Chirac appeals for calm as French suburban riots spread

[unclepercy]

I've been seeing other forums discussing this outbreak, and I was waiting to see if someone here brought it up. But, so far no one has. Talk to me about this. I want to hear your thoughts.

11.02.2005, 10:39 AM

PARIS (AFX) - French President Jacques Chirac appealed for calm in the wake of riots that have plagued a poor suburb of Paris for nearly a week, which have begun to spread to other areas outside the capital.

'Tempers must calm down. The law must be applied in a spirit of dialogue and respect,' Chirac was quoted as saying by the government's spokesman, Jean-Francois Cope, following a cabinet meeting today.

'A lack of dialogue and an escalation of disrespectful behaviour would lead to a dangerous situation,' Chirac said, in his first public comment since the violence first broke out last Thursday.

Gangs of youths in towns around Paris have repeatedly clashed with police, resulting in torched cars and trash cans, and dozens of youths have been arrested since the trouble first erupted, sparked by the accidental electrocution of two teenagers whom locals believe were fleeing police.

The firing of a police teargas grenade against a mosque in Clichy-sous-Bois during clashes late Sunday also sparked rage in the suburb's large Muslim community, and the violence has gone on unabated despite a pledge by Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy to crack down on the rioters.

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin today delayed an official visit to Canada, in order to attend a parliamentary session in which he called the violence 'extremely serious.'

http://www.forbes.com/home/feeds/afx/2005/11/02/afx2314088.html

Uncle

 

[Nascar_James]

Gangs of youths in towns around Paris have repeatedly clashed with police, resulting in torched cars and trash cans, and dozens of youths have been arrested since the trouble first erupted, sparked by the accidental electrocution of two teenagers whom locals believe were fleeing police.

The French need to stop this rioting before it gets way out of control. At this point, they should seriously consider bringing the armed forces in to restore law and order.

Also, any video surveilance of those responsible for this unrest should be used to identify the troublemakers and proptly locate and arrest them.

 

[unclepercy]

I am wondering if this is an isolated incident or if it is a sign of a French Jihad. It is being interpreted as terrorism by other forums. Chirac had to cancel his trip to Canada, so it must be pretty serious.

I just wondered what the opinion was on this forum.

Uncle

 

[Nascar_James]

What in Sam Hill are the French authorities waiting for? They need to institute Martial Law in France ... now. They need military authority to take control over the normal administration of justice. Shoot any violent/armed rioter on site. Firing at police officers and setting fires is unacceptable.

Reuters - French Rioters Shoot At Police

Reuters:

French rioters shoot at police, Chirac vows action
Sun Nov 6, 2005 6:52 PM ET

By Franck Prevel
GRIGNY, France (Reuters) - Rioters fired shots at police and set hundreds of cars ablaze in an 11th night of violence in France on Monday, hours after President Jacques Chirac vowed to restore order.

Ten policemen were injured, two of them seriously, when a group of youths fired at police with shotguns in Grigny, south of Paris, police said. One officer was treated with lead shot wounds to the throat, another suffered injuries to one leg.

"They really shot at officers. This is real, serious violence. It's not like the previous nights. I am very concerned because this is mounting," one police officer said.

Another spokesman said the shots could probably not have been fatal due to the distance from which they were fired, but were clearly capable of causing serious injury.

Police said at least 300 cars had been set ablaze in several towns across France and 37 people had been arrested.

The fresh violence came just hours after Chirac said the law would have the last word over the riots, making his first public comments since violence started in the poor suburbs on October 27.

"The Republic is quite determined, by definition, to be stronger than those who want to sow violence or fear," Chirac said after a domestic security council met to respond to the violence in which thousands of cars have gone up in flames.

Chirac's government has come under increased pressure to halt the riots, sparked by frustration among ethnic minorities over racism, unemployment, police treatment and their marginal place in French society.

Later on Monday, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin is to announce measures for France's poor suburbs, where many immigrants from Africa live in bleak social housing projects.

"We cannot accept any 'no-go' areas," Villepin said after meeting Chirac on Sunday, adding the government would step up security where necessary. Some 2,300 extra officers have already been drafted in to quell riots that have spread from Paris's suburbs to other towns, unnerving France's European neighbors.

