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Thursday, June 18, 2020

Those Green-Streaked Men in the Parks are Strangers

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Library of Congress



The first thing I ever wrote for The Washington Post was a little chapter about statues in a 1975 guidebook to D.C. that is now long out of print, and subsequent editions dropped my contributions. But given the current debate about monuments and protests in Lafayette Park, these pages may be of interest, or even amusement.












Tuesday, June 02, 2020

Antifa, 'Casseurs,' Anarchists, Neo-Nazis Hijacking Peaceful Demos? We Saw a Lot of That in Paris in 2018 and 2019


Beginning in November 2018 and well into 2019, virtually every weekend protests taking place in the name of the gilets jaunes were staged around the country and, especially in Paris, turned into violent confrontations with the police by groups that identified themselves as anarchists and, yes, "Antifa." The graffiti slogans they left behind make that clear. 

On December 1, 2018, presumed members of this group broke into the Arc de Triomphe and destroyed or defaced important artifacts. Others burned banks and cafés and cars. I posted several photographs of the rioting and the police response immediately after the initial violence. Those can be found here. These I selected mainly for the graffiti, which speaks for itself.

ANTIFA=GILETS JAUNES scrawled on Arc de Triomphe Dec 1, 2018
CLASS against Class .... GILETS JAUNES=ANTIFA - Graffiti on Arc de Triomphe  from Dec. 1, 2018
----UTION, What else? - in English on fallen sign. French and Palestinian flag in background. March 2019


Trashed and looted boutique, March 2019


French pun: No quarter (Cartier) for the bourgeois

Child looking at paving stone projectile at closed entrance to the Arc. Circled A is for Anarchist.

MAKE IT BURN and SWEPT AWAY BY A REVOLUTIONARY WAVE on torched Belle Époque mansion at the Étoile. December 2018

Liberty defaced. Inside the Arc during repairs after Black Bloc vandalism.



VICTORY THROUGH CHAOS

The Black Blocs trashed Fouquet's, and the gilets jaunes amused themselves.


Torched news stand, March 2019





Borrowing a line from the U.S. 

Dec. 1, 2018: "THE YELLOW VESTS WILL TRIUMPH" written on Arch of Triumph.

December 2019. "WE'LL BE BACK" with Anarchist symbol. And they certainly were.



Friday, April 24, 2020

Weekend Reading: Forays Into Friendships and History




Lockdown Weekend Reading: Forays Into Friendships and History


Over the last few years I have written quite a few rather personal pieces, some of them exploring friendships, some of them bits of history that interested me, some of them both. I am thinking of reading some of them aloud as a sort of informal podcast. If you have a preference, let me know.

They are posted here by publication date in reverse chronological order dating back to 2016, which means the subjects appear random, but one might discern certain threads that run through them.

 

"We're entering the age of density and stress from overcrowding and squeezing," the photographer told me in 1996. "It's like the elephant metaphor."

CHRISTOPHER DICKEY


Published Apr. 21, 2020 

Trapped in my apartment I pulled Joan's books off the shelf. I wanted to learn again from her meticulous observation of detail, character and setting, and her great sense of irony.

CHRISTOPHER DICKEY

 

Travel Like a Snob with 'A Brave New World' Author


ARMCHAIR TRAVELER
Many of us worldwide are stuck at home, which means it's the perfect opportunity to escape with a great travel book. Our first selection? Aldous Huxley's "Along the Road."

CHRISTOPHER DICKEY


Published Mar. 23, 2020
 
Published Mar. 08, 2020 

To the end, the Egyptian strongman failed to understand how his country had changed, even as a devastating personal drama unfolded within his family.

CHRISTOPHER DICKEY


Published Feb. 25, 2020   

The JFK Mistress Gunned Down in Cold Blood


TIME OF ASSASSINS
The most powerful reporters—and spies—in America were haunted by the death of Mary Meyer, President Kennedy's murdered lover. They knew her well. What secrets were in her diary?

CHRISTOPHER DICKEY


Published Jan. 21, 2020

 

The Night the Cold-War World Turned Upside Down


HAMMER, SICKLE, AND SWASTIKA
The generation now quaintly known as "boomers" had grown up thinking the planet might soon be blown to hell. Now that threat was over. Or was it?

CHRISTOPHER DICKEY


Published Nov. 09, 2019
 

Searching in Paris for the Woman Who Launched Impressionism


TRAILBLAZER
Captivated by Morisot after an exhibition at the Orsay, I set about trying to find traces of her that remain in Paris today.

CHRISTOPHER DICKEY


Published Aug. 25, 2019
 

Did Novelist John Steinbeck Spy for the CIA in Paris?


DUBIOUS BATTLE
During the same summer that he wrote "The Amiable Fleas," now published in English for the first time, the American author also appears to have been gathering intel for the Agency.

CHRISTOPHER DICKEY


Published Jul. 31, 2019

 

The 'Red Spy Queen' Who Shocked America—and the Soviets


УМНИЦА
The only training she ever got as a spy was from her lover. But Elizabeth Bentley managed to manipulate the most feared secret police agency in the world—and intimidate the FBI.

CHRISTOPHER DICKEY


Published Jul. 28, 2019
 

Could Secret Cables Have Saved Ethel Rosenberg?


'WORSE THAN MURDER'
Even as Ethel Rosenberg was strapped into the electric chair for spying for Moscow in 1953, decrypted cables might have spared her. But they were released only decades later.

