Billy's Lines Of Gibberish

The French Republican Calendar – Year III

Today, September 22, is the day of the September Equinox, when Autumn begins in the Northern (and Spring in the Southern) hemisphere. It was also the first day of the French Republican Calendar. On September 22, 1792 in France, the First Republic was born, and the new calendar (although it was fully conceived some months later only) started on this very same Equinox day.

The new calendar was part of a plan of rationalizing, standardizing, and secularizing systems of measurements named the Metric System, then the Système International (S.I.). At the time in Europe, you would not have a same value for a French, British, Spanish or Italian league, mile, pound, ounce, gallon, whatever. Values would even change between counties or cities in a same country sometimes. A few years earlier then, French King Louis XVI had commissioned a group of scientists headed by Antoine Lavoisier to create a unified and rational system of measures. The Revolutionary Government intensified it.

French scientists decided modern values should be based as much as possible on number 10. Their work led to the present unification and rationalization of measurements, with the development of meter, kilogram, then the second, kelvin, ampere, candela, mole, etc. The metric system/S.I. is of widespread use in science, and it has been progressively adopted  in ordinary life by every country in the world but three: Liberia, Myanmar and the USA.

One attempt was a failure though: the Revolutionary Calendar, that lasted for about 13 years only (plus 18 days in 1871 during the Paris Commune) and never spread outside France. Every year was written in Roman letters (year CCXVIII begins today). It had twelve months of 30 days each, that were given new names based on seasons and nature, principally having to do with the prevailing weather in and around Paris. For instance, Vendémiaire that begins today, means "the month of Winds". It obviously made the calendar pretty inaccurate in most countries, and especially in the Southern hemisphere.

Every months was divided into three decades, 'weeks' of 10 days called Primidi (first day), Duodi (second day), Tridi (third day) and so on. One Decadi every ten days instead of one Sunday every seven days was certainly another good reason for the new calendar to fail. Instead of Saints as in the Christian calendar, every day in the year was associated to a plant or a tool (Grape today for example).

[BbN #10]

At the end of the year, 5 or 6 Complementary Days (or Sansculotides) were respectively called Celebration Day of Virtue, Talent, Labour, Convictions, Honours, and on lap years, Celebration of the Revolution.

Today is Primidi, 1er Vendémiaire CCXVIII, day of Grapes. Happy New Republican Year, everyone.

Several years ago, I was given a book entitled Chronique du vingtième siècle (The 20th Century Saga), edited by Le Monde newspaper.

It is a huge book (1350 pages, A4 size) that contains excerpts of most relevant articles published in French newspapers in the 20th century. 'Sarajevo: Archduke shot dead' (June, 1914); 'Lindbergh flies over the Atlantic' (May, 1927); 'Paris is now free' (August, 1944); 'Explorers on the Moon' (July, 1969), and so on.

You have a strange feeling when you read articles written many decades ago, on the very day historic events happened. They fill in a gap between personal experience and what you have been told. Obviously, the journalists who wrote the articles could not know about a future that is part of a well-known past for present readers. Yet, paradoxically, such a lack of knowledge adds a lot. When an event happened long time ago, before you were born, or able to understand it, you see it as a piece of History; almost an abstraction. On the opposite, when you can remember a event, how you heard of it, what you thought about it at the time, it is part of *your* history. Quite not the same.

When you read articles in such a book, you feel as if this gap has been filled in. Past events become more real, because you hear about them happening 'live'. Furthermore, beside words, you see pictures, some of which are known throughout the world: Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin in Yalta. Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin on the moon, photographed by Neil Armstrong who appears also as a reflection on the visor of Aldrin's helmet. Vietnamese girl Kim Phúc, badly burnt, running down a road after a Napalm attack...

It works with articles, it works with photos. It works also with films. I remember the year 1989 very well: resistance and demonstrations in communist countries, protesters in Tiananmen Square, the fall of the Berlin wall. The youngest cannot remember how hopeful we Westerners felt at the time, and how sad and angry after the massacre  in Beijing. Yet, thanks to the movie below — that I have displayed several time on my successive blogs — they can feel the same as we did, 20 years ago exactly, when the desperate action of the Unknown Rebel testified about what the courage of a unique human being can be.

Guernica by Pablo Picasso (1937) — Oil on canvas, 349 cm x 776 cm  Museo Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid.

In the form of its execution and the scale of the destruction it wrought, no less than in the selection of its objective, the raid on Guernica is unparalleled in military history. Guernica was not a military objective [...] The object of the bombardment was seemingly the demoralization of the civil population. George Steer, The Times (27th April, 1937)

Seventy-two years ago, on April 26, 1937, a little Basque town called Guernica was bombed by planes from the Condor Legion, a unit composed of soldiers from the German air force (Luftwaffe), which was allied to the Nationalists headed by Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War. It was the first time in modern history — but not the last one — that an urban population was slaughtered on purpose by the means of a military attack.

