The Last Time I Saw Paris....

Child abuse casts a shadow the length of a lifetime.
Herbert Ward, Episcopal priest, Annual Report on St. Jude's Ranch, 1988

Since writing about the Paris riots (HERE) , Porcupine has received several other reports.

First, a link to similar incidents in Denmark, of all places (HERE). Yet another in Birmingham, England.

Porcupine's original correspondent, Paul Cruce a.k.a. Louis LaVache, has decided to return to the U.S. for his own safety.

"I was going to stick it out over here. The Ècole Boulangerie et Pâtisserie de Paris had a concern that my French isn't good enough to keep up with the pace of the class, and I would have been the only English-speaker in the group. To a degree they are right. I've still got a long way to go before mastering the language. But they also discount just how much I really comprehend and how determined I am. What frustrates me is that I comprehend most of what I hear, but I'm not quick on the response. My brain isn't yet thinking fully in French. But I know that and that's one reason I came over in September - so that by January, I would have been using the language on a daily basis for several months. And, this is something I've wanted to do for a long time.

But these riots have changed things. As I wrote you on Friday and again Saturday, I feel as if I'm a target. My friends here feel this way, too, so it's not my paranoia. Saturday when the rioters attacked the 3 ème in Paris, that was a little too much. The government is failing to secure the R.E.R. as it should, and that's my primary means of getting around. (I don't have a car here.) As a Conservative, I'm certainly not a "big government" person. But also, I recognize that when the state fails to properly use the way it is organised to the benefit of its citizens, it is very broken. France does not have a Federal System. The levers of power are all in Paris. But Chirac and de Villepin are not using the levers at their command to protect the people.

It's time to pack up and come back to the U.S. and put "Plan B" into action.

Hardest to watch is a captured video of Saturday monring cartoons from Iran (HERE). While this is difficult to watch, imagine a society where this is shown to children instead of Teletubbies or Barbie movies. Learn how to get your very own machine gun by terrifying Jews, or why a young boy would choose to become a martyr.

Porcupine has no answers for this, but is certain that the solution does not lie in pulling the blanket of the oceans over our shoulders, and huddling underneath.