At Business Week, reporter James G. Neuger was really upset on Thursday that concerned politicians were raising the issue of protecting the public against radical Islamists in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre.
Of course, he couldn't resist chalking it up to bigotry — against "immigrants -- especially those with veils, turbans and non-white skin." Excerpts follow the jump.
The final excerpted paragraph below attempts an interesting assertion that I'm not buying (bolds are mine):
Europe’s Islam Debate Erupts as Paris Killers at Large
The bodies haven’t been buried and the killers are on the loose, but that didn’t prevent anti-Islam politicians across Europe from seizing on the Jan. 7 massacre in Paris.
The rhetoric varied in intensity across the European Union’s 28 countries, each with its own religious and social phobias, many gripped by an economic recession that makes convenient scapegoats out of immigrants -- especially those with veils, turbans and non-white skin.
“I wish my daughter will be free tomorrow to go around without a veil and without any fears,” Matteo Salvini, head of Italy’s anti-immigration Northern League, said on Twitter. Nigel Farage, leader of the U.K. Independence Party, spoke on LBC radio of a “Fifth Column” gnawing away at Britain and “a really rather gross policy of multi-culturalism.” Geert Wilders, head of the Freedom Party in the Netherlands, said it is time to “de-Islamize our country.”
The murder of 12 people at a French satire magazine put Europe’s fragile politics on display, mobilizing the opponents of the EU’s much-heralded open borders and driving mainstream backers of often ill-defined “fundamental values” onto the defensive.
... Europe is more vulnerable than the U.S. to radical, anti-immigration leanings. Abutting the newly aggressive Russia and across the Mediterranean Sea from the upheavals of the Arab world, the EU inhabits a dangerous neighborhood, with potential troubles that dwarf what the U.S. faces along its southwestern border.
I don't think so, James. I think the EU at least attempts to intercept people who aren't citizens when they attempt to enter their country. As James O'Keefe showed in August of last year, anyone can cross the U.S.-Mexico border and walk several miles to Interstate without running into any kind of immigration or law enforcement official. So perhaps our problems shouldn't be as challenging, but thanks to our lax border security, they probably are.
And anyone has. Last August, "A leaked intelligence analysis from the Customs and Border Protection (CBP)" revealed "the exact numbers of illegal immigrants entering and attempting to enter the U.S. from more than 75 different countries."
As to Neuger's prime contention, everyday native Europeans are perhaps finally beginning to understand how completely they have been betrayed by the their elitist leaders, and want to do something about it. What is wrong with that?
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
