Sarkozy says that violence in French suburbs is a daily fact of life.Must be great to be a used car dealer and bad to be an insurance agent, though. Details (hat tip: Damian Penny) from the AFP make it sound like a fun time fer sure:
Since the start of the year, 9,000 police cars have been stoned and, each night, 20 to 40 cars are torched, Sarkozy said in an interview last week with the newspaper Le Monde.
We have found our thrills: playing with riot police in the evening," one 22-year-old told AFP, under cover of anonymity.I wonder if he can dodge bullets too? Except the police don't really seem to be fighting. Yet.
"As long as the police come and provoke us in the evening, we'll bring out the Molotov cocktails, stones, petanque balls, planks," he said.
Around him, half a dozen youths nodded in agreement.
"In the day we sleep, go see our girlfriends, play video games... And in the evening we have a good time: at 9:00 pm we go and fight the police," said one.
"It's like being in Matrix," the science-fiction film, he said, adding that he liked to see the "riot police in a panic, hiding behind their shields."
And count on the usual suspects to start the whining about misunderstood tykes:
Heavy criticism has focused on French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy -- a man with hopes of becoming French president in 2007. His "zero tolerance" policy and harsh language (Sarkozy vowed to rid the suburbs of "louts" and "scum") have made many uncomfortable, as has his tendency to blame the youth of Clichy-sous-Bois exclusively for the crisis.It was spontaneous combustion?
