French Foreign Nuclear Policy

For years the joke was that a man facing ruin would abandon life as he knew it and join the French Foreign Legion.

What has changed between then and now is that it is no longer just men who consider life in a foreign army, but women too. And the army is no longer the French Foreign Legion – it is ISIS.

Not sure what the French Foreign Legion are up to these days.

Back in 1972 a schoolmate’s father was beaten by French soldiers for protesting French nuclear weapons testing in the South Pacific.

His name was David McTaggart, and he was a member of Greenpeace.

The French denied McTaggart’s accusations, said he fell. Then pictures showed up to prove otherwise.

In 1985 two French soldiers were arrested in New Zealand. They admitted to blowing up a Greenpeace ship called Rainbow Warrior, killing a photographer on board.

The photographer's name was Fernando Pereira.

I will never learn to stop worrying, no matter how big your bomb.

Sartre's Genet As Paris

"Even at the present time, now that he is a triumphant hero and is made much of by middle-class society, he hastens to please in order to disarm, and if he suspects that his charm has not worked, if he senses that there is a spot of freedom in the other person's eyes, he gets worried and irritated. He dislikes anyone's criticizing his works, not so much out of pride as out of confusion in the presence of an intelligence which he thought submissive and which suddenly reveals its independence. Whatever mistakes I may make about him, I am sure that I know him better than he knows me, because I have a passion for understanding men and he a passion for not knowing them. Ever since our first meeting, I have no recollection of our having spoken of anything other than him." -- Jean-Paul Sartre, "The Eternal Couple of the Criminal and the Saint…", from Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr. Translated by Bernard Frechtman. New York: Mentor, 1963, P. 214

"Vive le Québec libre!" (1967)

A seditious visit to Canada by the political successor to Napoléon Bonaparte -- the Caliph of the Fifth Republic of France, Charles de Gaulle.

Pictures at an Explos(it)ion

Godard did not show this picture at his Sarajevo Writers Festival appearance in Notre Musique (2004). But if he did, would audience members mistake it for something else ("Stalingrad?" "Hiroshima?" Sarajevo?"), like they did when he showed them Matthew Brady's picture (below) of a bombed out Richmond, Virginia taken in the last year of the American Civl War (1860-1865)?

Since its introduction as a news item, I have been reluctant to take seriously the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), thinking it more a construct of those who stand to gain by it as an agent of fear than a group of mercenaries (ex- and otherwise) fighting for a self-determined political structure designed to oversee the production of oil.

Which returns me to the first picture: Jerusalem's King David Hotel after the Irgun blew up its southern wing in 1946. This act (of terrorism?) is generally seen as the last straw in Britain's attempt to manage Palestine and is counted as one of a number of events that allowed for the modern state of Israel.

So what's the difference between what the founders of the modern state of Israel did and what ISIS is doing? Why was the former group rewarded with state recognition and the latter group vilified?

Perhaps an answer begins with an understanding of this rather damning "agreement"-- a WikiLeak before there ever was such a thing. (It should be noted that what happened in Paris on Friday comes exactly 100 years to the day the French and British governments sat down to discuss what became known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement.)

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Say Cheese!

Last week marked the public opening of The Broad. Billed by Forbes as "Edythe and Eli Broad's new museum," my first thought was, What happened to the old one? Did it wear out?

Most remarkable about The Broad is its admission, which is free (you must reserve in advance). But as it is with most DTLA destinations, the parking is not.

It costs $12 (with museum validation) to park on one of the museum's three underground floors. On weekdays before 5 p.m. additional charges are applied after three hours.

Los Angeles is an easy, if parenthetic, city (if you read the fine print).

The Philanthropy of Allen

Sky Goodden's Momus continues its online presence as if it has no other, poking portals into a webness that leads to better-funded news agencies, or, like Seattle and Interstate 5, allowing articles to run through it, as it does with Ben Davis's monthly almanac of "10 Must-Read Art Essays", which this month carries a feature on the venture philanthropy of Paul Allen by The Stranger's Jen Graves, a feature that brought to mind our own venture philanthropist Michael Audain who, now that he has what he wants, has left it to his foundation to distribute his crumbs.