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Post by spaceneedle on Jun 16, 2020 9:40:10 GMT
It has been determined than more than 200 streets in Paris bear the names of famous people who were involved in racist or anti-semitic actions at least one time in their life. So of course a debate has begun about what to do about it. At the moment, the general idea is that additional plaques should be put on the streets to explain the full story of these people. To get a street named after you, you have supposedly also done some very good things in your life. But others say that the names should be banned and use the example of Pétain. He was France's greatest hero from WW1 and now there is absolutely nothing named after him. Of course, this requires a determination about what is "bad." In the context of the times or in the context of current times? An example which I imagine that Americans can easily understand is the fact that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were slave owners. That makes the dilemma easier to understand. And then there's also that pesky Coco Chanel problem, too K2!
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 16, 2020 11:32:33 GMT
Did she have slaves?
One amusing factoid is that my market street rue de l'Olive was named rue l'Olive until 2011. It was named after Charles Liénard de l'Olive, the coloniser of Guadeloupe who slaughtered both the males of the local population (taking the women for other needs) and also killed as many sea turtles and manatees as possible. Now the street is just named after olive trees, but interestingly enough, one of the cross streets is rue de la Guadeloupe. One of the only other streets to change names in Paris for similiar reasons was rue Richepanse, named after the person who re-established slavery in Guadeloupe in 1801 on the orders of Bonaparte. In 2001, that street became rue du Chevalier-de-Saint-George (sorry for the people who have to write that address on envelopes) -- he was one of the people who emancipated slaves in the 18th century.
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Post by spaceneedle on Jun 17, 2020 7:47:18 GMT
Ha! Sweatshop manufacturing in third world countries for some products probably counts... And we all know about the unpleasant Nazi stuff...
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 17, 2020 8:12:13 GMT
If you're talking about sex, that still isn't a crime in France. And no one needs to look as far as other countries to find nasty people. Forgetting or erasing the past can be dangerous.
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Post by lagatta on Jun 18, 2020 13:05:42 GMT
There were Nazi sympathisers in pretty much all the "white majority" countries in Europe and the Americas, and even in Brazil, which didn't have a white majority, but a powerful white élite. I don't think Chanel's collaboration can be summed up as a tryst; she had long been a vicious antisemite (remember that Jewish people played an important part in the rag trade in European and American countries).
K2's Time article was good, but somehow it failed to mention Henry Ford.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 18, 2020 13:11:57 GMT
Yes, they always miss Henry Ford for some reason.
The various famous collaborators and antisemites like Chanel, the Lumière brothers, Céline, etc have no streets or squares or statues. "Naming" committees are very careful about such things in modern times.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 18, 2020 15:14:55 GMT
Less controversial, today President Macron went to London (and was not quarantined). He met with Prince Charles and Boris Johnson and awarded the Légion d'Honneur to the city of London for its support during WW2. Today was the 80th anniversary of General de Gaulle's call for resistance, broadcast on the BBC from London. I saw a very interesting report on television today about De Gaulle's female chauffeur in London. She is 102 and still considers it to be the most exciting time in her life. "I really enjoyed the war." video of this delightful woman
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 28, 2020 19:15:20 GMT
Today we had the second round of the municipal elections at last. Even though it can't actually be called a landslide, the Greens have swept an amazing number of cities in France including Lyon and Strasbourg.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 29, 2020 20:10:25 GMT
Among the new Green cities, there are Strasbourg, Lyon, Bordeaux, Poitiers, Annecy, Besançon and also Grenoble, which was already held by the Greens. Paris remains Socialist in a Green coalition, and it should be the same for Marseille, although some tough lobbying will need to be done there, since the PLM cities (Paris-Lyon-Marseille) are the only ones in France that use an electoral college for municipal elections. The final result will be on Friday.
This is going to be a big change, but it is slightly weird that local politics and national politics will be clashing on a number of subjects since the Greens no longer have any members in parliament.
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Post by kerouac2 on Sept 18, 2020 15:02:27 GMT
One thing that has always been interesting about the Greens in France is that everybody likes them until suddenly they don't anymore. They seem warm and fuzzy at first and then their agenda bubbles to the surface.
In the last week, they have made plenty of enemies on two points. The Green mayors of Lyon and Rennes said that the Tour de France was no longer welcome because it is sexist (only men!) and pollutes too much. But the mayor of Bordeaux won the big prize of outrage when he said that the city would no longer display a municipal Christmas tree (he called it a "dead tree").
Quite a few commentators have compared the Greens to the Grinch (also green) as they want to ban anything that is fun and which appeals to the general public.
Obviously, it is not that simple, but the Greens, if they want to remain influential politically, very much need to learn how to frame some of their ideas and not just blurt out things that pop into their head.