On Sunday night, youths seized a bus in Saint-Etienne, in southern France, ordering passengers to get off and then torching the vehicle. The driver and one passenger were hurt.

In eastern Strasbourg, rioters lobbed Molotov cocktails into a primary school, and in southern Toulouse, a car was pushed toward the entrance of a metro tunnel, police said.

Rioting began with the accidental electrocution of two youths apparently fleeing police.

One of France's largest Islamic groups, the Union of French Islamic Organizations (UOIF), issued a fatwa against rioting on Sunday after officials suggested Muslim militants could be partly to blame for the violence.

"It is formally forbidden to any Muslim seeking divine grace and satisfaction to participate in any action that blindly hits private or public property or could constitute an attack on someone's life," the fatwa said.

Many rioters are of North African Arab and black African descent and assumed to be Muslims. Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy and other officials have hinted Islamist militants may be manipulating angry teenagers to defy the French state.

On Saturday night some 1,300 vehicles went up in flames across France. And for the first time, more than 30 were destroyed inside Paris rather than outlying suburbs.

Despite the worst destruction since the riots started, a police spokesman called for a sense of proportion: "It's 211 districts out of 36,000, so France is not burning."

The violence has tarnished France's image abroad, forcing Villepin to cancel a trip to Canada, while Russia and the United States have warned their citizens to avoid troubled suburbs.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

What in Sam Hill are the French authorities waiting for? They need to institute Martial Law in France ... now. They need military authority to take control over the normal administration of justice. Shoot any violent/armed rioter on site. Firing at police officers and setting fires is unacceptable.

what they DON'T need is any advice from americans..

 

[unclepercy]

What in Sam Hill are the French authorities waiting for? They need to institute Martial Law in France ... now. They need military authority to take control over the normal administration of justice. Shoot any violent/armed rioter on site. Firing at police officers and setting fires is unacceptable.

what they DON'T need is any advice from americans..

Whoa! Slow that horse down. The fallacy of this argument is that the US has not offered France any advice. And the other viewpoint of your comment is: Neither did the US ask any advice from France....nor you (Canada) for that matter. So? That was a loose cannon comment.

Uncle

 

[Ocean Breeze]

That was a loose cannon comment.

yep.. :roll:

 

[missile]

The heroes over there are the brave firefighters,who ,while responding to the 10,000 or more fires the rioters set,were attacked by these same criminals.

 

[Blackleaf]

What in Sam Hill are the French authorities waiting for? They need to institute Martial Law in France ... now. They need military authority to take control over the normal administration of justice. Shoot any violent/armed rioter on site. Firing at police officers and setting fires is unacceptable.

what they DON'T need is any advice from americans..

Back in the 1990s, the French sneered at America for the Los Angeles riots and said that riots like that would never happen in France.

Intifada in France

New York Sun Editorial
November 4, 2005


If President Chirac thought he was going to gain peace with the Muslim community in France by taking an appeasement line in the Iraq war, it certainly looks like he miscalculated. Today the streets of the French capital are looking more like Ramallah and less like the advanced, sophisticated, gay Paree image Monsieur Chirac likes to portray to the world, and the story, which is just starting to grip the world's attention, is full of ironies. One is tempted to suggest that Prime Minister Sharon send a note cautioning Monsieur Chirac about cycles of violence.

Back in the 1990s, the French sneered at America for the Los Angeles riots. As the Chicago Sun-Times reported in 1992: "the consensus of French pundits is that something on the scale of the Los Angeles riots could not happen here, mainly because France is a more humane, less racist place with a much stronger commitment to social welfare programs."
President Mitterrand, the Washington Post reported in 1992, blamed the riots on the "conservative society" that Presidents Reagan and Bush had created and said France is different because it "is the country where the level of social protection is the highest in the world."

How the times have changed. Muslims in Paris's suburbs are out shooting at police and firefighters, burning cars and buildings, and throwing rocks at commuter trains. Even children are out on the streets - it was reported that a 10-year-old was arrested. The trigger for the riots was the electrocution of two teenagers last Thursday, which the rioters say came following a police chase, a charge the police deny. But even if the charge by the rioters is true, that the police are culpable in the deaths of the two youths, the fact that such an incident would spark a riot is a sign of something deeper at work - no doubt France's failure to integrate its immigrant Muslim community.

