WATTS GOING ON?

How do you say "Burn, Baby, Burn" in French? And which would you believe, Doug Ireland's "Why is France Burning? The Rebellion of a Lost Generation," or Craig Smith's "France Has an Underclass, but Its Roots Are Still Shallow"? Did we really have to ask?

Ireland messages:

U.S. press coverage of the youth rebellion in France's ghettos hasn't done a very good job of portraying the reasons for those riots. As a journalist who worked in France for a decade and knows those ghettos, I've dissected the rebellion for you.

Compare. Here's Ireland writing on his Web site on Saturday about the "high-rise human warehouses in the isolated suburbs," where the "tsunami of inchoate youth rebellion" began:

[They are ] run-down, dilapidated, sinister places, with broken elevators that remain unrepaired, heating systems left dysfunctional in winter, dirt and dog-shit in the hallways, broken windows, and few commercial amenities -- shopping for basic necessities is often quite limited and difficult, while entertainment and recreational facilities for youth are truncated and totally inadequate when they're not non-existent. Both apartments and schools are over-crowded. Birth control is taboo in the Muslim culture the immigrants brought with them and transmitted to their children, and even for their male grandchildren of today, who've adopted hip-hop culture and created their own French-language rap music of extraordinary vitality (which often embodies stinging social and political content), condoms are a no-no because of Arab machismo, contributing to rising AIDS rates in the ghettos.

And here's Smith, reporting from Paris yesterday in The New York Times: "Even in the worst government housing developments, green lawns and neat flower beds break the monotony of the gray concrete." He also minimizes the crisis by quoting a French scholar's dismissive assessment: "It's a game of cowboys and Indians." The riots are pretty much "a local sport, a rite of passage," he tells Smith, who writes.

The despair in these housing projects (called cités here) has been mitigated by better schools than those that serve poor, minority districts in the United States (education is financed nationally in France, rather than through local tax rolls) and by extensive welfare programs. Even when employed, a family of four living in a government-subsidized apartment typically pays only a few hundred dollars a month in rent and can receive more than $1,200 a month in various subsidies. The unemployed receive more. For all, health care and education are free.

There is crime, but not nearly at the level of random violence feared in poor neighborhoods in American cities. Guns are tightly controlled and are still relatively rare. When a teenager was killed in a drive-by shooting in a Paris suburb this year, it made national headlines.

We don't doubt the facts Smith cites. We wonder why so many others are missing. The contrast between the stories is just another reason why we need an alternative press.

-- Tireless Staff of Thousands

Postscript: A message just in from the establishment magazine Foreign Affairs, apropos the riots, reminding us of Robert S. Leiken's huge takeout, "Europe's Angry Muslims," which appeared in the July/August issue.

The short of it: "Radical Islam is spreading across Europe among descendants of Muslim immigrants. Disenfranchised and disillusioned by the failure of integration, some European Muslims have taken up jihad against the West. They are dangerous and committed -- and can enter the United States without a visa."

Leiken swings both ways within the establishment. He is Director of the Immigration and National Security Program at the Nixon Center and a nonresident Fellow at the Brookings Institution.