Monday, November 07, 2005

France makes the US look good

Unbelievable reading about a dozen nights of mayhem in France. Hard to fathom hundreds of cars, even a thousand being torched in 1 night (favourite tidbit - Nationwide vandals burned 814 - i'm sure their count is so accurate).

I lived through the Rodney King riots, and we were justifiably pissed at Gates for not setting up road blocks so Reginald Denny didn't get his head bricked in, but despite how dysfunctional Gates & Bradley were, the peak violence really only lasted 2 nights.

The government's response to Katrina was pathetic, and every newsman on the spot castigated the government for being so out of touch for taking 4 days to get the troops into New Orleans to restore order.

So how can France possibly let violence go on for close to a fortnight? Impose martial law in the towns & pull in every single soldier you have until order is restored. I'm hoping something was lost in this translation whether the army should be brought in, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said, "We are not at that point." When do you reach that point? Do you assume that the violence burns itself out along with thousands of cars? Let's see if it's only 550 cars tonight, and only 387 tomorrow, then my next weekend we'll only have a few dozen torched. Mind boggling incompetance & denial.

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