Europe Burns as EU Leaders Fiddle

(Toulouse) A bus is burning at the entrance of 'Le Mirail', a neighbourhood of Toulouse, France. French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin warned that the country would impose curfews in its city suburbs where necessary to curb riots that are raging across the country.

Rioting by French youths spread to 300 towns overnight and a 61-year- old man hurt in the violence died of his wounds, the first fatality in 11 days of unrest that has shocked the country, police said Monday.

As urban unrest spread to neighboring Belgium and possibly Germany, the French government faced growing criticism for its inability to stop the violence, despite massive police deployment and continued calls for calm. One riot-hit town in suburban Paris said it was preparing to enforce a curfew.

Meanwhile, governments worldwide urged their citizens to be careful in France.

President Jacques Chirac, in private comments more conciliatory than his warnings Sunday that rioters would be caught and punished, acknowledged that France has failed to integrate the French-born children of Arab and black African immigrants in poor suburbs who have been taking part in the violence, according to Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga, who met Monday with the French leader. More...

The typical Franco-appeasment philosophy reflected above infers that the criminals performing these acts are not to blame! Instead, as President Chriac intimates, it's social inequity that has caused this lawlessness not the individual acts of citizens violating the law! I suppose he feels this is a form of freedom of expression, Parisian style? Viva la France and the Revolution! How hypocritical coming from the mouth of the "holier than thou" EU leader.

The chickens are now coming home to roost in Central Europe. Watch for differences between countries with respect to how this lawlessness is dealt with. I suspect the Italians will not tolerate any of this, nor the Germans for that matter. But every European leader knows that how the French handle these riots, which from every indication now appear to be out of control, may very well have reprocussions in their own countries! We smell backlash coming....