Easter Island imagines its independence

World-famous Easter Island was annexed by Chili in 1888. One might imagine that the Polynesian inhabitants, known as Rapa Nui, might be happy to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their Chilean citizenship. On the contrary, these people would like to acquire their independence from their distant "owners" on the other side of the Pacific.

In fact, the islanders simply wish to recover their ancestral territories, home of the famous ancient statues known as moaïs.

This blog post was inspired by an article in Ouest-France by Léonie Place and Sylvain Clément. The blogger William Skyvington has taken the liberty of borrowing certain photos, created by these journalists, that are contained in the article in Ouest-France. Here is a link to the article:

http://www.ouest-france.fr/leditiondusoir/data/651/reader/reader.html?t=1450718022433?utm_source=neolane_of-eds_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=lienarticle&utm_content=20151221#!preferred/1/package/651/pub/652/page/4

The blogger William Skyvington thanks Ouest-France and the above-mentioned journalists for having borrowed their work.

What indeed was happening here?

Try this link to a French media website that has picked up some kind of a US crime story: http://video.lefigaro.fr/figaro/video/usa-un-reporter-assiste-a-un-braquage-en-direct/4663241302001/

Crime stories and news reporting in the USA appear to be too complicated for me. Maybe I'm not very bright at this level. So, please let me know if you can figure out what indeed was happening there.

And here, if you're still interested, is another mystery TV interview from the USA: http://video.lefigaro.fr/figaro/video/bagarre-en-direct-entre-deux-journalistes-de-la-television-americaine/2359651042001/

Final days of the terrorist Abaaoud

Today, there's a short but superb article in the French newspaper Le Parisien describing the final few days of the terrorist Abdelhamid Abaaoud, hiding like a running bushranger on the northern outskirts of Paris before being disintegrated by guns of French police in the ancient suburban city of Saint-Denis. This is the first time that we have a chance of understanding how in fact the police found the evil fellow and finally destroyed him.

http://www.leparisien.fr/faits-divers/attentats-du-13-novembre-20-h-13-le-mardi-abaaoud-sort-de-son-buisson-20-12-2015-5388857.php

Recall the dates of events. The terrorist atrocities took place in Paris on Friday, 13 November 2015. By the end of the weekend, French police were convinced that the ring-leader was Abdelhamid Abaaoud, but they feared that he had probably fled already from France, just as stealthily as he had arrived.

No, he was still well and truly located in France, hiding in scrub in the Parisian suburb of Aubervilliers. That dull zone would be the terrorist's rough hideout for his final nights of earthly existence. On Monday, 16 November, a witness became aware of the terrorist's hiding-place, and told the police. The next day, on Tuesday afternoon, 17 November, the police had installed a camera in the area. Just after 8 o'clock in the evening, a young woman arrived at the spot, and started to use her phone. Police recognized instantly the angular profile of Abaaoud's cousin Hasna Aït Boulahcen. During the next five minutes, two men emerged from the bushes, one of whom was clearly Abdelhamid Abaaoud himself: the most wanted man in France.

The police received orders from their headquarters to follow the trio stealthily, without daring to intercept them. Clearly, Abaaoud was wearing a thick vest that surely contained explosives. So, the detectives stood by calmly while the fugitives hailed a taxi, to take them to the nearby suburb of Saint-Denis. There, the trio found their way, at 22 h 14, to the door of a sordid squat.

The rest is known history. For hours, during their last night on earth, the three terrorists were smothered constantly in a hail of police ammunition, and blown to bits. One wonders if they ever realized what had hit them. The next day, disfigured dust-covered bodily remnants of the terrorists could only be identified by means of their DNA.

No, we are no longer living together

In breakup photos, former partners can sometimes adopt the facial attitudes of great screen actors. Here, the viewer hardly needs to be informed about the vile thoughts that might be fleeting through the minds of Nicolas Sarkozy and Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet. The actors' expressions are more powerful than words.

The lady (often referred to by her initials as NKM) has told us that she learned through an AFP (Agence France Presse) message that the boss had removed her from the direction of the Républicains, where she was replaced by Laurent Wauquiez (who won the recent election in our local Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region).

Now, a survey has just informed us that two out of three French people consider that Sarko screwed things up when he decided rapidly to kick out NKM. It's quite possible that the offended lady might end up replacing Sarko as the right-wind presidential candidate in 2017. It's a little too early to say so... but not too early to imagine this possibility.

Mother Teresa never told us she specialized in neurology

Talented people shouldn't keep quiet about their extraordinary medical skills, which could save lives. Why didn't Mother Teresa, glorified for taking care of sufferers in Calcutta, ever tell us she could intervene successfully in the case of a man with cancerous tumors in his brain ?

The lady was beatified (?) in 2003. And she will be canonized (?) in Rome on September 4 next year. Meanwhile, countless innocent folk have succumbed to brain tumors in spite of the alleged knowledge of the humble lady named Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, who's only starting to be applauded as a great cancer specialist (?) now that she's dead.

