imkittymyers at hotmail dot com
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
LES MISERABLES*
France's Toll of Destruction
Not a single word in the press anymore about the ongoing vandalism in France’s lost neighbourhoods. Yesterday the French government officially declared the riots over. Police figures are at exactly 98 cars torched on Wednesday night. This, the police say, is “a normal average.” Consequently the 20th consecutive night of violence was declared the last one.
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In contemporary multicultural France such staggering figures of lawlessness are considered to be a sign of “normality” and are hardly reported in the mainstream media. Neither is the following little piece of information. This week Professor Dominique Reynié of Sorbonne University in Paris, told the Brussels weekly Knack that the French state was obliged to borrow money last week to pay the wages of its civil servants. “The money has run out. One must concede: this is no example of a strong state.”
Perhaps what we are witnessing in Europe, but what the politicians and the media dare not say aloud, is the implosion of the (welfare) state. The Soviet Union suddenly collapsed in 1989, when owing to the inability of communism to create wealth, the state went bankrupt, was unable to maintain its army and hold its empire together. In France, the same thing might be happening. The socialist welfare state is no longer able to maintain law and order and is abandoning entire neighbourhoods to anarchy.
* The French word "miserables" means both poor wretches and scoundrels or villains.
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