Category Archive 'Paris'
28 Jan 2016

Travelling in Style

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Yves Géniès drives a Bugatti Type 41 Royale across Paris.

La Traversée de Paris avec la Bugatti Royale , escorté par l'ami Raymond Loiseaux et son équipe Honda Goldwing , un souvenir inoubliable .. Et unique privilège , je suis le seul a l'avoir conduit dans ces conditions, moment inoubliable !!

Posted by Yves G̩ni̬s РOfficiel on Tuesday, January 26, 2016

25 Nov 2015

“The Flowers and Candles are Here to Protect Us”

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ImagineParis
Some douchebag plays John Lennon’s “Imagine” on a piano with a Peace Sign outside Paris’s Bataclan Theater.

Kathy Shaidle, at Taki Mag, tells us just how grossed out she was by some of the popular reaction to the Islamic Terrorist attacks in Paris.

The French hate America because you saved their asses during World War II while they were screwing German officers and pretending to be in the Resistance. They never stop bitching about Coca-Cola colonialism and America’s tacky, shallow, plastic “culture”—yet they’ve nevertheless embraced one of the Anglosphere’s most embarrassing exports: those “makeshift memorials” that have been de rigueur mortis since the death of Diana.

Except, as Taki’s own Gavin McInnes reported, Parisians added weird stuff to their stupid piles of flowers, like a poster of the Doors’ Jim Morrison (?) with his eyes blacked out (!). …

“Why Paris is doomed, in one image,” I blogged, in a post that went viral: “Outside the Jewish-owned Bataclan, this guy (a) played ‘Imagine’ on a piano with (b) a peace sign on it, which he’d transported to the site (c) on a bicycle.

“Couldn’t that at least have been—I rack my brain—(a) ‘Rock the Casbah’ on a guitar with (b) a Star of David on it, next to your (c) Hummer or something?”

A disgusted Mark Steyn added (which is why he makes the big bucks):

“When Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941, did everyone coo because somebody dragged along a piano to the naval base and played a hit song from 1896?”

We were also ordered to be deeply moved or else by this immigrant father’s assurance to his little boy that they were safe from “the bad men.”

“They might have guns,” the father tells him, “but we have flowers.”

“But flowers don’t do anything,” his son replies, rightly.

The boy is gently corrected:

“The flowers and candles are here to protect us.”

Jesus.

17 Nov 2015

Shield of the First French Spec Ops Officer to Enter the Bataclan Theater in Paris

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FrenchSpecOpsShield
US Marines on Facebook today were applauding the owner of this shield which bears the marks of most of a magazine of AK-47 rounds and a fair amount of suicide vest shrapnel.(picture source: iTele French TV)

16 Nov 2015

“Wave-Tossed, But Not Sunk!”

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Fluctuat1

Claire Berlinski reports that graffitists in Paris have responded to the attacks by painting on walls the city’s medieval Latin motto.

This phrase is the motto of Paris. It means, roughly, “tossed by the waves, but not sunk.” You can see it in the city’s coat of arms. It derives from theCoat of Arms 5 Seine boatsman’s corporation, the Marchands de l’eau. They were a Middle Ages hanse, an organization of merchants (as in the Hanseatic League), organized in 1170 to control all trade conducted on the Seine River. Its jurisdiction was — in principle — limited to commerce, but you know how these things go; they became powerful enough to organize a whole city government outside the reach of the French crown. An uprising in 1383 forced them to disband, and they never regrouped. But Paris has been well and truly fluctuat since then, nec mergitur.

I like the slogan for a few reasons, but among them is the message: We’ve been around since the Romans. You’ve been a caliphate since June 29, 2014, we believe?

Read the whole thing.

Fluctuat2

15 Nov 2015

“I’ll Take ‘What You Won’t See on the MSM for $1000’, Alex”

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ParisCarnage

Via Clarice “Final Jeopardy” Feldman.

14 Nov 2015

Mush From the Wimp*

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obama-paris-statement

At 3:40, Obama says: “I don’t want to speculate at this point in terms of who was responsible for this…”

As soopermexican puts it: “Obama of course, came out and said that he can’t speculate on who attacked Paris tonight, because it could be Global Warming, or the Amish, after all.”

