What makes the #Paris2024 opening ceremony special? In a segment called 'Liberty,' they've shown a beheaded Marie Antoinette, followed by Gojira blasting some kickass heavy metal. | #Olympicspic.twitter.com/AuMf810eGO
Rod Dreher rightly found profoundly offensive both the Drag Queen Last Supper vignette and the really vile, supposedly cute skit treating with heartless and inhuman frivolity the murdered Queen of France and all the other 30-50,000 victims of the French Revolutionary Reign of Terror.
Making the beheaded puppet of Marie Antoinette sing the Ça ira abd then following with a rain of bright red streamers gleefully commemorating all the blood shed by la Révolution was really something very special.
Ah! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira Ah!
les aristocrates à la lanterne!
Ah! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira Ah!
les aristocrates on les pendra!
Si on n’ les pend pas
On les rompra
Si on n’ les rompt pas
On les brûlera.
Ah! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira
les aristocrates à la lanterne!
Ah! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira
les aristocrates on les pendra!
Nous n’aurons plus ni nobles, ni prêtres,
Ah ! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira,
L’égalité partout régnera.
L’esclave autrichien le suivra,
Ah ! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira,
Et leur infernale clique
Au diable s’envolera.
Ah! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira
les aristocrates à la lanterne!
Ah! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira Ah!
les aristocrates on les pendra!
Et quand on les aura tous pendus
On leur fichera la pelle au cul
Ah! It’ll be fine, It’ll be fine, It’ll be fine
aristocrats to the lamp-post
Ah! It’ll be fine, It’ll be fine, It’ll be fine
the aristocrats, we’ll hang them!
If we don’t hang them
We’ll break them
If we don’t break them
We’ll burn them
Ah! It’ll be fine, It’ll be fine, It’ll be fine
aristocrats to the lamp-post
Ah! It’ll be fine, It’ll be fine, It’ll be fine
the aristocrats, we’ll hang them!
We shall have no more nobles nor priests
Ah! It’ll be fine, It’ll be fine, It’ll be fine
Equality will reign everywhere
The Austrian slave shall follow him
Ah! It’ll be fine, It’ll be fine, It’ll be fine
And their infernal clique
Shall go to hell
Ah! It’ll be fine, It’ll be fine, It’ll be fine
aristocrats to the lamp-post
Ah! It’ll be fine, It’ll be fine, It’ll be fine
the aristocrats, we’ll hang them!
And when we’ll have hung them all
We’ll stick a shovel up their arse.
It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in,—glittering like the morning-star, full of life and splendor and joy. Oh! what a revolution! and what an heart must I have, to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream, when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom! little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor, and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.
C'était l'une des 1ères photos prises à mon arrivée à Paris. 1 an plus tard, on a décidé de la refaire. Fière que l'entrée de notre ambassade reflète aujourd'hui mieux l'#IncroyableDiversité de mon pays 🇺🇸. Une valeur que je porte où que j'aille en France. pic.twitter.com/kkwdlQeWtz
— Denise Bauer, Ambassadrice des USA en France (@USAmbFrance) February 3, 2023
“This was one of the first photos taken when I arrived in Paris. 1 year later, we decided to take it again. Proudly the entrance to our embassy now better reflects the incredible diversity of my country. A value that I carry wherever I go in France.”
Same pattern repeating itself all over the democratic world: the liberal-left claims it represents the poor, the working class and the downtrodden while their chances for victory overwhelmingly rely on the affluent urban/suburban professional class. That's how Biden won: pic.twitter.com/WqvDU7sCRH
France in recent years has lost a church or Christian religious building to demolition or arson every two weeks. Meanwhile, a new mosque is erected every 15 days.
The French native white birthrate is 1.4 children per woman, compared to the Muslim immigrant rate of 3.4 to 4 children. Charles Martel’s victory at Tours in 732 may be reversed within 40 years when France becomes majority Muslim.
Not since Ronald Reagan has there been such a political speech. It sounds to me like this guy is going to win. I agree with Gerard van der Leun that the American candidate who delivers the equivalent US version of this speech will win the presidency here.
My dear Countrymen— For years, the same feeling has swept you along, oppressed you, shamed you: a strange and penetrating feeling of dispossession. You walk down the streets in your towns, and you don’t recognize them.
You look at your screens and they speak to you in a language that is strange, and in the end foreign. You turn your eyes and ears to advertisements, TV series, football matches, films, live performances, songs, and the schoolbooks of your children.
