. Once on their own turf it will be a different story. But the price of using racial profiling, whatever words are used to disguise the fact, is that profiling is a blunt instrument, prone to identify as many of the innocent as it does the guilty.
Richard Zeckhauser is one of the few applied mathematicians of the first rank to examine the economics of racial profiling. Reading his paper I was struck by his observation that if a person could somehow capture the results of being cleared after having been profiled that clearance would have some value. ("See, I've already been cleared!") But if that information could not be captured by a profiling system -- a system that was memoryless -- then it would take on the character of harassment, because the profiling would be repeated whatever the result. What that suggested to me in plain words was that the French crackdown on the banlieus, if it is to have any significance, must be part of a larger program to take them back from the organized criminals, Islamist extremists and assorted hooligans; it has to be part of an intelligence-gathering operation to make these enclaves transparent to larger society and worthwhile places to live in.
What I am afraid will happen is that the French authorities will apply the worst possible combination: a short-term crackdown based on profiling together with an agreement to cede the governance of these ghettos to some kind of Islamic councils. That will make the banlieus more opaque while at the same time making them more alien. Yet the attraction of this policy mix is obvious. It throws a bone to the extreme right and left wings of French policy and may quell the disturbances for a moment. It kicks the can down the road into a minefield. It's a soothing gargle of antiseptic mouthwash prior to flossing with a razor blade.
Update
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 Google Earth map of the French towns affected so far compiled from the Europe-based blog No Pasaran!
posted by wretchardthecat at 11/06/2005 10:24:00 PM
57 Comments:
Wretchard, your command of metaphor is truly matchless.
More substantively, thanks for highlighting both the advantages and the dangers of racial profiling.
Yeah, I also expect the French to worst-case this. I have higher hopes for the Danish, the Dutch, and other European nations, but France?
I suspect that they'll do whatever is necessary to put to problem off to another day.
I come to a different conclusion than Wretchard.
US counter-terrorism forces have said for years now, both prior to and after 9/11, that the French counter terror units were the most helpful, the most effective, and the most ruthless of all the foreign governments they had to deal with. Whether these riots are terror related or not is besides the point; the resources and skills required to track down terrorist within Franch are the same needed to quell these riots - sifting through profiles and makind the bad apples disappear.
No, I give the French decent odds of making it through this actually. What I don't see though in the follow through. These riots are by 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants who have never been assimilated into French society, and have almost no chance of gainful employment. Working for a living is a source of self-respect, and as long as the French state denies them that opportunity, they will hate French wealth (cars), French handouts (schools), and symbols of French power (police stations).
Should you doubt France's resolve or willingness to fight dirty when their territory is at stake, remember the Battle of Algiers. Despite their protestations of being a post-conflict culture, and despite their genuflection to the UN and the ICC, they don't blink an eye about invading an African country to sinking a Greenpeace ship when they feel their interests are at stake. They are merely hypocrites, not incompetent.
It sounds like the French managed to paint themselves into a corner with the brush of socialism and a huge unassimilated immigrant population (Islamic population). What was that old saying "Bad money always drives out good money..."
...to finally emphasize, the French heritage -- which to me has come to mean nothing more than compulsory secularism, extreme statism, and extraordinary narcissism, and which I first saw up close 26 years ago -- may have begun to disappear in the fires of the former "red belt." What will replace it? Who knows? Some of "Christian Europe" seems to me intellectually, spiritually, and morally dead. How I wish it were not so.
"Red Belt" Riots By Stephen Schwartz
I will note if Stephen Schwartz is correct about France, then the Euro and the French stockmarket should fall. Markets tend to react quickly to bad news.
Isn't there room for some optimism though? Paris could be Europe's Pearl Harbor in the War on Terror...
French Leader: Restoring Order a Priority:
Police said copycat attacks are fanning the unrest but had no evidence of separate gangs coordinating. Officials said older youths, many already with police records, appear to be teaching younger teens arson techniques.
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.
Restoring Order
DJB has a post up on the subject of events in France serving as a wake up call here.
