France celebrated New Year’s Eve in its own special way: 1,137 cars went up in flames all across the country. According to Reuters, the number of vehicles torched was only 10 short of the record 1,147 burned last year. France’s Interior Ministry mobilized 45,000 police during the night, 10,000 more than 12 months ago – apparently with little effect.
Police detained 549 people overnight; nearly double the 288 arrested during 2009 New Year celebrations – apparently with little effect.
Elswhere in Europe , 17 cars were set on fire in the Hague, government seatl of the Netherlands, well below last year’s total of 52, says Dutchnews.nl.
In Germany, brennende-autos.de, the website that chronicles burning cars in Berlin (and even maps them on Google,) did not report any special New Year’s Eve activity. They burn cars all year long in Germany’s capital, 207 in 2009.
Why do the French torch cars?
It’s called being civilized
Something to do with their cultural superiority or something.
Well, even the native French are famous for stirring up trouble and violence if they are disgruntled with anyone or anything, but the torching of cars is the work of immigrant gangs. In most of Europe, Political Correctness is the guiding light for describing events in society, so instead of calling these hooligans with their right name, meadia prefers to call the perps “youths”, “youngsters”, “teens”, and whatever else that does not offend anyone. And so the torchings can go on and on….
he speaks the truth!
Europe is much less PC than the US,
for better: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/75/Jyllands-Posten-pg3-article-in-Sept-30-2005-edition-of-KulturWeekend-entitled-Muhammeds-ansigt.png
or worse: http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/09_01/SwissSheepL_468x635.jpg
@no_slushbox:
I beg to differ on your statment that Europe is “much less PC than the US”. Your link to the famous drawings of “The Prophet” with bombs in his turban in Jyllandsposten, definitely is the exception that confirms the rule. If my memory serves me right, the Danish government was about the only government in Europe that did not crawl on its belly with agonizing excuses to the totalitarian forces that unleashed a storm on all things Western/European in the wake of these drawings. Governments all over Europe were shouting to make their “excuséz-moi’s” towards “The Muslim World” heard. Everybody was scrambling to attack those who used their freedom of speech, while excusing the “breaches of conduct” that were committed against, once more, “The Muslim World”. You haven’t even felt the scent of Political Correctness until you have followed the European scene for a while! The grossly misleading reporting on the torching of cars in France i just a tiny part of this charade.
What is sad is that this almost certainly costs less per car than cash for clunkers did in America.
I can’t understand anyone who touches another persons car….come punch me in the face like a man but do NOT touch my vehicles, house, or wife.
@Robstar – the point is that the car burning is NOT some kind of vindictive payback directed at 1,137 individuals. It is a collective protest about something else. Society, inclusion, employment, equal opportunity…. Probably those involved in the torchings each have their own individual motivations. Amongst which would be a sense of collective power when most of them are fairly powerless within French society. All moral arguments aside, setting fire to a car would be kind of fun and exciting huh?!
Torching an individuals car does nothing. They should write their representative or peacefully protest. They can still do that in France, right?
come punch me in the face like a man
We are talking about the French, oui?
Sorry, couldn’t resist the cheap shot…
2 problems here:
1. The headline says 1147 were torched on New Year’s Eve. Then in the first sentence of the article, it says that 1137 cars were torched on New Year’s Eve.
2. The article goes on to say that The Hague is the capital of The Netherlands. It isn’t, Amsterdam is.
As Top Gear said: Given the French reputation for dodgy electricals, how do we know that these cars aren’t catching fire themselves?
Frau Corrigan:
Right on both counts. The Holland matter is a bit complicated: Whereas Amsterdam is officially the capital, The Hague is the seat of their government.
Herr Schmitt,
I know about the complications with Amsterdam and The Hague. It’s a country I know VERY well.
P.S. It’s not “Holland” it’s “The Netherlands”. “Holland” is a province (divided into North and South Holland) in “The Netherlands”. It’s a bit like calling Germany, “Lower Saxony”.
The French are known particularly for fine culture, fine food and protests. The culture suggest that government should be afraid of the people and not the other way around. Hence regular protests and 1137 cars burning for seemingly minor issues.
Another factor is that France has a lot of immigrant population that are in the country legally but cannot attain citizenship and don’t adopt their host country culture. The police are fairly brutal to these people and they often act out violently. Think of the riots in Paris in 2005/2006.
