Cyclopean Columns

"Good morning to Karl and Tracy and to all of you where ever you are beginning a new week.

While the focus here has been on the terrorist threat, no-one can be unconcerned by the pictures we see every night of what is happening in France.

And any number of theories are being advanced.

Big cutbacks in recent years in government spending on jobs programs.

50,000 young people said to have lost places in jobs programs.

Or, the failure of the so-called republican model to integrate immigrant communities.

There is no affirmative action policy in France for immigrants such as housing and employment programs, especially for the newly arrived.

Or, in a world where the working week can be very short and the minimum wage very high: people in work are protected and nothing is done for those out of work.Labour is more expensive.

You can't fire for poor performance.

So this looks good only if you happen to have a job.

France is the country which legislated for the 35 hour week because there would be more jobs to go around.

But unemployment in some of those rioting areas is the worst in 20
years at almost 20%.

All of that offers convenient explanations.But it's a fair way off the mark.

750 neighbourhoods housing about 5 million people across France are severely disadvantaged.

But just because you are disadvantaged, you don't torch cars and petrol bomb police and sponsor hideous violence."

So, we come back to what we are not meant to say.

There is a large Muslim population in France which has not integrated into the country into which they were made welcome.

You have heard this before.

Immigrants in France are told to assimilate, not integrate.

So when second and third generation immigrants from Algeria and sub-Saharan Africa look at the ranks of the professions, they are not there.

All of this has been used to explain away the pictures of a country virtually at
civil war.

But surely there is a common thread for the problems in France, England, Denmark, Holland, Germany, Belgium and now Australia.

Islamic youth.

Not all, but Islamic youth, nonetheless.

Never mind the unemployment and the rest of the excuses.

Why is it that across the world this is the one factor in all these problems?

Yet, you will get academics and so-called intellectuals trying to shame us into believing that we are the cause of these problems.

But surely all these countries can't be the same in terms of racism, unemployment and integration.

They can't all be responsible for Muslim youths trying to destroy the host country that gave their parents a new start in life.

So the notion that the host country is somehow to blame is a nonsense.

Or, is it a very clever tactic that Islam is using to weaken the resolve of politicians: to incorporate the support of so-called left wing intellectuals and community leaders to deflect the blame away from the Islamic community and place it at the feet of the silent majority.

John Howard at the weekend said Islamic leaders must weed these people out.

Suddenly John Howard is being criticised.

If we continue to stand common sense on its head, we may be left standing on our heads ourselves.

# posted by Cthu1hu @ 11:13 pm