At some point even the most somnolent are bound to wake up. Even Priam woke up that night in Troy. The trick, I think, is to wake up while there is still time to avert the worst; not only for the sake of Europeans, but for the Muslims of the world too. And the key, I believe, is to change the public's level of awareness. DJB understands what this is about. But to many, the disturbances are all about "youths".
France, "Sick Man" of Europe, is attacked by vicious jackals, across the breadth of what should be (what USED TO BE) French, and the dogs demand "Leave us alone!"
Rule yourselves? That would mean sovereignty, self-rule, but you jackals can't even control yourselves!
"Taste ye what your hands have wrought!"
Dare I say the ol' Frenchys are getting what they deserve? Is that too harsh?
Now that police have been shot the officials have the cover they need to take the Islamis down hard if they want to. The French police have a sadistic streak to them. They would have a "good" time.
Perhaps this is Europe's wake up call.
This CAN be Europe's wake-up. Quiet contemplation, however, leads me to see such an outcome as Wishful Thinking on many of our parts.
We see it as being a good thing... Well, lets see how the French deal with this.
I just don't see this as part of the War on Terror. I don't see it connected to terrorism at all, except at the most basic levels.
The rioters are Muslims, it's true. But that is not enough to conclude this is an intifada. As we've been saying for years now, although most terrorists are Muslim, most muslims are not terrorist.
The rioters are widespread and numerous. In every other terror situation the operators are few, carry out planned strikes, and hide in the general population. This IS the general population.
Al Jazeera is not spinning this. Now, the Jaz isn't the official spokesperson of all this Terror, but you can rely on them to give a feel for the situation. The don't even mention that the rioters are mostly muslim, only that they're poor. The prominently disply the fatwa issued by the French "Islamic community" condeming the violence. If we've learned anything in the past few years, it's that the terrorist playbook is to use the media to mutitply their effectiveness, not downplay it.
A European assimilation problem has been a known issue for a decade or more. Whether France is the worst offender or not I don't know, but it wasn't any kind of surprise to suddenly discover ghettos in Europe. Decades of >50% unemployment rates, endless charity, and ugly government housing have had their corrosive effect, and now the French are reaping what they've sown.
How is this connected to terrorism? Only in that terror and this frustration have similar roots. Living in French ghettos isn't as bad as living in Arabian ghettos, but the idea is the same. No jobs, no future, and no chance of making your way up in society. If the French "youth" are given another couple decades to stew and then find the financial sponsorship of a couple insane French billionaires, only maybe then would this be a terrorist situation.
Wretchard - the human mind is capable of seeing patterns where they don't really exist. The conspiracy theorist takes it to the extreme, but we are all capable of it. Your coverage of the war on terror has been exemplary, but I fear your focus on it has lead you astray in this situation.
A couple of things for you to ponder: the Muslim population of France is not like our hostile Black population only because their numbers are at least twice that of our Black population. It is not possible to "put down" a rebel mob, contain it, or bribe it if that mob is twenty percent of the whole. Think of the LA riots if twice the number of blacks had been on the prowl.
The second thing is that THE WORLD HAS CHANGED in twelve days.
Cardozo,
I completely agree that the hand of Al Qaeda is not evident in this situation yet. In that sense events in France are not part of the War on Terror. But the War on Terror itself is a product of the collapse of Europe and chaos in the Third World.
If France were to allow Islamic enclaves within it, that would have a tremendous effect on European and world geopolitics. And I think we are looking at fair odds that this will actually happen.
Of course events in France are related to the GWOT. But that is not the same as saying they are masterminded by radical Islam, though the unrest may eventually be taken over by radical Islam.
For last two weeks the press has been trying to describe events in France as race riots or unemployment riots largely bereft of ideological motivation. Youths. Immigrants. Sarkozy and other sources are saying these disturbances are conspiracies. In the end the two may run together. The chaos of Weimar was not a conspiracy, but one eventually grew within it.
Cardozo,
There is one further aspect of events in Paris which are related to the GWOT in a fundamental way. GWB made the assertion, and I know it is fashionable to laugh at it, that only by making Islamic homelands functional and free can the world find peace. This is the fundamental Bush doctrine though it is treated as a joke.
