FRESH PERSPECTIVES

THESE BLOOKS HIGHLIGHT OMISSIONS THAT PERVADE  HOW PARIS AND FRENCH HISTORY ARE SEEN... AND MUCH OF REALITY ITSELF

Whatever contradicts the mentality that giant corporations favor is minimized, distorted or left out. 

• The giant ads that hover over great cities express that outlook: The images idealize separateness and unreason, showing isolated individuals happy because they can buy brands. No reason is given. Signs not even say what the product is. 

The crossroads at the entry to southern Manhattan / Elisabeth Rawson

 The Châtelet crossroad at the center of Paris.

What's the product?

• The figures' isolation and separation from reality is the opposite of the long term, thought out, collective action that is the only effective way to fight the pharaohs of our time. 

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The most sacred beliefs, most basic social ties, individual creativity of all kinds, anything that hinders their search for profit is blown away:

Harald Wolff

The same cause — globalized capitalism — brings the same effects, and what is true for France is broadly true wherever it holds sway.

 

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The changes to come are terrifying. But there is also hope. In an extraordinary departure from the usual deletion, this huge mural in a new metro station* recalls the victorious struggle for the eight-hour day...

*The Social-Democrat Saint-Denis municipality commissioned the giant panel for the platform of the last stop of the métro line that connects the stadium of working-class Saint-Denis in the north with Orly airport in the south.

...And resistance to billionaires and their minions blooms: 

 

I have never experienced a large demonstration of  more than a few dozen Americans in Paris, but almost one thousand gathered at symbolic place de la Bastille for the "No Kings" rally (on June 24, 2025).

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In revealing a manipulation that is

all the more powerful 

in that we are rarely conscious of it,

 these pages add to the resistance

 their two cents.

Harald Wolff

End of the blooks.

I'd like to know what you think of them.

If you find their ideas useful

please pass them on.

Harald Wolff

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