November 10, 2005

Mosquitos Trapped in Amber

Hatched by Sachi

We already know that the Moslem immigrants in France were not allowed to assimilate into the French society. But it is not so well known that the French children of Moslem immigrants are still ensnared in government housing projects, echoing in France what happened for decades in the United States. They are mosquitos trapped in amber, struggling against the sticky sap that binds them in place.

The projects were built in the 1960's as a part of modern urban planning. At first, poor working-class Frenchmen and immigrants lived side by side. As the French economy improved, job opportunities soon opened up for the native French; but for a variety of reasons, they were not equally open to the immigrants, especially Moslems from North and Central Africa.

A home-buying program of the 1980s allowed most of the native French to move out of the projects; but without jobs, few Moslems qualified. Soon they were left behind; with no jobs, no future, and (most important) no sense of being part of society, many Moslem youths turned to crime, probably for the same reason disaffected and alienated youth do here: impulse, boredom, bad example, and a deep feeling of "apartness."

The police instituted a crackdown in the projects in 1983; that police reaction led to a riot. This is very similar to what is happening today across much of france: rootless young Moslems, alienated from a society they have seen only via interaction with police, riot in response to a crackdown on real crimes.

"There's nothing to do, and frustrations have added up until in the end it has become like a bomb that they carry inside," said Azzouz Camen, 44, at a small snack bar he owns between the neighborhood's apartment blocks and a gleaming new mosque.

Most of us have the impression that the inaction of the spineless French police has greatly contributed to the crime surge in the region. However, the residents see just the opposite, overly aggressive police tactics, as the real cause. Both could be true simultaneously, as France lurches from crackdown to appeasement. From this angle, it's hard to see who is more right.

It really doesn't matter anyway; today's rioters don't care whether their lifelong belief about the crackdown was accurate then or now... they believe it, and it drives their actions. You can't argue someone out of his basic belief system. Especially when, like the French, you don't have any basic beliefs of your own.

The riot of twenty-two years ago was put down very heavy-handedly... and I think it became a part of the mythology of the current rioters as they grew up: they would hear much about the supposed gallantry of the protesters and the (still evident) brutality of the French police, and that would alienate them even more from the society inside of which they live.

Nothing permanent came from that riot in 1983:

[Harlem] Désir emerged as a leader from that unrest and helped organize a march for equal rights that started in the immigrant neighborhoods outside Lyon and ended in Paris.

The press dubbed it the March of the Beurs, using the immigrants' slang word for Arab, and France's left-leaning intelligentsia embraced the cause, seeing in it an echo of the United States' civil rights movement. President François Mitterrand received some of the marchers at Élysée Palace and euphoria swept through the country's children of immigrants. They had stood up and been heard.

However, the government response to the problem turned out to be merely cosmetic with no substance. They repainted projects and assigned a few social workers to "help" youths. But they did nothing to assimilate the immigrants into the general population.

As things grew steadily worse, crime in and from the projects grew. An effort by the last Socialist administration helped improve things a bit by putting police officers on the beat in the neighborhoods and providing money to create jobs for young residents. But both programs ended after Jacques Chirac became president [in 1995].

His tough interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, replaced the police on the beat with officers from an anti-crime brigade who cover several towns at a time. Their aggressive tactics have won almost universal scorn in the projects and created an air of hostility that has precipitated the current violence.

Chirac's response to this problem was to keep the immigrants in the projects and lock the door. Assimilation is farthest from his mind. His tactics reminds of a Japanese saying: "put a lid on a smelly pot." All the while Moslem jihadis were recruiting potential terrorists in the projects.

France has been ignoring the probelm for too long. If you cut some segments of the population off from the rest of the society, tragedy is inevitable. They should have known this would happen. This is not to excuse the rioters, just to note that when you light a fuse, you shouldn't wonder that a bomb explodes.

Many people in the world have the wrong impression that the United States suffers from an unusually high rate of racial discrimination. I always tell people from other countries that you hear about our racial problems only because we are willing to face them. We heard nothing about the racial tension growing in Europe, but that does not mean there was none; it only meant they never had guts to face the reality.

If you ignore reality long enough, it will bite you in the face like a swarm of hungry mosquitos bursting free of their amber prisons. Well, Europe, are you ready to face the reality now?

Hatched by Sachi on this day, November 10, 2005, at the time of 4:18 AM

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» Sachiko ab Hugh: Mosquitos trapped in amber from Common Sense Political Thought
Black Americans are not immigrants, but are the decendants of many generations. The Arabs in France are relatively recent immigrants; if the French were not willing to help them assimilate, to become French, then they shouldn’t have allowed the... [Read More]

Tracked on November 10, 2005 5:28 PM

Comments

The following hissed in response by: RonC

Sachi...

..they should have cleaned the 'smelly pot' long ago, now it has exploded in their bigoted face.  The leftist-invented word apartide is appropriate with repect to the French treatment of immigrants.

The above hissed in response by: RonC [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 10, 2005 4:38 AM

The following hissed in response by: RBMN

I'm certainly not in favor of our current flood of illegal immigration from Mexico, but we Americans don't realize how very lucky we are, that the vast majority ... the VAST MAJORITY ... of Mexican immigrants--that come here for entry-level jobs--are believing-Catholics and socially-conservative traditionalists for the most part. That part is the blessing. We should worry most about the ones who aren't Mexican. And also make sure that Mexicans here learn English, so they can assimilate and not concentrate themselves in ethnic ghettoes.

