Polio in Islamic countries is said to be, in the article below, a cultural problem rather than one stemming from Islam. We are left puzzled by the distinction: at what point is Islam separate from culture in Islamic countries? One might argue that if the imam says it's OK to take a vaccine to combat polio and the natives refuse on other ground, then yes, there is a cultural rejection of vaccines rather than a religious rejection. But is that what we read below? We think not. We think what we read is a dhimmi idiot pandering to Islam, a cover-up, if you will, that tries to explain away the influence of Islam on primitive people. Look at the nations suffering now from polio, and see if they are Islamic or not. See who else suffers from polio because the natives will not allow the vaccine. Ask why so people won't allow its use and for what reasons. And ask: "If the polio spreads, who is responsible for it, and what is there to be done about those who will not allow its halt?"

Polio gains power amid pockets of Muslim distrust

Cultural bias, and not religious proscription, is to blame for a resurgence of polio in Muslim countries.

By Kevin Ferguson
(November 14, 2005)

Cultural bias, rather than religious proscription, is more to blame for a resurgence of polio cases in Muslim countries where the disease had been all but vanquished, according to international health workers.

This year, for first time ever, the number of afflicted children in reinfected countries, 718, is higher than that of endemic countries, 426, according to the World Health Organization and UNICEF. ...

Polio is spreading most rapidly in Nigeria and Indonesia, and new cases have cropped up in Yemen, Sudan, Ethiopia, Angola, Mali, Cameroon, Chad and Eritrea. All told, the number of polio cases worldwide has dropped drastically, from 350,000 in 1988 to 483 in 2001. But last year the figure rose to more than 700.

Rumors have been circulating in Indonesia that polio vaccinations are contrary to Islamic dietary law and are a plot by Christians to secretly sterilize Muslim women and introduce the HIV virus. Similar rumors precipitated a 2003 Nigerian outbreak, when Muslim leaders in the country's northern Kano state forbade inoculations for 10 months. The declaration was later rescinded, though the polio virus has since spread across Africa and to Asia.

"Religion is not an issue at the moment," said John Budd, UNICEF's Indonesia communications officer. In West Java, for example, only one child in 500 studied this year was found to have refused polio vaccination because of fears that the shots were haram, or forbidden, by Islamic dietary laws. "In fact, I went to one village where health workers told me that children weren't being immunized due to religion. On discussing it with the local imam, we discovered, on the contrary, he was totally supportive of the campaign. It was the issue of [medical] safety."

While religious beliefs have played a relatively small role in preventing vaccinations, approval by religious leaders is considered essential for polio eradication. In Indonesia, which in March saw its first case of polio in 10 years, international health organizations have been working closely with religious leaders and have received strong support for the campaigns and for the vaccine, according to Budd. "Essentially, [the vaccine] is safe and has been declared halal [or acceptable] by Islamic leaders in Indonesia and all over the world," including the Grand Sheikh Tantawi of Egypt's Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia and the Indonesian Ulemas Council, he said. "Furthermore, it is haram not to allow vaccination, as this would expose children to dangers of the disease."

Despite such declarations, the notion that polio vaccinations are, indeed, haram surfaces from time to time because the manufacturing process often includes the laboratory cultivation of polio virus from the cell lines of African green monkeys. As such, Muslim leaders offer contradictory or ambiguous advice.

"It's not always as simple as whether or not pork is involved," said Sheikh Suheil Laher, the Muslim chaplain of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass. "There are animals that can be eaten and those that cannot. Those that can must usually be slaughtered in a certain way." Canine-toothed animals are considered not to be halal, according to many scholars, said Laher, and that makes the omnivorous African green monkey haram. However, there are also concessions or dispensations in Islamic law for medical necessity.

Laher, a Zimbabwean of Indian origin, was inoculated as a child and has no reservations about polio vaccinations. "But in northern Nigeria, where it's mostly Muslim, I can understand that there would be mistrust amongst some people."

Dr. Rehana Kausar, an anesthesiologist and newly appointed president of the Islamic Medical Association of North America in Lombard, Ill., is pointed in her assessment: "To say that you cannot take a polio vaccination has nothing to do with Islam." The Kashmiri physician said she saw no evidence of religious-based objections to polio vaccinations during a medical relief mission to Banda Aceh, Indonesia, in late March.

Rather, residents of small villages and their leaders simply distrust the motivations of foreign aid workers and are uncertain that the vaccinations are medically safe. "This is then multiplied by confusion among health workers about whether they should give sick babies the vaccine," said UNICEF's Budd. Distrust is also bred by the very nature of vaccines, said Nathaniel Raymond, communications advisor for humanitarian response for Boston-based Oxfam America. "People are suspicious of vaccines because they don't see results immediately. If this is the first time, you're introducing an abstraction to them," he said. ...

Such reservations have worldwide impact. Many of the current outbreaks have their genetic roots in Nigeria, where polio vaccinations were suspended for 10 months. From Nigeria, one strain has spread successively to Chad, Sudan, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and eventually to Indonesia, according to Oliver Rosenbauer, communications officer for UNICEF's Geneva bureau. "I think there is a distrust of health services in these countries," said Rosenbauer. Residents see foreign health workers come regularly to administer polio vaccinations while millions succumb to measles, tuberculosis, malaria and AIDS. They don't understand that there are no vaccinations for malaria and HIV, and that measles and TB shots are more difficult to administer than the oral polo vaccine, he said. "I would begin to get suspicious, as well," Rosenbauer said.

Such distrust is inevitable, said Aminah Beverly McCloud, director of DePaul University's Islamic World Studies Program. "If people know our history, they will understand why there is mistrust," she said. McCloud cited the use of Trovan, an experimental oral meningitis vaccination manufactured by Pfizer and used in clinical trials in Nigeria in 1996 in which – said local residents at the time – 11 children died. Eventually, 15,000 Nigerians died of meningitis during the epidemic. In August, a federal judge in Manhattan dismissed a class-action suit against Pfizer by Nigerian families who claim the drug maker put their children in dangerous drug trials without proper consent. The dismissal bounces the case back to Nigerian courts.

"Religion does play a huge role," said Rosenbauer. "A lot of times the religious leaders are often the community leaders. As a partnership we work with religious and community leaders to try to become advocates for polio eradication."

