Le Monde Aux Barricades With The Huffington Post

Prescient, fortuitous or simply clairvoyant the Huffington Post will be launching a French language edition, Le HuffingtonPost, in conjunction with Paris' great daily Le Monde Group and Les Nouvelles Editions Independantes.

And the timing could not be more fortuitous.

As the New York Times reported today in its coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement, this is a percolating story threading its way throughout the nation. What better partner to engage than Le Monde, having been there and done that, in what may well emerge as one of the major news stories and themes of the months to come.

Back, now some 40 years ago the "revolution of 1968," the streets of Paris were astir with the mass demonstrations of first students, then citizens from all walks of life, marching against a government perceived as unresponsive to its citizenry. To many the demonstrations changed forever the relationship between obdurate governance and 'vox populi'. In Le Monde the demonstrations made for headlines day after day, with an in depth and clear coverage of the issues at hand and the street theater, as it was being played out. The demonstrations caught the imagination of much of the world in that they were perceived as not being the voice of a lone constituency such as workers or a minority, but rather a purely popular manifestation superseding cultural, ethnic, age and class boundaries.

Inherent to the movement were the varied, mordant and lucid posters pasted to walls and lampposts throughout Paris and then much of France. A small but cogent sampling are set forth below, their message unambiguous.

The Return to Normal

And then, as though anticipating the events some 43 years into the future.

May '68: The Beginning of a Prolonged Battle

Is it and will it be so? With Le Monde on board one can be sure we will find out sooner than most.