October 7, 2026

IS PARIS BURNING? Why the French school riots are a taste of the chaos to come.

Just over a week ago, the French, inspired by the visit of Leo XIV, were apparently communing in peace and harmony. Around 800,000 turned out on the streets of central Paris to hear the Pope celebrate an open-air mass. But as the papal plane took off from Metz in north-eastern France, the last stop on Leo’s trip, France was descending into a week of chaos and violence.

Teenage school pupils launched a wave of protests that spread across the country. Demonstrations rapidly turned ugly, leading to clashes with the police, assaults on teachers and extensive vandalism of not only street furniture but also school buildings and amenities. By the end of last week, more than 1,000 lycées (sixth-form colleges) and collèges (middle schools) had been affected. More than 5,000 individuals had been detained by police, mostly but not all minors. Over 300 police officers were injured last Thursday alone, by which time 65 schoolteachers and principals, as well as 170 pupils, had also suffered injury.

The most extensive damage was done by fire, accidentally or not. On Thursday, an international lycée in Nantes was ravaged by flames. The fact that it bore the name of Nelson Mandela did not protect it. On Friday morning, the inhabitants of Metz awoke to find that a local collège had suffered a similar fate.

The contrast with the scenes of the apostolic visit could not have been more striking. The level of violence has been exceptional, even by French standards. Comparisons can be made with the riots of 2005 and 2023, but these were in response to supposed incidents of police brutality and drew in disaffected youth from banlieues all over France. This is the first time that school protests have turned so nasty. The French government was in no way prepared.

Related: Speaking of the riots of 2023 (when this was apparently filmed), a timely metaphor alert:

Posted at 5:12 pm by Ed Driscoll

GREAT MOMENTS IN PARENTING: This Video Explains Everything. (Language alert before playing video):

You can see the police are pretty shocked by what is coming out of this 6-year-old kid’s mouth. But of course they can’t say anything or react because they know they are being filmed. A stray comment from a white cop about a black child talking like he’s Snoop Dogg could end his career.

This was not the first time this kid had talked like this in class. It wasn’t even the first time he’d attacked a teacher. He did that for the first time in kindergarten.

A 6-year-old Newport News boy who shot and wounded his first-grade teacher constantly cursed at staff and teachers, tried to whip students with his belt, and once choked another teacher “until she couldn’t breathe,” according to a legal notice filed by an attorney for the wounded teacher…

The choking incident described in the notice was confirmed by the teacher. She said that in 2021, the boy came up behind her as she sat in a chair in the front of the class, locked his forearms in front of her neck and pulled back and down, hard. She said a teaching assistant pulled the boy off her…

“I didn’t feel safe the rest of the year because I knew if they didn’t protect me when he choked me and I couldn’t breathe, then they wouldn’t protect me, my kids or my colleagues if he did something not as harmful,” she told The Associated Press.

You get the picture. This little kid is living his best thug life every day at school, being a verbal and physical threat to everyone around him and no one can say a word. Why? Because he’s black and it was 2021 (in the case of the choking incident). Right at the height of BLM’s cultural impact, no one wanted to say that this kid was a little monster. And so he got shuffled off to another school and then brought back on a modified schedule where his mother had to attend class with him to keep him under control. The day of the shooting, as you heard above, was the first day his mother hadn’t come to school with him.

Exit quote: “I hope this kid gets help. He’s really young. Maybe if he’s socialized by some actual adults he can come back from this. If not he’s going to wind up dead or in prison. That’s another problem with ignoring this behavior for years out of fear of being called racist. It hurts everyone, but especially this kid.”

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

SHINING CITY ON A HILL: It’s not everyday that a HillFaith reader sits down and composes a great new patriotic song, sings it just about perfectly, but that’s exactly what Texan Gene Rutt just did. Give it a listen here.

Posted at 4:00 pm by Mark Tapscott

BUCKLE UP: Drones sink ships near NATO countries in “unacceptable” attacks, EU says.

Drones sank two cargo ships and damaged a third in the exclusive economic zones of NATO member countries for the first time, killing at least two sailors. The attacks represent a notable escalation as Black Sea commercial shipping has increasingly come under attack during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with Russia also being accused of carrying out “hybrid warfare” incidents across Europe.

The Togo-flagged cargo ship Alfa Watan sank, and the Palau-flagged cargo ship Able was set ablaze after being attacked by multiple sea and aerial drones about 80 miles (128 kilometers) off the coast of Bulgaria on October 6, according to the Associated Press. In an interview, Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev described the incidents as “an unacceptable attack in Bulgaria’s exclusive economic zone” and “a blatant violation of international law and maritime law.”

The fate of the Alfa Watan’s crew was not immediately known after the vessel sank. A Bulgarian ferry managed to evacuate the 18 crew members of the Able, with two severely injured mariners being flown to a hospital in the city of Varna.

This comes one day after drones struck the Turkish-owned cargo ship named Royad Mammadov within Romania’s exclusive economic zone in the Black Sea on October 5.

Of course, I don’t know what “NATO” will do about it, other than complain.

Posted at 3:50 pm by Stephen Green

NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU DESPISE THE MEDIA…:

…the media despises you even more.

