Thursday, October 19, 2006

Sometimes is a phrase in the report that's most important

A lot of people have written about the attacks on the police in France by gangs of youths, mainly of North African descent. Well, I found an article in the Telegraph titled 'Crisis talks over gang attacks on police. Here's the line that I think is important:
amid news that gangs of youths, mainly of North African descent, were intensifying attacks on police.

Key words: intensifying attacks. Which acknowledges that attacks have been ongoing and are getting worse. The article describes something that's happening more and more, an organized ambush of police.

Next step? They'll start using the weapons they've been holding back with. And they've got them. There was an article about two years ago about the developing problems of how islamic groups were stealing luxury cars and smuggling them to eastern Europe to sell, in some cases taking weapons- from rifles to machine guns to RPGs- as payment and then using those back 'home' in France to commit robberies. From that and other sources they've got serious weapons, the question is why haven't they used them yet?

At a guess, they're not ready to take on the national government. Yet. So they hold back the more aggressive groups, either with words or by keeping the arms from them for now. And when they think they are ready, then there'll be open guerilla warfare in the streets. Which could mean that incidents like that noted in the article aren't just an attack on the police, they're a training exercise.

Which means that I hope Kim's reports on stores in France are correct, because they're likely to need them.

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