It turns out that France's Muslim community lives in areas rampant with crime, poverty, and unemployment, much the fault of France's prized welfare system. There are those of us who spent part of the 1980s in Europe, supporting the idea, among others from the Reagan era, that immigration was a virtue for a country and that the racial or religious background of the immigrants did not matter. We maintain that view. But immigration into a country with a dirigiste economy is a recipe for trouble, which is why supporters of immigration into France have long warned of the need for liberalization.

Part of France's problem is that it has defaulted on those measures. The lack of labor market flexibility and other socialist policies have created unemployment at nearly 10%, most of which falls among immigrants. And part stems from the fact that France's estimated 5 million Muslims, out of a population of 60 million, are led by mostly foreign radical imams. Only belatedly has the French state started taking action, pressing for clerics to be taught in France. All this is compounded by the image France projects of itself to its Muslims, which one can surmise is the reason why Muslims see rioting as the solution to any grievance.

It's a barely kept secret that Mr. Chirac led the opposition to the Iraq war out of fear of how his Muslim population would react. This fear is a big part of why France portrays itself as America's counterweight and why it criticizes Israel at every turn and coddled the terrorist Yasser Arafat right up to his death. This doesn't elicit thanks from Muslim radicals in France. It turns out to project an image of weakness. Unsurprisingly when faced with some unhappiness they believe they can pressure the French state into submission.

A number of observers of the French scene have looked at population trends and suggested that France is on its way to becoming a Muslim country (one that would, let it be noted, be armed with hydrogen bombs). Some react to this by suggesting a halt to immigration and even expulsion. The better approach is to impose law and order, more speedily to reform the burdensome welfare state, and start integrating the Muslim community. France could also help itself by dispatching troops to help battle the radical Islamists in Iraq, thereby sending a message to Muslims at home and abroad that France is on the side of those Muslims, the majority no doubt, who want to live in peace.


nysun.com

 

[Blackleaf]

"Riots?" said the French. "Things like that only happen in America, or any other Anglo-Saxon nation. They would never happen in La Belle France!"


Will rioters burn the French social model?

Last week Paris was burning. Now it is the little town of Evreux where 50 cars were torched on Saturday night by Muslim teenagers. No problem? Evreux is 25 miles from Giverny, the home of Monet’s garden and its famous Japanese bridge. The garden was restored in the 1970s by an American publishing heiresses.

After the Los Angeles riots in 1992 the French were supercilious. It couldn’t happen here, they sniffed. The French social model made such a thing impossible. But on Sunday after ten nights of riots, French President Jacques Chirac convened an “emergency security meeting” to address the crisis.

He could start by ordering the French pompiers to put out the blaze in the social model, a system designed to frustrate opportunity and job growth for the poor and the marginalized.

Inspired by their social model, the French have a very high minimum wage, about twice the level in the United States. Ten years ago, the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress issued a bibliography on how the minimum wage “reduced employment,” “reduces employment among teenagers more than adults,” “hurts the unskilled,” “hurts low wage earners,” “increases the number of people on welfare,” and “hurts the poor generally.” The minimum wage is so high in France that supermarkets don’t hire people to bag groceries.

Encouraged by the social model, the French have extremely rigid employment laws that make it difficult to fire employees. As the consulting firm Triplet & Associés puts it,

“employment in France is not ‘at will’… [and] dismissals are subject to stringent, and often bureaucratic, procedural statutory constraints.”

This makes employers in France hesitant to hire permanent employees. They do hire interns, of course. And now the interns are starting to protest. They are getting fed up with serial internships but no jobs.

The French also have generous unemployment benefits. They have recently “slashed” them, according to Deutsche-Welle, from 30 months to 22 (compared to US state unemployment benefits that mostly last for 6 months.) Research on long-term unemployment indicates that the unemployed are hurt by overgenerous benefits. They lose skills while they are unemployed, and after a year, the skills erosion gets serious. So it is not surprising that Evelyne Zylbermann, 22 months after she last had a job, doesn’t know what she should do now that her benefit has been cut from $1,780 to $500 per month.

The French have always strongly believed in protecting French companies from global competition and administer a complex system of subsidies and preferences that privilege French enterprises over non-French companies, and producers over consumers. But researchers such as William W. Lewis in The Power of Productivity assert that the way to grow a healthy economy is by removing all privileges and subsidies for producers and entrenched interests. “Undistorted competition in product markets is essential.”

