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Dear Friends,

You haven't heard from us in a few months - but we've been working hard
to protect your freedom to speak online. And now we need your help.

Right now - there are TWO bills in Congress that will affect bloggers -
one good, one bad. The bill that deserves our support is HR 1606 - The
Online Freedom of Speech Act.

The other bill - HR 4194 - is a substitute offered by those most
interested in regulating the Internet. Its supporters are engaged in an
aggressive campaign to pass this legislation in Congress, in an effort
to muddy the waters and distract Congress from passing real protections
for bloggers. They're so terrified of your freedom to speak your mind
that they've actually compared giving freedom to bloggers to the scandal
involving Scooter Libby in the White House. (No, we're not making that
up.)

In order to pass the bill we want - we need - to stop the sham
alternative bill, HR 4194.

Their measure, HR 4194 purports to protect "bloggers" from campaign
finance regulation. But, in fact, it is so riddled with exceptions and
exclusions that it is worse that nothing.

Click here to search for your member of Congress by zip
code. Tell them that the blogosphere is not behind HR 4194.

Problems with 4194:

* It offers no guidance as to the treatment of group political
activity, potentially treating all group websites that discuss federal
candidates as political committees

* It would stifle technological innovation. HR 4914 specifically
mentions "blogging," but ignores such as already-widely used
technologies like podcasting, wikis and peer-to-peer networks, let alone
the technologies of tomorrow.

* Its alleged protection to incorporated bloggers offers no real
protection. In comments filed before the FEC, supporters of HR 4194
have stated explicitly that those websites which endorse, expressly
advocate, and urge readers to donate funds to the election of preferred
candidates do not qualify for protection under the law. This would force
bloggers that speak forcefully about politics to seek legal counsel - a
complete disaster.

This measure is a smokescreen designed to confuse the issue and prevent
better laws from passing. Call your Representatives in Congress and
make sure they understand that HR 4194 is unacceptable.

PS - If you're a blogger, make sure your member of Congress knows that
you're telling your readers about HR 4194. And if you post about this issue - please send a trackback to
this post so we can show Congress what bloggers think about their
watered-down attempts to "protect" free speech online.

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From Leaders fiddle as France burns

By Colin Randall in Paris
(Filed: 08/11/2005)

11am update: France declares state of emergency
In pictures: Paris burns after week of rioting

France was struggling to overcome one of its gravest post-war crises last night as every major city faced the threat of fierce rioting that began 12 nights ago and now seems to have spun out of control.


A mechanic inspects the wreckage of a burned-out car
Despite an assurance from Philippe Douste Blazy, the foreign minister, that France was "not a dangerous country", the spread of violence prompted the Foreign Office in London to warn travellers that trouble could break out "almost anywhere".

Dominique de Villepin, the beleaguered prime minister, announced that officials in riot-hit areas would be authorised to impose late-night curfews "wherever it is necessary" in a bid to halt the disturbances.

He rejected calls by a police union for troops to be sent in but said that 1,500 reservists were being called up and repeated an appeal to parents to keep adolescent rioters off the streets.

Although the disorder began on the intimidating sink estates of Paris's northern suburbs, trouble had been reported yesterday in the early hours from most regions of the country. Even areas such as Brittany, the Loire and Bordeaux, favoured by British holidaymakers and second- home hunters, have now been drawn into the worst wave of unrest in France since the spring revolt of 1968 set in motion the downfall of Gen Charles de Gaulle.


More than 1,400 vehicles were destroyed during a night of increasing violence

Yesterday the violence also claimed its first life. A 61-year-old man died in hospital three days after being beaten unconscious when he left his home in a northern Paris suburb intending to stop rubbish bins being set on fire.

Even before renewed disturbances broke out last night, figures showed that rioters had wrecked 4,700 vehicles, injured more than 100 police and rescue workers, and opened fire in at least six separate incidents

Trends
Trends
The Times of London has a handy table of the numbers of cars burned during each day of the French riots. Tim Blair and Mark Steyn have called this metric the Car-B-Q. A graph showing the numbers of cars Car-B-Qed against day is shown below

Commentary
Two inflection points immediately jump out. The first occurs on Day 6 when the car burnings really took off after trending flat for the previous 5 days. I think this represents the missed opportunity to deal with the riots at an early stage, either with large concessions or large crackdowns. I don't think it mattered which as long as the authorities acted decisively, which they didn't, because this was the period when the French government stood paralyzed like a deer in headlights.

The second inflection point is Day 11, when the graph appears to be flattening out. Appears because Day 11 is also the day in which the modality of the disturbances began to change from Car-B-Qs to arson against churches, schools and buildings combined with shooting attacks against police officers. But clearly it may be the case that the French riots may be running out of steam and therefore susceptible to the countermeasures the government is now putting in place. Let's wait and see.