Meanwhile, the Nigerian polio strain continues to wend its way around the globe. Since March, the strain has paralyzed 225 children in Indonesia. In response, 24 million Indonesian children were immunized in late August as part of the country's largest-ever mass immunization campaign, according to the WHO. More than 750,000 vaccinators, health workers and volunteers went house to house across Indonesia to reach children under the age of five years. Initially restricted to two provinces on the Banten and West Java provinces on Java island, the outbreak is geographically expanding, having recently infected the country's capital, Jakarta, as well as Sumatra and Central Java, said the WHO.

Kevin Ferguson is a freelance writer based in Arlington, Mass. His work regularly appears in BusinessWeek and numerous computer-industry journals.

http://www.stnews.org/News-2281.htm
***

So there we are. The dhimmi idiots contradict themselves, apologize for Islamic obscurantism, fall over themselves to blame modern medicine via a case no one is likely to have heard about, and claim it's nothing to do with Islam that polio is spreading across the Islamic world. What do we do? We shake our heads and wonder how people can be so completely dishonest and still make a living outside the confines of the mafia.

Identity Fascism (2)

"This sacred land has belonged to the Palestinian Peoples from the beginning of time. It is ours, and it will be ours forever."

Chop and change all you like, swap the Palestinians for the "natives" of X in the land of Y, and off you go on a whole new crusade of Identity fascism in the name of Z.

There is no such thing as the X people. There is such a thing as the identity of the X people, and it comes from families grouped together for inbred generations on small parcels of depleted land they couldn't escape from because they were part of the landowners' holdings. There are ties that bind, family ties, and ties of custom and language, and perhaps they make up an ethnic group one can recognise with a keen eye for such things. But for the concept of the people, it's a stretch to claim ownership of land by virtue of ethnicity over the course of anything longer than owns own life time. What my grandfather owned isn't mine but his. Unless, of course, I own what he owned by virtue of atavistic whim. If I can convince myself and you and others that I am continuous by racial identity, and if not there, by language and personal custom, then I can make an argument that this is mine and not yours because I am mine and you are not. If I can convince us that I am of my own kind and you are an outsider, not an authentic insider, not part of the group who owns by virtue of being of the group, then you are excluded by the laws of nature and spirit.

The point of the exercise is to claim that I have an identity within a group, and that you do not share that identity. If you do not share it, you are not a legitimate recipient of the goods and services we have, not entitled to what we have and get and give, and you do not have a right to be among us as an equal.

There are common instances of separateness that make fine sense to all but communitarians of all sorts, those who claim the family of man takes precedence over the smaller group, including the nuclear family. One can find theoretical expression of communitarian families in Plato's Republic and in the writings, such as they are, of Sparta. More recently, a great deal of ink is wasted in the 19th century socialist and anarchist press on the concept of internationalism and community of nations. Today we live with daycare centres and the U.N. Altogether, we have, in the Modern West, multi-culturalism, the family of man and the unity of all peoples. And too we have identity. We have the common idea that man is not individual by only valid in comparison and in contrast to others, and that his identity and validity comes from his belonging to a group who defines him by virtue of boundaries, a shore around a body of water that defines a lake, for example, a body of language that defines a German, a religion that defines a Muslim.

This is a relatively new concept, this idea of identity. Until recently there was no such thing as nation, (cf the Treaty of Westphalia here,) and there was no sense of the universality of man outside his family, clan, and tribe (cf Modern Agriculture here.)

Here we will look at the concept of national identity as formulated by J.G. Herder (cf Herder here.) We will see again more of the roots of the common concepts of our time in the Modern West, and below we will see the evidence again of the fascist reactionary Counter-Enlightenment that is to day Left dhimmi fascism. We will see the roots of such repugnant cliches as "the people." We will see the beginnings of nonsense such as "we have always lived on this sacred land." We will see the beginnings in Herder of the Nazi quest for racial purity and living space for Germans, and also the place held today by those who claim the Palestinians are a people with a right to land by virtue of identity. We will see the mass of confusion that creates both multi-culturalism and fascist identity politics. We will see "We are all one, but you are different, you have a right to the sacred soil of your ancestors, and we, being outsiders, defer." All of the seeds of identity fascism and Left dhimmi philobarbarism are in the two short excerpts below. We will continue this look in further detail in our next post, and there we will sort it out to show the fascism of identity and the roots of modern anti-Semitism as well.

Our first piece is a breathless introduction to Herder from the Goethe Institute, which we have mercifully cut severely for the sake of our readers. We follow it with more of the same from wikipedia. We will take time again tomorrow to follow up on this important and sinister thinker as preparation for the introduction to Fichte, and he as introduction to our eventual look at identity and ecology fascism.

***
"I feel! I am!" - Johann Gottfried Herder

Johann Gottfried Herder was undoubtedly one of the most significant representatives of Weimar Classicism. Nevertheless, he tends not to be mentioned in the same breath as Goethe and Schiller. However great his impact on the "Sturm und Drang" movement, German Classicism and Romanticism, philology and history may have been, it is not easy to sum up Herder's work under a single heading .

***

Born in 1744 ....

Folk Song and "Sturm und Drang"

Herder studied theology and philosophy in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) – where his lecturers included Kant and Hamann. He subsequently worked as a teacher and preacher in Riga until setting off for France in 1769. He then got to know Goethe as a result of a chance meeting in Strasburg.

***

Herder looked across state borders in his search for lyric poetry rooted in the traditions of folk song; his anthology, "Volkslieder" (Folk Songs), helped to establish the concept of "world literature", a term coined later by August Wilhelm Schlegel. This significant anthology contains over 90 texts translated from English and Scots, a variety of Romance, Slavic and Northern European languages and Greenlandish.

National character and humanity

In the 19th century, Herder's view of peoples, their languages and the character of individual nations – which was untainted by nationalistic bigotry – also encouraged smaller nations to explore their languages and cultures and regard them as having value in their own right.

The preacher and educationalist had a lasting influence with his belief that nations (like languages as well) are subjects of history and manifest a character of their own tied to particular places and times. The modern philosophy of history begins with Herder, as does a historiography that concentrates its attention on the formation and development of individual nations.

His unfinished major work "Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit" (Ideas for the Philosophy of the History of Mankind, 1784-1791) can be read as a synthesis of his thought. ... And he ascribes a central function to humanity: "Humanity is the purpose of man's nature and God has placed our race's own destiny into its hands with this purpose" (Book XV).

