samedi 31 mai 2003

Macs and sharing things - a test On the latest turn of the file-sharing debate in OS X inspired by Apple's 4.01 iTunes update, which prevents users from sharing except on a network, MacFixit has released a report that some "users have been experimenting with a full iTunes 4.01 installation, in addition to retaining the older 4.0 release". Some apparently with success. For once, I'm not going to write a long piece full of views on the ethics of file sharing. In short, I prefer largely to abide by copyright restrictions and certainly to loot my bank account for software I like, but the broad debate when it comes to paying for music and the record company "majors" is a complex one, with good arguments on both sides. A new spin has been given to the old clash, of course, with the iTunes Music Store, which I inspected tonight with Marianne. For the time being (though there are ways round this), we "froggies", along with most of the world, can only browse the place. But I was surprised, and she very pleased, at what she found there. Today also saw the release of an upgrade to one "peer to peer" (OK, François, "P2P"!) file-sharing "application" (programme), the Gnutella client Acquisition 0.92 for X (1.6 MB download, $15 if it really grabs you). The better known Limewire (4.2 MB; $9.50 if you're so inclined for a "pro" version) saw a thorough overhaul a couple of weeks ago which promised, among other things: "•Better search results, especially for rare files. •Lower bandwidth use, leaving more bandwidth for faster downloads (...) •Better grouping of search results for better downloads and FEWER CORRUPT FILES!" (I'll fix their typo, not their yelling.) These developments supposedly address the most widespread complaints about a Java "app" whose quirks could block up your machine. When it comes to accessing the KaZaA P2P network (that better?) Marianne raves about to an alarming degree, Mac users finally have "Kazaa for MacOs X (sort of)", Neo (1.9 MB, donation-ware) in its 0.90 beta shape. The May issue of 'Univers Macworld' (no website), in a timely article on peer-to-peer matters, gave its rosette to a very different kind of application Direct Connect (688 KB, in its 1.0 "preview" incarnation). Its developers at 'NeoModus' ask people: "tired of other file-sharing communities such as Napster, Gnutella, and Scour? Tired of Napster Clones in general? Looking for something new? Get ready to change the way you think about peer-to-peer file-sharing. NeoModus Direct Connect offers a complete set of tools to locate any type of media. Unlike other impersonal, server-driven file-sharing networks, Direct Connect offers a community-oriented, open, user-controlled network. Moreover, Direct Connect's network architecture is built on a peer-to-peer foundation; users run, control, and maintain the network. Users are able to share any type of file - absolutely no restrictions." Well, there's only one way to find out. I plan to give the lot a go, and see what works best. 'Univers Macworld' dubs as "indispensable", for anybody really into file-sharing, another donation-ware programme called CarraFix (a French job). It's said to "to fix network congestions, often caused by your servers or some P2P programs, on Mac OS X. CarraFix brings features called 'bandwidth throttling', 'traffic shaping' and 'Quality Of Service' to Mac OS X. These features are efficient ways to improve your connection throughput in both download and upload". There's a caveat, apart from being careful which version you download (3.6 MB for the Jaguar one). It's the kind of gadget where it's a very "good idea" to read the frequently asked questions at the Carrafix site before messing around with it. "Indispensable", though? Hmm. We'll see about that... The pic's got nothing to do with all this. Sometimes I'm asked whatever happened to some software of the good old days and especially whether I've kept any of it. The answer, for friends seeking that kind of thing, is frequently "yes". When I saw this lonely Noël 1996 edition of the predecessor to 'Univers Macworld' going for a song, I snapped it up. It'll be intriguing to liberate it from the plastic and find out just what's on that CD! 12:46:34 AM  link   your views? []

vendredi 30 mai 2003

Unbuckle your Swatch: 'Fanfan' is fun Vincent Perez could almost make me jealous! Such youthful energy, such panache ... all I have in common with the man is that I do nearly all my own stunts. Yup, it was 'Fanfan la Tulipe' (lively and noisy Flash site in French) we saw on Wednesday. It's a swashbuckler in the grand tradition with plenty of swordplay, chases and villainy, clearly thoroughly enjoyed by a largely fine cast. Once you've got used to Penélope Cruz laying on a Spanish accent denser than the royal headware. Set vaguely in the reign of a Louis XV (Didier Bourbon) who needs regular reminders of which battle his army is fighting and why it began in the first place, 'Fanfan' bears a passing resemblance to a 'Barry Lyndon' without the length, the seriousness or the sad decline in our hero's fortunes. Director Gérard Krawcsyk whips the adventure along at a spectacular pace, to a soundtrack which would well befit a Western, apart from a running gag involving a fop of a regimental commander (Guillaume Gallienne) and an unfortunate little band of military musicians. A characteristically French delight in absurdity and anachronistic winks lend little touches to the fun. One aspect of the unmasking of the villain (scarcely a spoiler for such a predictable development) inspires the King to remark that it's about time for a single European currency. Elsewhere, we learn that we're caught up in the Seven Years' War (1756-63) - which means, the army decides, with four years already fought, there's only three more to come. If the film has any weighty points to make at all, it's on the utter indifference of court and general alike to the lot of the ordinary trooper. Louis prefers convenient times to watch the mayhem from a safe distance, with about the decisiveness he brings to choosing his eggs, or not, for supper. Luc Besson, who has his own corner of the Net, is right up there in the writing credits, but I'd suspect that the bulk of an entertaining script which takes considerable historical liberties is largely the work of Jean Cosmos. However, Besson's very name will certainly pull in the public in France, I hope, and even beyond. When I saw that TF1, the most populist pap chain of French TV, partly funded the movie, my heart sank, but they do occasionally put the cash where it should go, rather than dispensing handfuls of loot to would-be millionaire game-show participants. 'Fanfan' - find out for yourselves of the exploit that earned him "la tulipe" if you don't know the story already - is not a great film and has no pretensions. But it's a most diverting big screen adventure, sumptuously costumed and set, with some twists in the plot you may even not guess in advance, and a sprinkling of wit. An easy 6/10 for the fun of it. (The pix are by Olivier Gachen and Etienne George for EuropaCorp Distribution. I didn't pinch Penélope or Vincent because they're all over the place anyway.) 7:06:11 PM  link   your views? []

jeudi 29 mai 2003

To the loyal three and a half I stand charged with being "incomprehensible", "enigmatic" and "bored". Bored I am not. I do miss my work-mates, yes, but have plenty to keep me occupied. "But am I boring?" was my obvious response to that one. "Not yet," came the reply. We'll try to keep it that way... Enigmatic? Ah, I see: "those flowers and things". What secret messages? OK, I own up to that much, but as several poets had their "dark ladies", you know, thus is it here. Finding the right plant for the moment, however, is an intriguing challenge which takes me to unusual places. Today I have two choices, but shall offer my wildcat the oddest: the balsam fir, from Canadian forest tree essences. Indeed, I've already mentioned, en passant, 'New Millennium Flower Essences' and even one view of the "meaning of flowers"! Henceforth, maybe I'll add the cryptic warning more often. I fear I can't cater for three and a half such different people without sometimes being incomprehensible. Sorry. The best I can try is to balance the diet. She who might be interested by Brent Simmons' recent chat with O'Reilly or the great iTunes '4.1 patch' debate, row even, sparked by Cory at bOingbOing ("Apple force-feeds customers shit, calls it sunshine") sometimes has little in common with he who drops in for the factory gossip (or flak). What gets left on the plate doesn't bother me in the least, and worse: I almost have the wherewithal to set about 'archetypes, part 2'. Not today, though. When Marianne dropped in for a mid-week visit to her "ailing old man", now that was a real treat! Gosh, we even managed a film without undue interruptions from my insides. More on the movie later... Meanwhile, now Marianne has gone to gird herself for a visit to the Opéra, lucky lass, I thank her for coming by way of a zoo card from Canoë. 1:34:06 PM  link   your views? []

