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Europe
World Leaders Gather in Paris for Bastille Day
2008-07-15
France is celebrating Bastille Day.

Leaders from Europe, the Middle East and North Africa - as well as United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon - joined French President Nicolas Sarkozy at the celebrations.

The world leaders were already in Paris for Sunday's inaugural Mediterranean Union summit.

The presence of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad among leaders reviewing the parade has angered human rights activists, opposition politicians and some in the French military who served in a United Nations peace force in Lebanon. Mr. Assad has been accused of sponsoring terrorism and undermining Middle East unity.

On the occasion of Bastille Day, Mr. Sarkozy granted his country's highest award - the Legion of Honor - to a number of notables, including former French-Colombian hostage Ingrid Betancourt.

The French national holiday commemorates the 1789 storming of the Bastille prison, which marked the beginning of the French Revolution.

Cities throughout France hold military parades in the morning and fireworks in the evening on July 14. The largest parade in the capital includes a flyover by air force jets. French communities worldwide also celebrate Bastille Day with picnics, parties and fireworks.
Posted by:Fred

#7  I've always thought that if the King had simply spent the funds required to fully stock the Bastille's armory with powder, the soldiers wouldn't have run out of powder for the cannon and been forced to surrender. It probably would have broken the back of the revolution.
Posted by: Silentbrick   2008-07-15 18:09  

#6  There are two countries called France...

Couldn't agree more, and, no, I'm no royalist nor monarchist.
Posted by: anonymous5089   2008-07-15 15:23  

#5  Initially the French Revolution 'worked' - the worst traits of the monarchy were replaced/being replaced by a constitutional government. Then the more radical elements of the Revolution (Jacobins et al) gained control of events, which resulted in the Reign of Terror, and ultimately the ascendance of Napolean and the bloody war of empire that followed. Revolutions are inherently chaotic - and controlling (or even predicting) where they will go is tough.
Our efforts in Iraq and A'stan are effectivly revolutions - and it has been challenging trying to manage the chaos.
Posted by: Menhaden S   2008-07-15 08:00  

#4  My favorite take on the day was made by the inimitable Gerald Warner (LINK ):

(excerpt)

Pompous parades will today celebrate the event that triggered the French Revolution, that is to say, the most appalling bloodbath anterior to the Russian Revolution. Seven prisoners were released from the Bastille - four counterfeiters, an accomplice to murder and two lunatics - whose return to the community was hardly beneficial. The attack on the prison, reserved for the well-off, was orchestrated by the Marquis de Sade and Camille Desmoulins on behalf of the Nine Sisters masonic lodge.

There followed the September massacres, the marriages republicains in which people of opposite sexes were stripped naked and lashed together in obscene postures before being drowned, mothers forced to watch their children being guillotined and the massacre of 400,000 Catholic royalists - the majority of them women and children - in La Vendee. Sounds like the perfect excuse for a celebratory knees-up.

There are two countries called France. One is the sluttish Republic - "Marianne" - the other is the timeless, civilised doyen of Christendom, the nation of Clovis and St Louis, of the Valois and Bourbon kings, the Catholic and monarchic civilisation that fell with Charles X in 1830 but still defiantly survives in many enclaves. That pulse will beat quietly today while the heirs of the sans-culottes strut their stuff, proclaiming French nationalism under the figurehead of a Hungarian president and his Italian wife.
Posted by: mrp   2008-07-15 07:00  

#3  The French Revolution - the dark side of the enlightenment.
Posted by: no mo uro   2008-07-15 05:57  

#2  If so, the car-b-qs will be in honor of the thousands who died on the guillotine in the French Revolution.
Posted by: Rambler in California   2008-07-15 00:59  

#1  but will there be a car-b-q?
Posted by: Deadeye Choluck2323 aka Broadhead6   2008-07-15 00:31  

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