Update: The French press reported that the Interior Ministry released a final “verified” count of 1,147 vehicles burned in France over New Year’s Eve. The number is up 30.64% from last year’s total, 878.
REUTERS – At least 445 cars were torched over the night of New Year’s Eve in France, a 20 percent rise on last year, but there were relatively few clashes with police, the Interior Ministry and police said on Thursday.
Car burnings are regular occurrences in France but the registering the New Year’s Eve total has become something of a tradition since they achieved symbolic status in the violent rioting that shook many of the country’s poor suburbs in 2005.
With riots in Athens heightening worries that the economic crisis might spark a resurgence of the violence seen in the run-down “banlieues” then, 35,000 police were mobilised on New Year’s Eve, some 7,000 more than last year.
Officials were also on guard against possible attacks after five sticks of dynamite were left in a Paris department store just before Christmas by a so-far unidentified group demanding a withdrawal of French troops from Afghanistan.
A more than 30% increase – and please note in the news report that its “poor suburbs” and “unidentified group” which is demanding France get out of Afghanistan. That the poor suburbs in question are heavily Moslem and controlled by Islamists and that only Islamists would want France out of Afghanistan shows just how bad its got – Europe is dying by self inflicted wounds, and they won’t even tell the truth to themselves about what is going on.
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