(T)he point is that the car burning is NOT some kind of vindictive payback directed at 1,137 individuals. It is a collective protest about something else. Society, inclusion, employment, equal opportunity…. Probably those involved in the torchings each have their own individual motivations. Amongst which would be a sense of collective power when most of them are fairly powerless within French society.
Nonsense. The car torchings, not a new thing in France, are the result of Muslim youth imposing their hatred for French (and western) culture. It’s a micro version of economic terrorism. To beat around the bush regarding the cause of the torching is to put one’s head in the sand, much as is being done by the PC media in it’s reporting of the torchings.
Right on the money!
At the risk of being called a racist, un-PC, culturally insensitive, and the like, here’s a novel suggestion for any muslim immigrant that hates western society. Go back to where you came from! Leave!
Right on. PC stuff is bullshit and the truth will set you free.
Every single time these torchings happen & I write my friends and say, “I hope you guys are ok” , they tell me the same thing as Mike_H.
They should just go back to their home countries if they don’t like it. Their non-home country, and the taxpayers in it, is already providing wildly more opportunity than they’d have at home.
Actually I would venture to say a large number of the "torchers" are not French at all. That’s the problem.
Uh-oh. Those Christian terrorists are at it again…
From Reuters: “Car burnings are regular occurrences in poor suburbs that ring France’s big cities, but the arson is especially prevalent during New Year’s Eve revelry.
The number of vehicles torched was only 10 short of the record 1,147 burned this time last year, even though the Interior Ministry mobilized 45,000 police during the night — 10,000 more than 12 months ago.”
“poor suburbs that ring France’s big cities” is PC-speak for Muslim enclaves.
So how many folks in France celebrate New Years’ Eve by sitting in their backseat with a fifth and a shotgun? That would be my response after a few years of these shenenigans.
Funny, I’ve never heard about cars being burned on riots in Dearborn, MI (big Arab/Muslim population).
That’s because the supposedly racist, free-market worshipping, religious-right-dominated American economy has done a much better job of integrating immigrants of all nationalities and religions than the supposedly tolerant, highly regulated French economy.
I agree we do a better job of integrating immigrants, but it’s more cultural than economic.
I had a friend in college who was a Moroccan girl, her family lived in France and then moved to the United States and there were a lot of differences in how immigrants are treated between here and there. For example, if you’re a North African in France, the French will refer to you as an “immigrant” even if you’re third generation! There’s no “melting pot” to melt in to.
After all Canadian Muslims don’t riot, either (AFAIK), and their economy is more west-European style.
I don’t think the problem lies within the ‘muslims’ (i.e. about 1/6 of world population). Do we have to generalize that much?
I rather agree with the solution of JuniorMint and believe in Clarksonism: Shoot the torcher in the face.
“I don’t think the problem lies within the ‘muslims’ ”
Yeah, and if it did, Dearborn would have been an inferno New Year’s Eve. It wasn’t. There’s something “French” about this, immigrant or not.
“ITS TEH MUSLIMZ VS. “TEH WEST” is a really cartoonish and childish view.
To tar all Muslims with the “terrorist” brush is inaccurate and simplistic.
But to deny that there is a group of people who are fighting against what they perceive to be an immoral Western culture and form of government, and that these radicals are Muslims and claim inspiration from the Koran for their actions, is equally simplistic.
Last time I checked, it wasn’t members of the Amish sect attempting to blow up airliners…
Reacting to the over-simplification of a very real problem by sticking one’s head in the sand is not a helpful or effective response.
Well, no Amish, but Eric Rudolph was a Christian and blew up the Olympics, bars, and abortion clinics. Then we have the Unabomber, who was a secular nutcase and bombed people. And in Japan the guy who gassed the Tokyo subway was a Buddhist (!).
It’s all a case of disgruntled misfits prone to violence grabbing on to X (X being Jihad, or racism, or Communism, or Buddhism or whatever) to justify it. There are probably more disgruntled violent misfits in the Muslim world than other places right now, but it’s a pretty recent phenomenon (post-1979). And even then, it’s not really the entirety of the Muslim world, but the Muslim world between Cairo and Islamabad. I don’t hear about Indonesian or Kazakh or Malay or Singaporeian (sp?) Muslims being violent much.
Eric Rudolph and the Unabomber are in jail where they belong. I don’t see any churches recruiting people to take Mr. Rudolph’s place, nor do I see anti-technology radicals doing more than writing articles or teaching university courses.