Damn those Amish!

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* Wikipedia

07 Jan 2015

Charlie Hebdo Attack Victims

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CharlieHebdo2
Among the slain: from left, clockwise, Stephane Charbonnier, known by his pen name Charb, editor of Charlie Hebdo; Georges Wolinski; Bernard “Tignous” Verlhac; Lead cartoonist Jean “Cabu” Cabut; and contributor Bernard Maris.

The best current account is from the Daily Mail:

Four of France’s most revered cartoonists – Stephane Charbonnier, Georges Wolinski, Bernard ‘Tignous’ Verlhac and Jean Cabut – were among 12 people executed by masked gunmen in Paris today at the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Two masked men brandishing Kalashnikovs burst into the magazine’s headquarters this morning, opening fire on staff, also shooting dead contributor Bernard Maris, 68.

Police officers were involved in a gunfight with the ‘calm and highly disciplined men’, who escaped in a hijacked car, speeding away towards east Paris. They remain on the loose, along with a third armed man.

Charbonnier, 47, known by his pen name Charb, was the editor of the weekly magazine, and once famously said ‘I’d prefer to die standing than live on my knees’. He also declared, in the face of animosity from extremists, ‘I live under French law, not Koranic law’.

Cabut, 76, also called Cabu, was Charlie Hebdo’s lead cartoonist, Wolinski an 80-year-old satirist who had been drawing cartoons since the 1960s and Tignous a 57-year-old contributor to the publication.

The gunmen reportedly asked for the cartoonists by name before shooting them dead and yelling ‘the Prophet has been avenged’. …

[T]here were unconfirmed reports that one of the gunmen said to a witness: ‘You say to the media, it was Al Qaeda in Yemen.’ …

Mr Charbonnier, who once said ‘a drawing has never killed anyone’, was included in a 2013 Wanted Dead or Alive for Crimes Against Islam article published by Inspire, the terrorist propaganda magazine published by Al Qaeda.

In 2012 he said: ‘I don’t feel as though I’m killing someone with a pen. I’m not putting lives at risk. When activists need a pretext to justify their violence, they always find it.’

Charbonnier said that he didn’t fear reprisals. After publishing naked pictures of the Prophet in 2012, he said: ‘I have neither a wife nor children, not even a dog. But I’m not going to hide.’

He added: ‘It should be as normal to criticize Islam as it is to criticize Jews or Catholics.’

Georges Wolinski, who lived in Paris, was married twice, first to Jacqueline Saba, with whom he had two children, Frederica and Natacha, and then in 1971 to Maryse Bachere. They had one daughter together, Elsa-Angela.

Cabu’s drawings first appeared in a local French newspaper in 1954. He was conscripted to the Army for two years for the Algerian War, but that didn’t stop his creative talent, which was put to use in the army magazine Bled and in Paris-Match.

In the 1960s, 70s and 80s his career flourished, with the artist co-creating Hara-Kiri magazine, working on children’s TV show Recre A2 and eventually working on Charlie Hebdo as a caricaturists.

His most controversial moment came in 2006 when his drawing of the Muslim prophet Muhammad appeared on the cover with the caption ‘Muhammad overwhelmed by fundamentalists’ with a speech bubble containing the words ‘so hard to be loved by jerks’. …

Victim Bernard Maris was an economist who contributed to the newspaper and was heard regularly on French radio

As well as the AK47 assault rifles, there were also reports of a rocket-propelled grenade being used in the attack, which took place during the publication’s weekly editorial meeting, meaning all the journalists would have been present.

When shots rang out at the office – located near Paris’ Bastille monument – it is thought that three policemen on bicycles were the first to respond.

‘There was a loud gunfire and at least one explosion,’ said an eye witness. ‘When police arrived there was a mass shoot-out. The men got away by car, stealing a car.’

Survivor and Charlie Hebdo cartoonist Corinne ‘Coco’ Rey was quoted by French newspaper L’Humanite as saying: ‘I had gone to collect my daughter from day care and as I arrived in front of the door of the paper’s building two hooded and armed men threatened us. They wanted to go inside, to go upstairs. I entered the code.

