It seems to mee that the problem is much deeper (and of much longer standing) than you suggest. In that respect, the muslim problem is simply the latest fruiting-body of a mushroom with very deep and widespread hyphae (roots).

I spreak French with near-native fluency and lived in 'la francophonie' for nearly 15 years. I have worked in former third-world colonies of England, Spain, and France. In my opinion, most former English colonies have it reasonably well together, most of the time, even in Africa. The Spanish colonies are a mixed bag, and the former French colonies are pretty universally rough.

One need look no farther than Jamaica, Republica Dominicana, and Haiti -- all starting with nearly identical racial and geographic situations and resources -- to see a living illustration of my point.

France itself has had more lurching changes than some former Spanish colonies. I think that part of the problem is that French concepts of individual and property rights are generally weak (in regard to the government) and the French legal system generally stinks.

The French have within that system developed an oppressive bureaucracy that is supercilious, elitist, detached, and domineering. Bureaucrats are well-paid, have (or learn how to take) numerous fringe benefits, get to retire early, and are impossible to get rid of. Mothers swell with pride and say, "Mon fils est bureaucrate." (my son is a bureaucrat). Only in french have I heard government officials say (with a completely straight face) "We have our best technocrats working on the problem, don't worry."

To follow the legal requirements to register a property for transfer in Haiti, for just one example, requires hundreds of steps and nearly twenty years (based on stated regulatory delays at each step).

All through 'la francophonie' employment and what little entrepreneurship there is possible is closely regulated by a system of Regies (no good english equivalent, but 'para-governmental control committee' is close). There is no incentive to create a job because you can almost never get rid of an employee, no matter how bad the employee or over-arching economic conditions.

In Quebec, bureaucrats removed all Passover-kosher foods from the shelves in Montreal because the labels didn't look 'french' enough. Montreal has several hundred thousand Jews, about a third of them Hassidim. This was thinly veiled anti-Semitism, and a far-from-unique example thereof.

Of the sixty states/provinces in the US and Canada, Quebec ranks firmly at the bottom as a place to establish a business.

I could go on (and on), but I hope you're getting the point. The entire socio-political culture of the French-thinking world has massive problems -- and has had them for generations.

It is entirely typical that Valery Giscard d'Estaing recently tried to sneak into the European constitution (currently under development) a provision that would have allowed the thing to be amended by a select committee without ratification by any of the member government.

Totalement pourri et sensiblement malin. [totally rotten, and palpably malignant/maligne/evil].

OMISSION above -- Para. 4, line 1 -- ... more lurching changes of_government than some former Spanish colonies.

"Law and order have disappeared"

murdered people on 100.000 citizens (1998):

France: 0,9
USA: 6,6

so in france there is no law and order - my god what a hell must be going on in the united states, do you have anarchy there?

Maxim:

Could you please amplify your comments?

Bart:
With respect to Quebec, you make the lack of entrepreneuralism is something essentialist in the French character. It's not. After all Charest's election was a signal that the Quebec population is fed up with the old statist model and want some major transformations. Whether that'll happen is really up to us; yet there's a real desire for change. It won't be the thatcherite style revolution that Anglophone will recognize but it'll still a signficant idelogical shake up for the Francophonie mentality.

xavier

Reminds me of an important point my history teacher Neil MacLean once made: we think of "law and order" as going together. The 2 are actually seperate - one can have law without order, and social order without law. Failure to realize that often confuses our debates.

Maxim's comments are a simple "people who live in glass houses" warning. Taken. For a fuller picture, however, one would also have to note that there are many place French police simply will not go any more. That's a powerful indicator of disorder, something that speaks to the nadir of the U.S. experience with its urban centers in the 1970s. No wonder the Americans gasp when they hear that, given the associations it raises. Couple it with the unintegrated Muslim demographic time-bomb, and the massive public sector "no longer servants and no longer civil" strikes that bring to mind the worst years of Britain, and France really is in trouble. Bart's points and comments are well taken in that light.

But collapse, Trent? Societies are very resilient things. Nigeria is a pest-hole, but even that hasn't collapsed. You have to get to Afghanistan, Congo, or Somalia to get real collapse, and France is a very long way from that. Political turmoil and economic consequences? Lots. Wrenching change? Yes. (Ah but what kind... and here our crystal balls darken.) Collapse? No.

Maxim's post assumes that French statistics are not merely honest, but accurate. Neither are true. And he knows that if he is French.

Official European crime statistics are political fabrications, including those of Britain.

Whoa there, Trent.

Teaching the French colonial era in school is not self-hate. It just is not. It is no more inappropriate for France to teach colonialism than it is for American teachers to assign Mark Twain's novels against slavery.

It is true that France wallows in self-loathing, but your "fourth root" cited above is not evidence of it. It appears you think France should stop teaching the truth of its own history, which is another way of saying the French should lie.

I don't think that's what you mean, but it appears so.

