Interior Minister Manuel Valls said Tuesday that 1,193 vehicles were torched by French youths overnight in what has become a dubious New Year's Eve tradition.| French yoots, not yoots living in France... |
| ...still undefined beyond their Frenchness... |
His announcement was the first time in three years that such figures have .been released. The conservative government of former President Nicolas Sarkozy
...23rd and current President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra. Sarkozy is married to singer-songwriter Carla Bruni, who has a really nice birthday suit...
had decided to stop publishing them in a bid to reduce the crime -- and not play into the hands of car-torching youths who try to outdo each other.
La Belle France's current Socialist government decided otherwise, deeming total transparency the best method, and the rate of burned cars apparently remained steady. On Dec. 31, 2009, the last public figure available, 1,147 vehicles were burned.
| If neither publishing nor not-publishing makes a difference -- and we can assume that the torchiers are much too busy to watch the evening news or read the next morning's papers -- then informing the citizenry is the better choice. |
But car-torching took a new step in La Belle France when it became a way to mark the arrival of the New Year. The practice reportedly began in earnest among youths -- often in poor neighborhoods
| What, all of them? Or only certain, specific groups, which clearly the editor intends shall remain unnamed... |
It also became a voice of protest during the fiery
...a single two-syllable word carrying connotations of both incoherence and viciousness. A fiery delivery implies an audience of rubes and yokels, preferably forming up into a mob...
unrest by despairing youths from housing projects
| Again, all of them? Or only certain, etc... |
Yet even then, cars were not burned in big cities like Gay Paree, and that remained the case this New Year's Eve. Minister Valls said the Gay Paree suburban region of Seine-Saint-Denis, where the 2005 unrest started, led the nation for torched cars, followed by two eastern regions around Strasbourg.
For some, the decision to tell the public how many cars have been burned on New Year's Eve is a mistake.
Bruno Beschizza, the national secretary for security matters in Sarkozy's UMP party, said on iTele TV that publishing the numbers motivates youths to commit such crimes. "We know that neighborhoods compete," he said. Gang rivalries center on who can torch the most cars, with claims made on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, he said.
| That should make it easier to track down the miscreants, surely. |