Can French youth still write French ?

I have my doubts... and it saddens me.

David Cameron is a man in the news

The British prime minister David Cameron seems to be playing with fire. Or maybe I might say that a lot of fire seems to be playing with the PM. I'm thinking, of course, of the Panama Papers, which have just brought the late Cameron father and his son into the limelight. I have the impression that the case of the PM and the forthcoming Brexit referendum (on 23 June) might well implode between now and then.

Although I have little evidence to back up such a belief, I've often felt that tax cheating is indeed a rather British preoccupation.

BREAKING NEWS Friday 8 April 2016 — Not only is Cameron a prick; he's also a liar, who only starts to approach the truth when he's cornered. He has just changed completely his explanations concerning links to his late father's offshore wealth. David Cameron's upper-class Pommy slickness gives me goose pimples, and makes me sick. It's rare for me to react so violently to a fellow's face and grin, not to mention his tone of voice and his complacency. That's not an argument, I know. Sorry. For the moment, I can't make myself clearer.

Where did Hannibal cross the Alps?

If only my smart dog Fitzroy had been around in 218 BC, I'm sure he would have figured out rapidly the exact itinerary chosen by Hannibal to cross the Alps and move into Italy. Fitzroy would have simply sniffed around for a while until he determined with accuracy the places where there were traces of horse dung and elephant piss, and he would have known immediately where Hannibal had traveled.

These days, scholars are still trying to solve this problem, and they are using scientific instruments to sniff at ancient specimens of animal dejections. Click here to access an article by Chris Allen, an environmental microbiologist at Queen's University Belfast, who reveals how microbial evidence has located dung left by Hannibal's horses when they were moving across the mountains.

[ I find it hard to believe that this kind of pseudo-scientific historical research is indeed serious. I'm not exactly proud to admit that I tend to be biased by the fact that the research in question has been conducted by would-be Alpine specialists from Northern Ireland. ]

The exact spot where Hannibal crossed the Alps is thought to be the treacherous Col de Traversette, seen here:

In the following map of the section of the Alps between France and Italy, the red blob indicates the location of the Col de Traversette:

Click to enlarge slightly

In the lower left-hand corner of this map, you can find a tiny village named Risoul. That's the Alpine birthplace of my dog Fitzroy, which lies just a whiff to the west of the spot where Hannibal and his animals scrambled over the Col de Traversette. It goes without saying that, if the Irish fellow Chris Allen wanted to call upon help from a local specialist to locate traces of archaic elephant piss and horse dung, I'm sure that my dog Fitzroy would be thrilled to participate in such an excursion... particularly if it's a chance to get involved in ancient history.

Gold Coast nut

Alex de Waal is an executive in charge of Queensland tourism. So, it’s normal that he was proud in June 2014 of that nitwit invention of personalized number plates.

Alex de Waal has just stepped into the limelight once again with his moronic opinions on coral bleaching. He downplays claims reported by scientists, and says that they’re overstated. He believes that areas in the vicinity of Cairns and Port Douglas, where most boat tours visit, are "looking great".

Why is this uninspiring fellow put in charge
of such a precious fragile asset?

Renaud won't be voting for the Left

The popular French singer Renaud emerged recently from a lengthy period that appeared to be linked (?) to depression and alcohol. Next Sunday afternoon, his appearance on the TV show of Michel Drucker is being hailed like an arrival of the Messiah. Meanwhile, the resurrected hero is voicing his current dislike of his former Left-wing friends. Consequently, political observers are bending over backwards (along with Renaud himself) in attempts to say whether the singer will end up voting for such-and-such a Right-wing candidate.

Recent rumors mention François Fillon. Personally, I feel that Renaud's a bright lad who's good at handling his publicity. When searching for an ideal expression, Renaud has the linguistic skills of a street poet: "La politique de ce gouvernement me débecte." (I'm incapable of translating his words into English. Maybe: "The government's politics sicken me.")

Getting ready for a tough match

This morning, in the football stadium at Saint-Etienne, emergency crews carried out plans for the forthcoming Euro 2016 matches by simulating a terrorist attack involving lethal gas. Nobody got hurt.

French presidential candidate, fruitcake category

This relatively moronic French fellow, Jacques Cheminade, has just enrolled himself as a presidential candidate. He competed already in 2012 and obtained 0.25% of the votes. One of Cheminade's popular plans is to set up colonies on the Moon and the planet Mars. He has also compared Obama to Hitler.

One of many versions of the Antipodes Law of Intelligence

Anybody who explicitly compares somebody with Hitler is probably a nitwit.

Panama papers

In the domain of financial scandals, this appears to be a really big show.

The Icelandic prime minister, two leading members of his government, and the chief of his political party have already been ensnared. And there'll surely be more to come, in various places across the globe.

Click to enlarge slightly

Portrait retouching in Sydney

When I was a young man in Sydney, I often used to catch a suburban train at an underground station in the city named Wynyard.

The station had two platforms, which could be entered from several outside places. But every aspect of this station was uniformly ugly.

To access staircases leading down to the platforms, people trudged along ramps packed with stalls of vendors.

Even the entrance located in a neighboring park was so dull that it might have been an underground toilet.

The main reason I'm raving on about this uninteresting Sydney train station is because I was reminded recently of a particular kind of boutique that had become popular in this setting. Merchants proposed retouching services for old damaged photographs. As a naive child, I had been impressed by the magical skills of the firms that carried out this retouching, whose results were demonstrated proudly in their boutique windows. First, we were shown a severely-torn fragment of an old damaged photo. Then we admired the magic outcome of asking the specialists to repair the damages.

