Nicolas Sarkozy: Nazi Occupation

France Dept: The possibility that small children and teachers were slain because of their religion and ethnicity brought to mind the worst outrages of the country s Nazi occupation, and had no precedent in postwar France. Yet it occurred against a backdrop of mounting interracial and ethnic tension and increasingly mainstream messages of political extremism and intolerance, according to Globe and Mail. With a hotly contested presidential election pending on April 22 in which conservative president Nicolas Sarkozy faces a serious challenge from the extreme-right leader Marine Le Pen, whose 17-per-cent standing in the polls threatens Mr. Sarkozy s majority, France s politics had turned increasingly racial and xenophobic. The April 22 vote is the first of two rounds, with the runoff on May 6 and the revelation Monday afternoon that at least one of the two pistols used in the Jewish-school slaying was the same one used in the previous week s murders of three soldiers two of them Muslims of North African immigrant backgrounds suggested that this was an act driven by dark beliefs cultivated in the current French air of distrust. French politics have turned into an angry culture war, and its flashpoint is often the southern coast of France, which is home to both the largest concentrations of religious minorities and the strongest support for extreme-right, anti-immigration political parties. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.