 | |
| Proudly wear the poppy that honors the fallen dead |
[For a selection of posts of interest to our warfighters, click here.]
The poppy is the symbol of remembrance here, owing to the
association commemorated in the poem (which schoolchildren everywhere used to
memorize) "In Flanders Field, the poppies grow". The original holiday, dating from
1919, was called Armistice Day,
and focussed on what was then called The Great War.
Only, it turns out, they don't, so much. Odd factoid (from
Wiki):
Avant la Première Guerre mondiale,
peu de coquelicots poussaient en Flandre. Durant les terribles bombardements de
cette guerre, les terrains crayeux devinrent riches en poussières de chaux
favorisant ainsi la venue des coquelicots. La guerre finie, la chaux fut
rapidement absorbée et les coquelicots disparurent de nouveau.
~
Today in France, commemorative ceremonies were held, though
under the curiously bland title of simply “11 novembre”:
François Hollande a présidé lundi
matin à Paris les cérémonies du 11 novembre, qui lancent les commémorations du
centenaire de la Première Guerre mondiale. Le 95e anniversaire de l'Armistice
coïncide avec le début d'un cycle de commémorations qui connaîtront plusieurs
temps forts jusqu'au 11 novembre 2014.
The 11-11-2014 centennial is naturally of more interest to
France (and to Britain) than to the United States, since in 1914 we were
sitting on the fence, and not directly threatened, not entering until 1917. So, today was supposed to be a
big day for President François Hollande, presiding over the festivities in
Paris, and doubtless hoping for a boost to his dismal poll figures.
[Flash update: François
Hollande a perdu encore trois points de popularité entre début octobre et
début novembre, tombant à 21% d'avis favorables et marquant un nouveau record
d'impopularité.]
But it didn’t go so well. In France, the unpopular “ecotaxe” has unleashed a furious,
Tea-Party-like response, only more violent; it is the rough Gallic equivalent of the Obamacare brouhaha. Protestors sporting bonnets rouges (red Phrygian caps, the
new symbol of the protest), gave him the raspberry. Now, in France that’s illegal, and several dozen were
promptly arrested:
11 Novembre : Hollande hué, 73 manifestants interpellés
Plusieurs dizaines de personnes ont
été arrêtées pour avoir hué et sifflé le président de la République sur les
Champs-Élysées. Des appels à perturber les cérémonies commémoratives
circulaient depuis dimanche sur Internet
[Yes, Virginia, you read that aright: it is illegal in France to hoot-down
the président; a latter-day echo of the crime of lèse-majesté. So if you would
like to characterize the feckless dwarf who now inhabits, or rather disgraces,
that office, as a
=> bald-faced,
two-faced (two bald faces in all)
slinking sniveling
parlour-bobo sub-adulterer,
who has been throning like a bloated toad
over the shameful decline of France <=
then you had best do it from a safe perch in America. -- Not
that people who, mm, utter
things are in general safe here
either; but slanging France is one
activity we are allowed, and even
encouraged, to do.
Note b.t.w. that I am not here slanging France, but its
mortician.]
The police response was, however, decidedly less vigorous in
a case from Saturday, in the southern city of Nice. Here, a band of around twenty “youth” beat up a bakery-owner
in front of her store, along with some citizens to attempted to come to her
aid. Eventually some police
arrived, but, outnumbered, and essentially forbidden to use their weapons,
sustained beatings themselves, sending five officers to the infirmary. The whole battle raged for twenty
minutes before finally being dispersed;
so far, there have only been two
arrests (as against 73 for the peaceful though vociferous and disrespectful
demonstrators); both the aggressors have already been released.
A reader notes the incongruity:
C'est ça la liberté d'expression à
la sauce Hollande ? il est plus facile d'interpeller 70 personnes qui sifflent
le président que d'arrêter 20 personnes qui se déchaînent pendant 20 minutes
dans une boulangerie ce matin.
*
Si cela vous parle,
savourez la série
noire
en argot authentique
d’Amérique :
*
What the facts of the case may be, I have no idea; details are difficult to glean from the
often self-censoring French press.
But Nice has recently seen similar disturbing incidents of assault by
youth-gangs, and the residents are perturbed that the police seem unwilling or
unable to deal with the situation.
The events, moreover, have taken on a profile at the national level
(rather like the Zimmerman-Martin case in the U.S.), since it fits into
the increasingly strident narrative of Socialist government laxisme (i.e., “permissiveness” --
remember that conservative battle-cry from the ‘sixties?) in the face of rising
provocationss from Gypsies, most recently in Saint-Ouen (v. the last section of our essay here) and,
in this case, possibly North Africans. That, at
any rate, is the assumption on the part of many readers, who have been told no
more than that the perpetrators were “des jeunes”: a phrase which, like “inner-city youth” in the United
States, has become a code-word and euphemism for minority gangs.
The
ubiquitous presence of those two groups has been generating a backlash among a
sizable segment of the population, who field besieged in their own
country. The irony of having
repelled a German attack in the Great War, only to be “occupied” now by
unsavory interlopers, has not been lost on some commentors:
C'était bien la peine de se saigner
pour faire la guerre de 14-18, et de s'engager dans la suivante... La guerre
est maintenant partout, et ce n'est qu'un début.
Now, it is by no means certain that the agressors in this
case were anything but français de souche: for one thing, they were reported as alcoolisés, something forbidden to those
who follow Islam. Nor
did the two who were nabbed have a previous police record. But in the current climate,
a significant segment of the French public, short of information, puts the
darkest interpretation upon such reports.
No comments:
Post a Comment