Picasso paints Guernica by Dora Maar (Paris, 1937)

Pablo Picasso had lived in Paris for several decades when Guernica was bombed, yet he began painting sketches for the canvas four days later only, as soon as he heard of it in the newspapers. The painting was finished in a few weeks, to be exhibited in June, 1937 in the Spanish pavilion at the Universal Exhibition in Paris. According to the tale, a German general then asked Picasso: "So, you are the one who made 'this'?" and Picasso answered: "No, you are".

Picasso put Guernica at the disposal of the struggle for the Spanish Republic. After it was defeated and Franco established his fascist power on the country, he insisted that it should return in Spain as soon as its government was restored (which happened in 1981 only). There is no allusion in the painting to a precise war action though. Picasso himself always insisted on the generality of Guernica's meaning, and described it as "the picture of all bombed cities".

Indeed, Guernica represents much more than an illustration of the destruction of the Basque town. It has become a symbol of the suffering of helpless civilians, in any war terror inflicted by a powerful army. As such, the painting could be called Coventry, Dresden or Hiroshima as well.

The 1944 version of the Kolff' rotating drum artificial kidney

Willem (Pim) Kolff died a few weeks ago. You probably did not hear about it: he was not a pop singer, a famous actor or a professional football player, he was only a scientist whose work has been credited for saving millions of lives.
Granted, he was almost 98 year-old — it comes with no surprise when such an elderly person dies — and he was not unrecognised: Dr Kolff received many international awards, including the Lasker Award for Clinical Medical research, when he was... 91, probably because he was never given the Nobel Prize, which is a shame. Yet his death went almost unknown, especially by most of the people with end-stage renal failure who live thanks to his great first invention: the dialysis machine.
As a young doctor in Groningen in the Netherlands in the end-1930s, Willem Kolff witnessed the miserable, painful death of a 22-year-old man from kidney failure. He had to tell his mother that his only son was going to die, and there was nothing he could do. "If I only could find a way to remove toxic waste products from the poor guy's blood, I would save him", he thought. He then devoted himself to research on creating such a machine.
When Pim Kolff was a child, he was tinkering about all the time, so much so that his father arranged for him to have lessons with a carpenter on Saturdays afternoons. As an adult, he remained a handyman. He conducted his first experiments with sausage skins filled with blood and urea, that he put into a bath of salt water. Urea passed through the membrane from the blood to the salt water: the concept of using dialysis for building an artificial kidney was born.
It was only in 1941 though, when the Netherlands were under German occupation, that he succeeded in developing a prototype machine. Kolff had left Groningen in 1940, on the day a Dutch Nazi replaced his former Jewish professor as head of his department, and worked in a small hospital in Kampen, on the Zuiderzee (now called the Ijsselmeer).

Willem Kolff

Materials were in short supply at the time, and almost everything was requisitioned by the Germans. Kolff build his prototype with metal pieces from a downed fighter plane, a wooden drum, the cooling system from an old Ford, and 40 meters of sausage casings (later, he would also use orange juice cans and a washing machine).
The cellophane casings were wrapped around the drum and set into a salt solution. The patient's blood was drawn from a wrist artery and fed into the casings. The drum was rotated, removing impurities, and the Ford motor pumped back the blood into the patient.
In 1945, after 15 deaths and many modifications and improvements, the dialysis machine saved a patient for the first time. Ironically, it was a woman in a coma due to renal failure who had been imprisoned as a Nazi collaborator. After eleven hours of treatment, she awoke from coma, and lived seven more years. Hundreds of thousands of people now undergo dialysis several times a week.
Before he invented the kidney dialysis machine, Willem Kolff created the first blood blank in Europe, during the German bombings on The Hague in May 1940.

"If a man can grow a heart, he can build it"  Willem J. Kolff (1911-2009)

After he emigrated to the USA in the 1950s, he improved his dialysis machine, that was used worldwide for almost twenty years. He developed heart-lung machines used to oxygenate blood during cardiac surgery. In the 1970s, he was the leader of a team that developed the artificial heart. He was also involved in the development of artificial eyes, ears and limbs.

A graveyard inside Mostar — March 14, 2009

There are many little parks in the city, with grass and trees. Anywhere else, such places of greenery would be called 'public gardens'. Not in East-Mostar though, because there are tombs between the trees. Dozens of tombs.

Each tomb is engraved : it displays a name, a date of birth, a date of death: 1993 usually. Thousands of people died during the civil war in Mostar, and graveyards seem to have replaced public gardens.

