France holds emergency meeting over student protests, calls the severed hand that followed an "accident"

…(cont) Next page, October 2nd. Four outlets wrote something down that day — Morning Star, Common Dreams, and two separate CBS dispatches. Four hundred schools closed. More than two hundred people wounded. The justice minister, on the record, calling it "an active and violent minority." I wrote all four down because I couldn't get them to agree on a number, and I wanted to see if they'd agree on anything else. Does an emergency meeting get called over an active and violent minority, or does it get called over something bigger than that? The notebook doesn't say which. It just has the meeting, and it has the minority, on facing pages.

I walked to the corner store for cigars with the notebook still in my coat pocket, because I wasn't done with it yet.

Here's where it gets interesting. October 6th, two pages, same date, two different countries' worth of story. The New York Post: an "intifada in the heart of Europe," an "orgy of Islamo-leftist violence." CBS, that same day: two hundred fifty thousand people in the street over funding cuts that have left public schools with leaks, rats, and not enough desks. The New York Times, the next morning, October 7th: a national political reckoning, people of all ages joining in, backing student demands that the government invest more in schools. Three pages, one stretch of weeks — is there one protest in any of them the other two would recognize?

And on that same morning, October 7th, Fox News wrote down what the Prime Minister said about it. A teenager lost a hand. Another was blinded. "Accidents happen," he said.

I sat with that one a while in the garage, dog at my feet, trying to get the order right before I wrote anything under it. My notebook has the emergency meeting dated the 1st. It doesn't have a date for the hand — only the day Fox got around to writing it down, the 7th. So which came first, the meeting or the hand? The page doesn't say. Does "accidents happen" sound like a sentence a government reaches for before an emergency meeting, or six days after one?

Oh — hold on. One more thing, before you go. The glovebox, the workbench, the corner store bag, the coat pocket — this same notebook went through all of it today, and at every stop I checked whether the page agreed with the one before it. A government with an emergency meeting on the 1st. A newspaper with an intifada on the 6th. A wire service with two hundred fifty thousand people and a leaking roof on the 6th. A Prime Minister with an accident on the 7th. Is there a single protest that fits all four of those pages at once? I've still got the notebook open. I haven't found it yet.