mercredi 28 mai 2003

Full circle for Luciano Berio: a small tribute Tidings come of Luciano Berio's death in Rome, aged 79. Thus passes a composer of very considerable note, who is the subject of a well-written study, 'The past as future' on the site of his publisher, Universal Edition. This article has the merit of being clearer than rather too much writing about 20th century music, while there are links to (brief QuickTime) extracts from two or three of his works. Berio was not among my favourite avant-garde composers - with the exception of some of his pieces for chamber orchestra - but I greatly admired him both as an innovator and a teacher. Of his vocal works, largely written for his wife, soprano Cathy Berberian, I was too young for the initial astonishment at Circles, but when it did come to my ears in the '70s I was deeply impressed by a piece which so successfully married - or rather, set off - lines by e. e. cummings with an ensemble consisting of Cathy B., a harp and two percussionists ... equipped with a battery of 80 instruments or more! The Wergo recording linked above also features 'Sequenza III', which really is a "tour de force" for those who like that kind of thing. Berio it was too who founded the Juilliard Ensemble in 1967. There are iinteresting thoughts on "'Words and Music': Exploring an Intricate Relationship" in the April edition of 'The Juilliard Journal Online'. 1:13:55 PM  link   your views? []

mardi 27 mai 2003

Enjoy it! I'll still be away for a while. This morning I cleaned out the rest of winter from the bathroom; the labour of less than an hour. It's very nearly finished. That remark is no bid to get anywhere near the lifetime achievement to date of Private Eye's admirable E.J. Thribb (at 'trash fiction'). Nor have I entered the competition for the world's most boring blog. I wonder if Meg knows that if you look for that, one wicked search engine takes you not just to the renowned current title-holder, but almost as swiftly to her not.so.soft place in west London (note: the lady jests: click on through). With the "comfiest bed in the world". I mention my own day's major achievement for two reasons. First, there was enough light to see all the filth in the corners and do it. Any lasting sunshine so far this year has rarely coincided with weekends or days when I haven't been working. Could the gloom really be behind us at last? Secondly, when I'd done, I needed to lie down for more than an hour, wait for pain in part of my abdomen to go away and gather my energies anew. I always wanted something of a "lean and hungry look (Steve Dismukes at Elfwood), but never the one that Sam (Kam-elio's oft-times clown of a brother and partner in "the canteen") has started to remark on. Now I'm convinced we're on the right track, my two doctors and me, I only partly regret reading on Saturday a Blogcritics entry by Tom Johnson ('unproductivity | choose your destiny'), to enlighten us that Crohn's disease strikes Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready". That "strikes" proved to be journalist-type licence with a headline, since McCready in fact "came out" with something he'd known for 15 years. Though we can't yet be sure about me, little jigsaw pieces like that fit together quite nicely to make sense of aspects of my own past decade or so. The downside of this is that my reader will henceforth be spared any jests about my bowels and what's coming out of them. No more messing with Shakespeare (bizarrely flattering report of a New York Times pick-up or not), no more lavatory humour. Won't you miss being emmerdé? But there are three upsides. The specialist has agreed to perform the conclusive probing with tubes on June 19, weeks earlier than first planned. A more serious look at this place, among others, reassures me that I'm not yet at a chronic stage and will be doing something about it long before then. Best of all, my buddies at AFP (where desk "boss" Jo even knows all about Crohn's already), can look forward to the return of an NB, with his foul mouth and other pleasing quirks - such as insolence, disrespect and an uncanny ability to interrupt or produce other weapons of mass distraction at precisely the best-judged wrong moment - in rather less than a month's time, revitalised. A handful of us have to maintain the Fleet Street traditions, you know. I was, after all, making at least a token appearance on the picket lines in the Wapping Dispute when some of today's brightest sparks still had their thumbs in their mouths, growing up under 18 years of Tory rule (May 1979-97). Checking the dates reminds me that it's not strictly true, as I like to say, that my departure from Albion's fair shores coincided with the arrival in power of the 'Iron Lady' and her cheery policies of "if it works, let's fix it good and proper" and "every woman, man and child for themselves". My wilfully fateful misreading of the invite letter from Ghyslaine (see, hem, "gurus"), met in the smoke-filled jazz clubs and pubs of London, didn't come until Margaret Thatcher was 15 months into her reign. Though her successor John Major was tossed out on May 1 1997, at the hands of Blair, the poor fellow can still be punched at URBAN 75 by anybody who should really feel so inclined. (u75 is not a twist on the Paris post code, that's pure coincidence, but a lively London e-zine) Dare I use words like "fuckwit" here as liberally as those people do? I got into trouble last night, less for my language that the way I occasionally choose to illustrate my points. I'm glad Marianne enjoyed both her birthday and my anniversary entry, once she'd assured herself that it contained no compromising content. Unfortunately to get there, she called up the archive for the whole of this month and decided to bookmark it for her mum... This earned me an earful of "Oh papa(s), t'es dégueulasse!!" after she'd scrolled too far down. But when I queried the grin in her voice, she confessed to one, and promptly proceeded to inform me of the latest revolting antics of some of her current favourite musicians. I have yet to hear from her mother. I suspect that she, like my workmates, is wise enough to make the very most of my relative confinement to quarters. Today, I might as well try to find out exactly why we're all on strike again. I know it's supposed to be about our pensions, but as in most such activity in France, almost everybody seems to be adding their own unrelated gripes to the stated cause for the protests. It's a traditional way of contributing to the fun. Tony has just told me he still plans to make it this afternoon from Odessa Street to Switzerland. By train. Best of luck, chum! I have unbounded admiration for these chivalrous family visits Tony undertakes, despite the risk he bravely runs sometimes of scarcely being able to go shopping without falling over. While he has no more idea than I do what's really going on here, he was "mildly amused" to see on TV news some American demonstrators with a placard reading 'Chirac is full of crêpe'. He added, for unfair good measure, that while this is true, these people might say so because "crêpes suzette is all they know about French food". 1:19:00 PM  link   your views? []