A ruin in Mostar

The war in Bosnia ended fourteen years ago but you can still see it everywhere. The streets and avenues are lined with destroyed buildings, dangerous ruins of which the fronts are riddled with holes of bullets and shrapnel. There is a same poster everywhere, that warns people against going into the ruins, children against playing there.

Constructions are coming on slowly in Mostar apparently. They are rebuilding, but you can guess that money is lacking.

Stari Most, the Old Bridge after which Mostar was named, was the symbol of the city, and a chef-d'oeuvre of Ottoman architecture. It was commissioned by Suleiman the Magnificent to Mimar Hajruddin, a pupil of Sinan, "the father of classic Ottoman architecture".

On Stari Most, close to the right bank

Built in 1566, Stari Most consisted of a single 30 metres long hump-backed arch that stood more than 20 metres above the green waters of the Neretva River. It had withstood all sorts of calamities, invasions, wars, and even earthquakes.

Nevertheless, it was destroyed when Croats and Bosnians, who used yet to be allies against the Serbs during the civil war in Bosnia (1992-1995), fought during one year in Mostar. On November 9, 1993, the Old Bridge was destroyed by the artillery of the HVO Croatian forces, allegedly to stop Bosnian troops, in reality for its symbolic value as an Ottoman piece of art and a link between communities.

Stari Most, the Old Bridge — March 14, 2009.

Under the aegis of the UNESCO, and thanks to a loan from the World Bank and grants from donor countries, the Old Bridge was rebuilt for the very same reason: as a symbol of peace and tolerance.

After two years of scientific and archeological research, it was rebuilt in 2004 exactly as it was, using identical blocks of white stones found in nearby quarries and according to traditional methods, using quoins, cramps and dowels. It is now listed as a World Heritage Site.

Guerillero Heroico by Alberto Korda (1960)

Fifty years ago, on January 1st, 1959, Cuba's dictator Fulgencio Batista fled Havana's Presidential Palace — where he had just hosted a New Year party — to the Dominican Republic, giving up power to the revolution headed by Fidel Castro, in which Ernesto 'Che' Guevara had taken a big part.

Everybody knows the portrait on the left side: 'El Che' stares into the middle distance with fiery resolve, military beret perched on his head, leather jacket zipped up to his neck, hair blown by the wind. Taken in 1960 by Alberto Korda, a Cuban photographer, this picture is one of the most widely reproduced images in the history of photography. It has been endlessly reproduced on posters, T-shirts and so on, and has remained remarkably durable as a symbol of revolution and youthful rebellion.

Hasta Siempre by Carlos Puebla (Soledad Bravo singing)

Such a romantic view of the character is somewhat odd when you know that, after Fidel Castro took the power in Cuba,  Ernesto Guevara was the supreme prosecutor of suspected war criminals from the regime of Batista and oversaw without leniency trials and executions of many people.

Yet 'El Che' became a romantic hero, an icon of freedom and fight against oppression, when he decided to leave the comfort of Cuba where he was a minister, and try to export revolution to other countries: Congo-Kinshasa first, then Bolivia. He even gained a Christ-like stature at the end, when he was captured in Bolivia in October 1967 in a military operation supported by US Special forces, and summarily executed.

Alberto Korda never earned any royalties from his famous photograph, although the portrait was declined in hundreds of reproductions.

The original picture (on the left) is usually reframed so that El Che appears alone on it. Very often, it is turned into a high contrast black and white picture that is especially found on tee-shirts. The high-contrast version of the portrait was also used in an artistic way in a pop-art serigraphy in colours, an imitation of a famous serigraphy by Andy Warhol featuring Marilyn Monroe.

Very often too, the picture is used in a way that would make El Che turn in his grave: "The revolutionary struggle of the cherries was squashed as they were trapped between two layers of chocolate", reads the copy on this ice-cream's wrapper. "May their memory live on in your mouth".

Poor Che... Taken over by Capitalism, at the end.

Dinner time. We are eating together, in the kitchen of our apartment. My mother, father, brother, and me.

We never watch TV while eating. 'It's unfriendly, and unhealthy', Mummy will say. Everyone instead tells the family how their day went.

Dad now talks about his job. Mum listens. I squabble with my bro. The radio plays softly in the background. Music usually, but news now. I like the music, but I don't listen to the news. Little boys are not interested in the news.

All of a sudden, my parents stop chatting. My father says 'Oh', stands up and turns up the sound of the radio. I look up from my plate of spaghetti. Daddy's face is as white as a sheet. Mum's eyes are full of tears. My little brother has not noticed, he is quite busy playing with his food.

November 22, 1963. I just learned there is a city named Dallas in the United States.

