Still more right-wing candidates to come

In the context of next year's presidential election in France, this is an updated presentation of right-wing candidates from the group associated with the ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy. You'll notice that Sarko himself is not yet present in the list.

From left to right: Alain Juppé, François Fillon, Hervé Mariton, Frédéric Lefebvre, Jean-Frédéric Poisson, Nadine Morano and Jean-François Copé.

We're also awaiting the candidacies of Bruno Le Maire and Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet.

One of their left-wing opponents said that Sarko's crowd will soon be big enough to make up a football team. But can we be certain, when the new season starts next year, that the former captain will still be running around excitedly on the playing field?

Personally, I wouldn't bet on it. Not at all...

CIA chief: "Paris was a failure of intelligence"

Hopefully, French politicians and security folk will listen attentively to these words from CIA chief John Brennan, who used the CBS show "60 Minutes" to judge the recent terrorist affairs in Paris. He was interviewed by the CBS correspondent Scott Pelley.

John Brennan: Paris was a failure of intelligence. All but one of the eight terrorists were French citizens, trained by ISIS in Syria. They returned, unnoticed, and attacked six locations killing 130 people.

Scott Pelley: What did you learn from Paris?

John Brennan: That there is a lot that ISIL probably has underway that we don't have obviously full insight into. We knew the system was blinking red. We knew just in the days before that ISIL was trying to carry out something. But the individuals involved have been able to take advantage of the newly available means of communication that are--that are walled off, from law enforcement officials.

Scott Pelley: You're talking about encrypted Internet communications.

John Brennan: Yeah, I'm talking about the very sophisticated use of these technologies and communication systems.

Scott Pelley: After Paris you told your people what?

John Brennan: We gotta work harder. We have to work harder. We need to have the capabilities, the technical capabilities, the human sources. We need to be able to have advanced notice about this so that we can take this-- the steps to stop them. Believe me, intelligence security services have stopped numerous attacks-- operatives-- that have been moved from maybe the Iraq to Syria theater into Europe. They have been stopped and interdicted and arrested and detained and debriefed because of very, very good intelligence.

I hardly need to point out that John Brennan was not referring, in that last sentence, to French intelligence.

Poor-quality fuzzy drawing of a boat

This low-quality drawing is so amateurish that it looks like the fuzzy work of a child. So, I would understand you for thinking it's worthless.

Well, it is indeed an uninteresting work of art... but I was prepared to pardon its weaknesses when I learnt that this was an authentic sketch of the barque Caroline which had reached Rottnest Island near Perth (Australia) in 1829, conveying the Henty brothers James, Stephen and John, accompanied by a few Spanish merino sheep. Four years later, on 6 August 1833, my great-great-grandfather Charles Walker had been employed as a steward aboard that same ship when he arrived in Sydney.

As for Rottnest Island, that was a lovely playground for my son François and me when we used to go sailing on the Zigeuner in 1986. So, at a personal level, this fuzzy drawing is a precious document.

A few years ago, I was surprised to learn that an Australian lady whose maiden name was Sheridan Henty had purchased a house in the neighboring village of Pont-en-Royans. She was a descendant of the Henty pioneers who had reached Western Australia aboard the Caroline. Sheridan showed me a book on her Henty ancestors by Marney Bassett, and that's where I found the fuzzy drawing.

Learning how to splash around in the sea

Who are these people, splashing around like water babies? Are they holiday makers? Is this their initial contact with the gear they're wearing? Well, they're medical staff, attached to the French organization Médecins du Monde (Doctors of the World).

They've jumped into the cold water at Concarneau (Brittany) with the aim of learning, in a hands-on fashion, how to intervene in saving refugees who've been thrown into the sea. Within a week or so, at Marseille, they'll be getting aboard a German patrol boat called Aquarius and sailing to the Italian island of Lampedusa, to await the arrival of refugees fleeing from Libya.

Click here to visit the English-language website of this exemplary French body.

Phone spam

In France, we often receive phone messages from crooks who leave a fake phone number (which generally starts with 0899 or 0892) and ask us to phone back. This has been the case, for example, since a new law about compulsory smoke detectors came into existence.

Citizens in France can complain about this costly rubbish by calling

0 811 02 02 17

or by contacting the French government website at

internet-signalement.gouv.fr

Click here for a short article on this subject.

Darwin Day

Charles Darwin was born on 12 February 1809.

It's wonderful that this birthday of one of the greatest scientists falls just one day after one of humanity's greatest scientific discoveries.