Can’t have JJR out on his lonesome. Here are a couple of blog offerings from the capital city of love, the first a fine display of principle and true courage from the bloggers of “no-passaran” who protested a Muslim protest march last weekend against Western free speech.
Voices start to ring out. “It’s provocation!” “You tread on 1.5 million Muslims!” “Connards!” “Rat faces!”
“Ignore them, they are idiots!” reply others as a crowd starts to press around. A rhetorical question rings out: “Would they be carrying out the same provocations in other types of demonstrations?!” (Actually, Monsieur, yes we would and yes we have.)
The Danish American feels like replying that they have done the same to Chirac, to Mitterrand, to the civil servant salons, and to union demonstrations, but suddenly he and the French American start moving away. What has happened is that a short blonde Frenchwoman has tugged on their sleeves and gently but firmly started pulling them away.
“I will show you my ID 10 meters from here” says the plainclothes cop. “They are going to lynch you!” she adds, as she leads us into another street (in the movie taken by our valiant camera team, you can briefly see her wearing a brown coat, right after a bearded guy in white cap and tan jacket says “They are provoking us” and the camera turns).
“Sons of adultery!” “Hey, you two sons of the whore!” Uniformed policemen join us and start rushing us, more and more quickly down the street (I don’t want to run, I tell them), with a growing crowd quickening their steps. A police van’s door opens. “Go! Go!” shouts a policeman to the driver, “Foncez!” as sirens wail and the van rushes ahead.
“Are you out of your minds?!” ask the two officers. “Do you know how many of them there were?!” “Somebody’s got to stand up for free speech”, replies the French protestor. After staying with us for 20-something minutes, they let us out. (As a departing farewell, I say, “You know, right before you came, we almost had them surrounded.”)
I must say, this marvellous story made me think of the two guys who were arrested by the Met for handing out copy cartoons at that crazy-Muslim rally a few days back. The MSM never told us who they were or what if anything happened to them after their arrest. Was it for their own safety? Have they been charged with any offence?
Second up, here is a photo-essay of down-and-out Paris by a blogger called McCarthy.
To me it all feels very like London used to in the late 1980’s, before John Major launched his drive to curb rough-sleeping. One knew that, “domestic” and emotional difficulties aside, the white runaways who in those days were sleeping in shop doorways in the Strand were only young and at least had the potential to catch hold of life.
The figures McCarthy photographs look much older and more tired, hopeless, lost. There are white derelicts here, of course, but there are more asylum seekers and illegals. Their presence in Paris’ public thoroughfares is not a sign of French society having failed them. They have failed to meet the standards for French society.