Gagnants/Perdants by Noir Désir

Noir Désir became famous in 2001 with their song 'Le vent nous portera'. Yet the band was disrupted after singer Bertrand Cantat was jailed for the manslaughter of his girlfriend, actress Marie Trintignant after a violent row in a Lithuanian hotel in July 2003. He was sentenced to eight years imprisonment, but left jail last year after he had served half the sentence.

"Noir Désir died the same day as Marie", Cantat once said. Yet the band does not appear to be that dead, since they released two new songs on the Internet last Thursday, that everyone can download for free.

Le vent nous portera (Noir Désir)

For several months, I did not listen to 'Le vent nous portera' because I could not help thinking this voice belonged to a man who once beat his wife to death. I still have mixed feelings about it: the song exists anyway, and it is a great song.

Giorgio de Chirico The Red Tower (1913) The Barnes Foundation

When I was in Philadelphia lately, I visited The Barnes Foundation, a fascinating place where hundreds (!) of chef-d'oeuvres are displayed. It owns a lot of Impressionist paintings especially. Also, many canvases by various painters who were not impressionists are exhibited, among which several pieces by Giorgio de Chirico.

I like many paintings by Chirico, in particular those he painted during his 'metaphysical' period. Yet the artist later joined the futurist movement 'Valori Plastici', then its 'Novecento' following, who both supported Mussolini's fascism. I sure dislike what were the ideas and behaviour of the individual. I still love many of his paintings anyway.

Another example: French writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline, also a doctor in medicine. His first novel, 'Journey to the End of the Night' (Voyage au bout de la nuit) is among my favourite books ever. 'Death on the Instalment Plan' (Mort à crédit) is another great novel by him. His medical thesis about Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis, who discovered the cause of puerperal fever and introduced hand washing in medicine, is at the same time a marvel of smartness and independence of mind, and splendid literature.

Yet Céline was a racist and anti-Semite, who shared many opinions with the Nazis. He wrote shameful pamphlets about the Jews before and during WWII. After the war, he was convicted a collaborator and imprisoned. I despise the man, I deeply admire several novels he wrote.

So... I still look at paintings by Chirico. I still read Céline. I still listen to music by Wagner. I may still listen to the songs by Bertrand Cantat also then. It does not mean I would shake the hand of the man, if it ever happened that I met him.

Benjamin Franklin Parkway — Philadelphia, Nov. 2008

Wherever you go in Philadelphia, you meet Benjamin Franklin.

One day, you visit the Philadelphia Museum or Arts on Benjamin Franklin Parkway, then gaze at the Benjamin Franklin National Memorial in the rotunda of the Franklin Institute of Science Museum.

Another day, in the Independence National Historical Park, you walk through Franklin Square, close to the Benjamin Franklin Bridge over the Delaware River, then in front of Franklin's Grave, on your way to Independence Hall where the founding fathers of the U.S.A. — including Benjamin Franklin — signed and ratified the U.S. Constitution on July 4, 1776.  Two blocks from there, you reach Franklin Court, where once stood Franklin's house. Below the court is the Franklin Museum, that is filled with paintings, objects, and inventions associated with Benjamin Franklin...

Okay, let's stop making fun of the way Philadelphians worship 'Ben', because he actually was one of the most historically fascinating personalities in the 18th century. Although he was given little education as a child, he became famous for being a printer, an inventor, a scientist, a musician, a champion swimmer, an economist, a writer, a philosopher, and a statesman.

Especially, Benjamin Franklin personifies the 18th century approach to science. When a subject interested him, he gathered information, experimented, and then developed a practical application.

Electricity, symbolized by the lightning rod, was the source of his worldwide renown as an inventor, but the list of his other contributions includes improved streetlights, more efficient heating, bifocal, and even a musical instrument, the armonica, of which a reproduction is displayed in his underground Museum below Franklin Court.

Franklin was in England in 1761, when he heard a performer playing musical glasses. He wrote then: "He collected a number of glasses of different sizes, fixed them near each other on a table, and tuned them by putting into them water, more or less as each note required. The tones were brought out by passing his fingers round their brims."

Franklin loved the music, and because it is very difficult to set up about fifty glasses on a table, he decided to find a more practical method of creating music from glass.  He had a glass maker create 37 glass bowls tuned to specific tones, according to their different size and thickness, then ran an iron rod through a hole in the top of each hemisphere so that they could nest together, from largest to smallest. Under the row of bowls, he put a water reservoir to moisten the rims of the bowls, and linked all of this to an apparatus like a spinning wheel, with a foot treadle that turned the rod, making the bowls rotate. This removed the need to rotate one's own hands, and allowed quick access to every note successively, like on a piano or harpsichord.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy

The instrument has a full compliment of 48 notes, two octaves above and below middle C. Franklin named it 'The Armonica', after the Italian word armonica which means 'harmony'. It is also called a Glass Harmonica sometimes. The Armonica never needs to be tuned, since glass bowls don't have the same intonation troubles as wood and metal instruments. Yet there are fragile... nothing's perfect.