Early skirmish in the Eurabian civil war

By Mark Steyn
(Filed: 08/11/2005)

According to its Office du Tourisme, the big event in Evreux this past weekend was supposed to be the annual fete de la pomme, du cidre et du fromage at the Place de la Mairie. Instead, in this charmingly smouldering cathedral town in Normandy, a shopping mall, a post office, two schools, upwards of 50 vehicles and, oh yes, the police station were destroyed by - what's the word? - "youths".

Over at the Place de la Mairie, M le Maire himself, Jean-Louis Debre, seemed affronted by the very idea that un soupcon de carnage should be allowed to distract from the cheese-tasting. "A hundred people have smashed everything and strewn desolation," he told reporters. "Well, they don't form part of our universe."

Maybe not, but unfortunately you form part of theirs.

Mr Debre, a close pal of President Chirac's, was a little off on the numbers. There were an estimated 200 "youths" rampaging through Evreux. With baseball bats. They injured, among others, a dozen firemen. "To those responsible for the violence, I want to say: Be serious!" Mr Debre told France Info radio. "If you want to live in a fairer, more fraternal society, this is not how to go about it."

Oh, dear. Who's not "being serious" here? In Normandy, it's not just the cheese that's soft and runny. Granted that France's over-regulated sclerotic economy profoundly obstructs the social mobility of immigrants, even Mr Debris - whoops, sorry - even Mr Debre cannot be so out of touch as to think "seriously" that the rioters are rioting for "a fairer, more fraternal society". But maybe he does. The political class and the media seem to serve as mutual reinforcers of their obsolete illusions. Or as the Washington Post's headline put it: "Rage of French youth is a fight for recognition".

Actually, they're very easy to "recognise": just look out the window, they're the ones torching your Renault 5. I'd wager the "French" "youth" find that headline as hilarious as the Jets in West Side Story half a century ago, when they taunted Officer Krupke with "society's" attempts to "understand" them: we're depraved on account of we're deprived. Perhaps some enterprising Paris impresario will mount a production of West Eid Story with choreographed gangs of North African Muslims sashaying through the Place de la Republique, incinerating as they go.

Let?s pretend we don't see it, and it might disappear

Let?s pretend there isn?t any alarm. More to the point, let?s call it all alarmism. If doesn?t explain the traffic and chatter on the boards that the PR slicks can?t influence. Here?s one of the people out there exposing a corner-store jihadist who has been using chat boards to ply his trade:

Go to !No Pasaran! for the reast of the story.

It is claimed by some that by over reacting we may create a religous war where none yet exists. I am afraid that time has past and on the matter of religous war or no religous war we no longer have a choice.

It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace-- but there is no peace. The war is actually begun!

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There's still plenty of room.Add your self to

The Committees of Correspondence Frappr map

Blogs that link to this post are: The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns
(though to be honest MrBig should have linked to the post below this one, we gonna get this worked
out one way or the other!)
Welcome to my map, Sam, MrBig and Laura, Good to see you JJ

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Blogs that Trackback to this Post:

Third World County , The Conservative Cat,
The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns Diane's Stuff

Y'al come back now, Y'heah? ;-)

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French Police Arrest 250 As Arson Grows

ACHERES, France - Youths armed with gasoline bombs fanned out from Paris' poor, troubled suburbs to shatter the tranquility of resort cities on the Mediterranean, torching scores of vehicles, nursery schools and other targets during a 10th straight night of arson attacks.
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Police deployed a helicopter and tactical teams to chase down youths speeding from one attack to another in cars and on motorbikes. Some 2,300 police were brought into the Paris region to bolster security, France-Info said. More than 250 people were arrested.

The violence ? originally concentrated in neighborhoods northeast of Paris with large immigrant populations ? is forcing France to confront long-simmering anger in its suburbs, where many Africans and their French-born children live on society's margins, struggling with unemployment, poor housing, racial discrimination, crime and a lack of opportunity.

The unrest, triggered by fury over the deaths of two teenagers, has taken on unprecedented scope and intensity. The violence reached far-flung corners of France on Saturday, from Rouen in Normandy to Bordeaux in the southwest to Strasbourg near the German border, but the Paris region has borne the brunt.

In quiet Acheres, on the edge of the St. Germain forest west of Paris, arsonists burned a nursery school, where part of the roof caved in, and about a dozen cars in four attacks that the mayor said seemed "perfectly organized."

Children's photos clung to the blackened walls, and melted plastic toys littered the floor. Residents gathered at the school gate demanded that the army be deployed or suggested that citizens band together to protect their neighborhoods. Mayor Alain Outreman tried to cool tempers.

UPDATE
The Moderate Voice has video and an extensive list of links covering this issue. Bravo!

Blogs of War now has a special Europe section to cover the French Intifada.

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The spin is amazing.