What about discrimination and racism? Surely nothing will change while the children of Muslim immigrants in the Paris suburbs remain underprivileged and oppressed?

Actually, light to moderate discrimination is not much of a barrier to advancement. In New York City, the Irish went from “No Irish Need Apply” and 50,000 streetwalking “nymphs of the pave” to respectability in fifty years, and the Jews went from the Pale of Settlement in Eastern Europe to Harvard in a single generation. Blacks in the United States made more rapid economic progress in the years before the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s than afterwards, according to Thomas Sowell.

The French are lucky. While they have been pompously digging themselves in deeper with their brilliant social model, we "dim" Anglo-Saxon cowboys have figured out how to dig out of the social model hole. For macroeconomic policy, set tax rates low and uniform. For the labor market, lower the minimum wage, unemployment benefits, and dodgy disability benefits. For the business arena, wipe out subsidies, rigidities, and privileges that distort the markets for products and services. But it is unlikely that the French are ready to bite the bullet. Not yet.

In the wake of the US riots in the 1960s the Kerner Commission called for “the addition of 1 million government-created jobs, the institution of a higher minimum wage, significantly increasing welfare benefits, spending more money on education and housing.” That was how the political elite in the US proposed to deal with urban riots: follow the French social model.

After the “long hot summers” of the 1960s it took 15 years in the US to cut tax rates – in the teeth of opposition from the US political elite. It took a mere ten years before the US started deregulating transportation and telecommunications monopolies. But it took 30 years to reform the welfare system to put a time limit on benefits – in the teeth of opposition from the Democratic Party.

Why should we assume that the French are any smarter than we are? So just what percentage of the population of France will be Muslim by the time they get around to reforming their faltering political economy?



www.americanthinker.com . . .

 

[Jo Canadian]

 

[Andem]

Gangs of youths in towns around Paris have repeatedly clashed with police, resulting in torched cars and trash cans, and dozens of youths have been arrested since the trouble first erupted, sparked by the accidental electrocution of two teenagers whom locals believe were fleeing police.

The French need to stop this rioting before it gets way out of control. At this point, they should seriously consider bringing the armed forces in to restore law and order.

Also, any video surveilance of those responsible for this unrest should be used to identify the troublemakers and proptly locate and arrest them.

Nascar, these so-called "French youths" are certainly NOT french and they don't identify as French either. It makes me utterly sick that Paris is no longer French and can be quite a dangerous place for locals because the majority of the immigrants there actually hate the French. It's the same thing across Europe, but on a lower scale (with the exception of the Netherlands and the UK.. the former being the most dangerous place for indigenous peoples).

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Back in the 1990s, the French sneered at America for the Los Angeles riots and said that riots like that would never happen in France.

is there a reason for this remark??? Isn't the situation in France tense enough without american (juvenile) BS??? :roll: :roll:

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Riots Spread Into Rebellion
by Julio Godoy

PARIS - Rioting by immigrant youth around Paris has begun to take the shape of a nationwide rebellion against racial and social segregation, and repressive police action.


A fireman tries to put out a fire in a car in a Paris surburb on the tenth straight night of unrest following the electrocution of two boys who believed they were being chased by the police. The French riots are a warning to Europe that racial integration requires a political solution, the head of Britain's race relations watchdog said(AFP/File/Stephane De Sakutin)

Over the weekend gangs comprising youth mostly from the Maghreb countries and sub- Saharan Africa set fire to more than a thousand vehicles, several supermarkets, and public buildings including schools and sport facilities.

Vehicles were burnt in the centre of Paris for the first time since the beginning of the unrest 11 days ago. Similar violence broke out in other cities including Marseille, Rennes, Nantes and Lille.

The police have been unable to re-establish order despite strong action. Hit-and-run youth gangs coordinating action over mobile phones have been too quick for them. It now seems less and less likely that police action alone can restore calm.

The unrest began Oct. 27 after two immigrant children died accidentally in a high-voltage electricity facility in Clichy-sous-Bois, a poor district some 30km north-east of Paris. In the face of rumours that they were being chased by the police, which the police deny, angry youths went on the rampage.

The police reacted with force, in one instance hurling tear-gas grenades into a mosque. Most residents of the Parisian outskirts where the unrest began are Muslims. Such action was seen by many residents as provocative.