Like the "Ideas", Herder's "Briefe zur Beförderung der Humanität" (Letters for the Advancement of Humanity, 1797) .... In the "Letters", Herder argues strongly for other nations to be accorded respect and esteem: "The insolent violator of others' rights, […] the audacious abuser of others' customs and opinions, the boaster who imposes his own merits on peoples who do not desire them will be hated."

Thinking and feeling

The recent interest in the Age of the Enlightenment has probably contributed to the renaissance of Herderian models of thinking. Herder's holistic attitude contrasts with the total domination of rational thought from Descartes to Kant, an approach felt by many to be inadequate. Herder's thinking also encompasses the "other" of reason: "Loving the body without the spirit, said a philosopher full of great insight, is idolatry; loving the soul without the body is zealotry; loving each in the other, is true, whole humanity" ("Vom Erkennen und Empfinden", Of Cognition and Sensation, 1775).
Herder stands for the anthropological turn. Following French sensualism, Herder accords greater significance to sensual cognition, and associates the senses and the intellect more closely with each other. In his posthumous text "Zum Sinn des Gefühls" (On the Meaning of Feeling), Herder sets out his own counterpart to Descartes's "Cogito ergo sum" when he says, "I feel! I am!"

http://www.goethe.de/kug/ges/phi/prt/en72435.htm

***

In 1772 Herder published Concerning the Origin of Speech and went further in this promotion of language than his earlier injunction to "spew out the ugly slime of the Seine. Speak German, O You German".

[....]

Herder wrote that "A poet is the creator of the nation around him, he gives them a world to see and has their souls in his hand to lead them to that world." To him such poetry had its greatest purity and power in nations before they became civilised, as shown in the Old Testament, the Edda , and Homer, and he tried to find such virtues in ancient German folk songs and Norse poetry and mythology.

[....]

Herder's philosophy was of a deeply subjective turn, stressing influence by physical and historical circumstance upon human development, stressing that "one must go into the age, into the region, into the whole history, and feel one's way into everything". The historian should be the "regenerated contemporary" of the past, and history a science as "instrument of the most genuine patriotic spirit".

[edit]

Volk and Nation

Herder replaced the traditional concept of a juridico-political state with that of the folk-nation as organic in its historical growth. Every nation was in this manner organic and whole, nationality a plant of nurture. He talked of the "national animal" and of the "physiology of the whole national group" , which organism was topped by the "national spirit", the "soul of the volk".

Herder gave Germans a new pride in their origins, ... remarking that he would have wished to be born in the Middle Ages and musing whether "the times of the Swabian emperors" did not "deserve to be set forth in their true light in accordance with the German mode of thought?" Herder equated the German with the Gothic... equally he proclaimed a national message within the sphere of language. ... This urged Germans to glory in their hitherto despised language, and Herder's extensive collections of folk-poetry began a great craze in Germany for that neglected literature.

Along with Wilhelm von Humboldt, he proposed what is now called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis — that language determines thought . Herder's focus upon language and cultural traditions as the ties that create a " nation" extended to include folklore, dance, music and art, and inspired Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in their collection of Germanic folk tales.

Herder attached exceptional importance to the concept of nationality and of patriotism — "he that has lost his patriotic spirit has lost himself and the whole worlds about himself ", whilst teaching that " in a certain sense every human perfection is national". Herder carried folk theory to an extreme by maintaining that "there is only one class in the state, the Volk, (not the rabble), and the king belongs to this class as well as the peasant". Explanation that the Volk was not the rabble was a novel conception in this era, and with Herder can be seen the emergence of "the people" as the basis for the emergence of a classless but hierarchical national body.

The nation, however was individual and separate, distinguished, to Herder, by climate, education, foreign intercourse, tradition and heredity. Providence he praised for having "wonderfully separated nationalities not only by woods and mountins, seas and deserts, rivers and climates, but more particularly by languages, inclinations and characters". Herder praised the tribal outlook writing that "the savage who loves himself, his wife and child with quiet joy and glows with limited activity of his tribe as for his own life is in my opinion a more real being than that cultivated shadow who is enraptured with the shadow of the whole species", isolated since "each nationality contains its centre of happiness within itself, as a bullet the centre of gravity". With no need for comparison since" every nation bears in itself the standard of its perfection, totally independent of all comparison with that of others" for "do not nationalities differ in everything, in poetry, in appearance, in tastes, in usages, customs and languages? Must not religion which partakes of these also differ among the nationalities?"

[edit]

Germany and The Enlightenment

This question was further developed by Herder's lament that Martin Luther did not establish a national church, and his doubt whether Germany did not buy Christianity at too high a price, that of true nationality. Herder's patriotism bordered at times upon national pantheism, demanding of territorial unity as "He is deserving of glory and gratitude who seeks to promote the unity of the territories of Germany through writings, manufacture, and institutions" and sounding an even deeper call:

"But now! Again I cry, my German brethren! But now! The remains of all genuine folk-thought is rolling into the abyss of oblivion with a last and accelerated impetus. For the last century we have been ashamed of everything that concerns the fatherland."

Herder presented formal defiance of the age of reason and Enlightenment . In his Ideas upon Philosophy and the History of Mankind he even wrote "Compare England with Germany: the English are Germans, and even in the latest times the Germans have led the way for the English in the greatest things."

Herder, who hated absolutism and Prussian nationalism, but who was imbued with the spirit of the whole German Volk, yet as historical theorist turned away from the light of the Eighteenth century. Seeking to reconcile his thought with this earlier age Herder sought to harmonize his conception of sentiment with reason, whereby all knowledge is implicit in the soul; the most elementary stage is sensuous and intuitive perception which by development can become self-conscious and rational. To Herder, this development is the harmonizing of primitive and derivative truth, of experience and intelligence, feeling and reason.

Herder is the first in but a long line of Germans preoccupied with this harmony. This search is itself the key to much in German theory. And Herder was too penetrating a thinker not to understand and fear the extremes to which his folk-theory could tend, and so issued specific warnings. While regarding the Jews as aliens in Europe, he yet refused to adhere to a rigid racial theory, writing that "notwithstanding the varieties of the human form there is but one and the same species of man throughout the whole earth".

