For into twenty years, there was a haven for free-thinking, healthy-food-eating, international travellers and ‘aware’ (or aspiring to be aware) local residents in the South of France.

For some of those years, le Speakeasy, in Nice, was even reputed to be the only strictly veggie restaurant in all of France, due to stringent, sustained propaganda (there’s no other word for it) put out ad nausium by French administrative authorities, openly proclaiming to French people (in the majority, linguistically isolated) that one of the first sure signs their children were being inducted into ‘a dangerous sect’ was ‘a change in dietary habits‘.

This was also a time, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when U.S. authorities were loudly proclaiming in mainstream media that ‘animal rights’ activists were at the top of the list of ‘dangerous domestic terrorists‘. To be fair, some violent, or even just shocking, tactics being used at that time by certain groups were opportunistically used by biased media to give all vegetarians a bad press. So, when it became more common for aware and brave doctors (mostly in the States, due to seemingly greater ‘wiggle room’ over there, at least at that time) to recommend a vegan diet for the treatment of such diseases as cardiovascular, cancer and diabetes, proponents chose to refer to the diet as ‘plant-based’, or ‘veggie’, to disassociate from ‘the nut cases’… Remember those days, not so long ago? How quickly society has fallen so far below even that low bar, to wind up in the chaos (and tyranny) we see around us today…

Don’t think it can’t get worse. It can. And will. Unless we, the People, stop it. For only we have a motive to do that…

Even across ‘The Pond’, 9/11 shattered the notion that barbarity in our ‘civilized world’ was under control… at least for some of us, who recognized the seeds of what was to come (following on from Ayn Rand’s early, clear and thorough analysis in Atlas Shrugged, published in 1957). In those days, le Speakeasy was sometimes accused of serving up conspiracy theories along with its plant-based food, but today most would likely agree that yesterday’s conspiracy theories have become today’s conspiracy facts…

Le Speakeasy, from early on, had shared tables, firstly to be able to fit into very limited space the number of seats allowed (by the fire department). Originally, the previous restaurant also occupied larger, adjacent premises which were, then, unoccupied, but also unavailable. Our space had been that restaurant’s bar de nuit, with communicating passages between the two, that the landlord on our side had had walled up, in order to rent out his space.  The owner of the other side, he said, was interned in the local psychiatric hospital and not in a state to deal with her property.  So, what had once been one restaurant with a bar became a tiny restaurant with a closed-up space next-door. But the separation work had been hastily and cheaply done, so that later on, the two walled-up, formerly communicating passages between the spaces would become a constant (and deliberate, from the other side) source of friction with the neighboring shopkeeper, a niçois, who moved in five years later.

Clearly, many of those in charge in France today, locally in Nice, as well as nationally (as in most countries), are very disturbed people, bent on self-destruction, who are steering our Ships of State directly into a brick wall, while dragging the rest of us along with them… They don’t love life. They are wreaking chaos, destruction and death, while seeking power and privilege for themselves, at our (the People’s) expense.  They are under the illusion of being smarter (in reality, just more unscrupulous) than we are, as if that were something to be proud of. For a full psychological portrait of these psychopaths, as well as of the society they have dragged us into, in this beginning of the 21st Century, see Ayn Rand’s remarkable Atlas Shrugged, and in particular the passages reproduced here.

Written in 1957, when the phenomena we see so clearly today seemed impossibly exaggerated, and unbelievable, we can now see that Rand was right, in fact spot-on : she knew what would inevitably grow from the seeds being scattered then. Today, we see in fact and in real life what she warned us of in fiction more than 65 years before.

But back to le Speakeasy… In 1998, when the doors first opened, the chaos we see today was already clearly, for some of us, the direction Society had taken. One Big Question was, is auto-destruction an inevitable result of Progress, or is Society being deliberately destroyed by some covert intention? And the CIA (we now know) developed the perfect formula for immediately shutting down this line of inquiry : Conspiracy Theories! Don’t look for hidden designs (or conspiracies!), just accept everything at face value…  So, however unlikely, our leaders assured us that they were in charge, and we had nothing to worry about, we could safely be occupied elsewhere and leave control over every aspect of our lives in their hands…

Most of those who found their way to le Speakeasy‘s door were only looking for healthy, strength-giving food and a quiet atmosphere in which to consume it. Congenial commraderie was (often) an extra bonus, particularly for world-weary travellers, isolated, lonely, and far from home, as well as for those for whom the local environment was, all too often, alienating. Nice is, after all, the capitol of the Cote d’Azur, land of frême, or bling–bling (as it is also known)… and, of course, corruption… blatant, flagrant, systemic… and a tradition dating all the way back (many claim) to the Roman Occupation… handed on from father to son (be it perpetrator or victim) for centuries, a millennium, and not about to change any time soon…

That le Speakeasy was able to resist the myriad of cascading assaults to which it was subjected over the twenty years of its existence, is actually a miracle. This achievement was not always graceful, but it was always sustained… and (one likes to think) with the support and beneficent protection of courageous leaders who came before (whose interventions were so frequently sought in prayer…) and many of whose names graced the façade and inner walls of le Speakeasy.

As Marguerite Yoursenar so aptly said, the protection of animals and the defense of Man are the same combat. Perhaps now, when humanity has its back to the wall in mortal combat with creatures who would cull their fellows like unwanted livestock, this Truth will be easier to understand : All lives do, indeed, matter.

For a little piece of meat, we steal a Soul from Light,

and from the Space in Time in which it was Born,

and for which it rejoiced.

–Plutarch