Franklin's invention took Europe by storm. Some said it was more popular than the violin at the end of the eighteenth century in Europe. At least 300 pieces were written for it, including works by Mozart and Beethoven. Thousands armonicas were sold; one factory employed over a hundred people for this purpose only. Many of the performers were women, and even the French Queen Marie-Antoinette took lessons.

The popularity of the instrument faded quickly afterwards, Several decades later though, Tchaikovsky used it in his famous Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, part of The Nutcracker ballet.

Philadelphia, Wednesday 5 November 2008, 2 am. Barack Obama has just been elected the 44th President of the United States.

I arrived at Philadelphia yesterday evening, and went to bed early. At 1 am, I was awoken by car horns and hundreds of people crying out in joy in the streets. You cannot stay in your bed in such a historic day... I put my clothes back on, and went outside again with my camera.

People in the streets now are excited and happy. They congratulate each other, they laugh, they shout and dance. Whites and blacks, a lot of black people. You can feel joy and hope in the air.

People will have to come back down to earth, their problems will not disappear in the twinkling of an eye, but this night is their night. Enjoy, folks. We're glad too. You've made the choice of courage and hope. Welcome back, America!

There are two large bookstores in Paris where I will go several times a year and buy books in English: Brentano's, the American Bookstore in Paris and WHSmith in Paris, the English Bookshop. When I last went to Brentano's, I had my attention attracted to the title of a book: Birdsong, by Sebastian Faulks, an Englishman. I had never heard of it, although it was labelled as a bestseller. I flipped through a few pages: the book was about the First World War, and beautifully written. I bought it.

The book tells the story of a young Englishman who fights in France during the WWI, interspersed with scenes of the life of his granddaughter, Elizabeth, a young woman living in the 1970s, who travels to France to discover more about the life and dead of her grandfather.

As Elizabeth drives across empty fields, she notices a great arch in a field. She pulls over and has a closer look at it.

Between 1914 and 1918, about 9 million people were killed, in Europe essentially: 2 million German, 1,300,000 Frenchmen, 750,000 British, 650,000 Italians... Beside the terrible loss of young men in every family — France lost about 10 percent of its working population in the conflict — the war changed the political map of Europe, and the world balance of power. Several European empires were dismantled. France and the UK, although the winners, were ruined. It was the very moment in history when Europe handed over to the USA as the world economical and political leader.

"I will write peace on your wings and you will fly all over the world" (Sadako Sasaki)

"Suppose Germany had developed two bombs before we had any bombs. And suppose Germany had dropped one bomb, say, on Rochester and the other on Buffalo, and then having run out of bombs it would have lost the war. Can anyone doubt that we would then have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and that we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them? " Leo Szilard, father of the US atomic bomb.

I was chatting the other day with a US friend about the trip I had in New-York a few months ago. As it happens often when you chat, our conversation turned, from Manhattan, the movie by Woody Allen I blogged about at the time, to the Manhattan project and atomic bombs. I was very surprised when he genuinely said that the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were "good things" because they actually "saved lives".

Although I know it is the way the whole story is usually told and taught in the USA, I wondered how a smart and articulate guy could seriously think that killing more than 200,000 civilians "actually saved lives". The whole bloody fighting in the Pacific killed about 40,000 US soldiers 'only'... When the US President Harry S. Truman ordered to drop Little Boy on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, then Fat Man over Nagasaki three days later, the point was certainly not about saving lives then, but saving lives of US soldiers, at the expense of much more lives of foreign civilians.

Little Boy and Fat Man had killed about 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 80,000 in Nagasaki by the end of 1945, of which about half within the first days after the bombings. Several ten thousands more people died from radiation-induced diseases in the following years. In both cities, the overwhelming majority of casualties were civilians. These are to date the only nuclear bombings in history. Yet, as the historian and Pulitzer prize winner Gary Wills wrote once: "Only the winners decide what were war crimes".

Sadako Sasaki lived in Hiroshima. She was two year-old when the first nuclear bomb was dropped on her city. Although she lived close to ground zero, she was not harmed. Nine years later, she was a healthy 11 year-old girl practicing running. After the end of a race, she fainted, was hospitalised and diagnosed radiation-induced leukaemia.

There's a legend in Japan, the country of origami. It says that if you can fold a thousand paper cranes, the Gods will make your first wish become true. Sadako decided she would fold one thousand origami and wish to be cured. She folded 654 cranes before she died, in October, 1955. Yet, she was buried with one thousand paper cranes, because her classmates had finished her uncompleted vow.

