Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Murder of Christians in Pakistan

This hallucinating photo shows a devastated Pakistani mother who has just learnt that her son died in a terrorist bombing at Lahore.


Click here to access a British newspaper website with dramatic images of the slaughter perpetrated on Sunday by a Taliban suicide-bomber.

In a distant city on another continent, the New York artist Liza Donnelly has used simple strokes of her pencils to express the universal grief of Humanity's maternal civilization.

French easter eggs of a special kind


In the town of Pierrelatte, a little to the south of where I live, there's a famous crocodile farm, for tourists and lovers of these splendid Nile reptiles. Easter is their annual breeding time. Click here to access a video on this fascinating subject.

Monday, March 28, 2016

News from Belgium: video of a free man

Click here to watch the video of a man
who has just been set free in Belgium.

His name is Fayçal Cheffou. To the left of the innocent man, you can see two genuine terrorists: Ibrahim El Bakraoui and Najim Laachraoui, who would soon blow themselves to smithereens. I would imagine that the police are keeping a protective eye upon the innocent fellow, to make sure he doesn't run into harm. What a wonderful world!

In another domain, click here to watch a short video of a mother in Molenbeek, whose daughter has disappeared, probably forever, as the wife of a Daesh jihadist in Syria.


Meanwhile, in Brussels, the count of recent victims of terrorism has risen to 35 dead and 340 wounded.

Sunday, March 27, 2016

What do we mean by a “Molenbeek” ?

Patrick Kanner, the French Ministre de la ville (minister in charge of townships) has said that, in France, at least a hundred neighborhoods are similar to (have the same potential problems as) Molenbeek. It's a kind of newly-invented word in our French language. So, an obvious question arises: What exactly do we mean by a “Molenbeek” ?


« It's an enormous concentration of poverty and unemployment. It's a collection of ghettos. It's a maffia system with an underground economy. It's a system in which public services have practically disappeared. It's a system in which the elected representatives of the people have ceased to react. »

The minister added that the big difference between comparable situations in Belgium and in France is that, here in France, the existence of so-called Molenbeek systems is being tackled constantly.

I've noticed indeed that, in the French press, there seems to be a mounting degree of outspoken criticism of Belgium's failure to handle her "Molenbeek" communities.

Dramatic arrest at Schaerbeek last Friday

In the following photo, taken last Friday, a wanted fellow named Abderamane Ameroud has just been "neutralized" by police at a tram stop in Schaerbeek (Brussels). He's still perfectly alive, of course, but his legs have received a good dose of a mysterious police product that prevents him from going any further.


The victim of this apparently successful neutralization operation is still holding on to his back pack (maybe because his muscles have become rigid?) while a robot vehicle is moving up to the scene. Missing from the photo is the victim's young daughter, who was calmly taken away from the scene by detectives, before the robot was brought into action. You might click here in the hope of receiving understandable images and explanations concerning this dramatic arrest.

Personally, I think I've evolved somewhat in my understanding of police techniques. And I would hope that police forces in my native land (Australia) have also evolved considerably since their shoddy handling of Sydney's Lindt Café affair in December 2014. I often said to myself, in the aftermath of that calamity, that it would be a good idea if Australian police were to seek high-level professional advice from France. I don't know whether this ever happened, but I don't think so... particularly when I notice that naive Australian political leaders are trying to give advice these days to France and Belgium.

Saturday, March 26, 2016

Trivial family data that remains a mystery


Apparently my father "Bill" Skyvington, as a teenager in Grafton, had made friends with a well-known family, named Clunies-Ross. It was only recently that I acquired a little information on this friendship, from my father's sister Yvonne Tarrant, but I've never been able to obtain any confirmation whatsoever. My father himself never seems to have mentioned this friendship to any member of my generation. So, one might say that this alleged friendship is such a flimsy tale that I ended up looking upon it as an empty family legend, which somebody (not my father) had invented. Furthermore this friendship legend was trivial, unimportant. But I'll repeat the tale briefly here in my blog, in the vague hope that readers might offer me a little factual data.

Clunies-Ross history and facts

Click here to meet up with historical facts concerning the so-called King of the Cocos Islands. More recent information deals with a descendant of the family who was in charge of scientific research in Australia, and there is even an aged descendant of the family living today in Western Australia. But nowhere in this mass of data is there any mention of members of the Clunies-Ross family who might have become my father's friends.

