Kicking Ass, Burning Cars

And they're just about out of cars.

Arabs Blame French Society, Discrimination
By TAREK AL-ISSAWI
The Associated Press
Wednesday, November 9, 2005; 2:07 PM

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- France's riots have set off a round of troubled debate across the Arab world: Most here blame a failure to offer opportunity to immigrants, but others see a more ominous clash of cultures over Islam.

Across the Middle East, the images of burning cars and stone-throwing young people have dominated newspapers and television. Analysts have hotly debated the riots' meaning, their cause and whether they might spread.

Wow. They're actually seeing video from France? I'm wondering if Brian Williams and Anderson Cooper are on vacation. Maybe they're still on assignment in New Orleans.

Great story. It absolves the criminals and blames the victims, and somehow squeezes in some Muslim paranoia and self-pity, even though of course this all has nothing whatsoever to do with Islam.

Here's a good rebuttal:

Troubling "Facts" of the Paris Riots
How our newspapers might turn bias to balance.
by Bruce Thornton
Private Papers
November 6, 2005

In the case of the Paris rioters, there are other explanations for their behavior that are more accurate than liberal clichés about "frustration.” As Dr Jack Wheeler puts it, "The problem is not that these Moslem kids are unemployed, but that they are unemployable. They are illiterate, unskilled except in crime, don't speak French well, refuse to assimilate into French culture and think being Moslem is more important than being French. Worse, they are paid by the French welfare state not to work, living well off the dole (and crime). The problem was epitomized by these words of a young Moslem rioter to a French reporter: 'In the day we sleep, go see our girlfriends, and play video games. And in the evening we have a good time: we go and fight the police.'”