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Post by bjd on Sept 18, 2020 15:55:29 GMT
It's refreshing when politicians blurt instead of always weighing everything carefully and only blurting out rehearsed statements. Macron obviously hasn't been a politician long enough -- he sometimes makes a crack that doesn't go down very well.
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Post by kerouac2 on Sept 18, 2020 16:10:22 GMT
That's one of the things that I like about him, but he is also a much more clever orator than the inexperienced Greens. While it is always a shame to need to moderate one's ideas (the perfectly appropriate French expression is "to water down one's wine."), it is the only way to make things acceptable to the majority in a democracy. If ever we move on to a dictatorship, no problem.
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Post by bixaorellana on Sept 18, 2020 18:26:26 GMT
Even though this is a documentary film, I'm sticking it into this discussion. It won't surprise anyone to know that I immediately assumed it was about the US, because of the title. But no, it's about France: virtual.filmlinc.org/film/the-monopoly-of-violence/
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Post by kerouac2 on Oct 26, 2020 20:36:43 GMT
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Post by mickthecactus on Oct 26, 2020 21:19:15 GMT
Don’t you just love religion?
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Post by kerouac2 on Oct 26, 2020 22:06:13 GMT
It is a real problem solver, isn't it?
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Post by bjd on Oct 27, 2020 7:31:44 GMT
I find it interesting that Erdogan was saying (in Turkish) that Muslims in France are being treated like the Jews in Germany in the 1930s. Obviously preaching to an audience of historical illiterates.
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Post by kerouac2 on Oct 29, 2020 18:44:48 GMT
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Post by kerouac2 on Dec 3, 2020 16:43:50 GMT
Demonstrations in France come in all shapes and sizes, but the more interesting ones are spontaneous. The traditional ones called by trade unions and political parties have pretty much run out of steam over the last 20 years or so and thank god for that. It was much easier to manipulate the "working class" or "party stalwarts" in the past while the leaders appeared in the forefront for 15 minutes just for the photo op. These programmed events such as May Day have become pretty boring and fewer people participate every year. But some events bring out people without warning, for example the Charlie Hebdo killings, followed by the Bataclan massacre later the same year and other similar events. The recent beheading of teacher Samuel Paty also brought aa lot of people to the streets. In the last couple of weeks, we have been faced with police brutality, which just about every country faces from time to time. And just like in other countries, the French authorities try to deny that it exists. First there was the rather brutal evacuation of a migrant camp that was briefly set up on Place de la République. Although the police behaviour was inadmissable, I find the organisers of this operation equally quilty because they were just using the migrants as pawns. They knew that such a "camp" would not last more than 30 minutes in the centre of Paris. Okay, the migrants got carted off to better (always extremely temporary) accommodations, but I still find the technique dishonest. But then there was another awful incident, seen around the world. A music producer (unfortunately of mixed race) was brutally beaten by a group of policemen who did not know they were being recorded on CCTV. He had been leaving his building but ducked back inside when he saw the police because he wasn't wearing a mask. But the vestibule inside had CCTV and the scene was terrible. So therefore we had a demonstration in Paris last Saturday. It was not 100% spontaneous, but close enough. Nobody had died, so they waited until Saturday, which gave a few groups time to organise. I decided to go and check it out. I knew I would not be marching, but I at least wanted to see the assembly. The schedule was for 14:00 which means that nothing will really start before 15:00. I arrived precisely at 14:00.
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Post by kerouac2 on Dec 3, 2020 16:49:11 GMT
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Post by kerouac2 on Dec 3, 2020 17:06:32 GMT
As I wandered around, I was not getting the best of vibes. Everybody with an axe to grind was there -- the yellow vests, the antifas, the fringe parties, the tired old trade unions, student associations, immigrant groups, Algerian democracy demonstrators, the Polisario with their Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic flags, ATTAC, you name it, they were there. The protest against police brutality was just a thin veneer for these people who had a completely different agenda. While the vast majority of people were just ordinary folk really worried about the police, I was certain that these other groups were going to take control of events. I do not mention the Black Bloc because they are always invisible until the end when they start wreaking havoc.