lundi 26 mai 2003

Cube for OS X, going inside games, and a museum Just spent a while catching up with busy TSers. Derek Ardnt's free OS X game in progress, Cube, has hefty system requirements but it's worth the 12.4 MB download if you've got them. There are several download sites at Cube, a large number of links (to be explored), even a forum (multilingual, but mostly in English). Derek also has a weblog and site. (Thanks to Marcel, aka Mrious_be, for the tip-off. He'd been delving inside Mac games. Again...) zzz The trip to TS, after the weekend excursion with François into Apple's past and the history of other operating systems too, reminds me it's about time to give a mention to the ever developing Apple Museum that keeps Lukas 'Spartacus' Foljanty busy. A "mention très bien", indeed. zzz For Mac "addicts" without reason, desire or perhaps the funds to move on to Ten, reassuring company comes (in French) in the latest issue of SVMMac to plop into this morning's letter box between strikes, even on the day it reached the newsvendors. The item has yet to go up on their site, but June's issue has a feature article where "les irréductibles de Mac OS 9" have their say. 11:57:06 PM  link   your views? [] 'Dessine-moi un mouton,' birthday gal As the lady sings in this song, n'est-ce pas, chérie? Play that in a loop (en boucle) and your mother will be really delighted. Ah, Mylène... You know, she has fans everywhere, from Martin's page to Alexander in Russia (caution: pop-ups)? And magazines, plus a 'Univers' of her own? But you're the real star today, Marianne! Bonne anniversaire! I have decided to celebrate your 14 ans with some more pictures from your own gallery, after a first look through your eyes at la mode. OK, another demoiselle or three, but not a sheep in sight. Some of your pictures are simply fun. They include a series where you have a view of your own on publicity. I've chosen the Coke bottle-trap. The one of the "god television" was too big to scan. Women make another appearance here. Sorry about the feet! No room for everything. I think what both of these two are thinking is clear enough. But if it isn't, it reads "génération stérile". Since you haven't given this one a name, I call it 'Man-maze' ('Labyrinth d'hommes'). I hope I've got it the right way up this time. You have no title for this one either and neither do I, so for now it's 'Abstraction'. Has that teacher who's giving you some excellent marks nowadays told you and the rest of the punks about Max Escher yet? He lived and worked in the Netherlands (1898-1972). But I didn't know until today that his "proper" name was Maurits Cornelis Escher. There are a couple of small galleries of his work, at 'World of Escher and at a fine art site. Art.com has 60 of them. In French, it's mainly Escher and mathematics. Perhaps not on your birthday, huh? One day, though, you could take a look at some more optical illusions. If my own eyes don't deceive me, I'd say you just might have been to Africa a few times too. On the left, your 'Totem'. I don't reckon he'd be too unhappy in a gallery of masques africains. Plenty more of those at L'Afrique chez vous! But these days, a number of countries want the stolen ones back. I have no idea if the person on the right has a name, so I've just called it 'ancient'. Even if it's a recent piece of work. In any case, I like it. And I hope a few other people have enjoyed a look at your "birthday collection" too. Bonne soirée, darling. Bisous à maman. See ya next weekend. "Papa pr..." (but now you know why! At least, that's my excuse). By the way, what was it you said you actually wanted? 5:54:12 PM  link   your views? [] Alas, alack, ailing apart! My wildcat grieves me, for now she too is sick! In solitude, she paces the cage she has made and prowls distant, empty streets. Her wounded heart lacks resolve, her thoughts are dark, and other cats come to her in her dreams. In some fancy, she would like to mate with the lion and ride the tiger, but now she's locked in hyperdrive! So do it, darling! Follow Grace and place your "face right in the triangle door Till you can move right on through instead of just standing there Looking at the floor." While you rest alone and proud, I have but one flower for you today. From Mexico, the zinnia comes. Would that I could have been with you this past weekend! But no. I too was condemned to my corner; and by early afternoon my mind was dead. The hunt goes on, yesterday's battle was against possible amoeba, and this one, Fasigyne (French), four horse-pills in one go, was a killer. I'm saving up the worst for last, but not today, not after that! When still my brain-cells were ticking, I looked at that car on the emptied packet and thought of the host of e-mail jokes that circulated after the US Department of Homeland Security issued its silliest warning stickers. Still alive today, I now understand that the vehicle is not just a warning to steer clear of the wheel. It means: "Stay off any highways at all, even virtual ones, unless you want to get run down." 2:14:14 PM  link   your views? []

