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 he
start of war of September 11 prevented me from sending this dispatch
from Europe, just as I was making ready to do so. Since some issues
never seem to go away — Bastiat first suggested this more than
150 years ago — this parody may not have lost its timelessness:
The French
press reported yesterday a huge protest in Paris against the globalization
and unjust hegemonic order of the sun. The protest was apparently
timed to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the birth of Frederic
Bastiat (1801-1850).
Radicals protested
that the sun shines everywhere in monopolistic fashion — on
every continent, in every country, without exception, and without
any competitor of comparable size or power.
Other radicals
shouted that the sun is demonstrably unfair in the amount and quality
of light it distributes. One feature of this inequality, the crowd
pointed out, is particularly irksome to France — the sun shields
it strength over England, allowing for frequent cloud cover and
even gentle rains for London. This is unfair, since Provence is
subject to such unrelenting sun that its inhabitants are often reduced
to shedding their clothes, thus exposing themselves to potential
cancers of the skin.
One more example
of the perfidious behavior of Anglo-Saxon capitalism, radical Greens
called it. The sun has plainly become an accomplice in unfair practices.
In other stories
this morning, the French press reported from Durban that the U.N.
Conference on Racism had also lodged a protest against the unequal
practices of the sun.
The sun shines
with unequalled intensity, even cruelty, upon Tropical peoples,
the protesters insisted, while tempering its rays in the so-called
Temperate zones.
The delegates
unanimously accused the sun of racism, which some called the inevitable
fruit of globalism.
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