Minister for the interior Nicholas Sarkozy's remarks calling violent youth 'scum' also provoked further violence, several experts say. "Sarkozy's choice of words makes me think of the rhetoric used by military police in racial dictatorships, and of regimes practising ethnic cleansing," Hugues Lagrange, social researcher at the independent Paris Observatory of Social Change told IPS.

Lagrange said conditions of extreme poverty, high unemployment and the racial segregation that hinders immigrant access to jobs lay at the heart of the rebellion. Instead of dealing with these issues, Sarkozy is stirring up unrest "to establish tighter electoral links with a populist right-wing extremist population."

Lagrange said one of Sarkozy's first measures as minister of the interior was to disband a special police unit created by the former Socialist government in 1997 to maintain close contact with youth organisations to prevent any outbreak of violence.

"The duty of police officers is to chase criminals, not to play football with them," Sarkozy said at the time.

Deep political divisions have emerged over the violence. Neo-fascist leader Jacques Bompard and the right-wing nationalist Philippe de Villiers have urged the government to call in the army to suppress the rebellion. De Villiers said the rebellion is proof that the French model of integration "has clearly failed."

On the other hand, local Muslim leaders say Sarkozy must be sacked. They said in a statement that after the attack on the mosque and Sarkozy's abuse of youth, they "do not consider Sarkozy an appropriate negotiation partner."

President Jacques Chirac indirectly condemned Sarkozy's response. "The law shall be firmly applied, but in a spirit of respect and dialogue," Chirac had said last Wednesday.

But opposition leaders and several commentators are urging Chirac to throw Sarkozy out of government. "Sarkozy is an arsonist pretending to be a fireman" ran the title of an editorial comment in the leftist newspaper L'Humanité.

Noel Mamère, leader of the Green Party, called Sarkozy "a danger for French democracy, a danger destroying rapidly the year-long integration efforts carried out by social workers and organisations in the field." He said if Sarkozy does not resign, "the government must kick him out."

Christian Pfeiffer, a German criminologist who has been researching youth unrest in Europe, said "Sarkozy's behaviour is absolutely unacceptable."

Sarkozy has refused to apologise. "I cannot understand why people make such a fuss about words, but ignore the reality of riots and crimes," he said. He said the riots had been "carefully organised...by criminal mafias and by religious extremists."

City mayors and social workers all over France are calling for a major plan to develop low- income districts to avoid future explosions of violence. Jean-Marie Bockel, mayor of Mullhouse in the north-east, has called for "a Marshall plan for our districts."

 

[unclepercy]

Back in the 1990s, the French sneered at America for the Los Angeles riots and said that riots like that would never happen in France.

is there a reason for this remark??? Isn't the situation in France tense enough without american (juvenile) BS??? :roll: :roll:

I really rather enjoyed it. Canada could be next. Don't scoff.
I just read that Australia foiled terrorist attempts there.

It's on the front page of CNN: http://www.cnn.com/

It could happen. Don't brag.

Percy

 

[Nascar_James]

Back in the 1990s, the French sneered at America for the Los Angeles riots and said that riots like that would never happen in France.

is there a reason for this remark??? Isn't the situation in France tense enough without american (juvenile) BS??? :roll: :roll:

I really rather enjoyed it. Canada could be next. Don't scoff.
I just read that Australia foiled terrorist attempts there.

It's on the front page of CNN: http://www.cnn.com/

It could happen. Don't brag.

Percy

Yep, I read about the terrorist related arrests in Australia, Percy. John Howard is a no-nonsense conservative minded individual. He will put a swift stop to it, rest assured.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Back in the 1990s, the French sneered at America for the Los Angeles riots and said that riots like that would never happen in France.

is there a reason for this remark??? Isn't the situation in France tense enough without american (juvenile) BS??? :roll: :roll:

I really rather enjoyed it. Canada could be next. Don't scoff.
I just read that Australia foiled terrorist attempts there.

It's on the front page of CNN: http://www.cnn.com/

It could happen. Don't brag.

Percy

:roll:

sounds like you just can't wait for a tragedy here. Maybe then you can say (like a two yr old)......."see, I told ya so". (and bounce with childish glee).