Posted at 3:34 pm by Stephen Green

WHY GEN Z MAY SAVE AMERICA: Yes, that sounds like an absurdity, especially to we aging “Get off my grass” Baby Boomers, but it actually makes great sense the way Rod Martin explains it in his new book, which I review in detail here.

Posted at 3:05 pm by Mark Tapscott

IT WAS A LITTLE AWKWARD, BUT IT WAS AN ENDORSEMENT: Angela Paxton Endorses Ken Paxton. “Paxton’s public record as Texas Attorney General has been absolutely stellar, filing lawsuit after lawsuit against both federal overreach under Obama and Biden and corporate malfeasance that violates Texas law. As I’ve said many a time before, I say about Paxton what Abraham Lincoln said about Ulysses S. Grant: ‘I cannot spare this man. He fights.'”

Posted at 2:48 pm by Stephen Green

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

YOU REALLY SHOULD READ MAMDANI’S ENTIRE OCT. 7 STATEMENT:

Full statement:

This day is profoundly painful for so many New Yorkers. It marks three years since the horrific war crimes of October 7. On that day, Hamas killed more than 1,100 Israelis and abducted 251 others. We grieve alongside our many friends and neighbors who still carry that unthinkable loss.

The suffering did not begin nor end that day. It instead continued through the Israeli government’s devastating, ongoing genocide in Gaza, in which it has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians—including more than 21,000 children. Even since the so-called ceasefire, more than 1,400 Palestinians have been killed. That suffering has intensified with every Israeli bomb dropped on ambulances waiting outside hospitals, every drone strike targeting a residential building or journalist, and every shipment of food aid turned away at a border crossing. Many New Yorkers are reckoning with this unbearable grief, and we mourn alongside them – all while knowing that our tax dollars fund these war crimes.

Three years later, we must refuse to accept a world in which occupation and apartheid continue, where war crimes are met with impunity, and our federal government continues its complicity with every arms shipment.

To honor the dead, we must fight for a world in which every person can live with freedom, safety, and dignity.

Translation: Maybe — maybe — the Jews didn’t exactly deserve Oct. 7, but they certainly brought it on themselves.

Posted at 2:32 pm by Stephen Green

THE MAMDANIS: Let’s Not Forget the Victims of 10/7 – Gazans!

Let’s be honest. We knew that the 25th anniversary of 9/11 would be awkward when New York City voters elected Islamist sympathizer Zohran Mamdani as mayor. We could have predicted that the third anniversary of Hamas’ despicable and grotesque atrocities in their Al-Aqsa Flood operation would be just as awkward in the Big Apple. How did Mamdani commemorate the mass rapes, murders, and kidnappings of men, women, and children?

Just as you’d expect, of course. After paying lip service to the people whom Hamas raped and slaughtered, Mamdani turned it into an indictment against Israel for fighting the war Hamas deliberately and cruelly started on October 7, 2023:

This day is profoundly painful for so many New Yorkers. It marks three years since the horrific war crimes of October 7. On that day, Hamas killed more than 1,100 Israelis and abducted 251 others. We grieve alongside our many friends and neighbors who still carry that unthinkable loss.

The suffering did not begin nor end that day. It instead continued through the Israeli government’s devastating, ongoing genocide in Gaza, in which it has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians—including more than 21,000 children. Even since the so-called ceasefire, more than 1,400 Palestinians have been killed. That suffering has intensified with every Israeli bomb dropped on ambulances waiting outside hospitals, every drone strike targeting a residential building or journalist, and every shipment of food aid turned away at a border crossing. Many New Yorkers are reckoning with this unbearable grief, and we mourn alongside them – all while knowing that our tax dollars fund these war crimes.

Three years later, we must refuse to accept a world in which occupation and apartheid continue, where war crimes are met with impunity, and our federal government continues its complicity with every arms shipment.

To honor the dead, we must fight for a world in which every person can live with freedom, safety, and dignity.

What happens when terrorists start wars they can’t win? They face the consequences of their own actions.

Read the whole thing.

Related:

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

THE VIEW HOSTS REACT TO PLAGUE RETURN AND ‘OMINOUS’ ELECTION MESSAGE FROM TRUMP:

The cohosts of The View had double trouble “Hot Topics” to deal with on Wednesday’s (October 7) live episode: the emergence of a new mystery pneumonic Plague in Russia and Donald Trump‘s cryptic statement that Project 2025 architect Russell Vought is preparing a “surprise” in the coming weeks leading up to the midterm elections.

* * * * * * * * *

Ana Navarro had a much grimmer outlook on the matter, saying, “I’m just so scarred, I guess, from the Covid experience that when I hear this, I just kind of want to put my hands to my ears, curl up in the fetal position, and say, ‘Wake me up when it’s over.’ This is why I think it’s so important that we have qualified people in government… I just don’t give a pass to Republican senators who voted to confirm RFK Jr. as secretary of health, knowing he wasn’t qualified, including people like Bill Cassidy, who’s a doctor himself, a senator, because things like this are going to come up. There’s going to be crises. There’s going to be health emergencies, and when I think of RFK Jr. heading HHS, I just say, ‘Girl, kiss your ass goodbye.'”

Good to see that ABC News productions and their show hosts are remaining calm and dispassionate during these trying times.

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll