The question remains: why did these people find attraction in leaving North Africa and moving to France in the first place, if it wasn't the promise of socialism's free lunch? The French and the rest of Europe are just beginning to learn chapter one economics the hard way. I suspect there are a lot more lessons ahead, that they brought upon themselves, and it won't be limited to ecomnomics!

In addtion to the riots, racism, and poverty, the dirty little secret about Europe in general and France and Germany in particular is that anti-sematism is alive an well, growing like a cancer just under the skin of society. This always comes as a surprise to my liberal friends in the US, its hard for them to believe.

European support for the Palestinians is nothing more than anti-semetic in origin.

I have been shocked several times to have it surface in polite dinner conversations among well bred, well educated citizens of both France and Germany.

But I suppose that after the attacks on Michelle Malkin and Mr. Steele in Maryland, I should have realized that for liberals, racist, religious and gender hypocrisy is OK as long as your target is not a socialist.

History does repeat itself, particularly with the French "aristocrats". The current group of French leftist, have never forgotten how to deal with the poor. They are still using the Marie Antoinette line of "So let them eat cake!". The French never learn. They again show their true colors with a lack of sensitivity to their own underprevileged. Their revolution by the Paris poor in the late 1700's started the heads rolling when the cries of the poor where ignored by King Louis and Queen Marie, who were the government of the time.
The current leader of the left, French "King Cher-Iraqi" has asked for calm(sic) and his henchman "Prince DeVelop-pain" cries out with regal indignation that "Law and order will be restored!"
After fattening their "royal" personal coffers with chummy ally Sadam's gold, they again ignore the same people Louis did, and may very well pay the same consequences, at least politically. We can only hope.

Eight nights of riots and counting, and now they've spread to other cities!

Schadenfreude, anyone?

Clearly France has a very deep immigration / social integration problem. But it is not a question of either equality or liberty - it is the balance struck for both by a good, responsible government that counts.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it . . ."

While rioting is almost always counter productive in that it hands the power and cover to criminals, we have to remember that one person's valuable cargo is another's harbor teapot protest!

Way to fight the stereotype that that foreign politics never is the neocons strong suit. France has had a rightwing majority for the last couple of years, the last socialist president was Mitterand. The riots, I can assure you, is not the result of the LACK of Reaganomics and evil, but that the social welfare is not being extended to already disenfranchised groups in french society.
Yes, racism exists in Europe and there is no standard solution for that one. There needs to be a sensible debate and I commend France for at least trying to diffuse the religious sidetracks by upholding secularism with its' ban on headscarfs. Church and state should be seperated. What we don't need is LePen and Haider taking their cues from bombastic pundits like Limbaugh or O'Reilly.
This comment is also a very neat way of illuminating that "compassion" side of conservatism to thoose fools who thought that this was just cynical branding efforts from the Bushies.

"France has had a rightwing majority for the last couple of years, the last socialist president was Mitterand"

Thats the trouble with socialists and left wing idealogues, they think they are centrists.

LePen represents the mainstream right of center in France as much as David Duke does here in the US.

Minister of the Interior, Internal Security and Local Freedoms, Nicholas Sarkozy is the head of the right of center movement.

The problems faced by France are well expressed above by DL. The illegal immigrants and many of the legal immigrants from Africa and the Middle East came specifically for the free lunch of socialism.

And riots and hatred are how they repay their hosts. But theswedes solution is to increase social benefits...not solve the problem by growing the economy and increasing job opportunities. Get a clue...Capital flees taxation, and no amount of wishing it weren't so will stop it. Restrictive legistaltion only speeds up the flight of capital and thus jobs.

11% unemployment and negative GDP growth!
Old Europe is crumbling under the weight of socialism, this is only a manifestation of that reality.

To borrow a phrase from our liberal friends, "Burn baby burn!"

The MSM and the world are finally seeing that Europe is being transformed into Eurabia by mass Muslim immigration into Europe. These Muslim immigrants come to Europe by the tens of millions and refuse to integrate into their host European societies. Instead, they want the societies of the host countries to become more Islamic. High Muslim birthrates mean that the European Muslim populations are growing exponentially, while the non-Muslim European populations are decreasing due to low birthrates. These horrible riots by Muslim youths are only the beginning. Not only will France see more and more of these riots, so will the rest of Europe. Islam is a violent death-cult and these Islamic rioters are demonstrating that violence in spades. France and Europe had better wake up before it's too late.

Hugh Hewitt had an excellent interview with Mark Steyn about the Riots in Paris.

Mark Steyn said there is a Euroarabian Civil War currently happening in the suburbs of France.

Mark Steyn-Euroarabian Civil War in France

(excertps):"HH: And so, you're not going to Paris anytime soon?"

MS: I'm actually thinking of going to Paris. I went to one of these suburbs that's currently ablaze three years ago. And what was interesting to me is I had to bribe a taxi driver a considerable amount of money just to take me out there. They're miserable places. But what was interesting to me is that after that, I then flew on to the Middle East, and I was in Yemen, and a couple of other places. And what was interesting to me was that I found more menace in the suburbs of Paris than I did in some pretty scary places in the Middle East. I mean, there is a real...this, I think, is the start of a long Eurabian civil war we're witnessing here.

HH: Now that's a pretty provocative statement. Let's begin by...describe these for us. Are they like the Moscow or the Leningrad or the St. Petersberg tenements that stretch on and on?

MS: Well, actually, I would say they're more miserable than that...

HH: Wow.

MS: ...because a lot of them are like concrete bunkers. They have very strange things there...these public buildings that you have to have a kind of security card to get into. So, you'll be going to see someone, and you'll be frantically sticking this kind of key card in the door, while you're standing outside on this very exposed sidewalk. They're places where people who are not Muslim feel very ill at ease. They're places where the writ of the French state does not run. The police don't police there. They basically figure if you go there, you're on your own. You're taking your own chances there. I mean, I don't think Americans understand quite the degree of alienation of some of these groups...."
[...]

HH: "...This is what...what option do they have if these riots continue, though? They can't appease people who won't be appeased.

MS: No, they can't. And essentially, you're dealing with communities that are totally isolated from the mainstream of French life. Where all kinds of practices that wouldn't be tolerated, that are not officially tolerated by French law, such as polygamy, for example. Polygamy is openly practiced in these...in les Banlieux, as they call these suburbs, these Muslim quarters of Paris. I mean, we're talking about five miles from the Elysee Palace. Five miles from where Jacques Chirac sits. And you finally got...you know, we kept hearing all this stuff ever since September 11th, you know, the Muslim street is going to explode in anger. Well, it finally did, and it was in Paris, not in the Middle East."

theswede,

France, regardless of government, is governed under socialist principles...it is ingrained in French law and custom, and the inevitible result of socialism is the riots we see in Paris today.

Socialims is built upon hatred, envy, isolation and despair...it is no wonder that the most hated, envious, isolated and despairing have taken to riots...and it is also no wonder that the French government doesn't give the rioters what they deserve: hot lead and cold steel. Socialism also breeds moral weakness...the inability to protect the weak against the strong because it is easier to bribe the strong. The people who are suffering under the riots are the poorest people in France...and the French government is blithely allowing it to happen.

Freedom1 wrote:
"Islam is a violent death-cult and these Islamic rioters are demonstrating that violence in spades. France and Europe had better wake up before it's too late."

Umm... it IS too late. I knew 10 years ago that France was heading to this. When Muslim groups succeeded in restricting "public" pools to one gender-only at a time, THAT was (a sign of) the beginning of the end.

Podunkct: "Umm... it IS too late."

Perhaps, but I like to think positively! With God, all things are possible-even the survival of Europe.

"When Muslim groups succeeded in restricting "public" pools to one gender-only at a time, THAT was (a sign of) the beginning of the end."

What about when they restricted wearing veils in schools? Was that a step in the right or the wrong direction?

boy you are really hung up on the veils. Anything to excuse their behavior. Are you muslim shortz? Or do you just fall lock step into the defense of anything that reinforces the Bush Doctrine.

Or do you just fall lock step into the defense of anything that reinforces the Bush Doctrine

That didn't quite come out the way it should have! oops. You defend the cruel nature of the situation with excuses, because it reinforces the Bush Doctrine, and we can't be having that now can we.

Shortz wrote:
"What about when they restricted wearing veils in schools? Was that a step in the right or the wrong direction?"

Apples and oranges. Banning of headscarfs *or other religious paraphanalia* was an attempt to diffuse growing religous based tensions, and whether you agree or disagree, was enacted by a legitimate national government. Restricting pool use by gender was imposed by religious groups and was, unfortunately, acquiesced to at the time by a timid local government.