Must be getting a tad desperate now ......with your leader and population despised so much on the world stage . and the likes of you would do anything to bring everyone down with them. Can't face the fact you created your own cesspool, can you?? Can't believe how immature neocon types are. (and how vengeful/ downright MEAN)

the dynamics in France are very concerning......and go deeper than what appears on the surface. Been brewing for some time. Once something like this is set in motion......new strategies are called for. ......and major changes are nec.

 

[unclepercy]

Back in the 1990s, the French sneered at America for the Los Angeles riots and said that riots like that would never happen in France.

is there a reason for this remark??? Isn't the situation in France tense enough without american (juvenile) BS??? :roll: :roll:

I really rather enjoyed it. Canada could be next. Don't scoff.
I just read that Australia foiled terrorist attempts there.

It's on the front page of CNN: http://www.cnn.com/

It could happen. Don't brag.

Percy

:roll:

sounds like you just can't wait for a tragedy here. Maybe then you can say (like a two yr old)......."see, I told ya so". (and bounce with childish glee).

Must be getting a tad desperate now ......with your leader and population despised so much on the world stage . and the likes of you would do anything to bring everyone down with them. Can't face the fact you created your own cesspool, can you?? Can't believe how immature neocon types are. (and how vengeful/ downright MEAN)

the dynamics in France are very concerning......and go deeper than what appears on the surface. Been brewing for some time. Once something like this is set in motion......new strategies are called for. ......and major changes are nec.

No, not at all. Just being realistic. What city in Canada has the highest Muslim population? This is becoming a pattern. Just be careful - that' s all. And if we - the Americans - get to say, "Uh-huh," we paid for the right.

Remember, I started this thread because I was concerned. No one seemed interested until the violence continued and escalated in France. Ocean, this is a global issue - not just an American/Middle East clash. The evidence is unfolding. Remember what I said about those binoculars.

Uncle

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Back in the 1990s, the French sneered at America for the Los Angeles riots and said that riots like that would never happen in France.

is there a reason for this remark??? Isn't the situation in France tense enough without american (juvenile) BS??? :roll: :roll:

I really rather enjoyed it. Canada could be next. Don't scoff.
I just read that Australia foiled terrorist attempts there.

It's on the front page of CNN: http://www.cnn.com/

It could happen. Don't brag.

Percy

:roll:

sounds like you just can't wait for a tragedy here. Maybe then you can say (like a two yr old)......."see, I told ya so". (and bounce with childish glee).

Must be getting a tad desperate now ......with your leader and population despised so much on the world stage . and the likes of you would do anything to bring everyone down with them. Can't face the fact you created your own cesspool, can you?? Can't believe how immature neocon types are. (and how vengeful/ downright MEAN)

the dynamics in France are very concerning......and go deeper than what appears on the surface. Been brewing for some time. Once something like this is set in motion......new strategies are called for. ......and major changes are nec.

No, not at all. Just being realistic. What city in Canada has the highest Muslim population? This is becoming a pattern. Just be careful - that' s all. And if we - the Americans - get to say, "Uh-huh," we paid for the right.

Remember, I started this thread because I was concerned. No one seemed interested until the violence continued and escalated in France. Ocean, this is a global issue - not just an American/Middle East clash. The evidence is unfolding. Remember what I said about those binoculars.

Uncle

so what is YOUR take on this issue??

 

[Hank C Cheyenne]

Back in the 1990s, the French sneered at America for the Los Angeles riots and said that riots like that would never happen in France.

...yea the French have a knack for being snooty....having said that I don't think anyone is happy to see these riots in France.... I heard about these punks beating a sixty year old man to death...disgusting.

Remember, I started this thread because I was concerned. No one seemed interested until the violence continued and escalated in France. Ocean, this is a global issue - not just an American/Middle East clash. The evidence is unfolding. Remember what I said about those binoculars.

...good point this is truly a global issue....although people do seem to think it is America vs the Middle east.....the fact is that these fundamentalists want to do as much damage as possible....and Ocean as I respect you...comments about this neocon crap and American bashin is not respectful........ It is logical to make the assumption that muslim fundamentalists would be happy to attack and kill Canadians...regardless of whether we are fighting in Iraq or not.... these monsters have a list of countries they would like to attack....with Canada and Australia on there......and we have jsut seen signs of a planned attack in Australia....... thank god it was not carried through.....