Yet there is a wisdom in it. Europe could not, even if it wanted to, absorb the flotsam of North Africa. It's not big enough to. The only way forward is to create functioning countries where there are now wastelands. That goes for the banlieus too. And it can't be done with refugee policies or welfare. It can only be brought about by bringing economic and political freedom to the world.
Newt Gingrich perceptively said that the GWOT is going to be 90% solving problems and communicating ideas and 10% dropping bombs. France's problem is that they have only pretended to do the first and avoided doing the second, even when it was necessary.
Wretchard,
Your map does not do justice to the extent of the trouble.
According to Le Figaro, rioting occurred in 274 communities last night, as compared with 211 the night before.
These events are not going to stop soon, or easily.
Gandalin
This is truly frightening. Regulars here know that I can be rather wordy. Right now I'm just stunned and sad, looking at a situation that is currently so sad and seeing how it could spiral further if the French government over-reacts or under-reacts.
I've long been a fan of Van Creveld and his work on the decline of the relevance of the state. Looking at France right now we clearly see a state which is unable to monopolize the use of violence in its territory. And if a state cannot do that, what is it? To see this happening in a modern, wealthy, Western European country is truly worrying.
The french muslims have declared war on western civilisation. Burning churches, synagogues, schools, police stations. These are not mere thugs. These are religiously motivated thugs, driven by a muslim supremacist mentality.
Perhaps there is no AQ connection, or perhaps there is nothing that happens in the ummah that is disconnected to AQ. The problem is in the timing. By attacking France at this time, while France is still one of the main critics of the Iraq war, the muslim thuggocracy in France appears brainless.
France must find herself in order to deal with these barbarians.
"I completely agree that the hand of Al Qaeda is not evident in this situation yet."
When Al Qaeda targeted the US, it made a stupid mistake by attacking the one power that could organize a sucessful counter-attack. With Al Qaeda unable to manufacture any significant wins, the chances of a strategy change increase. If Al Qaeda returns to a more traditional strategy of attacking the weak points first, Old Europe could find itself on the front lines of this battle rather quickly.
Read George Washington's vision here:
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/9/13/211315.shtml
"Newt Gingrich perceptively said that the GWOT is going to be 90% solving problems and communicating ideas and 10% dropping bombs. France's problem is that they have only pretended to do the first and avoided doing the second, even when it was necessary."
I would say this is right.
Brussels got hit (sorry in French) last night but the media here are playing it down. I went jogging on Sunday with my neighbor who is a senior officer in an anti-terrorism unit here and he told me it couldn't happen in Brussels! He'll be working overtime tonight.
Berlin also had a few burning cars to deal with last night.
I would say passive socialists would be rather easy to murder and intimidate, since they tend to regard their murderers as victims. If I were a jihadi commander, I would continue and I would escalate the violence. Oops! I forgot, this has nothing to do with muslim ideology - it is poor V. rich, right? How do you say "burn baby burn" in arabic?? I would say as ye sowe so shall ye reap, but religious commentary is probably not welcome here.
The key danger, irrespective of the short-term outcome, is that France establishes (formally or informally) Islamic enclaves within its territory. The idea of territoriality is intimately connected with Islamic theology. These enclaves would provide a base from which to launch jihad. France would wind up with its own Gaza Strip (or strips).
The map seems to have Marseilles named where Paris is. Marseilles is on the southern coast, above the Cote d'Azur, on the way to Toulon, where there has always been a large Arab population. Seems like the Riviera should be hot, too.
Thank God for the 2cd Amendment, eh? What is the french policy on citizen ownership of guns?
Again, it is not aQ that is the challenge, aQ is nothing, in and of itself. A few middle aged reactionaries, border bandits with a good PR man.
Syria, Iran, Sudan... these are terrorist STATES.
The UN moves seriously on the Syrian issue, Paris burns.
Sanctions are seriously discussed against Iran, Paris burns.
Syria and Iran are allies.
Paris burns.