I would have liked to include some graphical specimens in this blog post, to illustrate the theme that I'm presenting, but I was incapable of finding the kind of stuff I had in mind.

For ages, I had never actually met up with anybody who called upon this type of retouching service. Then suddenly, when I was least expecting to encounter this kind of old-fashioned stuff, I was invited to witness such a specimen in the village of Pont-en-Royans, just down the road from Gamone. The most amazing aspect of the event was that this shoddy retouching, giving rise to a totally fake image, had in fact been performed, by chance, in my native Australia... which gave me the impression that this abominable approach to "retouching" was almost certainly an Aussie specialty. I had just met up with a new resident of the French village: an Australian lady whose surname coincided with that of a famous Australian explorer. I naturally asked the lady if she happened to be related to the famous explorer, whose story was part of our history lessons when I was a school kid in Grafton. The lady replied: "Yes, of course, he's an ancestor of mine. Step inside and I'll show you his portrait." Well, inside the lady's house, in the heart of the village, I was shocked to come upon a framed color portrait that was so terribly kitsch that it looked as if it had just emerged from a scruffy retouching boutique in the Wynyard ramp.

A few years later, I had a second encounter of a similar kind,... once again, from an Australian lady. In the context of my family-history research that was giving rise to A Little Bit of Irish, I was excited to learn by e-mail that a remote relative (?) in Australia was prepared to send me a copy of a photo of one of our old-time bushranger folk. When it arrived, I was saddened to find that, once again, I was faced with a kitsch mess from a Wynyard photo shop. I trashed it instantly.

Spirit of Judaism

I've just been rereading my Israeli novel, All the Earth is Mine, which I published through Gamone Press.

I'm constantly proud of that major period of my life when I was often visiting Israel, studying the Hebrew language and reflecting vaguely about Judaism. It was one of the most fascinating and truly noble adventures of my life. I look upon my novel as a personal celebration.

Pedalling with pills

This attractive drawing has been used in Le Monde to illustrate an ordinary article about the coming cycling season.

I often wonder whether many conscientious parents would be thrilled, these days, to see their children becoming enthusiastic about road cycling. At another level, when I was driven around a bit in Brittany last year, I became aware of the fact that riding a bike on rural roads has become a terribly treacherous pastime. As a young man, I made several thrilling two-day trips from Paris to Brittany (about 450 km) then back to Paris a few days later. Today, I'm sad to realize that any attempt to carry out such a pleasant trip would be totally suicidal.

Australian self-righteousness

From time to time, my native land is overcome by waves of self-righteousness concerning the poor treatment of Aborigines. This was the case — first on so-called Sorry Day, 26 May 1998, then again on 13 February 2008 — when Australia made a point of apologizing to Aborigines for having dispossessed them of much of their land and treated their offspring badly.

The truth of the matter is that these special days are largely a pointless celebration of self-righteousness, and that the actual conditions of Aborigines don't seem to evolve greatly.

Click here to consult a pompous declaration that emanated recently from an Australian university on what they refer to as Indigenous Terminology, which is basically a matter of learning to express oneself in a politically correct manner.

French president's big flop

Finally, in spite of an early promise, our constitution will not be altered to deal with French terrorists. In the wake of the terrorist acts of 13 November 2015, François Hollande had suggested that the nationality of our home-grown criminals might be altered, to render them harmless.

Unfortunately, right from the start, this seemingly smart idea got screwed up, and went wrong. Today's official backflip is a major setback for our president. I can't imagine how he might possibly recover his popularity, and get reelected for a second presidential term.

Children's stories enhanced by US firearms

US kids are already concerned by the constitutional right to carry firearms. Since the beginning of 2016, some 50 US citizens less than 18 years old have accidentally fired a shot at somebody, often themselves.

It was inevitable, in God's Own Country, that old-fashioned stories for European children would end up being enhanced by the presence of protective firearms. Conscientious US parents certainly won't tolerate the possibility that their fat little kids might get devoured by a wolf.

Koala gets police assistance on a busy highway

Click here to see a Queensland koala taking advantage of exceptional police road-safety assistance. It would be a mistake, I fear, if koalas were to imagine that they can count upon this kind of convenient assistance. They need to realize that Australian police officers are busy individuals, who don't normally have spare time to help koalas cross the road. I feel it's the responsibility of mother koalas to get this message across to their young offspring, maybe with the help of government specialists in road safety and education. Could we imagine the creation of some kind of regular school training in this field, for juvenile koalas?

Difference between murderers and assassins ?

In my own mind, this linguistic question arises often. For example, in the case of my preceding blog post, I wasn’t quite sure whether I should designate the Taliban suicide-bomber who killed 72 people on Sunday as a murderer or rather an assassin. This question was further complicated by the fact that the killer had surely targeted Pakistani Christians, whereas his victims apparently turned out to be mostly Muslims.

The Arabic word hashishiyyin is a plural noun meaning “people who consume the drug hashish”. At the time of the Crusades, it was thought that future killers were often deliberately motivated, prior to their murderous acts, by drugging themselves with hashish. Consequently, the plural term gave rise erroneously to a singular word, assassin. Over the years, an assassin is thought of as a murderer of an illustrious victim. In the case of terrorist killers whose victims are often everyday citizens, there is no obvious reason to label such murderers as assassins. Admittedly, the case of the celebrated Charlie journalists in Paris might be thought of indeed as a strict assassination.

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.

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.

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.