Unfiltered cigarettes
25th anniversary the other day of the french secret service bombing of the greenpeace boat Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour. I can still remember the outrage people felt, how obviously french products disappeared from the shops (cigarettes, cheeses, wines). Certainly Gitanes and Gauloises never returned though the wine and cheese certainly did and I wonder how many people alive at the time remember it at all, I’d certainly forgotten all about it, though I think it formed a lot of my underlying attitudes about France. In retrospect it also seems like the last gasp of the french flexing old colonial muscle in the pacific.
