http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=10114

As France Burns, Immigration Debate Rears its Ugly Head

by Mac Johnson
Posted Nov 7, 2005

For 10 nights now, France has burned and spun. The fire has been provided by rioters, but the spin has been provided by the French government and the mainstream media, both in Europe and in North America.

At first the riots were ignored, then portrayed as typical French-style protest, then as understandable acts of anger by an underclass made desperate by poverty, and finally they are being reluctantly described for what they are: race riots.

Gangs of Arab and African Muslim men, the children and grandchildren of immigrants accepted into France following the collapse of her African empire, are conducting an intifada in the midst of Europe. It has escalated from shoving and shouting to stone throwing, then to arson of thousands of parked cars, then to assaults on civilians, firemen and paramedics, and finally, as of Sunday night, to shootings of police officers. The intifada is increasingly organized and has spread to dozens of cities throughout France.

Apparently, while the intellectuals of Europe have moved past thinking of the world in terms of “us� and “them,� a lot of the immigrants they have recruited to their homelands have not. As a result, “assimilation� is suddenly more than just an SAT word in media analyses the world over.

Obviously, the spontaneous army of Muslim “youthsâ€? burning Peugeots and nursery schools in France has not been properly assimilated, it is reported. Following this astute observation, it is usually added that France does not have America’s long history of successfully assimilating immigrants and that the French government needs to do something about that. Preferably, it should do something teary-eyed, big-hearted and expensiveâ€â€