Originally posted at PoliZeros.

I went to a protest in Philadelphia this past Saturday, and it was more disheartening than anything else. It was against the wars and various other injustices, with a special focus on he recent FBI raids of peace activists and Pennsylvania Homeland Security spying on innocent civilians and activists.

By the end of it, I kind of just felt like going up to the megaphone and asking, “How much moral outrage can one person muster? There are more people handing out fliers here than not, and with this country committing so many disgusting, outrageous acts, I don’t blame you.” I won’t lie, I handed a few out myself. Yet the contrast between the righteous causes featured in the speeches and on the signs and on the fliers and the, as a fellow protester said to me, “complete lack of solidarity” was striking.

The European Union is considering taking legal action against France for violating EU’s discriminatory laws. President Nicolas Sarkozy’s right-winged government has been engaged in a massive deportation of Roma — also commonly referred to as ‘Gypsies’.

I’m happily wending my way through Tom Geoghegan’s wonderfully entertaining and maddening book “Were You Born On the Wrong Continent?: How the European Model Can Help Us Get a Life.” Filled with great stats and facts, Geoghegan shows us why Germans are richer and happier than we are.

For me, the most French place in my whole yard is the middle of my overgrown herb garden. And so I thought about herbs, and about what herbs want — about what I could eat to bring France right here. It had to be simple and effortless, perfect but able to be cooked in heels — chunky Julia heels. It had to be eggs. You might know it as shirred eggs, but today, we’ll call it oefs en cocotte.

About 200 people demonstrated against the attack on the Gaza flotilla in Paris on Thursday.

The Italian Communist Party (PCI) formed in 1921, as a break-away faction of the socialist party. In many respects, its early years were similar to those of the PCF. Like the French Communists, the Italian Communist Party (PCI) fared poorly in national elections, winning less than five percent of the popular vote. Its time to grow, moreover, was cut short by Benito Mussolini’s dictatorship; he outlawed the party in 1926.

In France, the Communist Party was founded in 1920 by revolting members of its socialist party, then called the French Section of the Workers’ International (Section Française de l’Internationale Ouvrière, SFIO). Their new party initially did fairly poorly, only one of the numerous parties out there. In 1928, for instance, the Communists (PCF) won 11.26% of the vote.

A mentor once told me not to study communism, because it was a dead system, and studying something dead is worthless.

In defiance of this sensible advice, I will be presenting two dead communist movements: the communists in Italy and the communists in France.

It’s been a busy few weeks for diplomatic engagement in Afghanistan. First Karzai’s meeting with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, then the US-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue, and now this week French President Sarkozy is in Washington for a meeting with Obama, and the main topic of discussion will be Afghanistan. The AP reports…

“Psychological Violence” is making it’s way through French legislation. But, will it be something easily proved or enforced?