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| Europe |
| Mark Steyn on le Intifade |
| 2005-11-04 |
| Transcript of Mark's appearance on Hugh Hewitt yesterday; EFL. HH: And so, you're not going to Paris anytime soon? MS: I'm actually thinking of going to Paris. 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. HH: Now that's a pretty provocative statement. Let's begin by...describe these for us. Are they like the Moscow or the Leningrad or the St. Petersberg tenements that stretch on and on? MS: Well, actually, I would say they're more miserable than that... HH: Wow. MS: ...because a lot of them are like concrete bunkers. They have very strange things there...these public buildings that you have to have a kind of security card to get into. So, you'll be going to see someone, and you'll be frantically sticking this kind of key card in the door, while you're standing outside on this very exposed sidewalk. They're places where people who are not Muslim feel very ill at ease. 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, there's a French cabinet minister whose title is the minister for social cohesion. And I think that would be a pretty odd title to have for a cabinet secretary in the United States. HH: Or the U.K. for that matter. Now, it's the seventh night of rioting as we speak, and it got very violent last night. I don't know what's going on tonight. Do you...how do they solve this? I mean, what do they even do in France to get a handle on this? MS: Well, I think this is the dispute that's going on between Monsieur Sarcosi, whose the, what passes, I think, for a conservative figure in French politics, who really wants to crack down, and who wants to say to these people you can behave like respectable French citizens, or we're going to take action and we're going to clean up these street. And then Monsieur de Villepin, whose currently the prime minister, whose line is basically that we should accommodate their grievances, and all the rest of it. And judging from Chirac's speech, where he says we have to understand their grievances and their alienation, I think the European tendency to appease these people is coming into play in the French cabinet. And I would say the one consequence of that is that a lot more people are going to be voting for fringe parties in the next election. We forget. The last presidential election, 20% of the French electorate voted for the fascist candidate. HH: For Le Pen. Yeah. This is what...what option do they have if these riots continue, though? They can't appease people who won't be appeased. MS: No, they can't. And essentially, you're dealing with communities that are totally isolated from the mainstream of French life. Where all kinds of practices that wouldn't be tolerated, that are not officially tolerated by French law, such as polygamy, for example. Polygamy is openly practiced in these...in les Bonlier, as they call these suburbs, these Muslim quarters of Paris. I mean, we're talking about five miles from the Elysee Palace. Five miles from where Jacques Chirac sits. And you finally got...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. . . . |
| Posted by:Mike |