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Post by kerouac2 on Dec 3, 2020 17:24:33 GMT
I need to backtrack a bit and mention what really set off this demonstration. There is enough police brutality to warrant a demonstration just about every month (luckily not every week). But the legislature found nothing better to do recently than to pass a new security law. And "article 24" of the law said that posting videos or photos of identifiable police agents with the intent of putting them in danger would be a crime. The intent of the law is understandable because individual police people have been threatened and attacked after appearing in such videos, even when they were doing nothing wrong (although of course often they were doing something possibly despicable). But in many cases, the police have been simply patrolling tough suburbs and arresting drug dealers. But the formulation of the law sounded like total censorship and a way to hide criminal police activities. On top of that, as many people have pointed out, there are already plenty of laws on the books to cover all such things. But since it is necessary to pander to the law-and-order crowd regularly, they just keep putting on layer after layer of redundant laws that are completely meaningless. That annoys people after awhile, even me. The government has said it will go back to the drawing board on the sticking points, but nobody is duped. In any case the law had only passed the lower house and had not yet gone to the Senate, so they will be able to drag their feet for months.
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Post by kerouac2 on Dec 3, 2020 17:33:56 GMT
I knew it would be wise to go home now. As expected, the cars started burning and the windows were smashed as the demonstrators reached Place de la Bastille. It was estimated that about 45,000 people were there (110,000 in all of France). Watching people coming out of the metro was impressive.
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Post by bjd on Dec 3, 2020 17:57:24 GMT
It's wonderful when people turn up with signs that have nothing to do with the actual purpose of the demonstration. Just above I see "repression des cheminot.es". What do railway workers have to do with it?
I'm also glad you mentioned the way the migrants were "used" in that clearout two weeks ago. Nothing was mentioned on the news about who organized their camp in the middle of Paris and I'm sure it's wasn't the migrants themselves, who try to remain discreet whenever possible. That was one of the first things I thought about when I first heard the news report.
I wonder to what extent the law will be rewritten now.
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Post by onlyMark on Dec 3, 2020 18:06:03 GMT
posting videos or photos of identifiable police agents with the intent of putting them in danger would be a crime. And that is the difficult thing to prove but easy to arrest for - the intent. There are a number of UK laws where intent forms a part of the definition, even something as simple as theft - that's why there had to be a special law made for joy-riding because without the 'intent' part, there was no crime when taking a car, riding round in it and then dumping it. The authorities have to prove intent in any prosecution but it is not always so difficult to do when the actions of the accused show there was no other reason for what they did. I have personal experience of being arrested for theft, going to court, but found innocent because the prosecution failed to prove I had "intent to permanently deprive the owner".
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Post by casimira on Dec 3, 2020 18:55:08 GMT
It appears that there are many people who are restless, bored, and discontent there to come out in droves like that. Not a whole lot of social distancing going on either. I guess any reason to get out of their homes is a good enough reason for many.
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Post by htmb on Dec 3, 2020 19:27:32 GMT
I’m kind of speechless looking at your photos and video. There are so many things to think about. I’ll start with Covid. The gathering seems overwhelming to me, considering the timing. I think I might have taken several quick snaps and then headed away from the crowd as quickly as possible. I certainly wouldn’t have taken the métro! I know several lines run through République, but still. Lots of people streaming up the steps! At least the majority of them were young. Glad you’d stationed yourself on the back side of the stairwell.
Kerouac, have you noticed more photographers covering demonstrations wearing PRESS notices on their body now than in the past? I’m totally against this proposed law..
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Post by bjd on Dec 3, 2020 19:36:20 GMT
It appears that there are many people who are restless, bored, and discontent there to come out in droves like that. Not a whole lot of social distancing going on either. I guess any reason to get out of their homes is a good enough reason for many. I don't think most of these people were bored or restless. I think the idea of the proposed law really has a lot of people up in arms, particularly those supporting a free press, which is pretty much everybody. This is all happening at a moment where, as Kerouac mentions in his introduction, there have been several examples of flagrant police brutality, so passing this law at this very moment is especially damaging for the government and the police.
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Post by kerouac2 on Dec 3, 2020 20:03:35 GMT
I did not feel in danger of covid at any time, in spite of the number of people. After all, they say that the masks are 95% effective at preventing transmission in both directions, and I was not touching anybody in the crowd, so that was good enough for me. Yes, I did have to nudge my way through a collection of people a few times, but I am not really paranoid about my jacket touching somebody else's jacket. Precautions are absolutely necessary, but common sense also plays a part.
I would absolutely not have wanted to crowd into the metro with all of those people, but since I walked to Place de la République from Gare de l'Est, it was not a problem. When I left, I was going contra flow, so the metro trains were almost empty in my direction.
People here take the sanitary measures very seriously. When I came home today, I ran into one of my neighbours. I had already pulled my mask down as I entered the building, but he wanted to talk to me, so he went into his place to get his mask and I pulled mine back into place.
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Post by htmb on Dec 3, 2020 22:00:33 GMT
You’re made of more resilient stuff than me, plus, you’re taller. It can make a difference when navigating crowds. Your coverage of the event is excellent. Is the man with just a face shield and no mask complying with French covid rules?
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