THESE BLOOKS HIGHLIGHT OMISSIONS THAT PERVADE MUCH OF WHAT IS WRITTEN ABOUT PARIS AND FRENCH HISTORY
Whatever contradicts the mentality that giant corporations seek to impose is minimized, distorted, or simply left out.
- The giant ads that hover over great cities express that outlook: Most show individuals isolated from the world around them, happy to buy wares with a name. No reason is given, and sometimes we do not even know what the product is. The images idealize separateness and unreason, attitudes that favor much more than buying overpriced stuff we don't need.
The crossroads at the entry to southern Manhattan / Elisabeth Rawson
The Châtelet crossroad at the center of Paris.
What's the product?
- Contradictions are blown away.
Harald Wolff
The same causes yield the same results, and what is true for France is true in its broad strokes wherever globalized capitalism reigns.
The changes to come are terrifying. But there is also hope. This recent mural in a huge new metro station* defies the schoolbooks and museum by portraying victorious social struggle...
*For the 2024 Olympics a métro line was extended to link the sports stadium of working-class Saint-Denis in the north with Orly airport in the south. The Socialist Saint-Denis municipality commissioned this giant panel for the platform of its final stop.
The flag-waving procession celebrates winning the eight-hour day in 1919, when the carnage of World War I and the Soviet Revolution brought intense working-class mobilization. That's the origin of French Labor Day, the May 1 celebration.
The harsh struggle of the past, indicated by the workers' grey...
Explains the immense improvement of the present.
And signs of global resistance to billionaires' rule are blooming:
The "No Kings" demonstration in Paris.
In revealing a manipulation all the more powerful in that is often involuntary, these pages add their two cents.
Harald Wolff
Of course they target progressives. But I wrote them thinking of the cops I taught, and by extension MAGAs.
"You're misled but not bought!
We need your energy.
Join us!"
Henri Welshinger
Me at the "No Kings" demonstration at symbolic place de la Bastille on June 14, 2025.
End of the blooks.
I'd like to know what you think of them.
If you find them useful, please pass them on.
Don't send any money.
They're not written to be sold,
but to be read.
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