The above hissed in response by: RBMN [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 10, 2005 8:26 AM

The following hissed in response by: beebop

RMBN,

Hate to burst your bubble, but I'd recommend you read "Mexico's Undiplomatic Diplomats" in this month's City Journal. I put up a link the last time Daffyd discussed this issue. Here's a taste:

"Mexicans view migration to the U.S. as a fundamental human right, says Davidow; no laws should stop it, they believe. In addition, nearly 60 percent of Mexican respondents polled by Zogby in 2001 said that the southwestern U.S. really belongs to Mexico. Only 28 percent disagreed.

Mexican consuls denounce any U.S. law enforcement effort against illegal immigration as biased and inhumane. For the moment, they still tolerate deportations if officials pick up the illegal Mexican right at the border and promptly set him down on the other side—whence he can try again the next day. Once in the U.S., however, an illegal gains untouchable status, in the consuls’ view."

We are in the process of creating our own immigrant ghettos and are acting just as myopic as the French about it. Most analysis of the Rodney King riots in LA pointed out that the African-American component was minor compared to the problems in the illegal Salvadoran and Mexican communities. I recommend a nondiscriminatory guest worker program that will allow east asians to supplant the Mexican tidal wave for awhile, to allow the Mexican communities to assimilate.

The above hissed in response by: beebop [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 10, 2005 10:09 AM

The following hissed in response by: beebop

By a nondiscriminatory policy I mean one that evaluates a guest worker's ability to contribute to our society.

The above hissed in response by: beebop [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 10, 2005 10:13 AM

The following hissed in response by: Linh_My

Over the last 50 years, I've kicked around the world a bit. From what I've seen, racial discrimination in the US is on the low side of normal around the world

The above hissed in response by: Linh_My [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 10, 2005 11:02 AM

The following hissed in response by: yonason

Ignorance of history is something we are all victims of in this age of political correctness and information-control induced amesia, so let's clear up at least one misconception.

''...the Europeans, spooked by the oil crisis of 1973, sold their cultural soul for oil. European leaders entered into a long series of pacts with the Arab League to secure favorable oil prices -- and a steady supply of cheap labor in Europe in the form of massive Moslem immigration.

But the price was steep: Arab leaders made sure that the Europeans WOULD DO NOTHING TO ASSIMILATE THE IMMIGRANTS into European Christian culture, but would in fact MAKE EXTENSIVE EFFORTS TO MAKE SURE THEY RETAINED THEIR ISLAMIC IDENTITY.''
http://www.falange.us/eurabia.htm

So, this is not JUST a product of European racism, but also of their yielding to Arab pressure to create conditions favorable for Europe's demise.

A somewhat more in depth analysis reveals WHY the Arabs imposed these conditions on a fearfull and morally bankrupt Europe
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16493

What the future holds in store...

''Few Americans have heard of him, but in Europe, more and more are becoming familiar with the name - and the ideas - of Dyab Abou Jahjah, founder of the now-international Arab European League (AEL) and the Muslim Democratic Party. Handsome, charismatic, well-educated, and multilingual, he has the perfect makings of a political leader, or perhaps better said, a man poised to lead a revolution. And he knows it.

More to the point: as the fury of Muslim youth explodes across the landscape of Western Europe, it's time that others know it, too.

The AEL, first founded in Belgium in 2000 - in other words, before September 2001 - now has branches in the Netherlands and France, and intends to spread across the E.U., with plans to participate in future European Parliamentary elections as the Muslim Democratic Party.''
http://www.reportingwar.com/esman111005.shtml

The above hissed in response by: yonason [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 10, 2005 11:17 AM

The following hissed in response by: yonason

to-'beebop'

re-''Mexicans view migration to the U.S. as a fundamental human right''

Look-like-it.

Here-is-the-official-Mexican-Govt..,-''guiamigrate''-[traveler's-guide]-comic-book,-which-they-have-translated,-at-last,-along-with-their-justification-[propaganda]-for-the-book.]

http://www.letxa.com/guiamigrante.php

It's-like-AlQaeda-saying-''we-only-teach-how-to-make-bomb-because-terrorists-will-make-it-anyway,-so-we-show-right-way-because-we-don't-want-them-to-get-hurt''.

The above hissed in response by: yonason [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 10, 2005 7:10 PM

The following hissed in response by: KarmiCommunist

A victim of the sticky ooze, this female mosquito appears to have put up a struggle. Wonder if she fed on any large mammals before the resin got her? This is Dominican amber of the Oligocene-Eocene epochs and only 25-40 million years old. Unfortunately, no dinos were left for her to feed on, so she's not much use to "Jurassic Park" type scientists. Do you know in what era we lost the dinosaurs as well as many other species? What extraterrestrial event could have been responsible for this extinction?

Mosquito

Well, next to 'Love Bugs', Mosquitoes are my favorite insect. i feed my Mosquitoes, and have done so for over 15 years. Have you ever snorted 'Love Bug' dust??? i get $100.00 an ounce for 'Love Bugs'...dead or alive or freshly bloodied off my hood. i get $100,000 an ounce if i refine them into a snorting dust form. Messy all around, so i now provide just the liquid version, for a profit that allows me to feed Mosquitoes for free. Mosquitoes are a loving insect, and don't really eat that much. Well, one only has just so much blood, so they should not feed hoards of Mosquitoes.

Karmi

The above hissed in response by: KarmiCommunist [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 11, 2005 6:47 PM

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