[....]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Gottfried_von_Herder

***

This is a hurried presentation, and if there are questions you, dear reader, wish to ask, please feel free to leave comments so we can return to this with a perhaps clearer exposition later.

Speechless at the Mill with Slaves

Threaten the safety of delicate Jewish girls in the Netherlands if you will, but don't you dare say anything bad in public about Islam or you'll be in really big trouble.

Poor "youths" discriminated against and marginalized and alienated, dispossessed by the evil Dutch neo-colonialist racists! White-wash this shite as we will, it just won't come clean. But what can we say? Can we find an audience who will listen to common reason and see plain as the azure skies the actuality?

Mostly we're concerned below with the loss of free speech due to Islamic terrorism and Left dhimmi fascism in Europe. There is a growing backlash against Islam and it's radical and murderous adherents, but though that is all to the good if Europe is to survive as an independent bloc of Modernity, it must not slip into White fascist reaction and obscurantism, the very evils of Islam we struggle to overcome.

We'll look below at some reactions to the situations we find, and from that we might begin to ask where we go from here. It's our postion that the West, if it is to maintain its Modernity, must continue in its classical Liberalist pursuit of privacy and free thought. We mount the portrait of our favorite Liberal, John Stewart Mill, to look over our post this day.

Here is a view from the Netherlands on how their nation fares. Below we'll look briefly at England's Hyde Park speakers' corner and some comments on the nature of Canada. We'll follow with views from Denmark, and we'll end with France.
***

NETHERLANDS

Published 10 November 05

International Desk

By Abigail R. Esman
World Defense Review columnist

The shifting direction of the war on terror

"This is the beginning of the war!" a French Muslim boy called out in the middle of the riots in Le Blanc Mesnil, just north of Paris.

But is it? Or was the war really going on already?

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, [known also as Abu Yaya,] 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. With battle cries like "Whatever Means Necessary" and frequent condemnations of America, Jahjah, who called the 9/11 attacks "sweet revenge," recruits Muslim youth to spread his ideology, a vague series of ideas that occasionally appear moderate, but when added together, call for violent resistance, the destruction of Israel, and the introduction of Sharia (Islamic) law in Europe.

Most recently, Jahjah issued a public statement supporting Iranian president Ahadi Najad's declaration calling for Israel to be wiped off the face of the map. "The foundation of Najad's reasoning is intellectually defendable," he writes in English (the statement in its entirety can be found here) "and despite the fact that his regime is no perfect example of political morality, I argue that his position on this matter is the only possible moral one." (Ironically, the man slain filmmaker Theo van Gogh once called "a pimp for Allah" continues his rant with mention of a "mythical racial-religious holy promise by some god in some religious book" by which, of course, he means the Old Testament. Despite such statements, Jahjah repeatedly insists he has "nothing against the Jews.")

I've thought a lot about Jahjah the last few days: Jahjah who never condemned the killing of van Gogh by a Dutch Muslim fundamentalist; Jahjah who finds the destruction of Israel "the only possible moral" option; Jahjah who has on several occasions incited riots on the streets of Antwerp and now defends the ongoing rioting of Muslim youth outside of Paris. I've thought of Jahjah as Muslim youths riot, too, in Arhus, Denmark, presumably in protest against the publication in a national newspaper of a cartoon drawing of Mohammed.

(Question: why is it that when a political leader in Western Europe refers to the Old Testament as "some religious book," it's all right, but when a Western European newspaper publishes a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed it brings international protest from across the Muslim world and rioting within the country?)

I've though of Jahjah in all of this because his influence on European Muslim youth men and women ages 18-30, mostly, has been significant enough that the Dutch intelligence service traces the rise of Muslim anti-Semitism and extremism in the Netherlands in no small measure straight back to the AEL.

And I think of this fact every day lately as I walk the streets of my mostly-Muslim neighborhood: because suddenly, now, as an American Jew, if I normally wore a star of David or a chai around my neck, after Jahjah's declaration I would be too frightened to be seen with it on the street.

MORE:

http://www.reportingwar.com/esman111005.shtml

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Muslim hate-mongers spewing racist exhortations to violence and post-Nazi Islamic supremacy get a free pass in the Netherlands. Look now for the sake of contrast at England and Canada:

BRITAIN AND CANADA

The Speakers' Shrinking Corner
"Britain's tradition of free speech is under assault."

By Joseph Brean in London

[....]

Last week, city council in the norther city of Hull sent staffers an e-mail telling them to stop using such words as "lady," "ethnic," "senior citizen," "love," "spastic," or "dyke" that might cause offence.

In Manchester, a hit and run victim was scolded by police for describing the driver as "fat" ....

"What has gone wrong is the Canadianization of Britain," says professor Christie Davies, a sociologist at the University of Reading....

He means that Canadians, especially Torontonians, led the charge for political correctness at the expense of free speech, and now Britain is following suit. I regard Toronto almost as being in the old East Germany," he said.

Prof. Davies recalled stopping at the city's [Toronto's] Speaker's Corner, which claims to be modelled on the London original, and reading a list of all the things he was not allowed to say....

Read it all at: jbrean@nationalpost.com
***

There is a limit to the burning and looting and murder, and even the Danes seem to be reaching it. What is the limit, and what comes when we pass it? We might think today that nothing can be worse than Islamic fascism, but what is it we're approaching?
***

DENMARK

A Mutual Suspicion Grows in Denmark

By Jeffrey Fleishman, Times Staff Writer
[excerpted]
COPENHAGEN —
[....]

Hate screeds are rattling against this Scandinavian nation's aura of serenity. A Muslim publisher with suspected ties to the Al Qaeda terrorist network was recently jailed for allegedly inciting jihad and distributing videotapes of beheadings. A right-wing radio host reacted by saying that Muslims should be expelled from Western Europe, "or you exterminate the fanatical Muslims, which would mean killing a substantial population of Muslim immigrants."

Such incendiary cases, although exceptional in Denmark, raise fears that if Muslim integration can't succeed in the most liberal of Western nations, it might not be able to flourish in more conservative ones.

With cars burning across France and Islamic radicals going underground in Britain, Europe is reeling from the anger of Muslim communities that for decades have existed as parallel universes. Terrorist bombings and riots have sparked fears on the continent and raised questions about its hallowed ideal of cultural tolerance. Muslims complain that tensions over terrorism have turned them into convenient symbols for conservative politicians pushing anti-immigration policies.

