2009 Closes with Less Veneration of Saint Sylvester

New Years' Eve was declared "relatively calm" in Paris, pot-shots are taken at the NYPD - just because, dontcha know.

Head smashing

Le Parisien report -only- 11 injured police officers and 405 arrests on the Champs-Elysées in Paris. The qualifier being that there were significantly less people out there this year, and the head-smashing took place over a 4 hour period.

The same report indicates that Strasbourg "only burned up a little bit," as if this kind of thing is normal.

Carbeques

After a 30% spike last New Years' Eve, last night's events are reported to have yielded a significant drop in vehicular arson. Some of it can be attributed to bad weather, and my sense is the senselessness of past years' chaotic public behavior has blunted much of it this year, even among feral youths.

International broadcaster RFI reports on its' news blog that the drop can be attributed to a committed intervention by police. Clearly, the use of the "broken windows" apprach to policing has been applied to effect.

The French police will be mobilized in large numbers for the traditional New Year festivities. The night of Saint-Sylvestre normally degenerates [in its' safety]. Last year more than thousand cars had been deliberately burned, or 30% more than last year. Update on the mechanisms put in place to fight against this crime.

Heal Thyself, Pokey

No good deed going unslandered, while taking a non-disapproving position on the improvements in Paris with the special deployment of 45 000 cops, "calm" in New York gets a different characterization. It's declared "draconian".

From east to west across the globe, millions of people thronged the streets of major cities around the world to celebrate 2010 and try to forget within a few hours, the climate of uncertainty surrounding and upheavals of the global economic crisis.

Hard to believe when the numbers out on the streets are down.

In New York, a huge crowd braved the rain and snow to welcome with enthusiasm the midnight descent of the famous crystal ball in Times Square, symbolizing the transition to the new year.

Draconian security measures surrounding the festivities, six days after the attempt of a young Nigerian to blow up an aircraft from a U.S. company flying from Amsterdam to Detroit.

So while the statist tendency give's AFP's scribblers the notion that all is well when it takes place in a relatively small celabration in Paris which had one-fifth the revellers, it's jack-booted when it's employed to protect the nominal one million people who converge on time square.