white man in shades

I was in a hurry on my way into Dublin, but I had to pull in when I saw this lot gathered near the French Embassy, awaiting President Sarkozy's visit.

There may have been a larger gathering (with 'hundreds' of protesters) elsewhere, or perhaps later in the afternoon, but this group seemed quite small to me, maybe fifteen to twenty. I shot quite a few frames within about ten minutes then fled to make my appointments; maybe the hundreds accumulated immediately afterwards.

On the way into Ballsbridge we were stopped by cops at the lights before the RDS while the boys in black limos (or whatever) shot past in the opposite direction with their sirening escourt: Sarkozy keeping his own appointment with the various factions.

The French president had allocated an hour for the meeting, each party/representitive (Sinn Féin, Libertas, Fine Gael, Labour etc,) to be granted a 3-minute speech. Ridiculous of course, and seemingly no more than a publicity exercise, though initial reports on the radio suggest that Sarkozy did impress quite a few of the parties and the meeting was extended (by a whole half hour I think, gee).

Sarkozy's political near-sightedness aside, I feel there is an awful lot of misconception about the Lisbon Treaty, and that the No campaign, run by Libertas, exploited to the max. There is also a lot of irony which many no-voters seem unaware of (side by side with posters telling us not to be 'bullied' are the guilt-trippy ones proclaiming 'Thousands Died For Your Freedom').

A big part of the No campaign was about our precious neutrality; you know, the neutrality (that Ganley and his ilk would heartily approve of) that allowed American planes to be refueled in Shannon, or, half a century ago, had de Valera visiting the German ambassador to offer his condolences on the death of that great statesman Adolf Hitler; the kind of neutrality that secretly (and sometimes not so secretly) fears anything foreign; the kind that gave us the Blueshirts and was behind our own little pogrom against the Jews in Limerick; that kind of neutrality.

I think Sarkozy's peremptory visit, giving an impression of bullying and arrogance, was a mistake. Impossible to know what the man was thinking. But politically stupid, probably a mistake to even visit at this point. Plenty of fodder for the No factions.