From the Danish Parliament to the immigrant neighborhoods in Norrebro, ... echoes with suspicion. Liberal freedom-of-speech laws are being challenged by Hizb ut-Tahrir, an extremist Islamic organization recruiting Muslims to battle coalition forces in Iraq that include 530 Danish troops. In a society that prides itself on racial parity, voters have elevated the xenophobic Danish People's Party from the fringes to the country's third most powerful political bloc.

"I believe integrating a large number of Muslims can't be done. It's an illusion," said Martin Henriksen, a 25-year-old legislator for the People's Party. "They don't have the desire to blend in with other people. We've been a Christian country for 1,000 years and we are the oldest monarchy in the world. I want to get married and have a lot of kids who can walk around in a society not influenced by Muslims."

This attitude mirrors growing cultural strains, anxiety over possible terrorist attacks and the Danish People's Party's frequent criticisms of the 200,000 Muslims among the nation's 5.4 million people. The tilt to the right is starkly seen in the number of asylum applications the government has approved: 53% in 2001 and 10% last year.

...Fadi Abdul Latif, the spokesman for Hizb ut-Tahrir in Denmark, accused conservatives of changing the meaning of integration. Whereas it once meant attending Danish schools and speaking the national language, he charged, now it forces Muslims into accepting European values on issues including sexuality and religion.

"This is the Europe of the Middle Ages," said Abdul Latif, a Palestinian born in a Lebanese refugee camp who moved here years ago. "When others want to force their values on Muslims, we must reject this. We neither want to assimilate nor isolate. We want to keep our identity and carry our message of Islam to others. But Europe is using the climate of war and terrorism to force assimilation."

Hizb ut-Tahrir seeks to establish an Islamic caliphate and expel Western influences from Muslim nations. Outlawed in Sweden and Germany, the group faces a possible ban in Britain after the London transit bombings in July. In 2002, Abdul Latif was charged with distributing hate literature that revered suicide bombers as martyrs and quoted a verse from the Koran: "And kill them from wherever you find them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out." He received a 60-day suspended sentence.

He also circulated a flier in 2004 urging Muslims to "go help your brothers in Fallouja and exterminate your rulers if they block your way." Abdul Latif said in an interview that Hizb ut-Tahrir was rallying fighters in the Middle East, not Europe. The Danish government, whose support of the Bush administration in Iraq has drawn threats from Al Qaeda affiliates, has reopened an investigation into Tahrir.

Abdul Latif is not the only voice testing Denmark's free speech boundaries. Said Mansour, a Moroccan-born Danish publisher who has been under intelligence surveillance for years, was charged in September with instigating terrorism after police raided his home and confiscated allegedly "inflammatory jihadist" videos and speeches. ...

Cultural relations were further strained later in September when Jyllands-Posten, the nation's leading newspaper, printed 12 caricatures of the prophet Muhammad, including one suggesting he had a bomb in his turban. The newspaper said the illustrations were an exercise in free speech, but Muslims viewed them as a provocation. Two newspaper cartoonists were reportedly driven into hiding.

Terrorism and immigration have propelled right and center-right political parties not only in Denmark but also across the continent. A breakdown of the four largest parties in the European Parliament shows that rightist parties hold 355 seats, compared with 243 held by liberal ones.

Thirty-five percent of Copenhagen residents listed integration as the most important issue in the upcoming elections Tuesday, according to a poll published by Jyllands-Posten. In a similar survey last year, only 13% considered integration a significant problem.

"Twenty-five percent of all children in Copenhagen and more than 10% of all children in Denmark are being born to non-Danish mothers. What is happening is a gradual scooping out of the Danish population," Mogens Camre, a member of the Danish People's Party and the European Parliament, said last year. "Islam is threatening our future…. That faith belongs to a dark past, and its political aims are as destructive as Nazism was."

Ahmed abu Laban, an Islamic leader in Copenhagen, said Christian and Muslim extremists are "manipulating the sense of insecurity. ... I tell many Muslims, 'Europe is sensitive today.' It won't tolerate any act of terror. It is fed up."
http://www.latimes.com/
***

The French don't want to show the rioting on television, not because it will provoke copy-cat riots-- but because they don't want to drive voters to the Right! To the rescue ride the Eurocrats in their Mercedes to pass out cash to the Islumpen masses. Ah, thank God for Bhatman.
***

FRANCE

The deportations could begin as early as Monday, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said, but it was not clear how many people would be affected.

The European Union offered France a quick handout of 50 million euros (2.4 billion baht) to help recovery from the riots. European Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso said up to 1 billion euros could be made available eventually for job creation and to help social cohesion - 48.2 billion baht.

French insurers estimate that damage claims alone will reach 200 million euros.

According to Sarkozy, about 120 foreigners, many of them with legal status, have been arrested during the riots, but most of them may be protected by French law. For example, minors and persons with family on French territory will probably not be deported.

"It's not about numbers," Sarkozy said. "It's the principle."

Since the rioting began on October 27, some 8,400 cars have been destroyed by fire and 2,652 people have been detained

Two policemen were reported injured in the unrest overnight, including one officer who was taken to hospital after being struck in the head and shoulder by a bowl[ing] ball in the Paris suburb of La Courneuve.
http://www.bangkokpost.com/breaking_news/breakingnews.php?id=61677
***

Le Pen is laughing. As Joseph Brean notes above, the Canadian course is taking us all down the dark path to East Berlin. The flavour might be French but the aftertaste will be purely sauer. The list of what we can and cannot utter in public is growing, and the list of angry voters is swelling at the same time that property goes up in flames and the Muslim communities in the West are inflamed by the rhetoric of entitlement and privilege from the Left dhimmi fascists who use them as proxies in the war against Modernity. We must speak up for free speech and democracy, and that must mean we speak openly about the threat of fascism from the Islamic communities in our midsts and against those among us who would have us silenced to soothe their senses of sanctimony, to quell their moral hysteria, to allow them their continued daydream of ruling the infantalized and passive populations of the West.

Is Just War Legitimate?

Karcher-Kozy.* Nicolas Sarkozy, French Interior Minister and presidential hopeful, threatened to hose off the scum from the body politic of France, the scum being immigrant and Muslim rioters running amok in 300 cities and towns in France over the past two weeks. What good is coming of his threats?