In my younger days our CIA was blamed, accused & triumphed, depending on perspective, for destabilizing Iran, Laos, Chile etc using AGENTS. Small numbers of operatives that, with deniability, tried to change the World. In most cases they used disaffected Natives to do their dirty work,
But, of course, the Mohammedans are much to irrational and inept to do the same.
Photos
http://www.jpney.com/reportages/Violences_Urbaines_93/
To say, as sone here have, that because the Mohammedans are using different tactics in France then are used in Sudan, the actions are unrelated. That if Arab TV does not announce the Paris riots are part of the Jihadist meme, it is not.
That because the Mohammedans do not use IEDs in France they are unrelated to Iraqi Insurgents.
Give it a break.
Two weeks of nightly violence is not spontaneous.
Violence spreading to Mohammedan communities across Europe is not spontaneous.
No more than either of the WTC attacks were spontaneous.
The powers that be do not want our public to know the scope of the challenge. So when Mohammedans attack El Al ticket counter at LAX, it is unrelated. When Malvo & Mohammed go on a Beltway killing spree, it is unrelated. When the Sudanese kill African Christians, it is unrelated. When bombs go off in New Delhi, it's unrelated.
When Paris burns, of course, that is unrelated, as well.
It appears to me that the major reason for the lack of action by the French authorities is that they are desperately searching for someone within their homegrown Muslim population to negotiate with. And there is no such entity.
They set up that Council for Muslims several years ago, to make the Muslim population feel important and accepted but if that was supposed to be a substitute for the Catholics and their Pope it has failed miserably. There is no one single Muslim authority, either in France or in the Middle East, who can slap these punks upside the head and with authority tell them to "knock it off!"
Re: Al-Queda influence, I'm being reminded elsewhere on the blogosphere that there have been reports for some months now that A-Q has been recruiting in France and then shipping froggy Muslims to Iraq for terrorist training.
There is further note being made that the rioters are communicating via cell phone and text-messaging with the question asked how they got each other's phone numbers all across the country without prior planning and training from SOMEone.
(see Captain Morrissey for links to the above concepts)
Please dear france, do not feed the cycle of violence and use force to quell these misunderstood children...
after all all they are doing is expressing their sincere political beliefs.
ha ha aha ha ha hah a ha aha ha ha
can we say karma sucks?
cardozo,
The Muslims don't just have a European assimilation problem, they have a world assimilation (into the modern world) problem. What is happening in France right now is just a microcosm of that.
Many people have noted that despite the massive amount of arson there has been relatively little violence. There has apparently been only one death, an unfortunate 60 year old man named Jean-Jacques Le Chenadec, and a few police hospitalized. This could clearly escalate quickly.
Furthermore, something I've not seen much discussed is that this kind of activity is the perfect smoke screen for a more serious attack to occur.
As I'm writing this, I'm being messaged via MSN by a close friend in Paris... he's not french but is a student there. He's looking for advice... beyond the obvious "get out!", what would people here suggest to those stuck in Paris? My first advice was to stock up on food and water and have essentials ready to go in a backpack. Services such as electricity and transportation and water could go....
In an effort to keep things positive and helpful for those in France, I'd like to solicit suggestions from any of you...
BTW: my friend reports that he's fine where he is but that everyone is quite concerned, very much on alert, and very much feeling that this is just the beginning.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Perot lo Lladre,
Thank you for pointing out the misplacement of towns on the map. It has been corrected.
I can't imagine that the initial reaction of the masses was coordinated beyond the decentralized links of family and cell phones. But I don't think we can say that any longer.
Desert Rat made a point that has been in the back of my mind for a few days. Is it merely a coincidence that the riots are happening concurrently with France's confrontation with Syria? Or following the EU-3's referral of Iran to the IAEA and the UNSC? How far should we stretch reason and avoid what seems more and more obvious?
Arafat's movement didn't start as an Islamonuts jihad, it started as a Marxist, secular insurrection. The mantle of Islamism just proved to be the better motivator. Belatedly did jihad supplant the original raison d'etre for the Palestinian cause.
