Bush sending Marines to France

[img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] Thnx for the linky. Also appearing on that page was this...


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[whiskeytown]

I've sorta taken a new interest in France...

It sounds like a lot of the arabs and protesters in France were the children and grandchildren of collaborators with the French during the fight for Algerian Independance - so in many ways, they were dispossessed from the Arab world for siding with France.

Now they feel France is trying to dispossess them too - this could be interesting - anyone who watched "The Battle for Algiers" knows that's as dirty as it got - just as bad as Iraq is now, complete with freedom fighters and the Major Power justifying torture as the means to an end.

I'll be very interested to see how this plays out.

RB

[nicky g]

"It sounds like a lot of the arabs and protesters in France were the children and grandchildren of collaborators with the French during the fight for Algerian Independance - so in many ways, they were dispossessed from the Arab world for siding with France."

Depends what you mean by a lot. Many of the harkis went to France but I doubt they made up anything like a majority of Algerian immigrants, so I'm not sure they can be used as an explanatory factor for trends amongst immigrants. Most people went for economic reasons. There was already a big immigrant population pre-independence; indeed the FLN (Algerian independence movement) had a large, active wing in France - some argue that it essentially started there.