The line on 'leftist teachers' was said by French politician Alain Madelin.My interpretation of it is that this is an identity question:The teachers in France,according to Madelin, are treating young Muslims not as French,but as members of a separate group who have a legitimate grievance against France because of its actions,in the past,against other Muslims.

However,the quote is vague enough to allow several interpretations.My take is that Madelin wasn't just referring to pupils being told facts of history;that doesn't seem like something that he would oppose in itself.Of course,I could be wrong.

thanks to joe for amplyfieing my comment.

the point is: you tell us about the 'death' of france - WHY do you do, and WHICH facts can you present us?

explorering your psychie is not my job, so i won't speculate WHY you want us believe in the 'death of france', but giving facts which fit in reality should not only be my job.

sometimes it seems to me you are living in a bubble, not realizing nor willing to realize the world outside of this.
the 'death' of france is something that could happen in your imagination, but not in THIS world in the forseeable future.

speculating about problems one society can face is one thing, but giving incorrect analysis together with wrong assumtions is another.

you believe because you WANT to believe. you can not do analysis with this point of view.

modern liberal societies face various problems because of various reasons, one would be the integration of immegrants and problems with unintegratet and illegal aliens. these are problems the whole western world is going to face - and american should know about their own problems with immigrants and illegals.
you should'nt be blind on one eye and forget the problems you are talking about are problems not only france is going to face.
are you really aware of the problems of unintegratet hispanics? you can look out in the future and ask those who are experts in social questions, and they tell you in not too far future 'new mexico', 'texas' will be mexican again, not because of different borders, but because of changed societies. and these societies cause problems, because they are mainly uneducated and poor.
you should be aware of these facts before looking at ONE western country and telling us these are problems only this country alone will face.

there are problems that are solely french problems - but there are others that are solely german, solely british and solely us-american ones.

and should you be the one who speaks about not enough 'law and order' in foreign countries?
you should watch your 'law', your 'order' and your 'safety' before telling us about enormous problems others are facing.
you have 'law's that can cause the collaps of a company because of damage compensations.
you have the 'order' with the highest rate of prisoners in the industrialized world - together with a poor meaning of 'security'. crime rates in the US are often a few times higher than in other western countries, i told you about the rate of murder.

you can acknowledge the problems the WHOLE western world has to face in the future and in the present, or you can close you're eyes on your own problems and on these general problems and look out to problems the french will face and hope you'll see the death of them, but you will wake up baleful if you are doing so.

you should find the way out of this bubble. who searches will find, and if you're going to look for signals of the arising of guinea as a world power you will find these signlas, but this is not the way of serious analysis which let you know better than others.
you should be aware that closing your eyes for some parts of the problems and only looking on some others will be the way to a baleful awakeing.

for those who want to know: i am not french, but german. i am living in a small town (juelich) near cologne.

Couple of points to make:

1. France isn't a liberal democracy anymore. They are a leftist/Gaullist technocracy now. The power of the people to organize and try and control government is pretty much non-existent. I suggest that you read Steven Den Beste's web site to see some examples of how France isn't a democracy but an oligarchy.

2. Hispanic people living in the US are much closer ethnically, culturally and religiously to "mainstream" America than North African Muslims are to "mainstream" France. This means in the US that Mexiancs and other Latinos are able to integrate easier, and that society is much liklier to accept their integration. Arab, North African Muslims come from a completely different culture than French people, and thus the two will have trouble living together.

3. France's current welfare state is extremely unstable, the reason why the strikes are going on is because of reforms that the government tried to pass to keep the system floating. If the reforms fail then the system will collapse. Yet the "public servants" will not accept these reforms because it will be the first time in living memory where the government would actually make things tougher for civil servants. Progress means that things are supposed to get easier on everybody, remember? Yet the current system will not work, the demographics don't allow it, and the economy prevents it.

I for one think that France will survive this. But I also feel that it will be much weaker afterward. The people who know what the problems in France are and are trying to solve them don't have the power they need, and the government is full of cowards. So I suspect that the government will back off many of its reforms. France will survive, for now. Joe, in regards to the resilience of a society, think how bad things could have been if the Great Depression hadn't led to FDR's presidency. I think you overestimate the sheer economic shock that France could experience. I don't think France will die per se, but I do think you could end up with something similar to Russia, with very few regions under real government control

Ok, enough rambling for now.

In my experience, regarding the FPM as a serious source on European affairs is the next best thing to deriving information on Israel from some "electronic intifada".

