Les Voleurs De Pommes

What's the hottest electronic gift of the season?  Stolen Apple products!

Verging on the point of trend, more Apple products were boosted, but this time, the bandits were overseas.  A few hours before midnight Monday night, the Apple Store near the building that hosts the Paris Opera was broken into by a group of masked men. After overpowering a janitor who was about to leave (what sounds less difficult to force your way past then a French janitor?), they skipped over the display products, cash registers, and safes.  their target was $1.3 million in boxed inventory.

The goods were loaded onto a truck conveniently waiting nearby. Although there was an increased police presence in the city for New Year's celebrations, the thieves were able to get away relatively easy due to the police focus on partiers.  It's a brilliant idea, with more gadgets and less heroin than the poorly executed plan from Killing Zoe (hence the lede photo)

The Paris Underground

Below Paris there are several Metro stations that are not in service due to a number of reasons (moving or mergers, abandonment, never opening). This article is a safe and inexpensive way to view them.

Pissed Off

In 1987, Andres Serrano plunged a plastic crucifix into a glass of his own urine and photographed. "Piss Christ" was making a statement on the misuse of religion...and fanatical assholes destroyed it.

Controversy has always followed the work, but on on Palm Sunday it was attacked with hammers and destroyed after an "anti-blasphemy" campaign by French Catholic fundamentalists in Avignon. And I thought forgiveness was the Christian thing to do...

Serrano often defended his photograph as a "condemnation of those who abuse the teachings of Christ for their own ignoble ends" and criticism of the "billion-dollar Christ-for-profit industry". In 2007, it was vandalised in Australia, and a show of his was ransacked by neo-Nazis in Sweden. The photograph had been shown in France several times without incident, and was hanging for the last four months as part of art-dealer Yvon Lambert's personal collection. And two weeks ago a heavy wave of protest began.

Lambert complained of extremists who had sent him tens of thousands of complaint emails, which could be credited to Civitas, a lobby group that says it aims to re-Christianize France who launched an online petition and mobilised other fundamentalist groups. They also organised almost 1,000 Christian protesters, who marched through Avignon to the gallery. The gallery immediately stepped up security, putting plexiglass in front of the photograph and assigning two gallery guards to stand in front of it.

On Palm Sunday morning, four people in sunglasses entered the exhibition just after it opened at 11am. One took a hammer out of his sock and threatened the guards with it. A guard grabbed another man around the waist but within seconds the group managed to take a hammer to the plexiglass screen and slash the photograph. They also smashed another work, which showed the hands of a meditating nun.

The gallery director said it would reopen with the destroyed works on show "so people can see what barbarians can do". I'd rather they take a hammer and pick to the vandals, and put that on display, but at least they are not backing down from lunatics with religious tunnel-vision.

Proto-Furries?

Blow Out Sale In The Explosives Deparment

Police acting on a warning found a bundle of dynamite inside a Paris department store at the height of the Christmas season, and a group demanding that France withdraw from Afghanistan claimed responsibility. Yes, get French department stores out of Afghanistan!

Sticks of dynamite tied together but without a detonator were found in the Printemps department store, a favored shopping destination for tourists, and a Christmas season attraction because of its festive window displays. The explosives appeared "relatively old", and police said they were found in the third floor restroom of the menswear department. Five sticks were found.

"There was no risk of explosion," authorities said.

French news agency Agence France-Presse said it received a letter from a group calling itself the Afghan Revolutionary Front saying that several bombs had been planted in the store. Police said they searched the store and found the dynamite because of the warning. The group was "totally unknown" to police but that the claim was being studied. In the letter, the group demanded the withdrawal of French troops from Afghanistan before the end of February, and threatened attacks if France refuses. "Otherwise we will go back into action in your big capitalist stores and this time without warning you," the letter said.

President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has increased France's troop levels in Afghanistan, quickly stressed that he would not bend to terrorism. France has 2,800 troops in Afghanistan. A senior police official said several aspects of the incident did not bear the hallmarks of Islamic terrorism — sending a warning, the type of explosives used, the language in the letter and the name used by the group. Perhaps it was women's shoes. Those dicks have been at odds with menswear since the spring sale.