RUSTY'S RIOTS

Last night, Rusty Humphries claimed that Muslim youths rioted in France EVERY night. This is part of his Islamophobia campaign, akin to Little Green Footballs. I looked on Lexis-Nexis for reports from European news sources for "riot" and "France." I did find one recent event:

Agence France Presse -- English
March 27, 2007 Tuesday 11:32 PM GMT
LENGTH: 315 words
HEADLINE: Police use tear gas to clear rioters from Paris rail station
DATELINE: PARIS, March 28 2007

French police used tear gas to clear out 100 youths from a major Paris subway station on Tuesday after a row over a ticket at the Gare du Nord station descended into a riot. Officers arrested at least nine people and two others were injured when the clashed with police at the station, where the mainline Eurostar and Thalys terminals are a major gateway from Paris to the rest of Europe. Dozens of rioters attacked windows, vending machines and shops in the main hall of the subway station in the afternoon, and it took police until nearly midnight to clear the station of rioters. The trouble started when a 33-year-old without a ticket jumped the barriers in the subway station and was stopped by railway officials, police said. He tried to resist and is accused of injuring two officials. Police patrolling the station intervened and arrested him. However, several young people who witnessed the incident began to gather in protest against what they perceived to be the use of excessive force by police. The passenger was removed from the station but the crowd grew. Some began throwing plastic bottles at police and shouted insults at Nicolas Sarkozy, the former interior minister and centre-right candidate for president. They also chanted slogans of "police are everywhere, justice is nowhere" and "down with the state, police and bosses". Police reinforcements soon arrived, but did not dislodge the rioters from the station until tear-gassing them shortly before midnight. The youths then played a game of cat and mouse with police in nearby streets, setting trash cans and signs on fire. Calm was restored only one hour later. In autumn 2005, youths and police clashed every night for three weeks in France's worst riots for decades.


Notice that there's no mention of rioting as a continuing problem. It looks like the rioters have decided to take another approach:

The International Herald Tribune
March 27, 2007 Tuesday
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1186 words
HEADLINE: The 'thugs' of France hope to win revenge on Sarkozy;
Poor youth in suburbs registering to vote
BYLINE: Katrin Bennhold - The New York Times Media Group
DATELINE: ARGENTEUIL, France

''Remember the riots?'' The young man in a leather jacket was scribbling hurriedly on a wall in a housing project in this working-class suburb north of Paris: ''This time the thugs vote!''

French, black and 21 years old, he has been waiting for next month's presidential election for nearly a year and a half. So have his friends. Ever since October 2005, when Nicolas Sarkozy, the front-runner in this campaign, came to Argenteuil as interior minister and vowed to rid the town of ''thugs.''

The next month, November, a wave of unrest swept many of France's suburbs. When the trouble died down, the four friends say, they went to their town hall and, for the first time, registered to vote.

''France may have forgotten, but the suburbs haven't,'' said the graffiti writer, who was born in France of Camerounian parents and identified himself only as Youssef. ''All this is fresh in our memory.''


I went back to March 14th, 350 articles, and the Gare du Nord incident is the only one mentioned.