After her death, her friends and schoolmates raised funds to build a memorial to her and all of the children who had died from the effects of the atomic bomb. In 1958, a statue of Sadako holding a golden crane was unveiled in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. At its base a plaque reads: "This is our cry. This is our prayer. Peace in the world." Every year, on August 6, the statue is decorated with thousands of paper cranes sent by children from all over the world.

The Saltire flag of Scotland (The Highlander, a Scottish Pub in Paris)

I arrived in Scotland two days ago, for a 9-day vacation trip in the country of William Wallace and Sean Connery. News from the Castles and Highlands to come then, and from Nessie also perhaps, who knows?

Scotland is not an independent country anymore, therefore it does not have a national anthem. Yet a few songs are used instead, that convey Scottish will to differentiate themselves from the rest of Great Britain.

It is especially the case of Flower of Scotland, the beautiful, patriotic song by The Corries. Resolutely directed at the English, the song celebrates Robert the Bruce's victory against the troops of King Edward II at Bannockburn in 1314.

O Flower of Scotland When we sill see Your like again That fought and died for, Your wee bit Hill and Glen And stood against him, Proud Edward's army And sent him homeward Tae think again.

In particular, Scots break into Flower of Scotland at the Highland Games — sometimes — and before a match by the Scottish national rugby team — always.

Edinburgh, 17 March 1990. Scotland previously defeated Wales, Ireland and France in the Five Nations Championship. Today, in Murrayfield Stadium, the last match in this championship is about to start, against the auld enemy and hot favourite, England, undefeated also. Victory in the Championship, and a Grand Slam, are at stake.

Players are on the field. Five minutes ago, while the English team ran into the Stadium as usual, David Sole, who captains the Scots, deliberately walked his men onto the pitch, in a slow, belligerent march, to deafening cheering of the home crowd.

English against Scots. Hundred years of conflicting history. Furthermore, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has experimented the Community Charge (aka Poll Tax) for one year in Scotland only, leading to massive disobedience, and riots to come shortly in the whole country.

Scotland vs England — 17 March 1990

Both teams are lined up in front of the VIP stand. Fifteen English players bravely sing God Save the Queen as strong as they can, while TV cameras slowly pass in review the staring faces of every Scot player fixed in a provocative silence. For the first time in their history, they don't sing the anthem.

Then, David Sole turns his head toward the musicians, and bagpipes start playing, while the Scottish team and whole home crowd — 50,000 souls — all together launch with fire into Flower of Scotland.

Needless to stay, Scots won the match and the Grand Slam. On that day, they just could not lose.

Jean-Pierre Houel — The Storming of the Bastille

July 14, 1789, by night. Louis XVI, King of France went asleep one hour ago in the Palace of Versailles, where Kings of France have resided since his ancestor Louis XIV, the Sun King, made it the centre of its absolute power.

Every day, the King writes a few words in his diary. Today, he hunted for several hours as usual, so he wrote: Nothing...

His closer courtier, the Duke of La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, has just been told about the Storming of the Bastille, the medieval fortress and prison in Paris. He decides to awaken the King, and breaks the news to him.

— The Bastille? it has fallen? the King asks, half asleep still.

— Yes, Your Majesty. A messenger just told me the prison has been taken by the people. They killed Governor de Launay and Provost Flesselles, and walked their heads on poles by the streets of Paris.

— Aw, it is a rebellion! the King says.

— Oh no, Sire, it is not a rebellion. It is a revolution

A lantern and the tricolour before a fire station in Paris

— Bonjour Monsieur ! the guy told me with a big smile while I was quietly walking in the boulevard. How about a couple of tickets?

Damn, I was lost in thought, I did not see him. A fireman, selling raffle tickets for the firemen's dance. Firemen have been everywhere in Paris for several weeks. I succeeded in steering clear of them until now, but I got nabbed at the end! No luck, definitely!

French people celebrate their national holiday, Bastille Day, on July 14. Le 14 Juillet, as they call it, commemorates the storming of the Bastille fortress on 14 July 1789, an event that marked the beginning of the French Revolution. Although the prison held few prisoners at the time, its storming has become a symbol of freedom and fight against oppression for the French.

The holiday symbolizes the birth of the Republic, whose motto is Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité (Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood). Firemen are undoubtedly a good illustration of the brotherhood part of the motto, all the more since the French are not that fond of other people who wear a uniform.

Bastille Day's festivities begin on the evening of July 13 with free dances organized in the streets of every town, and especially in every fire station — it is Le bal des pompiers, Firemen's Dance. Hence the tickets the guy wanted to sell me, for a tombola during the dance at his fire station. He'd got some nerve, don't you think? After all, if you decide to go to a fire station tonight, you'll see a lot of gorgeous women for sure, but they won't even look at you, interested as they will be in firemen only. And this, frankly speaking, is something I can hardly understand: these guys in uniform are young, strong, handsome, cheerful, and they save lives... so what?

