Intifada in France

The idea for this cartoon was not that creative.
Sort of simplistic.
I scribbled out the text while sitting in a barbershop.
But I needed to see some photos of the riots in order to draw the cartoon.

"Easy" I thought, so when I got back to my studio and computer, I jumped to a great site called newseum that shows the front pages of newspapers from 45 different countries.

I was certain (foolish me) that the front pages of the world's press would be covered with photos of the "French Intifada"... but on the 7th day of Paris burning practically no paper had any front page note of the riots.

My next step was to check news reports and found numerous versions of an AP story (with no photos) which focused on the plight of the poor "victims", like Farah:

"Farah, an 8-year-old budding gymnast, cried when she saw the gutted wreckage of her gym crackling with flames and spewing smoke, destroyed in the latest nighttime rampage by immigrant youths in suburban Paris."

You might think that these "victims" blamed the rioters, and they did. As the widely published AP piece reported:

"They are stupid. They are destroying everything," said an 18-year-old who gave her name only as Mariam. "They should do that in southwest Paris or at the National Assembly - not here. People here are suffering already."

Eventually I found some photos at Yahoo! and carefully copied them for the cartoon.

I figure that few people will have seen the photographs and will probably think I exaggerated. Here's one of the photos. It's the one I used for the second panel of the cartoon above.