Why do otherwise intelligent human beings persist in inventing impossible legends, and then disseminating them as if they were true?

Watching the sky

I spent a most pleasant hour or so this afternoon watching a web news presentation of the launching by the European Space Agency of a pair of Galileo navigation satellites. Everything went over perfectly, and the live webcast was both simple (none of the typical American jazz) and perfectly clear.

I had the impression that we were tuned in to a very private low-key affair, in the style of a televised sporting match.

Their graphic presentations were highly understandable, even for people (like me) who are unaccustomed to such French-language space-technology shows. Incidentally, it was an excellent companion show to the climate-change broadcasts last week.

Finally, we saw a group of skilled technologists and colleagues who watched enthusiastically the marvelous moment when the two satellites sent back messages confirming that they had been placed in perfect orbits, and were now fully operational.

It's fabulous, all this recent news about France being a winner (in the context of Europe, of course, as far as these satellites are concerned).

Same eyes, nose and mouth as our cousin ?

Don't take me seriously. I'm joking, while cynically evoking suggestions that might be made harmlessly by members of my family. Some people place a lot of emphasis upon the presence of comparable physical traits that I'm generally incapable, personally, of detecting to any recognizable extent whatsoever. A late aunt was even convinced that the sinuous form of certain hands in our family (her own hands in particular) was a clear proof that we descended from the Vikings. Although I never dared to tell her so, I found that belief utter hogwash.

Bodily and indeed psychological resemblances do in fact flow down from parents to their biological offspring, and are often displayed most strikingly in sporting achievements. But an observer needs to be wary of drawing conclusions. Two complementary questions spring into mind as soon as a researcher becomes interested in his/her genealogical origins:

• When we've assembled more-or-less factual data concerning interesting characteristics of one of our eight great-grandparents (who are often the most ancient ancestors about whom we've obtained relatively in-depth information), can we then assume that some living members of the researcher's present-day generations might be likely to express those same ancestral characteristics?

• Inversely, when we've found exceptional physical or psychological characteristics in a particular living member of the researcher's present-day generations, is it thinkable that our family-history research might enable us to identify a particular great-grandparent who could be looked upon as the biological source of those characteristics?

Questions of this kind arise, of course, when a family-history researcher happens to run into various disturbing ancestors. In my maternal-oriented book A Little Bit of Irish, I ran into ancestors in the bushranger domain, and I was tempted to wonder whether some of that behavior might have "rubbed off" onto members of recent generations. In the accompanying paternal-oriented book, They Sought the Last of Lands, I was particularly troubled by the crazy case of my English great-grandfather William Skyvington [1868-1959], and I couldn't help but wonder if I might have inherited a dangerous dose of his nutty fruitcake genes.

Let me drag into the picture my most-admired source of scientific wisdom: Richard Dawkins.

I would like to evoke his literary masterpiece of 2004, The Ancestor's Tale, which might be described as a time-reversed variation of The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan (1678).

Richard Dawkins is not at all the sort of person who makes a point of rambling on (like me) about his personal ancestors. It's not for want of expert knowledge about genealogical research that Dawkins remains underspoken about his ancestors; it's surely because he realizes (as I'm certain to realize sooner or later, if I become a little wiser) that we're likely to make silly blunders as soon as we dare to describe our personal ancestors as if we knew all about them. Here's how Dawkins speaks politely about his recent ancestors:

I remember my four grandparents clearly, but of my eight great-grandparents I know a handful of fragmentary anecdotes. One great-grandfather habitually sang a certain nonsense rhyme (which I can sing), but only while lacing his boots. Another was greedy for cream, and would knock the chess board over when losing. A third was a country doctor. That is about my limit. How have eight entire lives been so reduced? How, when the chain of informants connecting us back to the eyewitness seems so short, and human conversation so rich, could all those thousands of personal details that made up the lifetimes of eight human individuals be so fast forgotten?

Dawkins talks a little of a group of distinguished human beings: our Tasmanians. I referred to these exceptional people, who played a rather special role in the history of human beings, in an earlier blog post: http://skyvington.blogspot.fr/2010/03/tasmanians.html

I strongly recommend this Dawkins tale to readers who would be interested in discovering the great writer in a pleasant readable context that is relatively free of difficult scientific technicalities, while steering totally clear of religious themes.

French lady Christine Lagarde up for trial

French celebrity Christine Lagarde is to be brought to trial for the possible role she appears to have played in enabling the payment of huge indemnities to the French business man Bernard Tapie.

Charles Darwin [1809-1882] "relatively little known in France"

In view of my total enthusiasm for the work in evolutionary biology of my hero Richard Dawkins, it's surprising that I should be equally enthusiastic about living in France, where Charles Darwin [1809-1882], founder of the theory of evolution, is designated, rightly or wrongly, as "relatively little known". I prefer to think it's a journalistic slip of the pen. In any case, there's a presentation at the Cité des Sciences in Paris, until the end of July 2016,  of this illustrious Englishman Darwin and his research work.