— So, how about a couple of raffle tickets? the fireman repeated.

— Well, see, I answered hypocritically with a friendly smile, I'd better not buy any. My wife and daughter will be so glad to buy them by themselves, you know!

The Statue of Liberty — Ellis Island, New-York.

The Statue of Liberty, whose actual name is Liberty Enlightening the World, has stood in Ellis Island in New-York for more than 120 years: aimed at commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies in 1776, it arrived at New-York in 1886.
The Statue was the work of French sculptor Frédéric Bartholdi, with engineering help from Gustave Eiffel, and a present from the people of France to the people of the United States, dedicated to the friendship established between the two countries during the American war of independence.

The Statue of Liberty. Jardins du Luxembourg, Paris.

There are a lot of replicas of the Statue everywhere around the world, but Paris is probably the only city that gets two. First, a small Statue de la Liberté stands in Les Jardins du Luxembourg (Luxembourg Gardens), a nice park in the centre of Paris, behind the French Senate on the left bank of the Seine River.

Les jardins du Luxembourg are in two basic parts. The organized part is a typical Jardin à la française, with straight dusty paths bordered with trees and playgrounds; there are also tennis courses, and pony rides, a marionette theatre, food kiosks and open-air cafes, and a big round fountain basin where you can rent sailboats and float them in... with the other ten-year-olds.
The wild part of Le Luxembourg is quite different. It is wilder, with deep bushes, many flowers, a fruit garden, beehives, and many statues, including this tiny model of the Statue of Liberty. In fact, it is not a replica, but the original bronze model of the statue. Frédéric Bartholdi used it as a pattern to have the New-York statue built, about 15 years later. He gave it to the city of Paris for the 1900's Universal Exhibition.

The Statue of Liberty. Ile aux Cygnes, Paris.

There is another Statue de la Liberté in Paris. It stands in the Ile aux cygnes (Swans Island), near Grenelle Bridge on the Seine River. This statue is a copy. It was given by the city of New-York to the city of Paris in 1889. It faces west, towards its 'sister' in New York Harbour, which was erected a few years earlier and looks east, to the old world across the Atlantic Ocean.
To Auguste Bartholdi [...] America, with its democratic ideals and Republican government, was already enlightened, Barry Moreno, a librarian at the Statue of Liberty National Monument, once wrote. Europe, still full of czars and emperors, was not. Sadly, things have changed; enlightenment now appears a feature of countries on this side of the Atlantic rather. Yet hopefully, it will reappear in the U.S.A., with time...
Anyway. Happy July 4 to all the U.S. Americans!

Postscript : I could not imagine when I wrote this blog that Ingrid Betancourt would arrive in Paris this afternoon, after she was rescued by Colombian forces on Wednesday.
Over the years of Ingrid Betancourt’s captivity in the Colombian jungle (almost six and a half year), France championed the Colombian-French politician and anti-corrupt activist as a symbol of endurance, holding rallies, marches and other events to draw attention to her plight.
Large posters bearing her face hang from the entrances of hundreds of French city and town halls, including in Paris, and on the summit of Mont-Blanc in the Alps. The posters are now crossed by the word LIBRE! (free!), at last.
Today was undoubtedly a great day to publish a blog about Liberty.

I arrived today at Ajaccio, in Corsica, a French island in the Mediterranean sea, where I'll spend three days. The island and city are essentially known as the hometown of Napoleon Bonaparte. In Ajaccio, Napoleon is everywhere indeed, from the big bust that is the first thing you see when you arrive in the main hall of the airport, to street names and many cafés' signs.

Yet Napoleon is not the Corsican 'hero' I wish to talk about now. On my way from the airport to the Convention Centre, the taxi passed though Le Cours Jean Nicoli ('Jean Nicoli walk'). It recalled me that I read a book about this great name a couple of years ago, and several quotes by him have marked me.

In 1942, Corsica département was annexed by the Italians, still Germans allies in the first years of WWII. Jean Nicoli was a French Resistance fighter. He was caught captive in 1943, tried for terrorism, and sentenced to death. The night before he was executed, Jean Nicoli wrote a letter to her wife, daughter, and the people of the world. Here come an extract of this letter (English translation of mine, any correction welcome):

I can give men an advice: don't be afraid of death. It scares you because you don't know it, yet believe me: it is not evil at all. It is nothing terrible, and as soon as you are getting closer to the large black gate, it seems welcoming and cheerful.

