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 put out ad nausium by official French administrative authorities, who openly proclaimed to (in the majority, linguistically isolated) French people that one of the first sure signs their children were being brainwashed into a ‘dangerous sect’ was a ‘change in dietary habits’.

This was also a time when some U.S. authorities were loudly proclaiming that ‘animal rights’ activists were at the top of the list of ‘dangerous domestic terrorists‘. To be fair, some violent tactics being used then by certain groups gave all vegetarians a bad name. And when it became more common for aware and brave doctors (mostly in the States, due to seemingly greater ‘wiggle room’ over there, which Big Pharma did not allow to last for long…) to recommend a vegan diet for such diseases as cardiovascular, cancer and diabetes, proponents chose to refer to the diet as ‘plant-based’, or ‘veggie’, to disassociate themselves… 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 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… all of it. In le Speakeasy, I decided early on to have shared tables, just to be able to fit into the limited space the number of seats allowed in the dining room. Originally the previous restaurant occupied larger, adjacent premises which were unoccuped, but also unavailable, next door, and my space had been that restaurant’s bar de nuit, with two communicating passages that the landlord of my space had had walled up, in order to rent his space. So, what had once been one restaurant with a bar became two spaces. But the separation work was hastily and cheaply done, so that later on, those two communicating passages would be a constant (and deliberate) source of friction with the neighboring shopkeeper, a niçois, who moved in five years after me.

Clearly, those in charge today, locally in Nice, as well as nationally in France, as in most countries, are (almost exclusively) very disturbed people, bent (unconsciously) on self-destruction, and 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, under the illusion of being smarter (meaning 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, at the beginning of the 21st Century, see Ayn Rand’s remarkable Atlas Shrugged, and particularly the passages reproduced here.

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

But back to le Speakeasy… By 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 meanings (or conspiracies!), just accept everything at face value… Albeit unlikely, our leaders assured us that they were in charge, so we had nothing to worry about, we could safely leave 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 and far from home, as well as 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 corruption… blatant, flagrant, systemic… dating all the way back (many claim) to the Roman Occupation… In other words, a long, historical tradition that has been handed on from father to son (be it perpetrator or victim) for centuries, and not about to change any time soon…

That the establishment was able to resist the myriad of cascading assaults to which it was subjected over the nearly twenty years of its existence, is actually a miracle. This achievement could not always be graceful, but it was always sustained… and (one likes to think) with the support and benificent protection of courageous leaders who came before, whose interventions were so frequently sought… and many of whose names graced the facade 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, this Truth will grow in our understanding.

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