France: Better, Still Bad

French authorities report, via Power Line News, that riots are dying down. But the statistics are still grim, and some of the recent attacks are among the worst:

Overnight Tuesday to Wednesday, youths torched 617 vehicles, down from 1,173 the previous night, national police spokesman Patrick Hamon says. Incidents were reported in 116 towns, down from 226 the night before.

In overnight violence, officials were forced to shut down the southern city of Lyon’s subway system, after a firebomb exploded in a station late Tuesday, a regional government spokesman says. No one was hurt. Transport officials will decide Wednesday morning when service could resume, the spokesman adds.

Arsonists also set fire to the Nice-Matin newspaper’s office in Grasse in the southeast Alpes-Maritimes region, national police spokesman Patrick Reydy says.

We and many others have commented on the mainstream media’s reluctance to identify the people who are doing the rioting in France. Another thing that annoys me is that countless news stories continue to state that the riots were precipitated by the accidental death by electrocution of two individuals who may or may not have been fleeing the police. The idea that this incident, the facts of which are still unknown, somehow explains the rebellion that has broken out in France reminds me of the reporting on the Palstinian intifada. For years, newspapers continued to recite, as by ritual, the assertion that the intifada was triggered by Ariel Sharon’s visit to Temple Mount. This continued long after it became obvious that the intifada was a long-planned strategy, and Sharon’s visit to Temple Mount (which, of course, was open to the public) was a flimsy pretext, at best.

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