CHRISTOPHER DICKEY


Published Jul. 06, 2019

 

Trump and the Persian Gulf Have a Long, Surprising History


OPINION
THROWBACK
In 1987, Trump attacked Reagan's deployment in the Gulf to protect 'ships we don't own, carrying oil we don't need destined for allies who won't help.' He may still feel that way.

CHRISTOPHER DICKEY


Published Jun. 19, 2019

 

Trumpists Fight Against Everything D-Day's Heroes Fought For


OPINION
GATHERING STORM
The president, born the year after the war ended, does not remember and probably does not want to know what brought it on or what it was fought to end.

CHRISTOPHER DICKEY


Published Jun. 05, 2019

 

The Allied Spies Who Paved the Way for D-Day


BEHIND ENEMY LINES
Secret agents—women and men—died making it possible for the Allies to storm through France. It's time to remember them.

CHRISTOPHER DICKEY


Published Jun. 01, 2019
 

Schoolteachers, archeologists, linguists and mathematicians worked on the Venona project breaking unbreakable Soviet code from WWII. They were heroes. But some had deep regrets.

CHRISTOPHER DICKEY


Published May. 26, 2019 

Was a top State Department aide truly a Soviet spy? Or did Richard Nixon and the right find a convenient victim?

CHRISTOPHER DICKEY


Published May. 19, 2019 

Regime change is implausible, behavior modification is unlikely. So what's left?

CHRISTOPHER DICKEY


Published May. 17, 2019 

Igor Gouzenko was a lowly Soviet cipher clerk when he turned the world order upside down in 1945. Nobody could have predicted the espionage hysteria his defection would unleash.

CHRISTOPHER DICKEY


Published May. 11, 2019
 
Published Jan. 26, 2019 

Her beauty was legendary, her fortune enormous, and he was notoriously thick. She made him emperor, but she's been written out of history as a tragic whore. She deserves better.

CHRISTOPHER DICKEY


Published Jan. 21, 2019 

Given a large fortune by one lover, Harriet Howard ditched him and used it to help her new lover return to France, get elected president, and fund the coup that made him emperor.

CHRISTOPHER DICKEY




 

This true story shows just how much we depend on the bravery of the few to right the wrongs of the many.

CHRISTOPHER DICKEY


Published Jan. 05, 2019 

The Musée d'Orsay houses a work that still shocks visitors, a painting that united one of the 19th century's most controversial painters with one of its most dissolute gentlemen.

CHRISTOPHER DICKEY


Published Dec. 31, 2018 
 
Published Dec. 02, 2018 

I was looking for a muse, and found in her eyes a gateway to the past, an icon for the present. Victorine Meurent was the painter's star model but remained an enigma for 150 years.

CHRISTOPHER DICKEY


Published Nov. 24, 2018

 

Christopher Dickey's father wrote the novel on which 'Deliverance' was based—and, during filming, Dickey saw Reynolds the womanizer, wit, and actor desperate to be taken seriously.

CHRISTOPHER DICKEY


Published Sep. 07, 2018 

A newly published short story by the iconic American author, set in WWII Paris, grew out of a "moveable feast" very different from the one he had lived there in the 1920s.

CHRISTOPHER DICKEY


Published Aug. 24, 2018 

These three journalists died investigating mercenaries tied directly to an oligarch and an intelligence agency indicted by the Mueller probe in the U.S.

ANNA NEMTSOVA,

PHILIP OBAJI JR.,

CHRISTOPHER DICKEY


Published Aug. 21, 2018

 

The Castros claimed Cuba was never into drug smuggling, then they said it quit. But their own operations were nothing compared to the ones they helped facilitate in Venezuela.

CHRISTOPHER DICKEY


Published Jun. 02, 2018 

Sacré-Coeur, the Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower, and the colonnade on top of the Pantheon all unlock secrets to this magical city.

CHRISTOPHER DICKEY


Published May. 27, 2018

 

How a British Spy Drank His Way Across the Americas


CLOAK & DAGGER
Richard Francis Burton was one of the great adventurers of the Victorian era, and a spy. But several weeks just before the Civil War are curiously missing from his life's account.

CHRISTOPHER DICKEY


Published Oct. 15, 2017

 

Explorer, Eco-Warrior, Spy: The Battles of Jacques Cousteau


ORACLE
One of the world's great adventurers—and a Resistance spy—Jacques Cousteau warned me 25 years ago that humans were reaching the point of no return on environmental destruction.

CHRISTOPHER DICKEY


Published Jun. 04, 2017
 

The Biggest Drug Bust in History


FULL CIRCLE
It took an invasion by the U.S. to take out the bloody dictator Manuel Noriega in what was likely the most expensive and largest drug bust in history.

CHRISTOPHER DICKEY


Published May. 30, 2017

 

The Hellfighters Who Cut Down Germans and Gave France Jazz


'HALF MOAN, HALF HALLELUJAH'
What the 369th had that set it apart was strong leadership by black officers as well as white— and the best damned band in the American Army.

CHRISTOPHER DICKEY


Published May. 29, 2017

 

Before he was a world-famous spy and translator, Richard F. Burton was sent into the boy brothels of Karachi so the British could conquer all of India.

CHRISTOPHER DICKEY


Published Dec. 17, 2016 

Brave women helped downed Allied flyers escape the Germans. But more than that, they showed Hitler's white nationalists they would not surrender, would not submit.

CHRISTOPHER DICKEY


Published Dec. 11, 2016
 

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