Story of a phantom vessel in South Grafton, the Induna

On the banks of the Clarence River in South Grafton, rusty remnants of the iron hull of an old vessel, the Induna, are still visible today.


When I was a child, we could clearly observe the perfectly visible form of the celebrated ship that used to transport train elements across the Clarence River before the construction of the bridge in 1932. Click here to read this story, which even includes a vague mention of Winston Churchill.


There seems to be no doubt whatsoever that the vessel, after being towed from Sydney to the Clarence River by the tug Heroic, in late 1924, steamed upriver to Grafton under the command of a certain Captain T. Clunies-Ross. According to our family legend, the captain's family settled down in Grafton, and my father "Bill" Skyvington (born in 1917) made friends with the Clunies-Ross children. That's all I know: certainly not much of a story...

Friday, March 25, 2016

Silly fellow who thought he was funny

A humorous Jewish fellow decided to celebrate the Purim festival by getting dressed up in an Arabic djellaba, carrying a fake kalachnikov and wandering into an austere synagogue in Vincennes.


Once inside, he cried out "Allah Akbar". Ah, what an imaginative and joyous clown. He'll have an opportunity of testing his sense of humor upon a local law court.

Beethoven Ode to Joy in Brussels


Click here to hear Beethoven in Brussels.

For the last half-century, tears start to flow whenever I hear that music. Today is no exception...

Thursday, March 24, 2016

This fellow's name is Malcolm Turnbull


He happens to be the prime minister of a rather dull country, Australia (where I was born in 1940), on the other side of the planet. Turnbull obtained that job last year, not because Australian citizens had elected him as their chief, but simply because he decided unilaterally to replace the existing party leader, Tony Abbott. Well, for reasons I fail to understand, this quite ordinary Australian fellow believes that, in the wake of the recent terrorist attacks in France and Belgium, he has political lessons to give to the Old World. I obtained that information this evening, through a joke item on a French TV channel. I would be less embarrassed if Turnbull were to simply shut his dumb mouth.

POST SCRIPTUM Click here for a real challenge that Turnbull must face.

Radovan Karadzic, "the butcher of Bosnia", condemned to 40 years in prison

At the height of his notoriety, Radovan Karadzic was known because of his flamboyant hair style: which was not unlike that of a present-day US presidential candidate. Today, the so-called "butcher of Bosnia" received a 40-year prison sentence.


In the above photo, his ugly mate was Radko Mladic, who is still awaiting a trial.


When he was arrested in 2008, Karadzic had been a fugitive for ten years, disguised as a hairy monk.


Radovan Karadzic and Radko Mladic committed one of the nastiest crimes in modern history, the genocide of Srebrenica, perpetrated between 11 and 13 July 1995.

Great scientists receive their award in Paris

This afternoon, in Paris, two great scientists, the French microbiologist Emmanuelle Charpentier and the American biochemist Jennifer Doudna, will be receiving the Oréal Unesco prize that they share for their discovery of the revolutionary CRISPR-Cas9 technology that is now applied worldwide in genetics research.


Many observers still have doubts about the ethical aspects of this technology.

"Before CRISPR-Cas9 might be used as a menu to build human babies, a lot of work would need to be done", states Emmanuelle Charpentier. "I feel that things are happening very rapidly. I think we should proceed step by step."

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Passenger name record

The idea of setting up a PNR file (passenger name record) for people who move around by planes in Europe is a Loch Ness monster story that comes to light momentarily whenever there's a search for terrorists, then it disappears once again.


At present, both Manuel Valls and Bernard Cazeneuve have been strongly advocating this PNR project.

Do terrorists of the kind that concerns us today actually move around in Europe on commercial airliners? That would surprise me. I'm reminded of the joke about a fellow, having lost his keys, who's searching for them at the foot of a lamp post. Somebody asks him: "Are you sure you lost them at this place?" The fellow shakes his head. "No, I don't think I lost them here... but the light from the lamp post makes it easier to search for them in this area."

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Good Texan gun robbers

http://videos.lexpress.fr/actualite/monde/video-l-impressionnant-braquage-d-une-armurerie-au-texas_1769824.html

When I say that these fellows are "good", it goes without saying that I don't really mean that they're actually good, in any way whatsoever. Or, if you prefer, they're good at being bad bastards.