Do not lament that much over your leaving ones: you are much more to be pitied than us. We have arrived, and we see you, at the foot of your death, struggling to catch up with us. Poor you... You are climbing, and you are afraid to arrive at the top and rest.

Don't be scared of the top. I have reached the last meters. I feel that I will rest soon on the springy smoothness of the top. You think: "how awful it must be, when you know you're going to be shot in four hours!" Well, no, you see, it is not...

During several weeks in the spring of 1989, hundreds of thousands of students gathered together in continuous peaceful protests in several cities throughout China, against the policies of their government.

On June 4th, 1989, the Chinese State ordered an end to the demonstrations that had been taking place on Tiananmen square in Beijing. Infantry and tanks were deployed against the unarmed people. Several hundreds were killed, thousands perhaps. 19 years later, and a few weeks before the Olympic Games are held in Beijing, about 130 persons are still imprisoned in China because they dared protest in 1989.

On the day after Tiananmen slaughter, a single man shocked the world, when he stood alone before a line of tanks and made them stop and turn off their motors.

Nobody knows who this man was. Nobody knows if he could make it at the end. Maybe he is one of the 130 people still imprisoned since 1989. Yet this anonymous, ordinary person, with shopping bags in both hands, has become an example of human courage and struggle for freedom. He is an icon of the 20th century.

(Repost of a blog published on the same day last year
on Yahoo 360°, with a few changes)

Algerian prisoners — Algiers, 1960

The following takes place 50 years ago, when France was still an imperialist country with colonies.

During the Algerian War [1954-1962], the French essentially fought the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN), engaged in violent acts of guerrilla warfare, bombings and assassinations.

At the time, the French military denied using torture, or rarely admitted it but justified it with claims that they were leading an operation of peace against terrorism by the FLN. Later though, several high-ranked officers aknowlegded there was generalized torture by the French military, following orders of the politicians in charge of the country.

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. (Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 5)

The social-democratic government of Prime Minister Guy Mollet had given a free hand to the occupying forces in Algeria to carry out torture. In June 1956, the National Assembly accepted Mollet's proposal to set aside individual freedoms in Algeria and permit the gendarmes and soldiers stationed there to use what was officially called extended questioning, coercive measures or special treatment.

Because FLN fighters were not looked upon as enemy forces but terrorists, The French Republic did not consider its military tied by the Geneva Conventions, France had signed several years earlier. Detainees were thus not granted prisoner of war status. On the contrary, since they were looked upon as terrorists, they were deprived of the rights that are legally entitled to belligerents during a war.

Shortly said, torture was an integral part of France's war policy in Algeria. Part of the daily practice included mass rapes, submerging victims in freezing water or excrement, and repeated use of electric shocks. Even in the Algerian hinterland, where there was no electricity, electric shock torture was carried out using the so-called Gégène, using the generation system intended to radio stations.

Yet when the use of torture became public knowledge in France, support for the war in Algeria quickly dwindled. After the French military won the battle of Algiers, French Président Charles de Gaulle decided the French should leave Algeria and give it back to the Algerians — which was the only possible solution, for that matter. In a March 1962 referendum, almost 90 percent of voters in mainland France backed the Évian Accords that ended the hostilities and gave Algeria its independence.

At least 400,000 Algerians were killed during the war — some say one million. In 2008, after several decades, many dramas and slaughters, Algeria still is not really a democratic country.

What was usually displayed in South Park could well be true now, don't you think?

It was not a surprise the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, was glad with Saddam's execution. Same with Iran, two decades after a war with about two millions Iranians killed. No surprise either that many Muslims were shocked he was killed on the day of Eid el-Kbir.

George Bush said yesterday that Saddam's execution was an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy... It appears quite strange to a European, since there are few democratic countries that still enforce death penalty! (see previous blog entry) It has been outlawed in all European countries, usually for decades. Then no surprise again that official reactions in Europe were similar to the German one: There are no doubts whatsoever about Saddam's crimes. But we are opposed to the death penalty, no matter where it is used. EU Commissionner Louis Michel even said: You don't fight barbarism with acts that I deem as barbaric.

Fully agreed: murdering a murderer puts you down to his level. Also, I cannot help but being worried the trial undoubtedly failed to satisfy international fair standards. Quoting Amnesty International:

Saddam Hussein's trial [...] was a deeply flawed affair. Political interference undermined the independence and impartiality of the court, causing the first presiding judge to resign and blocking the appointment of another. The court did not take measures to protect witnesses and defence lawyers, three of whom were assassinated during the course of the trial. Saddam Hussein was denied access to legal counsel for the first year after his arrest. The appeal process was obviously conducted in haste and failed to rectify any of the flaws of the first trial.

Therefore, this hasty killing will be seen by many as nothing else than victor's justice. Most probably, it will not help things to go better in Iraq, just the contrary.