The problem of Islamic revolt is not going away just because Sarkozy makes bold statements to the media. Many French themselves are buying the party line that it's Sarkozy's intemperate speech that caused the riots, rather than the feral culture of lumpen-jihad in France. The scum people of Islam and the Left dhimmi fascists who live in the darkness of self-willed ignorance are inflamed by Sarkozy's rhetoric, the rioters are barely resting in the wings, and the farthest Right are as inflamed as the rioters, pausing only to protect their property before they too take to the streets in conflict with the rabble. Our concern is that Sarkozy is caught in the middle of what will be a civil war, and that he will be swept aside in the fury of both extremes.

We must assess the situation at a great distance from the mind of France-as-Will, from the collective mind and attitude of the French collective. As we look upon a dhimmi people in the throes of suicide it is our task to assess our possible option as non-state actors: we must look realistically at what we can do, and what we must do, in the plain sight of the demise of a nation akin to our own nations. We must ask ourselves if France belongs specifically to a "French people." Do the French have an innate right to a geographical space we term politicallly as France?

If France, so-called, collapses in its self-will into Islam and dhimmitude, do we honor our contracts with France as it has been historically but as it is not now? If our political and social and moral contracts with a sister nation are negated by new and hostile populations, by Muslim and dhimmis, if they are, do we sit by idly and seek new social contract with the new rulers? What is a legitimate response on the part of non-state actors?

Plainly put: if Musilm gangs take over parts of France and impose on these new-formed millets sharia, do we as non-French and non-Muslim individuals have any obligation to obey alien laws in the formerly non-Islamic state? Do we have an obligation, legal if not moral, to sit back and let the French, democratically and by general consensus, slip into dhimmitude and Islamic sharia statehood? If the French allow their nation to be Balkanized by Muslims do we as non-French and as private citizens have an obligation to let them run their own internal affairs regardless? France is France, and they can do as they please with their nation. Isn't that so? Armed intervvention into the lands and affairs of a sovereign nation is an act of war if a nation does it; and if private citizens do so without sanction of their governments, it is simply crime. The question is whether it matters what crime is in a state taken over by those whose laws we agressively reject. If sharia millets arise in France, and if the French state allows it by consensus, is it an internal affair of a democratic and legitimate nation state's government and population?

Below we have three short pieces on the state of Islam and Eurabia.
***

European far right seizes on French riots

11.11.05 1.00pm
By Mark John

BRUSSELS - Far-right groups across Europe are seizing on riots by the children of French immigrants as a potential vote-winner and intensifying their demands that governments halt immigration and toughen up nationality laws.

Some portray the violence as the seed of bloody ethnic civil war, or play on fears of Islamic radicalism to warn that today's petrol bomb-hurling teenager could be tomorrow's suicide bomber.

"The riots are fertile ground for the far right," Thierry Balzacq, security and immigration analyst at Brussels think-tank Centre for European Policy Studies, said of riots that have sparked copycat violence in some of France's neighbours.

"It gives them extra leverage on the waverers, those people on the verge of voting far-right. And we know that European democracies are full of that kind of voter," he added.

Governments in turn are seen tempted to enact measures seen as appealing to potential far-right voters. Critics suspect that may be behind French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy's call on Wednesday for the expulsion of foreigners caught rioting.
***

French anti-immigrant leader Jean-Marie Le Pen declared President Jacques Chirac's response "pitiful", telling Le Figaro newspaper he had long warned of the results of "mass immigration, the moral corruption of the country's leaders, disintegration of the country and social injustice".

The situation was evolving into something "which could be the first signs of a civil war", he said.

The solution was clear, Le Pen said: an end to immigration, tougher nationality laws and a zero-tolerance security crackdown -- possibly including the army.

Fears the violence would spread through Europe have so far proven unfounded, with only isolated cases of youths burning cars in Germany and Belgium. But far-right activists all over the continent say the lesson from France is clear enough.
***

Germany's anti-immigrant NPD, which last year made headlines by winning seats in an eastern state assembly, said the riots showed attempts to found a multicultural Europe had failed.

"The NPD wishes foreigners a good trip home," it said on its website, reiterating its calls for forced repatriations.

In the Netherlands, still traumatised by last year's killing of film-maker Theo van Gogh, a critic of Islam, by an Islamist militant, anti-immigration campaigner Geert Wilders called on Monday for an end to immigration by "non-Western foreigners".

Pia Kjaersgaard, leader of Denmark's anti-immigration Danish People's Party, went further, arguing this week that the French violence was tantamount to terrorism.
***

Far-right groups in Belgium and Austria have also stepped up calls for immigration clampdowns, and the radical wing of Russia's nationalists seized on the riots to push a "Russia for the Russians" message.

Beate Winkler of the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC), said it was too early to say whether the French rioting would lead to reprisal attacks on immigrants.
***

"Liberal democracies seem to be pushing for more security (since 9/11), making all social relations very confrontational," argued Balzacq of the Centre for European Policy Studies. "It is very dangerous."

- REUTERS
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/print.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10354708 ***

Europe's 'disaffected youths' conspiracy

---

Posted: November 11, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com

For two weeks roaming bands of "youths" have rampaged across France, burning buildings and cars and daring police to intervene. At least one person was beaten to death by a mob as he tried to stop them from burning his car.

The mobs have already burned more than 6,000 cars across the country, they've burned hundreds of buildings, and more than 2,000 rioters have been arrested since the rioting broke out.

Nobody remembers the details surrounding the incident that sparked the unrest – ostensibly it was a protest over the deaths of two teenagers who were electrocuted while fleeing police. It seems a pretty thin excuse for weeks of rioting. The police didn't kill the pair – they killed themselves while trying to evade arrest. What would the alternative choice be for the government? If somebody runs, let them go?

But while it is a little unclear why the rioters are blaming the police for the accidental electrocution of the two evading arrest, it is even more unclear why the French and the mainstream media are conspiring to rehabilitate the rioters even as the smoke continues to rise over French cities.

According to the mainstream media, the rioters are "disaffected youths" who feel "alienated" from French society. The mainstream fiction is that they are rioting because of high unemployment and unfavorable social conditions.

Although that fiction is a direct slap in the face to France's self-image as a socialist paradise that offers its citizens cradle-to-grave security, Paris seems comfortable with the story.

