Night Ten rages away in Paris as freedom fighters set fire to cars and schools. But have no fear, the French Government is holding a meeting: (h/t The Belmont Club)

The French government is holding crisis talks after a night of rioting which saw nearly 900 vehicles torched and at least 200 people arrested. … into the second week … appear to have spread beyond the capital … other French cities. … now concerns that the violence is being organised by groups of youths using the internet … de Villepin, has summoned eight key government ministers to his offices, to try and find a political answer to France’s worst rioting in decades.

A political answer to end the rioting?

And from the “You’re Doin’ A Great Job, Brownie” files:

Paris Attorney-General Yves Bot told Europe 1 radio that the riots were not spontaneous outbursts of anger and frustration from within immigrant communities.

Rather, he said, they had been organised, with “genuine tactics of mobility” involving masked young men on motorcycles hurling petrol bombs, and Internet appeals for young people to join in in other towns and cities.

“The movement is mainly directed against the institutions of the republic – but it does not have any ethnic character,” he added.

French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has tried to stand firm but is naturally being shouted down and ordered to apologize by the androgynously named Dominique De Villepin and asked to resign by the Communist and Green (same difference?) parties:

Sarkozy’s tough language describing the rioting youths as “hoodlums” and “scum” as well as the apparent lobbing by riot police of a teargas grenade into a mosque in Clichy-sous-Bois are also considered causes for the intensity of the unrest.

On Saturday, Villepin told the rector of the Paris mosque, Dalil Boubakeur, that police had not intentionally targetted the mosque, but that it was the result of an “unfortunate accident”.

Boubakeur went on to indirectly criticise Sarkozy by calling on the government to issue “words of peace”.

“Words of peace” stop arsonists in their tracks?

In a recent interview with shameless Bush mouthpiece Hugh Hewitt, the omnirelevant Mark Steyn offers troubling observations on the roots of France’s Muslim animus:

I went to one of these suburbs that’s currently ablaze three years ago. And what was interesting to me is I had to bribe a taxi driver a considerable amount of money just to take me out there. They’re miserable places. But what was interesting to me is that after that, I then flew on to the Middle East, and I was in Yemen, and a couple of other places. And what was interesting to me was that I found more menace in the suburbs of Paris than I did in some pretty scary places in the Middle East. I mean, there is a real…this, I think, is the start of a long Eurabian civil war we’re witnessing here.
[...]
They’re places where the writ of the French state does not run. The police don’t police there. They basically figure if you go there, you’re on your own. You’re taking your own chances there. I mean, I don’t think Americans understand quite the degree of alienation of some of these groups.
[...]
you know, we kept hearing all this stuff ever since September 11th, you know, the Muslim street is going to explode in anger. Well, it finally did, and it was in Paris, not in the Middle East.

When Hurricane Katrina nailed New Orleans, the French were kind enough to offer us a couple of generators and some cots. Let’s send them a hose or something. America’s Oldest Enemy deserves no less.

UPDATE 11/06: Mark Steyn has finally turned the subject of his radio interview into a full-fledged column, “Wake up, Europe, you’ve a war on your hands”:

Ever since 9/11, I’ve been gloomily predicting the European powder keg’s about to go up. ”By 2010 we’ll be watching burning buildings, street riots and assassinations on the news every night,” I wrote in Canada’s Western Standard back in February.

Silly me. The Eurabian civil war appears to have started some years ahead of my optimistic schedule. As Thursday’s edition of the Guardian reported in London: ”French youths fired at police and burned over 300 cars last night as towns around Paris experienced their worst night of violence in a week of urban unrest.”

”French youths,” huh? You mean Pierre and Jacques and Marcel and Alphonse?
[...]
What to do? In Paris, while ”youths” fired on the gendarmerie, burned down a gym and disrupted commuter trains, the French Cabinet split in two, as the ”minister for social cohesion” (a Cabinet position I hope America never requires) and other colleagues distance themselves from the interior minister, the tough-talking Nicolas Sarkozy who dismissed the rioters as ‘’scum.” President Chirac seems to have come down on the side of those who feel the scum’s grievances need to be addressed.

Check it out.

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