Violence in Paris suburbs sparks copy-cat unrest

EPINAY-SUR-SEINE, France (Reuters) - Violence erupted again in poor suburbs of Paris where youths torched buildings and dozens of cars and sporadic unrest spread in the early hours of Saturday to at least three other French cities.

In a potentially worrying development for Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin's beleaguered government, police said more cars were set alight outside the greater Paris area than in the capital's suburbs, the epicenter of riots for more than a week.

Violence erupted again? Should that not be violence continues to spread? Is theis the 10th or 11th day fo the French Intifada?


France shaken as riots spread

Arson attacks, running battles with police, random gunfire and looting over 10 nights have spread from the dingy Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois to dozens of other predominantly Muslim slums, where religious fundamentalism competes with drug pushers for the attention of alienated youths.

In an alarming turn early yesterday, police said the unrest had even reached the centre of the French capital, where more than a dozen vehicles were torched.

A growing number of rioters seemed to have found a political demand: the resignation of the Interior Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy. But Mr Sarkozy, who is accused of having inflamed the riots by calling the youths that began them "louts" and "scum", is refusing to moderate his tough stand, telling yesterday's Le Monde that the Government's strategy of firmness was correct

Oh wow they go on a rampage and Sarkozy if at fauilt because he HURT THEIR feelings by calling them names.

PS an appropriated English translation of the word he used would be rascals.

It is true that the French Government has much to be held to blame for, the segregation, and ghettoizing of the Muslims Immigrants was a very bad idea and the French People's inability to assimilate foreigners is a problem too, BUT when you compare the squalor of the Muslim enclaves in France with the squalor and the destitution these people would have endured if they had never come to France?

I mean if you are living in subsidized housing, means given you by the State and the crowding is so oppressive, MAYBE having 10 or 11 children adds to the problem?

The truth is they should pray to Allah with gratitude that they face now a French Government rather than a Muslim one.

If the later they would be facing Hama Rules.

n February 1982 the secular Syrian government of President Hafez al-Assad faced a mortal threat from Islamic extremists, who sought to topple the Assad regime. How did it respond? President Assad identified the rebellion as emanating from Syria's fourth-largest city ? Hama ? and he literally leveled it, pounding the fundamentalist neighborhoods with artillery for days. Once the guns fell silent, he plowed up the rubble and bulldozed it flat, into vast parking lots. Amnesty International estimated that10 , 000to25 , 000Syrians, mostly civilians, were killed in the merciless crackdown. Syria has not had a Muslim extremist problem since.

I visited Hama a few months after it was leveled. The regime actually wanted Syrians to go see it, to contemplate Hama's silence and to reflect on its meaning. I wrote afterward, "The whole town looked as though a tornado had swept back and forth over it for a week ? but this was not the work of mother nature."

This was "Hama Rules" ? the real rules of Middle East politics ? and Hama Rules are no rules at all. I tell this story not to suggest this should be America's approach. We can't go around leveling cities. We need to be much more focused, selective and smart in uprooting the terrorists.

I say that NOT to advocate this tactic as a solution to the present problems, but to indicate there is a degree in quality and quantity of oppression between the West and the East.

We are not Saints. but I very seriously doubt Hama Rules will be invoked in France, under a Muslim regime?

In a heartbeat.

Captain's Quarters has an eery, but with a ring of truth read on these events.

The Islamists, however, understand that they have the momentum and the political will that the French and their government lack. They will not give that up easily, and not without significant concessions. One cannot help but be reminded of the first barbarian sack of Rome at the hands of Alaric, who decreed that the Romans would keep their lives only as long as they refrained from interfering in the pillaging of Alaric's forces until they finished. I wonder what the Islamists will demand from the French for their survival.


UPDATE: This is a MUST READ from !No Pasaran!
A perfect example of how Idealogical editing of the News spreads lies and engenders chaos.
It appears that Nicolas Sarkozy was deliberately demonized in the TV reports of him using his strong language earlier in the week. In fact, there was footage available showing Sarkozy using the word ?racaille? (riff-raff) while speaking to an inhabitant of Clichy-sous-Bois who herself had just used the word while expressing how fed up she was with local crime.

Sarko answered her using her own words. In politics, that?s a way of communicating empathy. Her words were edited out and never shown in the ensuing days. His weren?t. ?Arret sur Images? showed the whole exchange today.

Mr. Sarkozy was filmed quietly and calmly speaking to youths from Clichy who were apparently very deferential toward him (calling him Monsieur), eager to talk to him and seemed impressed that he was willing to leave himself unprotected by bodyguards in order to spend some time with them. In a what amounts to a ghetto that?s a sincere display of trust.

That footage didn?t make the news programs simply because the Provisional wing of the CGT got in the way of honest journalism. It didn?t suit their political agenda, and through its? heavy ideological editing fanned the flames you might see in your nearest car park or bus depot. Never mind the possible tensions that the press can inflame by reporting too much, worry about what harm is caused by consciously reporting too little.

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