Skip to main content

If you want to understand the gilets jaunes, get out of Paris | Nora Bensaâdoune

While some protesters are wreaking destruction in the capital, others are breathing life into rural France’s forgotten corners

When I left Paris four years ago to settle in the pretty Drôme valley in south-eastern France, I opted for a village not far from the city of Valence. I wanted to be close to a high-speed rail station, but remote enough to finally be able to enjoy the fresh air and rural surroundings. At the time, I didn’t expect I’d be moving from one world to another. I had reckoned on making regular trips back to the capital. But Paris has gradually become a distant, hazy concept. When I do go to visit friends, it feels cut off, like a city in a bubble, carefully concealing its pockets of poverty while proudly showing off its cultural trophies and temples of consumption.

Related: The gilets jaunes have cowed Macron. But for them, that’s just the start | John Lichfield

Continue reading...

from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2zQfOy4

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

REPORT: Furious Spike Lee Paces Aisle, Turns Back To Stage...

REPORT: Furious Spike Lee Paces Aisle, Turns Back To Stage... (Top headline, 5th story, link ) Related stories: REVIEW: Hostless Show Starts With Rock & Rolls Off Rails... Actor knocks borders, walls during speech in Spanish... Stage designed to look like Trump hair? 'GREEN BOOK' OVERCOMES BACKLASH, NABS BEST PICTURE... Top Critics Fume... LIST: WINNERS... Advertise here from Drudge Report Feed https://ift.tt/2SUpIKy

Tiny Love Stories: ‘Who Was I to Deprive Him of Joy?’

By Unknown Author from NYT Style https://ift.tt/2UV7YAG

The Ugly History of Dual-Loyalty Charges

When Representative Ilhan Omar recently complained about “the political influence in this country that says it is okay to push for allegiance to a foreign country,” many noted accurately that she had deployed a trope—dual loyalty—that had been used against Jews for years. But this accusation has a broader history in the United States, having been used against several religious minorities—including Muslims like Omar. Indeed, many battles over religious freedom have revolved around dual-loyalty claims. [ Read: Ilhan Omar just made it harder to have a nuanced debate about Israel ] In the 19th century, many attacks on Catholics stressed that these immigrants were pawns of a foreign power. In the 1830s, Samuel Morse—then a prominent painter and later the inventor of the telegraph—urged Americans to build “walls” and “gates” to keep out Catholic immigrants, who would always be loyal to Rome. Because these Catholic immigrants were decrepit —“halt, and blind, and naked”—they were easy to co...