Tom --

if I interprete what you were trying to say correctly, where does the amazing notion that European crime statistics (all of them, I assume?) are cooked to such a degree that were they true the official murder rate in France would be worse than the one in the US come from?

you see signals for the french getting in a situation russia was in 1992?

go on try to find signals the US will be, and you will find [trade deficit, enormous debts (those of the country and those of the citizens are the highest in the western world), increasing joblessness which means often personal ruin for those who lose their job (thats different in europe where you have efficient insurances), the decrease of the industry etc.]. but you will get a wrong picture if you focus on this, because these are not the only facts that move the world.
and there's the same problem with your 'french has problems' 'analysis' - you forget an amount of factors.

you don't believe in european statistics? [by the way can I believe any longer in you president?]
then go on and read other ones:

murders per 100.000 citizens:

azebaijan: 4,7
tajikistan: 6,1
hungary: 2,9
japan: 0,6
great britan: 0,7 [oh, sorry this is EU, too. i think it is cooked]
argentina: 4,6
USA: 6,6

in relation to the US the 'law and order' in the collapsing society of azerbajian must be enormous - how do they exercise their cops?

In a way, "societal failure" analyses for countries like France are similar to those Club of Rome studies that said the world's oil would be running out about now.

Yes, the things mentioned in this article will create disruptions and failures. Whereupon, the system has enough self-correction in it to adapt. It may not adapt well. It may not adapt smoothly. It may not remain as strong. But adapt it will.

Law and Order becomes too big a problem in French cities? You get the rise of a LePen, and if it continues you can guess how the problems will be dealt with. Public service forces the government into an untenable economic position? Then the bill comes, sooner or later, and instead of reforming the bureaucracy's priviliged position they may shatter it or at least crack it badly. Failure piled on failure? Never forget that this is a nation that has always exported intellectuals. It would be an irony indeed if the France neocons like myself love to hate becomes the next intellectual and cultural center of the movement - but it's not impossible to imagine that.

France won't die. Weaken, yes. But the article isn't titled "The Weakening of France." The cracks are easy for an analyst to see, the equally important sources and levers of stability not so easy but every bit as important, and the way the system will adapt long-term almost unforseeable.

As a wise being once said: "always in motion is the future."

Maxim,

The murder rate for Britain is not 0.7

It is double that. The BBC quoting Home Office figures, says: "Home Office figures showed the murder rate in the US in 1998 was 6.3 per 100,000 people compared with 1.4 per 100,000 in England and Wales."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/810522.stm

becareful: this is only the rate of england and wales, i gave those of whole britan.
i do not know where the bbc gets it's data, i have mine from an United Nations report. if you are interested in this more deeply you should ask the statsitical offices in each country, i think this data would be the accuratest one.

but you see the point, no matter which data you take: the murder-rate in the US is a few times higher then in the whole western world. does this mean they have anarchy and will collaps soon? no. does this mena their system of 'law and order' is inefficient? yes, i think so.

There was a recent report I read published by some European organization that addressed Europe's economic future and without massive societal/governmental change, Europe is not looking good. I cannot remember if it was addressing specifically Europe or just France.

If anyone knows what report I'm referencing, please post it! It was sobering.

Maxim,

You realize of course that if you concede that the murder rate for England and Wales, where the bulk of the population live, is 1.4 per 100,000, that the murder rate in Scotland and Northern Ireland would have to be negative in order to arrive at the figure you gave.

The BBC got its figures from the Home Office, which is in charge of the UK police forces, and which is certainly more authoritative than the "UN". You will also note the the trend in the US murder rate has been steadily going down. "In 1973, there were 9.5 murders for every 100,000 Americans. In 2001, the figure was 5.5." -- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/09/15/wjail15.xml

The crime trend in the UK, on the other hand, has been steadily going up, as per the Telegraph article cited above. I believe your figures are wrong.

Trent, it's frustrating for me because you manage to leap from a reasonable explanation of real issues facing France (and Germany and the other Social Democratic European states) to the Isle of Conclusion (sorry, reading 'Phantom Tollbooth' to Littlest Guy) and hyperbolic assertions that don't begin to hold water, and aren't supported by current events or the historic record.

France isn't going anywhere. The French aren't going anywhere. Their social-welfare state is about to have some immense problems, because a) their productivity doesn't grow as fast as ours does; and b) the low-wage labor they import assimilates worse than ours does.

There are an array of possible futures that come out of those problems; some of them are definitely worse than others and worse than things stand today.

I can't tell if it is just a form of rhetoric you're using, of if you genuinely believe that France will somehow implode into cantonments or some other subnational 'statelets'.

But I'd love to find out...

A.L.

Trent, you make one mistake. School funding decisions are being driven by the state courts -- the last bastions of all-out judicial activism east of the 9th Circuit -- based on state constitutions. (Florida's "Supreme Court" differs only in that it embarrassed itself publicly.) If it were a federal court issue the Supremes would have reined them in by now.

As for the Islamist population bomb, denial only makes it worse for the French.

Re murder rates:

"The FBI asks police to list every homicide as murder, even if the case isn’t subsequently prosecuted or proceeds on a lesser charge, making the U.S. numbers as high as possible. By contrast, the English police 'massage down' the homicide statistics, tracking each case through the courts and removing it if it is reduced to a lesser charge or determined to be an accident or self-defense, making the English numbers as low as possible."

[source: http://reason.com/0211/fe.jm.gun.shtml]