You take the subways and trains. You go to train stations and airports. You wait for your sons and your daughters outside their school. You take your mother to the emergency room. You stand in line at the post office or the employment agency. You wait at a police station or a courthouse. And you have the impression that you are no longer in a country that you know.
You remember the country of your childhood. You remember the country that your parents told you about. You remember the country found in films and books. The country of Joan of Arc and Louis XIV. The country of Bonaparte and General de Gaulle.
The country of knights and ladies. The country of Victor Hugo and Chateaubriand. The country of Pascal and Descartes. The country of the fables of La Fontaine, the characters of Molière, and the verses of Racine.
The country of Notre Dame de Paris and of village church towers. The country of Gavroche and Cosette. The country of barricades and Versailles. The country of Pasteur and Lavoisier.
The country of Voltaire and Rousseau,of Clemenceau and the soldiers of ’14, of de Gaulle and Jean Moulin. The country of Gabin and Delon; of Brigitte Bardot and Belmondo and Johnny and d’Aznavour and Brassens and Barbara; the films of Sautet and Verneuil.
This country— at the same time light-hearted and illustrious. This country— at the same time literary and scientific. This country— truly intelligent and one-of-a-kind. The country of the Concorde and nuclear power. The country that invented cinema and the automobile.This country— that you search for everywhere with dismay. No, your children are homesick, without even having known this country that you cherish. And it is disappearing.
You haven’t left, and yet you have the feeling of no longer being at home. You have not left your country. Your country left you.
You feel like foreigners in your own country. You are internal exiles. For a long time, you believed you were the only one to see, to hear, to think, to doubt. You were afraid to say it. You were ashamed of your feelings. For a long time, you dared not say what you are seeing, and above all you dared not see what you were seeing.
And then you said it to your wife. To your husband. To your children. To your father. To your mother. To your friends. To your coworkers. To your neighbors. And then to strangers. And you understood that your feeling of dispossession was shared by everyone.
France is no longer France, and everyone sees it.
Of course, they despised you: the powerful, the élites, the conformists, the journalists, the politicians, the professors, the sociologists, the union bosses, the religious authorities.They told you it’s all a ploy, it’s all fake, it’s all wrong. But you understood in time that it was them who were a ploy, them who had it all wrong, them who did you wrong.
The disappearance of our civilization is not the only question that harasses us, although it towers over everything. Immigration is not the cause of all our problems, although it aggravates everything. The third-worlding of our country and our people impoverishes as much as it disintegrates, ruins as much as it torments.
It’s why you often have a hard time making ends meet. It’s why we must re-industrialize France. It’s why we must equalize the balance of trade. It’s why we must reduce our growing debt, bring back to France our companies that left, give jobs to our unemployed.
It’s why we must protect our technological marvels and stop selling them to foreigners. It’s why we must allow our small businesses to live, and to grow, and to pass from generation to generation.It’s why we must preserve our architectural, cultural, and natural heritage. It’s why we must restore our republican education, its excellence and its belief in merit, and stop surrendering our children to the experiments of egalitarians and pedagogists and the Doctor Strangeloves of gender theory and Islamo-leftism.
It’s why we must take back our sovereignty, abandoned to European technocrats and judges, who rob the French people of the ability to control their destiny in the name of a fantasy – a Europe that will never be a nation. Yes, we must give power to the people, take it back from the minority that unceasingly tyrannizes the majority and from judges who substitute their judicial rulings for government of the people, for the people, by the people.
For decades, our elected officials of the right and the left have led us down this dire path of decline and decadence. Right and left have lied and concealed the gravity of our diminishment. They have hidden from you the reality of our replacement.
You have known me for many years. You know what I say, what I diagnose, what I proclaim. I have long been content with the role of journalist, writer, Cassandra, whistleblower. Back then, I believed that a politician would take up the flame that I had lit. I said to myself, to each his own job, to each his own role, to each his own fight.
I have lost this illusion. Like you, I have lost confidence. Like you, I have decided to take our destiny in hand.
I saw that no politician had the courage to save our country from the tragic fate that awaits it. I saw that all these supposed professionals were, above all, impotent.That President Macron, who had presented himself as an outsider, was in fact the synthesis of his two predecessors, or worse. That all the parties were contenting themselves with reforms, while time passes them by.
There is no more time to reform France – but there is time to save her. That is why I have decided to run for President.
