Left Turns On The Red Streets Of France

When I first moved to Vancouver I was struck by the street names of my new home. Some were named after battles of the Crimean War (“Alma St”, “Balaclava St”) and others from sources taken from British military history (“Trafalgar St”, “Hornby St”, “Bleinheim St”), attesting to the city’s ties to Mother England. There were several colorful names (“Dunsmuir St”, “Trutch St”, “Robson St”, “Cambie St”) that I would soon learn had their origin in local BC history. The city map itself provided a fun history lesson for this new guest, and I used it as a guide for more than just my navigation needs: it also gave me a sense of the history, the culture, the values, of my new home.

Fast forward to more recent times, and a revelation that occurred while blogging at Covenant Zone.

In what feels like another life, I used to blog regularly on the urban violence rocking France’s fractious suburbs. Early on I especially needed to rely upon internet maps to help me situate the scenes of the latest crimes I would read about, since “Seine-St-Denis” and “Clichy-sous-Bois” were place names I wasn’t yet familiar with.

I couldn’t help but notice that the neighborhoods I was researching seemed to contain several streets with familiar names indeed. I remember the first time this happened: “Avenue Salvador Allende?”, I read aloud from the tiny text on my computer screen. “The socialist Salvador Allende from Chile..? Well, France does have a left-leaning history…”

I didn’t know the half of it. Lately I’ve been indulging in some armchair traveling through the streets of Paris and its environs, thinking up historical personages and historical events and seeing if there's someone commemorating them in Paris' "banlieus rouges" ["red suburbs"]. Here’s a picturesque report highlighting the surprises that were in store for me, courtesy of GoogleMaps' mesmerizing street view feature.

What can we learn about a city, a people, from the names they choose for their streets? Let's take a left turn through the streets of some of the "sensitive zones" of suburban France, and look for some clues...

France's Counter-Culture At Work

Truepeers' post earlier today on the undercover che guevara rescue squad reminded me of a heartening video I had originally linked to way back in November of 2006: "spooking France's che guevara fans".

This hilarious 2-part outing features France's true counter-culture movement, the satirists of LaBAf ["La Brigade de l'Argent des Français", "the Brigade of the money of the french"], who stand up to their nation's moral and cultural decline with courage and a sense of humor.

(Speaking of courage, you may have already seen their work through the famous February 2006 video they made during the Danish mohammed cartoon madness, facing down a veritable army of homophobic islamists marching down the streets of Paris, and being secreted away by undercover french police before they could be lynched by the frenzied mob.)

Back in late October 2006, the freedom fighters of LaBAF confronted che guevara's cult of true believers on the streets of Paris, dropping a few historical facts about the icon of amnesiac leftists, all of which were news to his devoted groupies. The result of this crash course education was chronicled in a fun two-part video.

Will che's followers see the light, convert, and accept to wear LaBAF's anti-che t-shirts instead? Watch the videos and see!

The suspense, like che guevara himself, will kill you...

(French video but with english subtitles provided by LaBaf)

Part 1:



Part 2:

Che Che Che!

We at Covenant Zone are sometimes so humourless we end up whining about the endless parade of murderer sympathizers in Che t-shirts.

We never had the brains to consider that people may be using these shirts in all kinds of creative ways. For example:

[Columbian] Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos told reporters earlier in the day that the rescue mission had been made possible by “a special intelligence” operation that had penetrated the highest reaches of the FARC, including the group’s seven-man directorate and one of the rings of specialized rebel units entrusted with guarding hostages. Santos said that ring, commanded by a rebel known by the alias Cesar, was tricked into believing that the FARC’s leader had called for the hostages to be brought to him.

Yesterday, two white helicopters arrived in a jungle clearing where the hostages were being held. The men in the helicopters looked like guerrillas, Betancourt later said, describing details of the rescue at the military airport.

“Absolutely surreal,” she said, noting that some of the men who got off the helicopter wore T-shirts emblazoned with the iconic image of the Argentine revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara. “I thought this was the FARC,” she said.

Their hands bound, the hostages were forced aboard the helicopters, wondering where they would be taken next in their long ordeal. But once aboard, Betancourt said, Cesar and another guerrilla were overpowered and the crewmen announced that the passengers were now free. “The chief of the operation said: ‘We’re the national army. You’re free,’ ” she said. “The helicopter almost fell from the sky because we were jumping up and down, yelling, crying, hugging one another. We couldn’t believe it.”

And if you want to hang out with guys in Free Mark Steyn! t-shirts, Covenant Zone meets every Thursday, 7-9 pm, in the atrium of the central branch of the Vancouver Public Library, in front of Blenz Coffee.