HNY 2019

2019✨

PDress

Topshop kills it: a beautiful party dress!

source: The Guardian

Acte VII

Been gleaning some interesting insights today, as
different French media prepare for what might be
another day of Gilets Jaunes protests.

There was a Bonnets Rouges protest in 2013 - also against
an ecotax - which resulted in the government caving in and
removing the tax. This was a tax on heavy truck loads and people
in Brittany destroyed the gantries meant to identify them. Indeed,
the 'red caps' are a reference to an even earlier tax revolt under
Louis XIV, who wanted to tax formal sealed paper to help finance
a war... In short, tax revolts go back in French political culture.

This helps explain, to me at least, the great tolerance to street violence
expressed, as the population continues to sympathize with the
protestors.

Analysts report heightened conflictuality in the psychologie of the French
electorate, a desire for revenge to the 'symbolic violence of decision-makers'.

As well, many are surprised by the horizontal nature of the protests:
not a party because not organized, not a movement because without
a charismatic leader, just collective action in the entire country.

https://www.nouvelobs.com/societe/20181213.OBS7093/gilets-jaunes-la-violence-politique-devient-elle-une-strategie-payante.html

https://www.liberation.fr/debats/2018/12/22/la-lecon-des-gilets-jaunes-aux-gilets-rouges_1699024

Significant

There is a hard Core of Yellow Vests protesters in France apparently not giving
up for this Saturday, New Years and beyond. What would it take to wind the movement down?
According to organizers, a significant reduction in the costs of living essentials,
and the possibility of launching citizen initiatives (on the Swiss model).

https://www.huffingtonpost.fr/2018/12/27/que-prevoient-les-gilets-jaunes-pour-leur-acte-vii-et-la-suite_a_23628068/?utm_hp_ref=fr-homepage

Xmas Cheer

Santa gifted me from the Chelsea Market, NYC this year;
it smells absolutely wonderful, and I cannot wait to
use it.

Santa, you are funny . The Best Christmas!

Écrire

One of the surprising outputs from the gilets jaunes
disturbances - a cultural production, if you will - is an
account by writer Gregoire Bouillier of what it was like to be
part of the December 8 events on the Champ- Élysées.
Pretty brutal, it turns out.

It is a longish piece, published by Libération. Below:

...

                                                                                           ...

...

So what if this was how it actually happened? Could it be that simple? Could it be today? All of a sudden, I feel myself becoming totally paranoid. In a flash, I see the images of the students arrested at Mantes-la-Jolie and forced to spend hours kneeling with their hands on their heads under the armed surveillance of the CRS (Compagnies républicaines de sécurité) looking very much like Pinochet’s soldiers. Darth Vader for real. Damn it! I suddenly envision the Champs-Élysées transformed into an Elysian camp of prisoners. Only difference in a letter, all told. By a thread. Good God. The worst is possible, here, right away, now. I tell myself that many worsts are possible. They are there, palpable, waiting to pounce, on all sides. From the powers that be; but from the street as well. Because there are occult forces at work on the Fields. I can see. I am not blind. Shit-hole. I need a moment to calm down. I start to wander among the participants, with explosions in the background, intrusive cavalcades, sporadic chaos. I feel like ‘Fabrice à Waterloo’ (Stendhal, bereft of an overview). Find myself ridiculous. What am I doing here? Yellow Vest protesters are chanting ‘Macron resignation! Macron resignation!’ One is howling ’50 million to save the Banks and nothing to save the people?’ He is applauded. All around me, exasperation is mounting. It is principally Macron that is the focus of all the hate. He is clearly a rallying cry. The appointed whipping boy. The punching-ball meant for all. The king whose head must be severed. What the heck, we are in France since 1789. One still believes in the monarchy in these parts, in order to replay the primal revolutionary scene. Even Macron is a believer. He most of all, maybe. Although he is but an image. He is but a face. Decidedly more explicit than many before him, more frank in fact, because one finds with him a morphology typical of today’s dominant class, a type of rigidity which makes him stand out immediately, a smooth and disincarnated fixity in his features which recalls a world essentially dead, as before the prosperous bourgeois would show off their large bellies thus signaling  enviable and cynical opulence, yes, but the real problem isn’t him. It never is a problem with a person. Never that simple. Word would get around if that were the truth. Presidents come and go but it is ever the same lot who have it all. Ever the same who rub their hands. The obscenity remains. It even grows, from its own internal rhythm, nice and quiet.

translation: doxa-louise                                                                                                            ...

https://www.liberation.fr/debats/2018/12/20/la-traversee-de-paris-des-gilets-jaunes-par-gregoire-bouillier_1698562

                                            *     *     *

NY, NY.

Lyse is on her first trip to NYC. Go to the Met, I told
her. This is her first FB post!! 😹

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

My current favorite New Yorker cartoon: