From: Michael Wiik (mwiik@messagenet.com)
Date: Wed Mar 12 2003 - 08:27:12 MST
Thomas Friedman recently gave a talk (shown on C-SPAN) at some
university's advanced political science course and suggested the 911
hijackers consisted of two groups: poor arab moslems who did the
strongarm work and comparatively rich and well-educated european moslems
who did the flying and provided leadership. He mentioned that while the
USA endeavors to be a melting pot (imperfectly at times, of course) no
such endeavor is taking place in Europe though it has a growing moslem
population which is basically frozen out of civil society.
Just wondering if France is less prejudiced than other european nations,
anecdotal evidence being the long association with Algeria, better
assimilation of blacks than in most of US history, the notion of
'frenchness' perhaps being less a function of race/nationality than
language/culture, and if all this is at least part of French resistance
to war w/ Iraq.
My only recent experience being in Norway, now with a growing Pakistani
population, and the seeming guilt complex composed of equal parts Nordic
racial superiority and strivings toward a socialist egalitarian utopia
wherein noone is better than anyone else (one of the reasons I remain in
the USA).
Thanks,
-Mike
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