I have decided to ask your votes to become your President of the Republic, so that our children and grandchildren do not know barbarism. So that our daughters are not veiled and our sons are not forced to submit. So that we can bequeath to them the France we have known and that we received from our ancestors. So that we can still preserve our way of life, our traditions, our language, our conversations, our debates about history and fashion, our taste for literature and food.
So that the French remain French, proud of their past and confident in their future. So that the French once again feel at home. So that the newest arrivals assimilate their culture, adapt their history, and are remade as French in France – not foreigners in an unknown land.
We, the French, are a great nation. A great people. Our glorious past pleads for our future. Our soldiers have conquered Europe and the world. Our writers and artists have aroused universal admiration. Our scientific discoveries and industrial production have stamped their epochs. The charm of our art de vivre excites longing and joy in all who taste it.
We have known great victories, and we have overcome cruel defeats. For a thousand years, we have been one of the powers who have written the history of the world. We are worthy of our ancestors. We will not allow ourselves to be mastered, vassalized, conquered, colonized. We will not allow ourselves to be replaced.
In front of us, a cold and determined monster rises up, who seeks to dishonor us. They will say that you are racist. They will say that you are motivated by contemptible passions, when in fact it is the most lovely passion that animates you – passion for France.
They will say the worst about me. But I will keep going amidst the jeers, and I don’t care if they spit on me. I will never bend the head. For we have a mission to accomplish.
The French people have been intimidated, crippled, indoctrinated, blamed— but they lift up their heads, they drop the masks, they clear the air of lies, they hunt down these evil perjuries.
We are going to carry France on. We are going to pursue the beautiful and noble French adventure. We are going to pass the flame to the coming generations. Join with me. Rise up. We, the French, have always triumphed over all.
Long live the Republic, and above all, long live France!
[T]he village of La Haye-de-Routot in Normandy…, just south of the Forêt de Brotonne, would probably have been founded some time around the 10th century by Anglo-Scandinavian settlers. It is likely that the two yew trees, which grow in the church cemetery, were part of the original forest in the area.
The two yews in question, one at 14 metres tall and the other at 16 metres, are estimated to be over 1400 years old and have diameters of over 10 metres each. The church was built in the 13th century, with several reasons given for the yews being retained in what would become the cemetery. One is that the male yews (which both of these are) are extremely toxic to humans and animals. Local farmers would, therefore, have been loathe to graze their livestock on the church grounds. The other was a more spiritual reason. For centuries, dating back to the times of the druids, the yew was a sacred tree used in pagan practices. It is said that the early church often incorporated them in order to assimilate non-believers.
Many old yews are actually hollow inside, as their cores often rot and fall away. In the 19th century, the cavities of our yews became so large that the clergy decided to turn them into places of worship. First, in 1866, the “Chapel of St. Anne” was installed in the eastern yew, followed by the “Oratory of Our Lady of Lourdes,” in the western yew in 1897. Sadly, in 2013, the eastern yew (the one with the chapel) was sprayed with glyphosate herbicide and is now half dead.
The quality and species of firewood matters to me, because my Pennsylvania log cabin has a stone groundfloor. The two-foot-thick walls keep it nicely insulated, but also tend to make it chilly as a well in cold weather, so I pretty much have to keep a log fire going from October to April.
Softwoods, like pine, burn too fast and release too much creosote, drastically upping your likelihood of chimney fires. Insufficiently aged wood, or wood cut live, is heavy to lift and hard to get to burn. You rapidly run through your tinder, starting and re-starting the fire as the moist log smokes at you.
They used to sell wood by the cord –4′ by 8′ by 4′, but nobody really measures in cords today. We buy now by the pickup load.
Jeremy Clarke, in the British Spectator, buys wood in France by the stère, and talks hunting (Outline gets around the paywall):
The other day we ordered a stère from a woodman recommended by an expat English friend. He dumped his load at the foot of the path and climbed up to the house for payment and a drink; €70 a stère is the norm. He wanted €90 and a whisky, ice, no water. I made him a belter and passed it over along with the cash. Would he like to sit? He consented to perch on the arm of the sofa. Our elderly bitch, deeply asleep on the sofa, was woken nostril first by the combination of rare and unusual scents emanating from this thick-set man in his mid-fifties.
He managed his heavy-bottomed whisky glass with an exaggerated delicacy that looked a bit like parody. But his expectant conviviality suggested a previous acquaintance with the expat English bourgeoisie, who, for all their faults and absurdities, offer strong spirits at 10 o’clock in the morning and defer obsequiously to the opinions of a man of the woods and forests. Then Catriona came in and sat and accepted a whisky also.
