Reuters: The rock-throwing youths and rough riot police facing off in Paris suburbs are recurring images in a country that proudly proclaims its ideal of equality but parks its poorest in slums out of the sight of most French people.

The torched cars lighting up these gritty ghettos nightly may be less than an hour's drive from Paris, but many residents of the rich inner city only know these areas from highway exit signs they speed past driving in or out of town.

It is an established fact that youths from the housing estates, who are mostly French citizens, often face blatant discrimination as soon as they present a foreign-looking face or name to a prospective employer or landlord.

I think it's a bit melodramatic to throw revolutionary slogans at the faces of contemporary French administrators, especially since this is a problem endemic to the western world. Nor can I possibly side with the predictable snide schadenfreud of the "freedom fries" crowd, dancing with idiot joy at this putative endorsement of their own rabid hatreds. Indeed, I am in no mood to furnish links or examples. According to such fanatics, the French public is suffering the consequences of "appeasement" (which apparently consists of refusing to massacre people who never did anything to you). The whole of the continent is in the grips of Muslim fanatics, and the Europeans are idiots for failing to do the obvious thing (which, I presume, obviously consists of... what?).

In point of fact, the underclass in France is Muslim for the same reason the underclass in the Southwestern USA is Roman Catholic: the close proximity of an abundant, indispensable source of cheap labor. In fact, the constant infusions of fresh labor by industrial managers in Europe leaves behind a sort of moraine of externally displaced people, who then find themselves without either jobs or recourse when a particular job is completed. Tight labor and identity regulations require documentation these people (and their children) may never obtain; survival in an industrial economy like France, without a formal job, is a degrading and doomed endeavor. The chronically unemployed sink into despair, depression, and vice.

The plight of this immigrant community breeds anger because it is so pointless; there's no compelling reason why a huge cohort of the population is practically barred from the dignity of self-sufficiency, or at least, steady occupation. There's little, if any, correspondence between behavior and outcomes. Moreover, in such a climate vices like alcoholism, drug addiction, and "wilding" become drains on the energy of the people there. Hence, the allure of Islamic activism.

In once sense, the "coincidence" of Islamic terrorism and Islamic underclasses rioting in Paris is merely that of geographic proximity. The Chinese (to select another group at random) have not the opportunity to immigrate to Europe, nor the ongoing humiliations of Western satraps. So no such connection exists for them. In another sense, the "coincidence" is actually a complex and ambiguous relationship of social dissolution (viz., that of the Parisian casbah), remedial action by religious community work, and (sometimes) religious solidarity spawning nihilistic zealots, most of whom never muster the courage to go beyond badass posturing. They put up websites honoring Osama bin Laden just to advertize how zealous they are. The rioters themselves were provoked by the deaths of two young boys who were hiding from the police in an electrical substation, and want to drive the police from the community. The police they loathe chiefly for the scorn they harbor for the communities they patrol, but also for the harassment and bullying.

For now, that's all I have time to write. Readers may notice that I have described the situation in ghettos all over the industrial world.