Paris Burning..blogs responsible !

Blogs are being considered as a key tool for fomenting violent revolt. According to the New York Times, rioters in Paris have been using blogs to co-ordinate their attacks.

One 14-year-old was arrested for calls to violence on a blog, on which one young poster wrote “Unite, ÃŽle-de-France, and burn the cops. Go to the nearest police station and burn it.” And the Washington Post reports on another post which ordered that “All the housing projects should rise. The wait is over. Friday, Nov. 11, a meeting under the Eiffel Tower. At 2 p.m. Show up, it’s important.” (Can you get there in time, Lambe?). It seems that blogs have evolved a second, darker and highly volatile purpose which can only get worse if continued in the same trend.

At the end of the compassion spectrum, blogs are also being used to honor some of the victims whose deaths triggered the unrest. All of these blogs are hosted by a radio station, Skyrock, whose Skyblog site has 3 million users posting their own blogs on it. They have had to take down several sites down because they got too provocative.

In an illustration of how nervous people are, the site’s spokesperson told the NYT that he was scared even about commenting: “Whatever you do, I do not want you to use my name,” the spokesman added. “You can imagine from what is happening in the suburbs that if someone finds out that we deleted their blog, it could mean a bullet in the head.”

The extensive degree of community organization of the riots, and the speed at which information can be circulated via the internet, is probably the key to their unusual intensity and duration.