Of course, it doesn't really explain why "disaffected youths" are also rioting in Belgium and Denmark. (In Denmark, the rioters chanted, "This land belongs to us.")

Denmark "belongs" to disaffected immigrant youths suffering from high unemployment and unsatisfactory social conditions? OK. Then why the Belgian riots? Sympathy pains?

What do all these "disaffected immigrant youths" have in common? Apart from being Muslims, that is?

Wait! The rioters are Muslims? Perhaps we've discovered a clue! Could this have somehow escaped the attention of government spokespersons and the mainstream media of the Western world?

They are Muslims? One would think that is a relevant connection, especially given that the rioters in Denmark were chanting "this land belongs to us." The "us" the chanters were referring to wasn't the "disaffected immigrant youths" who were claiming Denmark for the unemployed. They were claiming it for Islam.

Why downplay the only common denominator between the riots taking place in three different countries? The Danish rioters don't have a beef with the French. Neither do the Belgian rioters. The only thing they have in common with their French compatriots is that they are all followers of Islam.

While the West nervously looks past the rioters' Islamic identity to find an explanation that blames the victims, the Islamic government of Iran says the riots are because of European "suppression" of Islam.

"Restrictions imposed on the Islamic dress code in France are an official policy there and the government has suppressed minorities' beliefs and humiliated them openly," the hard-line Jomhuri Eslami daily said in a commentary.

Call me crazy. I agree with Iran. Not because France banned the wearing of religious symbols – the ban includes Christian and Jewish symbols as well. But I do agree with Iran that the reason for the riots is all about Islam and has little or nothing to do with "disaffected youths suffering high unemployment" and everything to do with Islam.

So, why are the Europeans (and the mainstream media on both sides of the Atlantic) blaming themselves and giving Islam a pass? It's simple. If it is the government's fault, there is some hope of fixing the problem. At the minimum, it creates the illusion of empowering the people, at least temporarily.

If it is the government's fault, the people can always change governments. But if it is part of a coming Islamic war for what's been dubbed "Eurabia" – well, that is just too terrible a thought to consider.

And if Islam is moved center stage as the main culprit, it might stoke the fires of Islamic rage and bring down the wrath of Islamic terror on them now, rather than in some nebulous "later."
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47350
***

By AMIR TAHERI

Some are even calling for the areas where Muslims form a majority of the population to be reorganized on the basis of the "millet" system of the Ottoman Empire: Each religious community (millet) would enjoy the right to organize its social, cultural and educational life in accordance with its religious beliefs.

In parts of France, a de facto millet system is already in place. In these areas, all women are obliged to wear the standardized Islamist "hijab" while most men grow their beards to the length prescribed by the sheiks.

The radicals have managed to chase away French shopkeepers selling alcohol and pork products, forced "places of sin," such as dancing halls, cinemas and theaters, to close down, and seized control of much of the local administration.

A reporter who spent last weekend in Clichy and its neighboring towns of Bondy, Aulnay-sous-Bois and Bobigny heard a single overarching message: The French authorities should keep out. ...

It is now clear that a good portion of France's Muslims not only refuse to assimilate into "the superior French culture," but firmly believe that Islam offers the highest forms of life to which all mankind should aspire.

http://www.nypost.com/commentary/53917.htm
***

*Karcher is the proprietary name for a high-pressure hose, for cleaning encrusted mud off the bottom of a car or accumulated grime off an apartment building.
***

Our question is who will prevail, given that even the French cannot ignore what will only become a worse situation with each passing month. Europe is edging toward civil war,, and we must ask what our places in it will be. Who will we support, given that our support will likely determine the outcome of the future of Europe, continuing on its past course of Modernity or turning to Islamic nightmares. We have a part to play in this struggle, and we must look clearly at where we stand.
***

The illustration above is a detail from an anarchist airforce poster from the Spanish Civil War.

Popular Public Intellectuals Poll

[O]ur biggest problem isn't Muslims but our own intelligentsia, the Camus of today, if you will.

Today Prospect Magazine posted its winners in their poll recently conducted to list the West's top public intellectual beauty contestants . Noam Chomsky is number one. No, not Robert Spencer, not Hirsi Ali, not Ali Sina, not Ibn Warraq, not VS Naipaul.

Our public intellectuals are not their public intellectuals. We have two publics in the West. I write on occasion that we will face a civil war here because of our Left dhimmi fascists siding with Right fascists, eco-fascists, and primitive fascist Muslims. But there are names on the list below that show the divisions in the collective mind of the Left dhimmi fascists too. Christopher Hitchens is number five.

The point is that some on the so-called Left are sensible enough to know that they are betrayed by the likes of Chomsky, and that the Left is two things if anything: Left fascism on the one side, and Teddy Roosevelt Progressivism on the other. Making this division clear to those self-identified Leftists is tough. Still, one may see it in the results of the poll.

Most Leftists, like most everyone, make their public ideological decisions on the basis of sociability. If an idea sounds good or satisfies ones self-image, then regardless of the history of the idea, regardless of its possible sinister implications, one takes up the idea naively and carries it as ones own, being a nice and sociable and moral person. Don't wade through that Herder, never heard of that Fichte, never picked at that Sorel. No, and they won't because those foundational philosophers are not what the average liberal 'caring- sharing' person wants to see in himself and in his attitudes. Don't dare to dig through Darre to find the roots of fascism in ecology. No, our intellectuals love bunnies, not Nazis. But, there they go, hippity-hoppiting down the slippity-sloppity slope to fascism without realizing it.

There are, as one may see in the poll below, some who don't like the direction of the path we're on. Trust me, they will not listen to the words of Herder. They will not plunge into Fichte's pools of thought to find out why they don't like what the West is becoming. They won't uncover the meaning of the Left dhimmi fascism we see so clearly under the thin cover of Sorel. Ideas gestated in the mind of Feuerbach will never see the light in the mind of the average Left dhimmi fascist. But the poll shows that there is an intuitive splitting going on in the Left, so-called.

