L'Escroc tried to sound authoritative last night and the rioters promptly raised the stakes by shooting a few riot police. In addition there is of course lots of sound and fury in the blogosphere and amongst the supposedly rsponsibly MSM, most of which I think is to put it bluntly - WRONG. A leader in the Torygraph today rabitting on about Islamic radicalization is an excellent example, although another editorial on the same subject is better. However there are good pieces of analysis too from the Belgravia Dispatch, the EU Referendum and Belmont Club, to name a few and the BBC is (amazingly) providing comparatively excellent coverage including picking up on the unfair demonizing of Sarko, something which seems to be escaping everyone else.
Anyway having spent Saturday night getting drunk near Fayence - yeah yeah another binge drinking british lout - I can't really comment about the reported disturbances in Nice and Cannes other than to say that I'm not really surprised. However what I think many people are missing is that public protest is a standard part of what passes for political debate in France. The government is generally speaking so blind that it takes a riot or blockage of fuel depots or similar to draw their attention to the fact that there is a problem. As Wretchard noted at the Belmont Club, most of the riotous actions are damaging property with little harm to people and particularly very little deliberate harm to people who are not riot-police, firefighters or otherwise people in authority. Yes there was a disabled woman burned in a bus, but other busses have been torched only after the arsonists told everyone to get off and indeed it seems like she was burned mainly because she was disabled and thus too slow to get off. This isn't to excuse what is going on but it does, I hope, make it clear that what we are seeing is not as serious as it could be.
I think this is important. If the riots remain at the level they are at now - i.e. semi-random property damage - then what we are seeing fits in with the idea that this is intended to call attention to a problem and demand that it be fixed, rather than a revolution. The problem, of course, is that fixing the problem is a long term one and not something that can be fixed by throwing money at the rioters (although that appears to be Vile Pin's plan) so I'm not at all sure how this thing will end. One other problem is quite simply that the rioters believe (with considerable evidence on their side) that they will not run much of a risk of punishment if all they do is burn things and that anyway the chances of getting caught are low. Currently the rioters have considerable sympathy from the chattering classes who are all wallowing in guilt that they have been so ungenerous in welfare payments, living accomodation etc to the underclass, which further indicates that the chances of the riots stopping without some sort of major government action seems low.
However one thing that I am sure of is that over time more and more people will believe Sarko and probably worse start looking to Le Pen for a solution as it becomes more and more obvious that the government hasn't got a clue what to do or how to stop things. I would also be unsurprised if we don't see some would be arsonists trying to burn the wrong thing and getting lynched by the victims and their friends. If so it will be fascinating to see what viewpoint the government takes of this response....