Sarkozy Time: Apropos of the European condition:

Nicolas Sarkozy became France’s most popular politician by promising to restore law and order in the whole of France, including in the areas abandoned by previous governments. Since Sarkozy became Interior Minister he has insisted on more police presence in Muslim neighbourhoods.

It will be intersting to see if Chirac sacks him. Seems to me that, in this scenario, we can think of the no-go areas as the Middle East, and Sarkozy is just being a confrontational Bush-like cowboy, upsetting all the "stability" achieved through generations of willful blindness. Or something.

Link via Meryl.