The times, they are a'changin'. Most people believe what most people believe, and those "most people" are the public intellectuals who con the majority of "most people" who haven't got the time or the interest to inquire deeply into the matters of the foundations of public philosophy. But the public intelligentsia is divided, and it's taking on a new direction. The Left dhimmi fascists are still number one according to Left dhimmi fascists followers. But that's a'changin slowly, and in time there is a hope that most people will believe what most people believe, and "most people" will hate fascism. When the list of top ten public intellectuals among the liberal segment of the West includes six anti-fascists, then most people will believe that Left dhimmi fasicsm is bad. When Spencer et al are in the top ten, then we'll see that most people have always believed that Islam is a primitive form of fascism. I know I've always believed that. I find others who've always believed it too. They obviously have extremely short memories, but why be picky?
***

Dr. Pepper writes:

I don't think anyone knows clearly what the sociology of Left and Right (or more precisely, of PC and non-PC) is in the USA or the West in general.

We can't be sure how many ordinary people are PC, and how many are not PC.

If there is a "silent majority" of non-PC people, they are seriously handicapped by the fact that the general sociopolitical culture is dominated by PC -- the media, entertainment, education, legal system, politics, public discourse in general -- all dominated by PC.

The problem we face is not a conscious problem: the dominance of PC over ordinary people in our West is not a dominance of ideas thought and discussed: it is a dominance of givens passively swallowed, as unconsciously and naturally as oxygen is breathed.

Posted by: Dr. Pepper at November 10, 2005 03:01 PM

***
[O]ur recent poll to find the world's top public intellectual [ran] last month in conjunction with Foreign Policy magazine.

You may have already heard that the poll was won by Noam Chomsky, followed by Umberto Eco, Richard Dawkins, Václav Havel and Christopher Hitchens.

As well as the complete results of the poll, the Prospect website features a range of articles on the results, including Robin Blackburn celebrating Chomsky's victory, Oliver Kamm denouncing it, brief biographies of the top five and David Herman's commentary on the results.

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/intellectuals/results

www.prospect-magazine.co.uk

***

More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.

Woody Allen

When the collective attitude shifts, when the public's eyes open upon new memes, then we'll find that everyone agrees that before was a time of very unappealing minds, and what did our parents' generation see in those people? Why, they're not pretty at all. Not like us. We are very pretty.

Not all French Bitches are TV Babes: Some are Politicians

Don't worry, Folks, It's Only Television

Cut my head off if I'm wrong here, but doesn't it seem that the "youths' in France act like children out of control? Oh, they are children out of control. Well, I meant 10 year olds. Oh, some of them are ten. Well, cut off my head anyway.

Yes, cut off my head so I don't have to see the French acting like impotent grandparents incapable of controlling children running amok.

Oh, we don't cut off each other's heads for no good reason. Well, then what is to be done?
***

Community looks for answers in riot-torn suburb
Published: November 10 2005 18:34 | Last updated: November 10 2005 18:34

Traumatised families streamed to the town hall on Wednesday evening for an "extraordinary" meeting called by the mayor of Rosny-sous-Bois, a town of 40,000 people scarred by the rioting that has swept through France. Policemen stood watch outside the hall; two women handed out stickers, including one that said "Stop the Violence."
***

He moved on to defend his record, citing the investments in housing rehabilitation, job creation, and a youth centre, and saying the city would do more.

But not all the audience was convinced. "There are social issues, lack of housing and jobs, and there are issues of discrimination. The mayor usually recognises that," said El-Hassan Guerrab, head of the Muslim Association of Rosny, a cultural group that has been sending members to reason with the bands of youth.

Sitting in the audience, with his two teenage daughters, Mr Guerrab, a tall Moroccan man with a thin beard, pointed out that the mayor had thanked many associations for helping out during this crisis, yet omitted the MAR. "That, in itself, is a form of discrimination," he quipped.
***

[Waiting to meet with "youths."]

Sure enough, an hour or so later, a group of young, mostly black men, appeared. They were, for the most part, dressed in jeans, tennis shoes, and black rain jackets with large hoods. Happy to speak to reporters – and wanting above all to appear before cameras – they seemed obsessed with Nicolas Sarkozy, the interior minister who called the gangs "scum" and on Wednesday threatened to expel foreigners involved in the violence.

"He has to resign, he has to resign, that's our demand," they shouted.

Lamine, a 19-year-old school dropout who sometimes works as a pizza delivery boy, is the apparent leader. His family – his father married four times and has a total of 30 children – came from Senegal in 1980. The parking lot, he says, has become his refuge. "We're here, it's our territory, we watch," he said.

He admitted that he had been thrown out of school because of bad behaviour yet he insisted he should be offered better job opportunities. "I look for jobs but I'm discriminated against, someone with a French name is always favoured," he said.

Some of the youth expressed real grievances of largely Muslim immigrant communities in France. Others, however, were cheeky, speaking of the riots as a game that, much to their own surprise, had worked, provoking a political crisis.

"We tried to express ourselves differently but the only way to get attention and to get the cameras here is through rioting," said 20-year-old Karim, a French-born man of Algerian origin.

The real enemy of these young men, aged between 15 and 21, was government authority. "You burn state property because you want to make the government pay. But the government also has to compensate citizens if private property is destroyed," added Karim.

French insurers yesterday estimated the riots had caused €200m of damage.

Thanks to a heavier police presence in Rosny, and the threat that a curfew could be imposed, the riots have subsided in recent days. The youth said they could still be arrested but claimed not to be afraid of the police.

"If a curfew is imposed, they will detain us and we'll get angrier. They'll force us to go home but that's like going to prison," said one member of Lamine's group, who refused to give his name.

Suddenly, the young men heard that Mr Pernès, the mayor, was touring the town. They rushed out of the parking lot to speak to him. Some of them tried to be polite but asked, in a forceful tone, how he planned to respond to their demands.

Others were impertinent. "I won't speak with you," one of the younger kids told the mayor. Why, asked Mr Pernès. "I just don't like you, I just don't like the way you look," was the answer.

Another young man used the occasion to mock Mr Sarkozy. "Have you ever met Sarkozy," he asked the mayor. "Is he a really small man?"

With Mr Guerrab and his colleagues standing near him, the mayor tried to control his exasperation. He said he wanted to establish a dialogue with the youth – and might even invite television crews to film a discussion – but that silly remarks like these made his efforts harder.

He answered the more serious questions, acknowledging, for example, that it was a challenge for blacks from the poor suburbs to find jobs. But his overall message to the band was that the riots would make employers even more reluctant to hire young people like them. "If it is already difficult to find jobs, it's going to be even more difficult now," he said.
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/cf8cf1a8-5212-11da-9ca0-0000779e2340.html