samedi 24 mai 2003

Choice morsels from the 'canteen' "No more internet," said my mum on the 'phone, after asking for a quick rundown on what blogging is. It wasn't an order. Just a conversational request from somebody to whom the whole world of the Net remains alien and unnerving. For her, a computer is a word-processor and something other people use for work. Full stop. Over lunch at the "canteen", my very wired buddy François gave me such a lucid explanation of MP4s - the codec and the multimedia products, which have their own site (QuickTime 6 or Windows Media Player, plus rapid registration needed) - and Div-X (now easier on Mac OS X if you can be bothered), that I suggested he'd make a good teacher were he not perfectly happy right now "between jobs". He's got projects a-plenty, including a happy notion of taking himself to Tahiti for a break. Now, what I didn't know, until I asked François how he found it so easy to explain rather complicated things so clearly, was just where he'd started out in telecommunications, multimedia and computer operating systems. "It helps," he replied, "when sometimes you can be about three years ahead of the game. "When something new comes along, it just goes 'whoosh' in your face and you try to understand it, work out what it all means, throw it away if you want. But once you've turned it all around in your head, it's much simpler than it at first seemed." The man has been in the game since the '80s. Met Steve Jobs a handful of times and knows the tales of Apple, Jean-Louis Gassée and France, which has given me some geek-browsing to do (places like 'Infomania', 'L'Aventure Apple', BeOS sites, NeXT and O'Reilly's history of Cocoa...) Oh yeah, and there was plenty of open source stuff too. But that's by the by. Because Mr Demeyer has a far worse sin to his name than being steeped in systems of great interest to me, but none to people like my mum or the wildcat. Rather more "Googled" in at least two languages than he, er ... pretends? ..., young François put France on the Net. Not all by himself, of course. So I couldn't blame him single-handedly for "all that pollution we've got now, then." Nor does he want my useless Minitel printer back. Now there was an expensive way of printing out online bank accounts! And a machine whose very keyboard drove me mad. All I need to know now is whether this is the same François D. behind some of those music posts scattered on the Net. Because if, as I suspect, it is, then we've got even more in common to talk about than sci-fi, hi-tech and sunny paradise dreams... After that, Jean-Paul, who's his equally entertaining and dry-witted weekend lunch partner, it's your turn. Fair warning? Kamel served up the nosh and also lent me a photo of the big news of his own. "Hallo, Ilyas. Bienvenue à l'avenir!" He's a good reason to disappear to Morocco for a couple of months, which is where Kamel's lovely spouse, Nouzha, comes from. She and Ilyas will be back in about three weeks. "And back to work here?" asked François, in the kind of voice where an "as of course she must" went unspoken, after managing an almost passable avoidance of one of those "they all look the same to me" expressions. I just teased Kamel for not having a pic of the little feller with his mum, but it turned out he'd kind-heartedly only produced half a dozen snaps out of a mere three rolls of film. When I asked who the man in the background of one of them was, first Jean-Paul had to repeat the question, then Kamel said: "What man?" Had gently to be shown. Yes. Well. Jean-Paul's been there too, he knows how it is. It's a wonder we got decently fed at all. As for François, I fear the only cure for a certain comment on the lines of "no kids all over my place" might be to unleash Marianne and her views on his CD and/or sci-fi collection. If he can cope with that without laughing, he could probably even persuade my mother that e-mail is not the end of the world. Ilyas. There are two things you might need to know. One is that - there's no end to his wickedness - François called you a "pizzaiola amoeba". And the other is that your dad has already decided you're not destined for the restaurant trade. Today's last tidbit from the canteen is more good news for the quartier as a whole. Enough perhaps even to merit a return visit from Patricia, Zoë and their respective fellers, with others who've abandoned the area of late for bigger flats in other parts of town. Just round the corner, L'Entrepôt lives again. Even the flyer they're putting out (extract here) has an instant appeal. Back in the "peace and love" days, this old print warehouse was turned into a lively arts cinéma-cum-club by Frédéric Mitterand, who introduced me to Somalia with a 1983 movie that really didn't do very well. His international reputation took off with 'Madame Butterfly' 12 years later. L'Entrepôt's reputation, by contrast, saw many ups and downs, mostly downs, after its first change of hands, when it became a gathering place for feminists, viz. 'les Gauchos' (French). Andreas frequented the place and notably took me with him to see Chomsky on screen. A union Christmas dinner there much more recently was OK despite some appalling food. I've not yet tried the latest, most reasonably priced "formule", but those who have are full of praise. As for the music, check it out for yourselves. Things are going to brighten up around here even more. 11:58:27 PM  link   your views? [] Gripes and ... thanks Michael Fish, who seems to have been giving us the weather since I was born, but only really began 32 years ago, told Britain this much: "It's going to be a lovely day -- on Tuesday. But, between now and then, we've got a bank holiday weekend." That was yesterday. The veteran was right. And thoroughly nasty it is this morning, though one of the rituals of 'Today' cheered me: Victim: "With all due respect, John, blah, blah, blah..." 'Harrumph' Humphrys: "Not true!" Victim: "If you'll just let me finish what I'm saying, blah, burble, bull..." H.H.: "You're not answering the question." Victim: "? xxx" (since the response to this one varies widely, depending on who and what is at issue.) Last month, Matt Wells in the 'The Guardian' dubbed J.'H'.H. "the BBC's breakfast rottweiler" in an announcement that it's he who'll revive another national institution, 'Mastermind'. I thought it was the same paper that recently accused 'Today' of "going soft". If it was, I can't find the feature, which I dismissed anyway as another "oh for the golden age" fancy. Whatever. The programme is a reassuring part of my own routines. Unlike the weather. "Not that again!" you cry. Not really, no. But a little "factoid" (as RHP occasionally calls things at TS) is this. Just a decade ago, the Paris weather was an almost clockwork prediction based on forecasts by Fish and friends. What they annnounced for southeast England would come our way one or two days later. Yup. That's how I did it. Better than Météo France. No longer. The pattern today is that we've already got what they've got over there. Or the opposite. It's one pattern I'd like to understand better. I could do with a bit more routine right now. As well as the return of some long-lasting sunshine. It's those costly calls to the wildcat or a big new halogen lamp to replace the one that finally exploded last month, but not both. The 'phone, of course, comes first. The past fortnight has seen one unpredictable development after another, which reached crescendo point yesterday. I hope so, anyway. An unwarranted detail is this morning's unexpected and comforting return to the evacuation of something solid. Or thus it was for 20 minutes, when it merely proved to be a case of "Après moi, le déluge" (an expression which, for anybody interested, gets a mention at another reference place of the kind some people like to keep handy, the Phrase Finder. Enough! I won't have one reader left out there if I blog much of what transpired yesterday with regard to my bowels, the occasional vomiting as well now, and the outcome of further tests. The news isn't great, but could be far worse. Clever Karin! In a couple of weeks all should be clear, but already virtually everything indeed points to Crohn's disease or a "Crohn clone". And that would be perfectly manageable. "You do realise what changes this will make in your life, don't you?" Marianne's mum, who works in a pioneering pharmaceuticals firm, sensibly asked. "Yes, dear." I haven't been short of time to check it all out. Andreas said with his characteristic generosity, "What's money?" And what's another drug or two, plus the rest of it, to add to a short lifelong list? It's not as if I'm in darkest Africa. Until we can start treatment, the fatigue can be draining, but I can handle it. Yesterday's entry about "gurus" of sorts didn't land there by accident. The mistake was finishing it on a Friday night and posting it when the "line" to the server in the States was so damned busy that I could only get rid of all the blunders this morning. zzz That's it! End of grizzle in the drizzle. I just needed the lunch-time outing. This health business is a little pricey now that the "canteen" has begun to become part of an almost daily routine and I don't think I'll get that back from the Sécu! What's been bugging me much more than the bug and minor budgetary disorder has been fretting over the eternal things left undone that ought to have been and others just accomplished which, perhaps, ought not to have been. Sorry to be cryptic, but if there's one thing I enjoy less than the feeling of not being in control of my own life (as best as anybody can), it's what can sometimes become the "imperative" of briefly taking charge of somebody else's. Well, I hope I did right. Responsibility is fine, just as long as it doesn't transgress bounds to become theft. The expression "It's for your own good!" has long been one to stick in my craw. zzz Forget the grumbles. I really want to say a big "Thanks" to quite a number of people who've been worrying about me or simply asking! All over the place they are, it would seem, like the last time I had a spot of medical bother a few years ago. Yup, the blog is, well ... therapeutic on occasion. I sure needed those "mentors" this week, alive in mind if not all on earth, but the notes coming in and the words being passed on are valued just as much. 4:32:44 PM  link   your views? []