And I believe that Indonesia has had problems with some elements of its Muslim population.
The simple fact is that there is a very tiny, but very radical, sect of Islam that is dedicated to fighting what they see as “ungodly” western influences and secularism. The great majority of Muslims do not belong to this group, and really want nothing to do with it, but most of the terrorist activity in the U.S. and Europe right now is being orchestrated by Muslims from this radical slice of Islam.
B10er, if we go that far back, then, no doubt that Germans are the most brutal terrorists this world has ever seen.
My Sister in laws 4 year old Chevy caught fire at my house over the weekend and her family is of French decent. I know for a fact she did not do it on purpose, but it is Ironic none the less.
It’s the French version of a “cash for clunkers” program. Maybe the owners actually torched their old Renaults and Citroens which they could not sell.
Twotone
I don’t get what French are not happy with?
They have:
unlimited sick days (payed for 65% government and 35% your employer)
minimum 5 (five) weeks paid vacation (even if you’re employed part time)
35-hour work weeks
100% free health care
100% free college education
6 month paid for maternity leave (you can take an extra 6 month unpaid)
when you have a baby government sends (twice a week for 4 hrs each time) a social worker to help you with the newborn (to babysit, to do laundry, to cook, etc.)
And yet they’re not satisfied.
Bimmer, nothing is really free.
Rich people are unhappy to pay for poor people’s free vacation.
Poor people are unhappy because they are unemployed due to the fact employers are unwilling to pay for all that free crap.
Communism doesn’t work.
Not really free, more than 70% of their pay is cut for that “free” stuff (before income tax, property taxes, TV tax, 20% VAT, 80% tax on gas,…). The Joys of Socialism…
wsn,
I live in Canada, where, like in majority of civilized countries (such as UK, Australia, France, Finland etc.) we have free healthcare. Maybe you should watch a film by Michael Moore ‘Sicko’. It was aired last Friday on government owned CBC. And see for yourself what treatment real heroes, who risked their life to do search and rescue and later recovery for victims of 9/11, recieved from American healtcare providers for their efforts and for putting their health on the line. And then you can make a judgment.
Geeber’s right. In addition, see Edward Banfield’s splendid book The Unheavenly City, especially the chapter “Rioting For Fun and Profit.” Urban “unrest” has an entertainment aspect (think of the rash of arson on Detroit’s “Devil’s Night”) as well as opportunities for gain (i.e., looting). France’s climate of political correctness grants victimhood status to those thuggish Muslim lawbreakers–er, I mean “youths”–so there is a further incentive: a sense of entitlement to misbehave.
Looks like Renault is about to get a spike in its sales for January.
We do not seem to be hearing from French people who own the cars that are burned. You can be certain that we would be hearing from car owners if this sort of thing was going on in anywhere near this scale in the United States. So what happens the first week of January every year, is there a big run on dealerships for cars to replace last year’s burned-out ones? Lots of absenteeism at work? The French equivalent of >>Yeah, sorry boss, I’ll be late to work because the [rioting suburban youths of pc-ly unspecified religious orientation] burned my damn car again<<?
If this happened in the US anywhere outside of of the unconstitutional enclaves of HI, NJ, MA, IL, or NY, it would only happen once, because there would be a pile of bodies.
IIRC, when he was running for President, Mr. Sarkozy swore that he was going to prevent this kind of thing by “going into those suburbs and clean them out with a Kärcher (power washer)”!
wsn,
I live in Canada, where, like in majority of civilized countries (such as UK, Australia, France, Finland etc.) we have free healthcare. Maybe you should watch a film by Michael Moore ‘Sicko’. It was aired last Friday on government owned CBC. And see for yourself what treatment real heroes, who risked their life to do search and rescue and later recovery for victims of 9/11, recieved from American healtcare providers for their efforts and for putting their health on the line. And then you can make a judgment.
At the risk of being repetitive, France has a large, unintegrated, Muslim population that lives in ‘ghettos’ where the police are afraid to enter. Here in Canada, we have our own experience with ‘french\'(read Quebecois), racists who enforce their own language and culture laws on the rest of the non-french population. Like the French, our media does not report on this for fear of an even more violent backlash from the francophone population. I can in some ways understand the frustration these ‘immigrants’ feel towards the government in France. For a culture that supposedly invented ‘Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood’, they do a pretty piss-poor job of it at home. Assimilation is the answer – in France and in Canada. The Americans got it right in this regard.