The woodman had noted with approval the stuffed boar’s head wearing Ray-Bans fixed above the side door. This moved the conversation in the direction of boars and boar-hunting and it turned out that we were entertaining the president of a local boar hunt. He owns 19 hunting dogs, a small arsenal of rifles and shotguns, and only yesterday had organized an 80-gun shoot followed by a wood-cutting session and piss-up. Another whisky, young man, we said? The empty glass was smartly presented while our old dog fastened her nose to his trousers.
Catriona interrogated him about his sex life. He was currently living with a much younger woman, an obstreperous vegetarian, he said. Then, suspiciously: we weren’t ecologists, were we? (An ecologist in his book was a shorthand term of abuse for an animal rights supporter.) I put it on record that I was not an ecologist and in fact had taken part in a boar hunt in which the chef had one leg shorter than the other and three dogs were gravely injured by boars’ tusks during the course of the day. Ah, said the woodman. His dogs were fitted with Kevlar jackets. Expensive but he no longer spends half the time sewing up his injured dogs.
Original footage by the Lumière brothers, this snowball fight from Lyon, France in 1896 has been upscaled and colorized using the open-source AI tool, DeOldify, a deep learning-based project for colorizing and restoring old images and video.
One day back in the 1980s, I stopped for a bite to eat at the Burger King in Brookfield, CT, and was astonished to see a local cop tricked out with an enormous Model 92 Beretta (the US service pistol) and carrying on his belt five 15-round magazines. We’re talking 91-rounds here altogether and a ton of weight to be lugging around all day. Such was the result of the police fashion that took hold in the latter decades of the last century, in which law enforcement agencies all over the country read up on two rather unusual (and very bloody) shootouts and responded by retiring all their six-shot .38 Special and .357 Magnum revolvers and switching over to Glocks and other semi-automatic pistols with large-capacity magazines.
You never know. A Zulu impi might show up at any time and you’ll need 91-rounds.
But not everyone thinks that way. It turns out that the deadly and elite French Groupe d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale (GIGN), the French tactical counter-terrorism, hostage rescue, and government official protection unit, sneers at semiautomatic pistols and makes a point of using .375 Magnum Manurhin MR 73 revolvers.
The Groupe d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale, better known by its abbreviated name GIGN, which translates to National Gendarmerie Intervention Group in English, remains France’s premier counter-terrorism and hostage rescue unit. Since its founding shortly after the terrorist acts in Munich in 1973, GIGN has risen to prominence among the world’s counter-terrorism community. But one piece of gear in particular not only differentiates the unit from others, but it is also deeply ingrained in its lore and tradition—the revolver, and in particular, the French-built Manurhin MR73. …
The revolvers are issued to each GIGN member for symbolic reasons as well as utilitarian ones. A passage from a 2014 issue of the official Gendarmerie information magazine states:
“Respect of human life and fire discipline have always been taught to group members since inception, and each new member is traditionally issued with a 6 shot .357 revolver as a reminder of these values.”
GIGN’s deep relationship with the revolver gets pretty intense beyond any outright symbolism. Apparently, the unit still practices a ‘trust shot’ as part of new member initiations where a team member wearing body armor puts a clay pigeon over their center of mass and the newly minted GIGN operator shoots the disc from 15 yards.
This morning arsonists seriously damaged a 15th century instrument of white supremacy, the Cathedral of Nantes. It had survived the French Revolution, the Reign of Terror, Nazi bombing in WWII, and a 1972 fire.
A fire at the cathedral in the French city of Nantes is believed to have been started deliberately, prosecutors say.
Three fires were started at the site and an investigation into suspected arson is under way, Prosecutor Pierre Sennes said.
The blaze destroyed stained glass windows and the grand organ at the Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul cathedral, which dates from the 15th Century. …
The fire began in the early morning, with massive flames visible from outside the building. More than 100 firefighters brought it under control after several hours.
Mr Sennes said the national police would be involved in the investigation and a fire expert was travelling to Nantes
“When we arrive at a place where a fire has taken place, when you see three separate fire outbreaks, it’s a question of common sense, you open an investigation,” he said.
Newsagent Jean-Yves Burban said he heard a bang at about 07:30 local time (05:30 GMT) and saw flames when he went out to see what was happening.
“I am shook up because I’ve been here eight years and I see the cathedral every morning and evening. It’s our cathedral and I’ve got tears in my eyes,” he told Reuters.