I think that is the underlying global story. Islam and "muslimness" are coopting the grievances of a billion people and uniting them under one, belligerent banner of inevitable victory. It is an angst-filled movement, and whether today sees riots of the poor or tomorrow sees terrorism by the rich, I think we must acknowledge the interelatedness of these phenomena. The riots in Paris are only a particular manifestation of the overall problem of Muslim angst.
Of course, the Muslims are not acting upon automata. A lion in repose is still a lion. Forgotten is the underlying ruthlessness of the French. France didn't even blink when told to liquidate their Jewish assets. I doubt her citizenry will stir itself over the eradication of a less docile and less assimiliated group.
aristedes,
You noted:
"I think that is the underlying global story. Islam and "muslimness" are coopting the grievances of a billion people and uniting them under one, belligerent banner of inevitable victory."
That's why the incidents in Paris are both more and less than they appear to be. At one level it is perfectly accurate to say "these are nothing but riots over race, jobs and discrimination". Yet it is important to note that mundane grievances underlie every political movement. The first task of any agitator is to raise a banner under which the discontented will march. Once the Left could do that on every occasion. But not any more. There's a new kid on the block.
Eric Hoffer once wrote that mass movements "can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil...The ideal devil is a foreigner."
By sequestering her immigrant populations away in concrete cites, France has inverted reality. The French are now foreigners in their own land.
A double whammy since her Muslim immigrant population already has the insider-outsider dichotomy bred into their belief system. Looked at this way, does it matter whether it was the match or the kerosene that started the fire? Whatever started it, it is the composition underneath that keeps it going.
Same song, fourth verse.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
James Keilland,
The best advice for your French Friends is to set up road blocks and check points and man them with men with guns. Organize your neighborhoods.
Those are some powerful images Dimitar. The Gendarmarie look like they're kitted out well and can dish out some serious nastiness if allowed.
Ya got to try the 'ol surprise visit with these droogs.
Anyone know what French law regarding personal possession of firearms is like? Also, to what extent the law extends protection to those who use deadly force in protection of their property?
I just can't help wondering who's cars are being burned, while simultaneously thinking that after the first day of such activity here in the US, vigilante-ism would have greatly reduced the porperty damage.
strategyunit said:
"The most likely worse case situation is goverence is ceded to Islamic Fundamentalist securing their position as mediator and as "governing" body over the ghettos, Sarkozy backs off from his “tough on crime” approach and the criminal gangs (that are likely involved in furthering the riots) secure their turf in the ghetto.
I agree. This will happen if France decides to approach its "ghettos" as a "colonialist military occupation" problem rather than a domestic "law-and-order" issue. Everything I have read about how the French military operates abroad in the past (ex: China) and today (ex: Bosnia, Afghanistan) boils down to one policy: find the biggest, strongest, thug in the area and be his ally. This permits criminals and terrorists free reign in areas nominally under government control, while allowing French "authorities" to pad their pockets with bribes and the feeling that their own personal safety is assured by supporting the strongest gang on the street.
We saw this in Bosnia, when French forces would "save" citizens only to turn them over to the Serb militias; we saw this in Afghanistan two years ago, when a French NATO officer allowed a local gang to store weapons on his territory; we saw this decades ago in Shanghai, when the chief detective of the French Concession was none other than the leader of China's most powerful triad.
As Churchill said, "the French aren't like us" -- functionaries survive by obeying the orders of their lawful superiors, not necessarily by obeying the lawful orders of their superiors. French citizens undoubtedly know that the enarques who rule them are biased by education and experience to be self-interested, rather than value their political party or France as a whole. Thus, any such accomodation will trigger first capital flight, then a fearful flood of non-Muslim migrants - religious refugees - out of France.
It would be interesting to superimpose Wretchard's map with any number of other statistical regional maps, say, Muslim immigrant population map, the arrest rate by city of jihadi cells map, number of kids in public schools map, number of mosques map, etc...
On Wretchard's map, Tours is in the wrong location.
Tours is actually southwest of where it appears on the map, on the other side of Paris, in the Loire river valley (le Val de Loire).