‘They fired on Wolinski, Cabu… it lasted five minutes… I sheltered under a desk… They spoke perfect French… claimed to be from al Qaeda.’…

‘They were wearing military clothes, it wasn’t common clothing, like they were soldiers.’

Once inside the gunmen headed straight for Charbonnier, killing him and his police bodyguard first, said Christophe Crepin, a police union spokesman.

Minutes later, two men strolled out to a black car waiting below, calmly firing on a police officer, with one gunman shooting him in the head as he writhed on the ground, according to video and a man who watched in fear from his home across the street.

The witness, who refused to allow his name to be used because he feared for his safety, said the attackers were so methodical he first mistook them for France’s elite anti-terrorism forces. Then they fired on the officer.

‘They knew exactly what they had to do and exactly where to shoot. While one kept watch and checked that the traffic was good for them, the other one delivered the final coup de grace,’ he said. ‘They ran back to the car. The moment they got in, the car drove off almost casually.

Full article.

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French policeman murdered.

07 Jan 2015

Je Suis Charlie

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JeSuisCharlie
According to Twitter analytics tool Topsy, there have been more than 70,000 tweets using the JeSuisCharlie: hashtag so far today.

Social media are exploding with world-wide indignation over the massacre in Paris. This evening, Parisians are marching at the Place de la République, “for freedom of the press, democracy, and the Republic.”

JeSuisCharlie1
A Parisienne demonstrates in solidarity with those killed. Photograph: Seán Clarke.

07 Jan 2015

Massacre in Paris

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ParisMap

Three Islamic gunmen armed with fully-automatic AK-47s walked into the Paris offices of the French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo around midday today and opened fire, killing at least twelve people. 10 journalists and two police officers were killed, and another five people were seriously injured. The shooters were picked up by a getaway car driven by a fourth terrorist. The killers then drove to Porte de Pantin in north-east Paris, where they abandoned the first automobile and hijacked another car.

Guardian story.


———————————–
TIMELINE OF PAST EVENTS


Mohammed Overcome by the Fundamentalists

8 February 2006: Charlie Hebdo republishes the Danish Mohammed cartoons, adding its own “It’s a Drag Being Loved By Idiots” cartoon as a commentary on the cartoon controversy.

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“Charlie Hebdo Must Be Veiled!”

7 February 2007: Charlie Hebdo and its’s publication director Philippe Val went on trial before the Correctional Tribunal of Paris
facing accusations by Islamic Organisations of France and the Grand Mosque of Paris that reprinting the cartoons was a violation of French laws prohibiting “publicly slandering a group of people because of their religion.” The charge carried a possible six-month prison sentence and a fine of up to $28,530.

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22 March 2007: Charklie Hebdo & Philippe Val acquitted.

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Translation: “One hundred lashes if you don’t die laughing!”

2 November 2011: Charlie Hebdo intended to commemorate the Islamic victory in the elections in Tunisia by temporarily renaming itself “Sharia Hebdo” and appointing the Prophet Mohammed “guest editor” and putting his portrait again on the cover.

The “Sharia Hebdo” edition had not even appeared, when during the night the paper’s Paris offices were fire-bombed and its web-site attacked and taken down.

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Captions: “Untouchables 2 — Must Not Mock”


Captions: top: “The film which embarrassed the Muslim world.” Mohammed says: “And my buttocks. Do you like my buttocks?” below: “Mohammed a star is born!”

19 September 2012: France closed 20 embassies and Charlie Hebdo’s web-site was shut down and its offices surrounded protectively by riot police after the magazine published its raunchiest Mohammed cartoons yet.

10 Feb 2014

“Paris is a Snooty, Unfriendly City’



Simon Kuper
, last year, in the Financial Times, pondered the reasons behind Parisians’ notorious rudeness and concluded that being Parisian takes so much effort that everyone is perennially in a bad mood.

It’s the eternal paradox of Paris: why is the world’s most charming metropolis also the most unfriendly? As the universal phrase goes, “I love Paris. I just hate Parisians.”

When I moved here in 2002, I rejected that view. I was determined to learn Parisian codes. I knew this city has a complex etiquette. I thought that once I’d learnt the importance of saying bonjour at every encounter, or of not walking into a restaurant demanding dinner at 6pm while wearing shorts, I would gradually break through Parisian rudeness.