vendredi 23 mai 2003

Hearts of oak One or two visitors to my little abode have ventured to remark on a lack of family among all the paintings and photos. No mum or dad, none of the brothers and only two other relatives. Most of them have whole picture-boards full of us all. But they're here, filed away among hundreds of others in albums and packets which one day when I have a year to spare I will turn into digital form. It's my way: I prefer the paintings, several by friends, while the framed photos have another significance. For the family, perhaps somebody more gifted than I can make the most of a very faded small one always in view, taken at my late maternal grandmother's 70th (though Graphic Converter's worked wonders). This was a clan gathering as big as almost any other we had (but who took it?). I've been reflecting this week on my "mentors". When a lad, I read some eccentric or esoteric people. I've mentioned the redoubtable Madame Blavatsky and my own passage to India before. Another was G.I. Gurdjieff. I devoured more than his best-known 'Meetings with Remarkable Men' (and the film of it by Peter Brook. Wikipedia has so much on the fellow, as on almost everything, that I'd better "blogroll" the place. Now there are prize-winning videos about him too. While long hooked, I wouldn't describe G.I. G. as a key teacher in my past. He's not up there with C.J. Jung, a number of physicists, Buddhists and artists, and the long deceased Chinese sages I often mention. The most remarkable "guru" in that sort of way was a man whose real name I never knew, for an encounter which almost stopped time. In Senegal in 1997, I wanted to meet a real "marabout", not some charlatan, to learn more of African traditions of healing, spiritual thinking and folklore It wasn't easy, beginning with a mystery "rendez-vous at the swimming pool at midnight", in the place Marianne and I were using for a base. I got a long grilling from Pape, the man who became our highly amusing guide, about my motives. What and who was I after? It seems I passed the test. The drive took the best part of a long morning, deeper and deeper into the bush and down dirt tracks from one village to another, Pape asking the questions until at last we tracked this man down. One of two odd things was that he was standing outside his hut, waiting for us. Nobody had told him we were coming. Such news doesn't travel from village to village as rapidly as we did. The other was that before he would speak to me, he snapped his fingers at Marianne and she instantly fell asleep on his bed. With Pape translating, we talked for almost three hours, occasionally breaking off for shy villagers who wanted counsel or medical help. A couple of them let me take their pictures, along with many others and notes I took of the things I was shown and told. The marabout very swiftly opened up, showing me his plants and powders, his writings (a mixture of Muslim verses and animist "recipes" and charms), and explained that he knew enough of "western" medicine to help raise money to send villagers he could not help to the clinics. He also took any medicines off people as soon as they came back, telling them to come to him for the daily doses. Otherwise, he said, they might swallow the lot in one go. When he was done, he snapped his fingers again. Wide awake in an instant, if bemused, Marianne much enjoyed the gift-giving that formed part of the exchange (we had brought grain, rice and sugar for the sage and his village). She also soon discovered that pounding the millet, as women do while singing and gossiping, is harder than it looks. Those pestles they wield are very heavy. A man who would have adored this encounter - which came to me as one I only knew I'd awaited for years when it happened - was my uncle, father of no fewer than seven kids, occasional tyrant and godfather, George Bales. His photo isn't a great one, because it comes from the newsprint of his obituary in 'The Times'. George spent much of World War II as an increasingly senior officer and flyer in bomber command. His love of aircraft and travel was such that he set up a business with the assistant he eventually married, Molly. Bales Worldwide, as it's known today, is still going strong, having embroiled most of the family at one time or another, but forced steadily upmarket by the competition from the mass tour operators we've got now. The business, however, was but one facet of a man who voted Tory in Britain but got on famously with Chairman Mao - George in 1969 wrote 'China. The East is Red' ("the story of someone who knew China in 1926 and went back nearly forty years later and found an utterly different world. In this book he gives his own very personal account of his experience," says the only place I can see any copy left for sale. In Australia, which would amuse him...) His achievement in being the first to get the Forbidden City open to foreigners again came, I believe, some years after the night he spent inside the sarcophagus of the pyramid of Kheops, incidentally scaring the living daylights out of the first little group of visitors to arrive in the morning and wake him up. Several screamed when he sat up. George was as physically big as his mind was broad. Among his gurus was a real one in India, a country he loved. Virtually blind in his last years, long after his admired Nehru had gone before him (I can't imagine in which heaven or dimension they may have met up again), this minor handicap didn't stop him stumbling down a long Indian train and finally falling over from his great height on top of a gentleman whose suit was covered with spilt tea and newspaper shredded, but survived. Yet another of George's remarkable conversations with strangers was struck up on the spot. As to real gentlemen, when small, I lived on the lower two floors of a Victorian suburban house with my family, while my maternal grandparents had the top floor for their "flat". The only room in between was my grandfather's study, where he introduced me to journalism. Albert Edward, known to everybody as 'Teddy', was the world's worst driver but one of Britain's greatest garden lovers. He was always out there, when he wasn't travelling or writing articles and books about the growth of the frozen food industry. Son of a butler, he seemed to lack the crippling notions of "class" that bedevilled his wife, my mother and father for a long time. Such things were beyond his gentle nature. Among the most uncomplicated, upright mentors I knew, he was at his happiest in his last years turning the retirement estate where he died (in that family picture) into a magnificent garden in its own right. Everybody thoroughly approved, but nobody else had thought to bother. I hope his beloved and giant acacia tree is still standing among the banal blocks of flats that have long since replaced my childhood home. The real lessons in journalism and the many pitfalls of the profession came from Andreas. If you've seen 'The Killing Fields', then you've heard of Andreas Freund, but you may well have missed the brief scene where his name crops up for a phone call that changed the whole course of the tale near the end. After the divorce, I had the amazing luck, coming back to Paris, to find a flat at number 90. Andreas lived just down the road at number 98. A terrific friend, but a fearsome table-basher when it came to failing to put up with fools, when I wasn't visiting him we often ran into each other outside. From my bedroom window, I could see him making his slow way down the street, stopping often to talk here and there, a great bear of a man going about his business. My "ex-", Catherine, still has my pictures of him, in albums it hurt too much to take when we split up, and which I've since forgotten to loot. We are both honoured to be among those he thanked in the preface to a first-class book which, I see on the Net, is now a widely referenced standard, both in articles and in journalists' training. (My copy was one casualty when the hole in the roof first started leaking, and it shows.) Immensely proud of his French citizenship granted after the war, Breslau-born Andreas was a life-long "Red" and foe of fascists, authoritarians and deceitful politicians whoever they stood for. But though he spoke fluent French, his first tongues were German and English. The hardest task in helping with that book of his was getting him to cut the darned thing!! Every time you thought you'd persuaded him to drop unnecessary bits or references, you'd get back to find more in the manuscript from the daily newspaper clippings that surrounded him in dozens of files. When cancer claimed him, the Paris branch of the NUJ lost somebody totally irreplaceable. Marianne adored Andreas, and he her. The finest teachers are very often one's kids. Lucky enough to watch the magical appearance of her head into the world from the womb, I've been even more fortunate to be close to her ever since. I wouldn't quite say she tells me everything, while some of what she does reveal as her English grandfather's "moulin à paroles" (word-mill) is the product of a most inventive imagination. But for all the kindly warnings from friends about "what happens", she's not the kind of teenager to start clamming up on me all of a sudden. The biggest challenge Marianne's long given me is always to be a father, as well as a friend and one of her confidants. They say the first great love of your life can be the strongest. But I haven't opened the "Ghyslaine box" for years until now. Good heavens! I must have been either very angry or, more likely, totally heart-broken - a regular occurrence - to have torn the best of the rare pictures to tiny pieces. I wonder what made me relent and keep the bits. Those were stormy times, though any quarrels we had I've forgotten, but for one. (Which reminds me of an April Fool's Day tale of a tiff from "her round a few corners", Ann ... Lee Ann ... Lee A. ... Lee, which had me chuckling. "Sweety-pie," in my humble experience, it's every bit as hard to get a "sorry" out of some women as you think it is of we blokes.) I did "get over" Ghyslaine and two others as well, if it took longer than it might have done (confessional tucked away). But a mentor? Oh yes. Not just a language and a culture, but lessons of the heart I dismally failed to learn at the time. A bisexuality which then fascinated but ... alas, also scared the naïf, inexperienced lad that I was. Passion and poetry. Art cinema too. With no Internet then, that lass could make a letter of a line of verse, one wild thought cast into a post-box. Her life was almost constant spontaneous combustion: an imaginative fire I'd never experienced before and rarely since. Rum with coke and Gustav Mahler, an equally tempestuous hero of the time, along with the likes of Leo Ferré, that was a good start to a night. Last I knew, she had three kids: Chanel, Alma and Tadzio. I hope she's happy today. Oh, and after a youth of nothing but dogs, it was certainly Ghyslaine who convinced me of the merits of cats. The wilder, the better. For some reason, all this makes me think of one of many passages in Ventus (a different review from my last fleeting reference to my current reading), which pulled me up for a moment: "I was alone, trapped here perhaps for eternity, with my own thoughts. How I wanted to stop thinking! But my emotions continued to evolve as well, and they commanded me to exist! to persist! and to think. "Oh, I inherited my emotions from Calandria May, and I understand now that each human has a ruling passion, one that serves as a fountainhead from which flow all semblances of happiness, sadness, anger and joy. I understand you better for this, Axel; oh, I thought about you for long hours and days, make no mistake. I wished that I had modeled myself after you, instead of her, for your fuel is a kind of rage driven by joy that finds no outlet. But hers–she is like a wave of sorrow, swelling slow and implacable across the earth she treads. She is nothing but sorrow, and that is what I inherited. So I walked, and I wept." The speaker is a starship, the Desert Voice, which is par for the course with a Karl Schroeder whose first novel is constantly surprising me. I shall be thinking more about that passage for a while, along with the tendency I sometimes have of finding people's "right animals". This last was no teacher, not really. I surprised myself, scared the heck out of Marianne and earned the wrath, at first, of a Tunisian keeper when I found myself undoing the bolt on this beast's cage in a dingy oasis zoo and walking inside. The first thing it did was to leap angrily at me, but it was frightened and I wasn't. The only anger I felt was a quiet one that it should be there at all, and malnourished as well. We had a bit of a "chat" and he let me take a few snaps. "Why did you do that?" asked a much calmer keeper when I was done. "C'est mon frère," was the answer that simply fell out of my mouth. To this day, probably only the animal and me know what that ... kinship was, but it's stuck. Not quite a wolf. Certainly a desert voice. 11:53:03 PM  link   your views? [] Life-saving grace of a fart? ORLANDO -- Some day, diagnosing that nasty stomach bug could be as easy as passing gas. British scientists say a hi-tech test focused on flatus -- the pungent gas emanating from stool -- is highly effective in quickly identifying tough-to-spot viral or bacterial infections of the gut. (...) "We did at one stage discuss the possibility of a 'smart lavatory,' so that you could have a device that could sample the gas in that way," (Dr. Christopher) Probert (of the University of Bristol) said with a smile. "There are a lot of things that we might want to do someday." I know. Another day. Another promise broken. And "stale news" at 'Wired' already. But you'll forgive me my current keen interest, when I caught up with this one at Journalized, where Mike Little gives a good story the treatment it merits. Quickly diagnosed "gas fingerprints" could genuinely save scores of thousands of lives. 1:14:07 AM  link   your views? []

