Western Resistance

« UK: Muslim Cleric Predicted 7/7 Bombing | | Turkey: Islamist Regime Announces Another Trial For "Insulting Turkey" »

December 24, 2005

France: Muslims Miss out on Meals For Homeless

With Christmas almost upon us, the news reports tell us how there are soup kitchens and charities making gestures to the homeless. There are also bad taste offerings, such as this "report" which claims to have a new US policy for the homeless. It is, of course, a spoof.

Some homeless men in New York, if lucky, are given the chance to play Santa Claus in New York, once they have convinced the Department of Homeless Services that they have tackled kicking bad habits they have accrued over the years.

In Britain, the homeless charity Crisis has opened "drop-in" centres across the capital, with the London Docklands centre expected to cater to 1,400 people over the next few days, according to the BBC.

Though the UK government has recently given 350 million pounds towards services for, and rehousing of the homeless, the figures for Britain's homeless are rising. The Scotsman states that five years ago, there were 65,170 homeless families in England, with 101,070 now, who will spend this Christmas in temporary accommodation.

In France, there are similar schemes, mostly inspired by Abbe Pierre, a charismatic Catholic priest, who set up the first soup kitchen for the homeless in the 1950s, spurred on by a news report from the winter of 1954, when a homeless woman froze to death on the streets of Paris.

In the south of France, soup kitchens operate in most major cities. In the Riviera city of Nice, the soup kitchen run by Father Patrick Brizore stands outside his church, near the harbour of the city, where vegetable soup is handed out. Near to where he distributes food to the homeless is another soup kitchen, run by members of a small nationalist group.

This soup kitchen has a line of police standing guard, as it has been the subject of protests from Muslims and leftist liberals alike. The reason for the acrimony is the "Patriot's Soup", the main fare on offer. This soup contains pork, which is neither allowed for Muslims nor Jews. There is quite a high percentage of the homeless population of southern France of North African origin, and Muslim.

The group running the soup kitchen is the small "Soulidarieta" party, whose name is the local dialect for "Solidarity", though it appears solidarity does not include solidarity with those of alien background. The founder of the group is Dominique Lescure, who says, according to Reuters:

I don't see why I should not be able to put pork, which has always played a major role in my country's cuisine, into a traditional soup that I want to distribute, admittedly, to my compatriots and European homeless people," he argued.

"I'm not excluding anyone," he shouted in a heated exchange with a handful of jeering protesters. "We're tired of being treated like little Nazis. If a Muslim comes, I'll serve him, but the real poor these days are our people."

I am wondering if a trend may be emerging in French homeless catering here. Even Father Pierre was accused of anti-semitism in 1996 by the Anti Defamation League. He had publicly endorsed a book written by a friend, Roger Garaudy, entitled "The Founding Myths of Israeli Policy", which denies the Holocaust.

Abbe Pierre, who is now 93, made headlines a couple of months ago, when it was revealed in his autobiography that he had not always followed the chastity he had vowed to uphold as a Catholic priest.

Life may be tough for the homeless in whatever country they live, but perhaps they should feel thankful that they have never encountered Ricard Pinilla and Oriol Plana, 18-year old immigrants from South America. They were caught on CCTV in the Spanish regional Catalan capital, Barcelona throwing a bottle and a traffic cone at Maria Rosario Endrinal Petite, a 50-year old Spanish homeless woman, who was sheltering in a doorway.

With a younger friend, they returned later and poured an accelerant over Ms Endrinal, a mother of five, and set fire to her. She died in hospital, a court in Barcelona was told, states today's Times.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at December 24, 2005 8:19 AM

Comments

Post a comment