So I wonder if the pin is in the right spot, and should be labelled with the name of another town -- or is Tours really one of the cities under attack?
Update: the French will try to impose a curfew under the authority of the Interior Minister.
This is a big risk, for if it doesn't work, France will not have a government worthy of the name; such failures are how French governments fall. Then it will be war, and not a law-and-order issue. Welcome to New Chechenya.
I myself do not think it will work: as in 1940, government forces seem to be spread thinly, rather than concentrated. The manpower, organization, and readily available hideouts of the rioters appear to give them a great advantage. It is difficult, if not impossible, to capture and convict large numbers of masked rioters. How will the authorities prove anything?
I see only one course: to cordon off and then expel entire communities. Perhaps that's because I'm ignorant and don't know enough to proffer a less forceful course of action. For now, I'm glad I'm not a Frenchman, and I don't have to be responsible for such decisions.
Matthew,
You're quite right about the mislocation of Tours on the map, however, it is one of the cities involved as per No Pasaran.
Also, there's another map of the riot locations at http://www.theneweditor.com/index.php?/archives/1324-Rioting-in-France-Spreads-to-300-Towns.html, via Glenn Reynolds. You can compare the two and I think they are about the same.
i don't see how these riots can continue for much longer unless the "youth" get some outside funding or the french do something really stupid like continue paying their monthly dole.
Map of France sans pushpins
Someone mentioned that these are second and third-generation Muslims who have never assimilated. THERE YOU GO! Just about EVERY immigrant group in the US gets itself assimilated by the second generation *Africans prior to 1965 notwithstanding, but that was more by not being allowed to than by the choice of Africans and African-Americans. Even then, black culture became an integral, if unrecognized, component of the American cultural ethos*.
In France, the Muslims have been encouraged in their REFUSAL to assimilate.
You still seem to have Cannes in the wrong place. Something that rather jumps out to me since i live near there.
Lots of other relevant commentry at my blog FWIW
I myself do not think it will work: as in 1940, government forces seem to be spread thinly, rather than concentrated.
Isn't France one of the countries that's been telling us for three years now that we went into Iraq with too few soldiers? And how stupid our government was not to have foreseen that and provided for having enough boots on the ground to secure peace?
I just love all the different poetic justices and chickens coming home to roost that are coming out of the burning of France. It's almost like God kept count and is dishing them back out again one by one, except that in France, God is dead because they killed Him. I wonder if Allah has as delicious a sense of humor.
Dirty,
Have fixed Cannes.
I hope the French government's relutance to take decisive action is due to the need for a certain 'trigger' point, at which stage they'll unleash their full force upon the rioters. In some respects, I think Chirac is still wary of any possible backlash from the Left. He needs a really polarising event in the conflict before he can take decisive(and probably extremely brutal) action that'll vindicate him in the eyes of the Left without costing him their support.
I really, really hope that's the case.
Unfortunately if the sitatuation goes the way the Islamo-Fascist Terrorists want France will be quickly Balkanized and begin to resemble a third world country war zone. It would be a good idea for us to stop that before it goes that far. One thing that we could be doing is interupting their communications networks with hacks, misdirecting them toward instead of away from police, and more importantly causing them to lose confidence that they are actually communicating to whom they think. This would certainly be possible, and could make the difference between urban war and a drizzling out of riots. Of course I don't mean by 'we' that hackers engage in this, but that the authorities do so, in a well organized and efficient manner. Intercept communications, discern patterns, and then establish methods of deteriorating and confusing their ability to communicate with each other. Right now it seems they are exercising wanton disregard simply because they are getting away with it. They may be using technology cleverly, but their group-think can be destroyed by more-clever usage. Just a thought. I doubt it will be picked up on, but I thought I would offer the suggestion.
I thought I left a comment here, last night, about sigmoids as trifurcated functions. Was it removed? And if so, why??? Are discussions about sigmoid functions forbidden for some reason?
Sorry, it looks like I was taken to the wrong comments page. I commented on "Trends." Not sure how that happened...
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