Michel Drucker found the right words

French TV is supposed to be in color.  I prefer to say it's black and white: either incredibly lousy or splendid. The time-honored TV celebrity Michel Drucker had harsh words concerning a nitwit named CH who would make me vomit if ever I were obliged to watch him for any length of time. Drucker has been around for decades, and his TV credentials are the finest in French media history.

Concerning the vomit guy, Drucker came up with a delightful formula:

It was impossible for me to do that kind of bad TV work. My mother would have been disgusted. She wouldn't have let me come home. She would have changed the door locks to keep me out in the cold.

Latest map of Mosul

This map has just appeared on the French Internet :

Click to enlarge slightly

How many days, weeks or months will it take

for the black zone to disappear... forever ?

In an upside-down world, roles change

Hollande has unleashed a terrible truth

In the book Un président ne devrait pas dire ça by Gérard Davet and Fabrice Lhomme, the most outlandish « ça » consisted of admitting that a chief of state might decide, outside any kind of legal framework whatsoever, that it is better for the nation that a particular extremely dangerous individual should simply cease to exist.

[photo Martin Bureau / AFP]

Many observers consider that Hollande was a nincompoop in enabling the publication of this secret information. One might imagine that, in doing so, he discarded his moral right to remain at the head of France.

I do not intend to say publicly whether or not I share these opinions.

I've changed the sense of Antipodes

Looking out upon an upside-down universe

Many voyagers have imagined for ages that the word "Antipodes" refers to a land on the other side of the globe. So, ever since the day I started this blog, I saw this term as a suitable title, since the blogger was born in Australia, which is roughly (very roughly indeed) an Antipodal location with respect to my new home place, France. Besides, that blog title gave me a pretext for popping in fragments of Australian news.

But, in recent years, the challenge of incorporating into my blog the theme of my land of birth has become hard and tedious. First, there's not really a lot of interesting stuff that happens in, or can be said about, Australia. Second, above all, I have fewer and fewer communications with Australia, even through the Internet. So, I was finding it more and more difficult to write anything at all on that subject.

So, I've finally decided that it would be preferable to eliminate altogether the subject of Australia from my Antipodes blog.

Maybe not the nice novel I need

I don't often read novels, and I'm not really looking for one at the present moment. Still, I thought it might be worthwhile glancing at a description of the novel that has just won the prestigious Prix Goncourt in Paris. Well, the author is Leïla Slimani. The theme of her novel Chanson douce [Sweet Song] sounds about as charming and soothing as a kick in the balls from a guy wearing football boots. She deals with the assassination of two children by their nurse. I'm sure I should read it... but I fear I won't. There's so much exciting news on the Internet and television about killings of all kinds.

Now kids, if you'll calm down, put your pyjamas on, and jump into bed, I'll read you a few pages of a nice story about children. And I'll give you a handful of cyanide lollies.

Is the big bugger still in town ?

Click here to access an article in The Independent suggesting that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi might be hiding these days inside the city of Mosul. This information comes from "a senior Kurdish official" who spoke to The Independent. Let's hope the USA can quickly find the big bugger and drone him. There's an even better idea. Iraqi soldiers might simply find him in hiding, and put him in a bag bound for Baghdad.

Zombie in the Elysées Palace

In The New York Times, the journalist Adam Nossiter has written an article [here] about the French president François Hollande.

The author looks upon Hollande as a living dead specimen who seems to be politically alive. Our president “still occupies the magnificent gilded Élysée Palace, still gives speeches attended by important people and still attends ribbon-cuttings”, whereas nobody believes for an instant that he’ll survive the forthcoming presidential election.

Hollande’s most unexpected recent attack—not only on his enemies, but on his former friends and associates—was a book of “secrets” published by two journalists, Gérard Davet and Fabrice Lhomme. It's title in English : A President Shouldn't Say Such Things.

In earlier days, François Hollande could only be bruised by a very tough opponent. Nowadays, he succeeds in doing the job all on his own.

Beginning of the end of the liberation of Mosul

Elite Iraqi soldiers moved into the north of Mosul yesterday, in the neighborhood of Gogjali. A few hours later, the general Taleb Cheghati Al-Kenani, in command of Iraqi counter-terrorist troops, said it was the beginning of the end of the liberation process that had started a fortnight ago. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of other Iraqi soldiers are encircling the city from the east, the north and the west, while the US-commanded coalition controls the air space.

Wounded Iraqi soldier
[Photo by French photographer Laurent Van der Stockt for Le Monde]

Experts believe that Daesh would have between 3,000 and 5,000 individuals in the city, striving to defend to the bitter end the place where their chief Abou Bakr Al-Baghdadi had proclaimed a caliphate over Iraqi and Syrian territory taken in 2014.

Moving into Mosul

Click here to see dramatic footage from Mosul. The journalist Arnaud Comte and his cameraman are working in a nasty environment.

Halloween without laughter