Stop Bush

At the Solidays Concert Festival, a benefit event for Solidarité-SIDA, and AIDS Awareness and Prevention Organization, I noticed this poster about French political courage. The statement is roughly translated as "We would like to be able salute the political courage of France in a new way. Sign the petition!" and, in the version I saw, included the following subtitle:
Nous sommes de plus en plus nombreux à refuser l'abandon de millions de malades du sida dans les pays pauvres. A un an des élections présidentielles, nous devons en faire la preuve.
Which is translated roughly as
"Increasing numbers of us refuse to abandon the millions of victims of AIDS in poor countries. In a year of presidential elections, we should prove it."
There was also an additional line which specifically pointed out the Bush administration's failure to make facilitating the distribution of AIDS treatments in Africa a priority, while preserving the profits of pharmaceutical companies.
I can appreciate that Bush needs to be stopped, but I found this sign a bit depressing, because the fact of the matter was that, despite all the courage that France can claim for standing against the war in Iraq, Bush wasn't stopped. A quarter million people died in the tsunami of December 2004, but 2.4 million people die in subsaharan Africa every year because of lack of treatment for AIDS. Courage is admirable, but it would be nice to have the power to change things.

Solidays

On Sunday, I went to the Solidays concert festival at the Hippodrome de Longchamp, a huge horseracing stadium in the Bois de Boulogne park just outside Paris. It was a terrific event with five stages and 60 different concerts over the course of weekend.
Here's the view from the south end, from the biggest stage (not pictured).



My favorite, and the reason I decided to go, was Maceo Parker, a saxophonist who also plays the flute and sings with his jazz/funk band. The only bad part was that the sound amplification kind of mushed up the music. The audience was better than I expected at appreciating him, considering that most of the acts there were pop, rock or techno. Here's Maceo Parker and his band:

Joy and Sadness

Last night, the French watched their venerable Zizou blow his top and get kicked out of the game and then saw the World Cup slip through their fingers into the hands of the Italian team. No parade, no riots in the street. Last night, people went home from the stadium by my apartment quietly, although I heard some people shooting off their fireworks anyway.
The principal topic of conversation this morning is about the Zidane-Materazzi incident. This Marco Materazzi character, who is nicknamed "Matrix," has quite a record of incredibly violent plays. Perhaps Zidane was just getting back at him for all of the nasty moves he's pulled on the field. Materazzi is also known for statements making fun of Marc Zoro, a player born in the Ivory Coast, who left the field at a game in Italy after fans chanted racial slurs and ape noises at him. Many people are guessing that it was a racial slur against Zidane, whose parents are Algerian immigrants, that finally caused him to lose his temper. He cheered up for lunch with Chirac, fortunately. No one seems to be talking about Frenchwoman Amelie Mauresmo winning Wimbledon!