jeudi 22 mai 2003

Sweet dreams Tonight it's Niels Vaes. His place (Flash) and his gifts are in ".be". This one he calls 'Trespasser'. I don't. But there you go... All this 'Matrix' fuss. It's sent me all over the place, learning more about anime. And finding more "fantasy art". 'First Encounters' is rich and intriguing. "Dark Matter at its basic level is the gray area that science cannot quite explain. In this it is symbolic of Science Fiction and Fantasy; the exploration of things not yet discovered, the hope or despair of the future, and the possibilities of a past long forgotten. It is as much an exploration of ourselves as it is a journey into the fantastic. Telling us about our greatest hopes, and our deepest fears." One nice thing about 'Dark Matter' is that it features a different artist each week. The range is remarkable. 11:58:10 PM  link   your views? [] OffenSive, obsceNe Jerks (dealing with them) "Out of it" I may be, in principle. Such is modern technology, however, that three people have been able to issue protests to me from distant parts of the world. These are among what still remain only too frequent updates, to a "union man", about demoralising, nasty behaviour by people despatched by the powers that be at "the factory" in Paris or in other "hubs" to serve the noble cause of AFP in taking command of its various outposts. Now - and you will have to pardon my English - I have been surprised to learn how one or two people I took for relatively decent human beings during our acquaintance on their various news desks turn, once they think themselves far from watchful eyes, into petty empire-builders, office tyrants and total pricks. I should add that recent years have seen commendable efforts by many in top management to clean up this kind of act. The days when unpleasant, occasionally incompetent, bureau chiefs even received "protection", via a foul equivalent of the "old boy network", against complaints from their prey appear to be almost completely behind us and buried. Nevertheless, eventual retribution can't immediately prevent them from making life hell for the - let's hope - diminishing number of journalists, generally young and highly vulnerable "local hires", who still get bad treatment. Hence both a warning and I hope a boost for a couple of my anonymous informants. What's in a name? No bed of roses for the victims if disclosed, but engraved in my brain, and those of like-minded colleagues, when it comes to the perpetrators of such misconduct. Most of the remaining bullies are men. What they do is tantamount to this (again courtesy of Francis's reach beyond that of kids, thank heavens), though those subjected to it are not always women, while those who wield the heavy hand are so obviously into no more than self-gratification. I doubt they really feel much better about it once they've let their wrath fly, but it doesn't stop them coming again. Sometimes the predators are not quite right in the head, though I'd never dream of imagining that anybody in management would deliberately let them go for a few years to some faraway place for the simple reason that nobody can put up with them any longer where they were. But then, remember that the personality changes are occasionally unpredictable. (Credit: 'Alex' for 'Pistou'.) Dealing with these loathsome inviduals is rarely as easy as any old Bob's your uncle. I remember cases where those who contended with them were women, who put up with such perverted behaviour that they became scared to speak out for fear of shaking the nest, perhaps even losing their job on trumped-up charges. But a few fellers had their lives buggered up too. Worse, even when they did have the guts to challenge the ruler of the roost, it backfired on them for a while before "something was done". In the end, though, such affairs have almost always worked out for the best, with support from unexpected quarters as well as the union people. One way or another, the retribution comes, though it's not as "cruel and unusual" as some artists might imagine. This might be read as a contribution to the current electoral campaign for the SNJ (French base), since there ain't much else I can actively do at present but blog. Because in the re-run of the vote, it matters less which union you vote for than the act of voting at all, after last time's unprecedented fiasco. Anyway, if some buddies saw the SNJ logo sitting in an entry with such unlikely partners, I might face instant excommunication! 1:46:09 PM  link   your views? [] 'Dare the grave passage' (M. Tippett) Inclination: unspoken Credit: Greg Crow Misheard line of the day: "Nick, you really are the armpit of God." Music: 'A Child of our Time' (Sir Michael Tippett - 1905-1998) Mood: Insomniac, fanciful, experimental ... rêveur Transition: yang to yin Poem: Crow's Nerve Fails Crow, feeling his brain slip, Finds his every feather the fossil of a murder. Who murdered all these? These living dead, that root in his nerves and his blood Till he is visibly black? How can he fly from his feathers? And why have they homed on him? Is he the archive of their accusations? Or their ghostly purpose, their pining vengeance? Or their unforgiven prisoner? He cannot be forgiven. His prison is the earth. Clothed in his conviction, Trying to remember his crimes Heavily he flies. Ted Hughes Job offer: Credit: R.F. van Koert - from Tish Summers - Digitalis ("adult graphics" site + links). Wildcat Attributed: 'In the Blue Corner' Credit: RSPCA(?) Quote of the night: "Minute after minute, aeon after aeon, Nothing lets up or develops. And this is neither a bad variant nor a tryout. This is where the staring angels go through. This is where all the stars bow down." From 'Pibroch' (by T. Hughes) 1:19:42 AM  link   your views? []