It was my mission. More than a decade later, I can say: beneath the snooty unfriendly façade, Paris is a snooty, unfriendly city. I can even explain why. …

[T]he strongest explanatory variable for Parisian rudeness (and I’m aghast it’s taken me a decade to work this out) is Paris’s very perfection. If you overlay an intellectual capital on an artistic and fashion capital in a former royal capital, all of it in the country that invented how to eat, there are so many codes governing so many behaviours that the demands of sophistication become all-encompassing. No other city makes so many requirements. Every moment of their lives, even at family breakfast or in bed, Parisians must observe the rules that govern eating, talking, thinking, dressing, making love et cetera. There’s even a generally approved life-long pose: never seem surprised; bored is much better.

In Paris, Big Brother (often in the form of oneself or one’s spouse) is always watching to see if you commit a faux pas. Whenever you do, he’ll let you know – perhaps with a silence, or a pained glance away. There is no intimate Paris where you can slob out in old underpants. (Admittedly, Parisian dress codes are less strict than in, say, Italy. Most of the time here it’s OK to look dowdy – though never weird.) In all, Paris is a nightmare of sophistication. Only in one field of local endeavour do no rules apply: driving.

Nor are Parisians allowed to laugh off their codes. My native informant Sophie-Caroline de Margerie – top civil servant, writer, fashionable Parisienne et cetera – says: “I’ve never met a bona fide French eccentric.” There is a right way to do everything in Paris, and it was probably decided before you were born. All the French provincials, Africans and romantics from everywhere who land here battle to adapt, sometimes forever. You try to be Parisian, to meet all the standards of perfection that mark this city, and so you sneer at anyone who falls short – for instance, by sitting down at the next restaurant table wearing the wrong jacket. Paris is a sneer. This attitude was summed up by the definitive Parisian film, Dîner de Cons (“Dinner of Fools”, 1998): a bunch of stylish Parisians hold a weekly dinner to which they each invite an unknowing con, “a fool”, in order to crow over their cons’ appearance, tastes, conversation etc. Parisian life is like a dîner de cons except that nobody would ever really invite the poor cons to dinner.

Via Ratak Monodosico.

14 May 2013

Preserved in Amber

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Boldini painting of grande horizontale subsequently sold at auction for £1.78 million

The Daily Mail describes a Belle Époque Parisian apartment, locked up at the time of the WWII German advance on the French capital which has remained unopened for over 70 years.

Inside the Paris apartment untouched for 70 years: Treasure trove finally revealed after owner locked up and fled at outbreak of WWII.

Caked in dust and full of turn-of-the century treasures, this Paris apartment is like going back in time.

Having lain untouched for seven decades the abandoned home was discovered three years ago after its owner died aged 91.

The woman who owned the flat, a Mrs De Florian, had fled for the south of France before the outbreak of the Second World War.

She never returned and in the 70 years since, it looks like no-one had set foot inside.

The property was found near a church in the French capital’s 9th arrondissement, between Pigalle red light district and Opera.

Experts were tasked with drawing up an inventory of her possessions which included a painting by the 19th century Italian artist Giovanni Boldini.

One expert said it was like stumbling into the castle of Sleeping Beauty, where time had stood still since 1900. ‘There was a smell of old dust,’ said Olivier Choppin-Janvry, who made the discovery.

But he said his heart missed a beat when he caught sight of a stunning tableau of a woman in a pink muslin evening dress.

The painting was by Boldini and the subject a beautiful Frenchwoman who turned out to be the artist’s former muse and Mrs de Florian’s grandmother, Marthe de Florian, a beautiful French actress and socialite of the Belle Époque.

29 Jan 2013

Color Photographs of 1914 Paris

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Porte de Paris, August 14, 1914.

It is always a bit disconcerting to be reminded that the distant past existed in brilliant colors and not simply in the sepia tones of of the black and white photos we are accustomed to seeing.

Some of the images go back as afar as 1909, a few are as recent as 1920 even 1930. The great majority are all from 1914.

Curiouseggs reposted them from Paris 1914.

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