French protests (and me)

The french are at it again, protesting their own government´s policies. W must love it; as long as they are protesting Prime Minister Villepin, they can't protest him.

"The police eventually turned to tear gas and water cannons to clear the protesters away." [link]

Water cannons? I mean, of course water cannons. Riots = Water Cannons, but when you think about it, do we even *have* water cannons in the U.S.?

"Strikes and demonstrations are part of the fabric of French society."

Quod erat demonstrandum - Water cannons in Paris.

There was a demonstration the first week I arrived to live in Paris in 1995 (I love the french word for it; "manifestation"). It took me by complete surprise; the street was shoulder-to-shoulder, curb-to-curb. People were carrying signs, banners, skeletons on poles, megaphones, each other. I ask my ami what it was about, this huge demonstration.

"Ne sais pas". I dunno, he said, shrugging his shoulders, not really even giving it a second thought. "Labor or something?"

There was only one other demonstration that I knew about that summer; a protest against the French Government performing nuclear testing in the Pacific. The French Government setting off bombs.

It was in Place de Bastille and there were several thousand folks there, mostly young, milling about and looking for...I don't know what. A few people spoke, there was some drumming going on. People danced around and yelled stuff. Some folks were dressed in black hooded robes, dressed like death.

The organizers passed out sheets of little round stickers with nuclear triangles on them. They were to be affixed to french coins to raise awareness in the marketplace of this terrible act by the government. Every time I used them, the little shopkeeper would just peel them off and examine the coins suspiciously for counterfeit.

Maybe that was unusual, to have so few demonstrations that summer. Maybe it was the weather. Maybe it was the more immediate fact that Algieran terrorists were setting off bombs of their own in trashcans all over Paris...making Moruroa in the pacific seem even further away.