mercredi 21 mai 2003

Blasted Americans, wounded Republicans: holy heart! With my apologies ... and thanks. Apologies for leaving this here for hours as a partly unedited mess. In the final phase of writing, I had major connection glitches. And thanks to Francis for some help with the "top shelf". He doesn't read the stuff, of course, but he knew just where to look. Some pix from 'La Poudre aux Rêves'. Not the American dream...) I usually direct my cordial contempt for some American "thinking", particularly by the semi-elected regime in and around the White House, at the politicians and greediest capitalists. Just as I've made clear that few politicians anywhere have much respect from me. Targetting a people for the acts of their rulers is strictly a "no-no". Some rules are made to be broken. There are moments when my patience with Americans as an alien species runs short. It's a British politician, Tam Dalyell, with whom I breathe fire in agreement about some American manners (for those who don't know of this Labour veteran, Wikipedia has a more extensive, link-rich, warts-and-all bio). While acknowledging the gravity of his allegation, controversial dragon Dalyell already wants Tony Blair "branded as a war criminal". I don't know about Bush. The devious team behind the part-puppet president took pains, as we knew back in March, to be sure a few buddies would join them in refusing to recognise the new International Criminal Court in the Hague. This was part of long-prepared plans for the invasion of Iraq, along with screwing up any effective WMD search by UN inspectors quite as efficiently as "brother-enemy" Saddam. What aroused my wrath was a blunt statement by Dalyell about some US troops in Iraq who "behave like yobs". Tam made a very good point. While renowned for occasional hooliganism, even perfidious Brits rarely turn it into a military virtue when it suits them. They also made more of an effort over hospitals and other vital services. I heard an Iraqi doctor weep at what US troops allowed to happen. It's conceivable that some of those troops were like their great grand-dads who arrived in the trenches: farmboys with scarcely a notion of geography, let alone politics, simply doing their bit for freedom, democracy and the Stars and Stripes. And we Europeans do owe their forebears a great deal. As it becomes dimly apparent that while the "secret stashes" news regarding the Baghdad museum is less clearcut than the harshest critics of pillage charged at the time, the US army, let alone Washington, has much more explaining to do. Dalyell's comment came in a Commons debate Wednesday about a subjects dear to his heart, the ancient ziggurat of Ur (Hansard) ... and reports of a "paint job" by the kind of technically brilliant idiots who had sprayed "friendly fire" almost as freely. He'd already told the House of a family tie to this (and to the people who "set up Kuwait) in 1992. Another charge against farmboy "yobs" comes in separate news reports of a fair chance that American soldiers are happily pinching stones from another old monument for an ad-hoc airbase. zzz At AFP, news flies in from bureaux worldwide which never gets past us on into the wider world. Obviously. Risky claims, especially "conspiracy theories", must be checked and counter-checked. If the sources aren't good enough, then we'll spike them. This can be a pity, because I've seen many more - or less - believable tidbits about the loathsome way in which Washington's louts and their multinational backers are slowly building a "new world order" for the rest of us, which revolt me. Sometimes I can't help flashes of anger at "ordinary American folk" who buy all the bullshit. My outlook has sadly changed since on March 7, I wrote Anti-American sentiment? Mais non! Why the hell not? Since those tough talking days, I've now seen film of a smiling Bush, even when the grin on his face has little to do with what the man may be reading. People who not only believe the spin but flood the web with stale stereotypes and prejudiced nonsense, if not ill-digested lies, about France and old Europe have begun to get on my tits (a view the young lady shares). I could make a good job of developing an anti-US bias were I compelled to read such rubbish and didn't work in a multi-national environment where it's easy to make friends with bright Americans across a broad political spectrum. I really enjoyed helping to build TS with other "founders", all but one of these American. From richly varied professional backgrounds, of different ages, interests and outlooks, we became friends around one common passion: the Mac and some of the best of trans-Atlantic technology (even if many components are farmed out to cheap labour markets abroad). But even the road to making TS one of the friendliest communities on the Web, where our Macs fortunately constitute only about three-quarters of the chat, had its perils. There was a dangerous rift en route when somebody quit over heated debate about the PR&S (politics, religion and sex) business, and feeling ill-treated by me as then "chairperson", despite communal hand-wringing in kid gloves. Too much for some! The episode and some twisted allegations undermined my confidence in my skills in that chair, but the others rallied round to restore it. Some considered me too diplomatic. While my pride and delight in TS is untarnished, I began to post less often there as of "9/11" and eventually took a back seat. That date was a landmark for journalists, who've rarely worked so hard as we have ever since. However, the terrorist attacks on the States triggered reactions from a small handful of TSers which shook me almost as much as the shockwave and global fall-out from the blasts. Diplomat though I can be, it took all the restraint I could muster to avoid acid responses to a few ablaze with patriotic fervour, flag-waving bluster, "my country right or wrong" disease, and incomprehension of the rest of a planet that one inordinately powerful, self-appointed policeman has largely helped to mould. And often to shape, through inexcusable ignorance and lack of savoir-faire, for the worse. Such comments as I ventured earned me stinging reproaches from half a dozen of the handful. To some I politely replied, most got trashed for the junk they were. Now, getting on for two years later, there's only so much sympathy one can feel for a nation in shock. Mine swiftly began to run out. zzz Who in hell did they think they were, these whingers who so cruelly learned how double standards, the seeds of injustice, the greed and self-centredness and a smug faith in all-American values, with the weaponry their own governments had so liberally distributed to some of the world's most barbaric dictators, would end up literally exploding in their faces? They'd been bombed on home soil, and so what, even it was in stupendously novel style? One can unstintly admire the fire-fighters, grieve with the families, but the attacks ... well, they looked like karma come home. Pompous-assed letters informed me that I couldn't possibly conceive of the scale of the shock among the great American people. The ones that pissed me off most were well-meant warnings that it was not my place to make ironic or witty remarks about some of the President's finest speeches, as if I'd spat in the face of God Almighty. Along with more reminders of the sacrifices brave American boys made to save the rest of us twice in one century. "Mon cul!" as we put it here. Americans, at least the cynical shits you find in any rich country and too many a desparately poor one, made an obscene fortune out of two world wars and any number of smaller spats, while preaching that almost unbridled capitalism and globalisation would be magnificent for the rest of us. The world's policeman did nothing when more than three million people died in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Just as it made friends with a pretty tough regime in Rwanda - after the genocide of 1994. Satellites that could spot Russian missile bases in Cuba in 1961 were perfectly useless, we were told, when it came decades later to locating a few hundred thousand black refugees in eastern Zaïre, as then it was. The cop worked hard to ensure the Arab world remained divided against itself, as part of a global energy and control strategy. Instead of funding the United Nations, it shat on it when lesser powers took issue with wayward notions of international law. And Bush gave the job of Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs to a dangerous but allegedly bright spark by the name of Walter Kansteiner. Like many "Africa hands", I read one of his first interviews for allAfrica with a mixture of incredulity, humour and despair. He bestowed several