My thoughts go out to all our Belgian friends



The Eiffel Tower in Paris is lit up this evening with the colors of Belgium.



Often, throughout the day, while watching news broadcasts about these tragedies in Brussels, I've been reminded of the extent to which strong links have always existed between France and Belgium.

French prime minister: "We are at war"

This morning, the French prime minister Manuel Valls made a curious statement: "We are at war."


Personally, I'm not convinced that words of this kind serve any useful purpose. The Daech bastards, whose operations are not a case of conventional warfare, don't deserve the honor of such a declaration from the prime minister of France.

Mad Daech bastards have hit Belgium

Daech spokesmen have just declared officially that members of their organization are responsable for this morning's attacks in Brussels.

Click to enlarge slightly

How much more time will it take before European forces eradicate forever these mad bastards?

BREAKING NEWS (Tuesday 17 h): Belgian police have just released this photo of three suspects:

Monday, March 21, 2016

New images of Molenbeek capture

Click here to access video.

I was impressed by the courage of the guy in white who decided to dash through the door, just in front of the armed policemen, and start running... as if he were invisible or capable of dodging the bullets.


He was rapidly "neutralized"... which is police jargon indicating that his body was hit by a mysterious pharmaceutical dart (?) making it impossible for him to go any further. Was he courageous, or rather suicidal, or simply foolish? Totally stupid? Maybe he was counting on prayer...

Practical questions

It was only a few years ago that I started to become obsessed by asking various practical questions, and attempting to find answers. Our modern life in society often leads us to ignore many fundamental questions of a practical nature, as if they weren't important enough to merit our attention. For example, countless urban youngsters eat hamburgers regularly without fully understanding all the steps that go into the production of such foodstuffs. For all they know, hamburgers might grow magically on MacDo trees.

When I revisited my native land, ten years ago, I was quite impressed by the widespread presence in Sydney of sushi products, all over the city. My first reaction was to wonder how it came about that so many Australians had acquired the skill of producing sushi. Had they all gone up to Japan and back, for a few weeks, to attend training courses? Had they then installed many modern Japanese kitchens in Sydney, to create these products? The truth of the matter is that all these sushi products were no doubt manufactured by a single firm, in one small factory, and then delivered throughout the city by small vans, in the early hours of the morning.

Over the last few days, I've become fascinated by a trivial practical question concerning the small town in Australia where I grew up, South Grafton. I had received an e-mail from a young man who informed me that his mother had been the daughter of our village baker, named Allan Gregor. It was easy for me to detect the building in which the bakery had existed (when I was a child), for its facade was crowned by a sheaf of wheat. And customers entered the bakery through the left-hand door, behind the reddish automobile.

Click to enlarge slightly

I was instantly intrigued by an obvious question. That bakery must have comprised an oven fueled by wood. So, how did the baker take delivery of wood for his oven, and flour for his dough? For hours, I studied GoogleMaps images, trying to figure out where the wood and flour could have been delivered. It took me some time to realize that there used to be a narrow lane to the right of the bakery, where a tree and a whitish vehicle are located in the above photo. I don't know whether the lane was big enough to allow the presence of a vehicle, but that's a minor question. In the early hours of the morning, a truck could have halted outside the lane, and the baker could have then used a trolley to cart wood and flour along the lane, to the rear end of his bakery.

Sunday, March 20, 2016

Vernal equinox, first day of spring

In our northern hemisphere, 20 March 2016 is the vernal equinox: the first day of spring.



I've always liked that woodcut of a fellow poking his head through the celestial vault... but I realize, of course, that it's meaningless nonsense, and a silly choice of an illustration intended to evoke the start of spring.

Saturday, March 19, 2016

Castle in Spain

Ever since the 9th century, the castle of Matrera stands proudly on a hill near Cadix.


But the ancient castle suffered from heavy rain in 2013, and was in need of restoration. This work was carried out by a Spanish architect named Carlos Quevedo Rojas. The problem, alas, is that the restored medieval castle now looks like a modern concrete building.


The architect is nevertheless convinced that he did a good job. Click here to access a short video of the massacre. An observer is reminded of another notorious restoration job in Spain: the Ecce Homo fresco at Borja carried out by an unskilled 82-year-old lady.