Thursday, November 03, 2005

Everyone needs a hobby

(Via LGF) The International Herald Tribune reports:
Sarkozy says that violence in French suburbs is a daily fact of life.

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.
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:
We have found our thrills: playing with riot police in the evening," one 22-year-old told AFP, under cover of anonymity.

"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."
I wonder if he can dodge bullets too? Except the police don't really seem to be fighting. Yet.

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?