Paris Rings in the New Year

Some denizens of the "City of Lights" celebrated the dawn of 2005 by burning 333 cars thoughout the city and its suburbs. The U.K.'s Independent describes this as a "15 year tradition" carried out by "disaffected youths in poor French suburbs." Exactly which segments of French youth are "disaffected"? The article notes obliquely that the vehicle-torching youths comprise "multi-racial gangs." Translated from the leftist code in which the Independent reports news, this means the car-burning gangs were composed of the immigrants (or their children) from the Middle East or Africa, mostly Muslims.

AFP reported that French police had detained more than 270 people in connection with the fires, and noted that 19 officers were "slightly injured" presumably while detaining these individuals. AFP said that "in nearly all cases, the automobile arsons occured in "what the government considers to be 'difficult' areas on the outskirts of Paris, the eastern city of Strasbourg and its suburbs." AFP also noted that France was "the only country in Europe where torching cars has become a New Year's custom."

Always eager to show exactly where leftist thought has brought Europe, the Independent noted that "Michel Wieviorka, a sociologist who has studied the violence, believes that the arson is a protest against the conspicuous consumption in wealthier areas over the holidays." Mr. Wieviorka characterized the arsons as "response from victims of social exclusion to our society of consumption," according to AFP.

Of course. The vandals who set hundreds of cars ablaze in an annual rituals aren't simply thugs prone to violence and mayhem ... they are oppressed victims of France's "social exclusion"! You can bet that "social exclusion" in this case means racism, but Mr. Wieviorka doesn't dare use that term because that would signal that the "disaffected youth" weren't native French. And, at all costs (and the costs are getting pretty high), no one in the French left wants to do that. If you name the source of the problem, you see, you might actually have to deal with it.