Paris Times Deux: An Experiment in Multiculturalism Gone Wrong

While Americans are getting ready for trick or treating, Parisians are getting ready for another round of riots.
Last year in Paris nearly 9000 automobiles were torched and over 3000 arrest during three weeks of rioting. Most of those rioting were Muslims of African or Middle Eastern descent.

The rioting was not contained just to France but spread throughout Europe last year including:
Belgium
Germany
Greece
Denmark
Netherlands
Spain
Switzerland

On Wednesday night this week, two groups of masked youths boarded two busy buses travelling through the suburbs of Paris. Pulling out pistols, they proceeded to threaten the drivers and passengers at gunpoint before spraying gasoline throughout the carriage and then setting it ablaze.

Attackers, some carrying handguns, torched buses in three overnight attacks in suburban Paris, as the nation faced the one-year anniversary of riots in France’s down-and-out, heavily immigrant neighbourhoods.

Fears of repeat Paris riots as buses burn

Armed "youths" today hijacked and burned a bus in Paris on the eve of the anniversary of the riots which tore through France last year.

Around ten hooded men, five of them carrying handguns, put a weapon to the head of the driver and forced him and his passengers off a bus heading to the eastern suburb of Montreuil in the early hours of the morning.

The gang then drove off in the vehicle before setting it alight in the second incident of its kind in Paris within a few hours.

In the other attack in the suburb of Nanterre around ten passengers scrambled to safety after a bus was boarded by a group of six youths who sprayed it with flammable liquid before starting a fire.

French Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said the vandals were guilty of "attempted murder".

Drivers on the Montreuil line went on strike to protest against the attack while the Essonne local public transport network, TICE, said it was suspending all night time bus services on 17 routes because of "a series of "minor incidents".

As the first bus was being attacked youths threw stones at passing vehicles at Grigny, in the south of the capital, as well as police cars that came to the scene while another group stoned police and firefighters who came to put out a burning car in the nearby town of Corbeil-Essonnes.

Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, a leading contender for next year’s presidential elections whose hardline stance has angered many in the suburbs, vowed to track down those who set the buses on fire.

“The people responsible should know that we are after them…and they will face severe punishment,” he said at a news conference in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, where he was meeting with interior ministers from five other European countries.

French authorities are keeping a force of some 50,000 riot police in permanent stand-by. A ministry spokesman said it is important to find “the good balance: not overreact to the situation, but at the same time, not underestimate it either.”