Wikipedia provides a handy reference image.
There is an ever-increasing degree of coordination among the rioters -- one is tempted to call them "invaders" now -- as they make use of cell-phones and text-messaging to communicate with each other to more efficiently create disturbance. A cursory glance at the Wikipedia notice on the coordination of these riots adds more detail:
Of course, the assertion that there "appear[s] to be no coordination" is put to lie when one reads what Der Spiegel has to say. Robert at Jihad Watch quotes:
French national police spokesman, Patrick Hamon, was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying that there appeared to be no coordination among gangs in different areas. But he said youths in individual neighborhoods were communicating by cellphone text messages or email -- arranging meetings and warning each other about police operations. According to the Guardian, (November 6, 2005), Hamon said, "what we notice is that the bands of youths are, little by little, getting more organized, arranging attacks through cell phone text messages and learning how to make gasoline bombs." The police have found a gasoline bomb-making factory in a derelict building; Justice Ministry official Jean-Marie Huet told The Associated Press that gasoline bombs "are not being improvised by kids in their bathrooms." The apparent role of the Internet in helping to coordinate and cause unrest was also noted.
Operation what? I can only assume that midnight sun in somewhat refers to some attempt to create a fire so huge that the night sky burns as day, but what do I know? Perhaps they're planning to buy everyone puppies instead, and I'm being paranoid.
But just as the Internet has proven useful to those wanting to vent their frustration and anger at the violence enveloping France, others -- those involved in the violence -- have found the Internet a useful organizational tool. Plans for further attacks have made their appearances in different blogs -- like that from "Brahim." "Nice work people," he writes. "The cops are petrified of us, everything must burn, starting Monday, the operation 'Midnight Sun' starts, tell everyone else, rendezvous for Momo and Abdul in Zone 4 ... jihad Islamia Allah Akhbar."
Yeah, right. And when the Iranian president said Israel should be "wiped out", we've misunderstood him -- he actually said that Israel needs to be "wiped clean", because the last time he was there he found that the maids had been lax in dusting the counter tops.
Also, take note of the extremely French names in the above quote -- none of those silly foreign names like Marcel or Francois.
And, as has been pointed out at Small Dead Animals, the fact that they are coordinating via cell-phones and text messages itself puts lie to the claim that there is no coordination -- wouldn't they need to know each others' contact info and blog URLs?
The rioters have been shooting bullets at police -- very few news reports I've read have mentioned that as a result of this, we must infer that the rioters are therefore in possession of firearms, and indeed it seems likely that given the widespread use of these weapons, there were probably caches being kept available for just such an occasion as this. Certainly, there seems to be at least one central bomb-making factory, and quite probably more than just one...use of gasoline explosives in the rioting has been as widespread as the riots themselves, and it seems improbable (at best) that one manufacturing depot could provide the entire supply of bombs.
And attempts by some Muslim leaders to re-establish order and civility -- even the issuing of a fatwa condemning the violence -- are themselves causing further strife and almost provoking more violence. The rivalry that exists between different Muslim authorities in France rivals that of the clash experienced in the Catholic Church during the Great Schism, where the three Popes denounced and excommunicated each other. And even though the fatwa was issued, it seems that nobody cares to listen.
The riots have even claimed their first fatality:
Advance planning, coordination, and explosives-manufacturing facilities. Nationalistic rhetoric -- rioters declaring themselves to be "100% Palestinian" (despite living in France) and further declaring that the suburd in which they live belongs not to France, but to its unassimilated population who claims foreign nationality. Large-scale rejection of police and other national authorities within the confines of those same suburbs -- what policing is done therein is done by the people who live there, according to (we can assume) a local flavour of Sharia law or equivalent. It's no secret that polygamy, arranged marriages, and even honour killings are all practiced within these segregated communities.
A man who was beaten by an attacker while trying to extinguish a trash can fire during riots north of Paris has died of his injuries, becoming the first fatality since the urban unrest started 11 days ago, a police official said Monday. Youths overnight injured three dozen officers and burned more than 1,400 vehicles.
An alternate way of life -- nations within a nation -- that has now exploded outward and is taking ground, causing havoc, and demanding recognition.
This is an invasion. This is a civil war. One hopes that the French will show up for it...because as in history, the only way to combat certain forms of aggression is with steadfastness and the resolve to assert order and national law, even if doing so means calling in the army and using a little bit of muscle.
I find it interesting that both Mark Steyn and David Warren have -- seemingly independently -- come to the example of 732 A.D. (none of that "Common Era" crap here!) and the defeat of the advancing Moorish armies by Charles Martel.
Steyn writes:
Warren doesn't go as deeply into the history, but invokes the powerful meaning behind it:
The French have been here before, of course. Seven-thirty-two. Not 7:32 Paris time, which is when the nightly Citroen-torching begins, but 732 A.D. -- as in one and a third millennia ago. By then, the Muslims had advanced a thousand miles north of Gibraltar to control Spain and southern France up to the banks of the Loire. In October 732, the Moorish general Abd al-Rahman and his Muslim army were not exactly at the gates of Paris, but they were within 200 miles, just south of the great Frankish shrine of St. Martin of Tours. Somewhere on the road between Poitiers and Tours, they met a Frankish force and, unlike other Christian armies in Europe, this one held its ground ''like a wall . . . a firm glacial mass,'' as the Chronicle of Isidore puts it. A week later, Abd al-Rahman was dead, the Muslims were heading south, and the French general, Charles, had earned himself the surname ''Martel'' -- or ''the Hammer.''
France has been attempting, since the collective series of riots and rebellions that was the French Revolution, to re-invent itself as a secular -- indeed an atheist -- nation, apart from its Catholic heritage and that which gave it courage, honour, and...heck..."balls". There was a time when a few thousand Frenchmen held the line against the advance of a fundamentally incompatible ideology and threw it down into the dirt, forever altering the course of history. However, in the last thousand years -- interrupted only by the various and only briefly successful follies of Napoleon -- the French have performed in exactly the opposite way: the derogatory term cheese-loving surrender monkeys is spiteful, but apart from the simian comparison it is also accurate, by and large.
The solution of the old Catholic France was, over the centuries, that of Charles Martel: victor at Tours in 732 A.D., where the advance of Islam on Western Europe was stopped. It consisted in a frank realization that two civilizations were clashing, where only one could prevail. The choice was relatively simple: victory over the invaders, or death and servitude.
We recognize that history is cyclical, and we make the almost cliched observation that those who do not learn from the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them. But equally so, I submit: those who do not learn from the successes of history are doomed to fail in any attempt to repeat them. There was a time, long ago, when the French were facing a Muslim invasion, and they stood up to that foe and threw him down, defeated him utterly. Some 1300 years later, they are facing another invasion by the same foe...and it seems that they, themselves, are being thrown down. But in a nation which re-invents itself with each passing generation, and spits on much of its history (especially its Catholic history), who can be surprised? The French have not necessarily forgotten their failures, but they have completely forgotten their triumphs, and with each passing night and the torching of another 300 cars, it seems less and less likely that in this war, they will topple the invading Moor.