gems on journalist Charlie Cobb: "What are we looking at as we look at Sharia in Northern Nigeria? When we look at Khartoum? And...." "Absolutely. Remember, in grad school when we were all learning to be Africanists it was always called 'the Black-Green line.' And it cut right across the southern Sahel. Historically it's been there and that rivalry, conflict - call it what you want - has historically been a fact of life for decades and centuries." Aahh, well-informed Walt! Yes, that's modern Africa, the one you learned at "grad school". The green sort of Arab-like bit at the top (when you turn the map the right way round), and all those funky darkies at the bottom. But there was better to come: "The Administration has been emphasizing the need to 'fight terrorism' characterizing it as a war. At the same time the Administration has argued in various forums for 'democratic transparency' as the real solution to any number of issues in Africa, any number of states in turmoil. And the two notions seem to be in conflict with one another: the need to fight terrorism and the argument for democratic transparency. How do you resolve that?" "It kind of goes back to that old adage that authoritarian governments are stable governments. They are authoritarian and hence can make security happen. In the short term you can probably make a case for that. In the long term you most certainly cannot. In the long term the stable secure countries are ones that are democratic, that have institutions that let the body politic have a voice. They are countries that have independent judicial systems where civil liberties and human rights are protected and private property rights are protected." This was September 19, 2001, when the Bush-baby was possibly too gripped by that "state of shock" to be lucid about anything. So "it kind of goes back to that old adage" that "we" did right propping up those dictators and thieves. Nothing like a bit of "authority". But hang on. What is this "long term", Waltie boy? You mean you want "civil liberties", "human rights" and all that stuff your friends are domestically stifling today with a package of legislation, having whipped much of a once bold American press into cringing subservience? What you're saying is fine, but would you really install democracy instead of friendly and conveniently "authoritarian" Arab regimes. Now Algeria, Walt told us, was not in his "bailiwick". Neither was Egypt. This obviously came as some relief when asked an irritating question about countries where people just could, and did (in Algeria in December 1991, before the military halted the poll) begin voting Muslim radicals into power. Quelle horreur! Could the reason for that have anything to do with Israeli hardliners and Palestine and US support for constant breaches of UN resolutions, as well as regimes which did nothing about grinding poverty? Walt's learned a lesson or two since. The poor fellow worked his ass off visiting countries which nearly all, oddly enough, produce oil. He even tried, but didn't succeed, to bribe persuade Nigeria to quit OPEC. Now that the invasion of Iraq has been such a rip-roaring success, the idea of setting up a second US oil-defence outpost off west Africa looks like its gone on to the back burner again. Worse, only two of those countries which had enabled Cobb's headline to be "Sub-Saharan African Rallies to US Support" were left on Washington's list of bosom buddies at its shortest. Walter's even made most of the "right" friends. That fellow in Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasago, not only has oil, but is "stable" and adored by his people. In the last election held since first he killed his uncle soon after a coup in 1979, he won 97.1 percent of the vote! The stuff of a wet Rumsfeld dream. The CIA manages to spell the president's name mostly correctly in its Factbook, and even gets quite a lot of its facts right, glossing over a few gory details of no concern to the Kansas city milkman. You do know the fact book, one whose very cover changes like the moods of US presidents? The newest would suggest that the world will become a far safer place, as armour-plated as Pentagon policy, than it was when Bush's dad pledged to make America a kinder and gentler nation" a decade back. We use that book at AFP, but it's usually a good idea to double- if not triple-check what's in it. Unlike the mythical milkman and one real former US secretary of state who was sent to Ethiopia for some talkfest at the headquarters of what's now the 53-member African Union but prudently asked first, "Where is Addis Ababa?", Walter knows where most of those odd places are. That milkman, as I remind far-flung correspondents in African towns with wonderful names, "is the feller you're writing for. Just imagine he knows nothing about your country. The first thing you do is give him an interesting story, and in the 3rd para you add the basics of background." I suppose it must work, because I've seen the most obscure "pick-ups" in Florida papers. It's a fat chance most of AFP's local African reporters will ever be able to afford to see America. There's a better one that the Kansas city milkman might become a US serviceman, in which case he should bloody well behave in a fashion that befits the world's most powerful armed forces! Or even a tourist in Paris, unless he's been turned off by the propaganda war. A little effort to say "Champs Elysées" of instead "Champs" (as in horse on bit) "Ellizez" might also win a friend or two. zzz "To be perfectly honest, I don't much like the Americans," generalised Kamel over lunch, just back from Morocco to resume charge of the "canteen". But then Kamel - the 'Elio' of some entries here (his "nom de patron" at the pizzeria) - had been enjoying a meal in Casablanca's Safir Hotel just two days before Friday's blasts. I've not dug deep enough into the more credible conspiracy theories and bizarre reports we couldn't use at AFP to be sure that when Rumsfeld over-ruled the Pentagon on the military strength needed to conquer Iraq, he had damned good reason to expect a walk-over. That "they 'took out' Saddam", fine, Kamel thought. Whether or not the conspiracy tale about a deal with Russia's Putin, a mysterious plane flight, and the vanishing of any Iraqi Republican Guard to fight was true. There are various ways of "taking people out". "They could 'take out' Algeria's generals while they're at it," Kamel added, perhaps like many compatriots who'd accept a foreign invasion to end years of oil-related corruption and theft. "After that, they go home!" The swift departure of Jay Garner (previously link-probed here) may be a sign that Washington has learned at least something from the Romans, whose emblems it borrows, about how to run a burgeoning empire. Kamel's people endure "terror" from both fundamentalists and the state, sometimes the two hand-in-glove. There, it's life. In Paris, where I've known two people injured, one seriously, in bomb blasts, most of us are sick to the back teeth with American "What we did we do to deserve this?" whining after September 11; let alone the talk of "freedom" and "democracy" and "human rights" that Kamel, like thousands of others, submit to far better, even-handed political analysis than the drivel on CNN, Fox News and other major shapers of opinion for a gullible American public. When some contend that the real problem and ignorance arise because "they don't have much history to speak of", that's unfair even on a nation far too fond of its poor wounded navel. In any case, my answer to that is, "Even were it true, they've begun making history a little too fast for their own good, let alone ours." If US citizens are serious about waging a relentless "war on terror", a phrase about as all-embracing and finally meaningless today as "The Base", that onetime American creation al-Qaeda, a good place to start might just be at home. Right at the top. Enough of this seriousness!! zzz I was mightily cheered to get comment here on my latest 'Matrix' ramble from a rare animal, "Dallas Republican, black turtleneck, go figure" and fine wit Chipstah!, who even found something nice to say about me at his place. What an outstanding exception among his brainless fellow-believers. When it comes to intelligence, Tony's sent in a tiddling test: "Q. What is the penalty for bigamy? A. Two mothers-in-law." It reminded me of an old Jewish jibe I heard about high-handed intervention: "Q. What's worse than a Jewish mother-in-law? A. Two Jewish mothers-in-law." Hey, chipstah! gets to rant on blogcritics. What about little me? Nah... They're just a bunch of Americans! Thank you. Something completely different tomorrow. Em, I mean later. 3:02:22 AM  link   your views? []

mardi 20 mai 2003