Muslim Youths Riot in Paris
5 Nov 2005
The City of Love ain’t so lovely these days. Muslim youths rioted again last night in the suburbs of Paris for the ninth straight night. Along with burning more than 500 vehicles, incinerating 27 buses, torching a warehouse, and preventing firefighters from evacuating a sick person from an apartment by pelting the paramedics with stones and setting the awaiting ambulance on fire, Muslim youths also doused a handicapped bus passenger with a flammable liquid and set her ablaze. In response to these deplorable incidents, France’s Justice Minister, Pascal Clement, was said to be suffering from “great emotion.”
France’s Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, met Friday with more than a dozen Muslim youths from the troubled Parisian suburbs. The meeting at Villepin’s palatial offices in central Paris was an attempt on the Prime Minister’s part to appease the youths and end the rioting. Villepin emerged from the meeting promising to put in place an “action plan” to address the youths’ concerns and to improve conditions in their neighborhoods.
The French government is warning its people not to see the rioting through the prism of religion. According to government experts, the violence has nothing to do with Islam. It’s more a game of copycats, insists one government official; youths in one area trying to do or outdo what youths in other areas are doing. “It’s a kind of hit parade by the neighborhoods,” the official added, dismissing it all as nothing more than young people trying to get on the evening news.
Ah, gay Parie, the city where no evil exist, only misunderstandings, and all of them easily solved at roadside cafes by negotiators nibbling on cheese and sipping wine. Well, I must go; we’re having French toast for breakfast. Au revoir!
Don Walton
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