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Saturday, August 02, 2003
posted by gbarto at 11:16 PM:
French news headlines:Le Monde: Liberia: Charles Taylor confirms his departure. Seems we've seen that sort of headline before.
Also, Marie Trintrignant, dead in France, according to her family's wishes.
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posted by gbarto at 1:11 AM:
French news headlines:Le Monde: José Bové will be freed Saturday. That's the McDonald's destroyer currently in trouble for damaging GMO corn.
Le Figaro: Marie Trintignant Is Dead of a Cerebral Edema. And so that phase of this horrible mess ends. Now comes the question of what to do with Bernard Cantat, the rock star boyfriend who in US parlance would be a prime suspect for negligeant homicide at a minimum.
Libération: Corsica: Explosive Impasse. Pro-independence movers and shakers must figure out what to do with the island, but with political disagreements, bombings, etc, things are a bit messed up for them.
Ouest-France: Marie Trintrignant: Passion to the end.
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Friday, August 01, 2003
posted by gbarto at 2:31 AM:
Here's Den Beste on the Bush lied question. It seems to me that while Bush may have pushed the WMD story to get the UN to shut up, most Americans were well aware of what our designs on Iraq were well before Powell went to the UN. The main thing Bush did in terms of swinging public opinion revolved not around convincing the public of the dangers of Iraqi WMDs but of showing the fecklessness of the UN.* * *
posted by gbarto at 2:14 AM:
A Dog's Life has some new ridiculousness from the public sector unions. A county union that says it should be paid for work done by a citizen's group because if it had to be done it was their place to do it and be paid for it.It may be anecdotal, but it seems to me, in the same vein, that there were problems in the late seventies with the use of nonviolent offenders to clean up roadside trash and similar tasks for the same reason.
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posted by gbarto at 2:05 AM:
Cicero has thoughts on Gibraltar and more. Specifically, he shows that there's an effective way to colonize and there are less effective ways. The Brits seem to have done Gibraltar right.* * *
posted by gbarto at 1:56 AM:
French news headlines on a Thursday night:Le Monde: Palestinians Call On Quartet To Intervene - as Israel improves its security perimeter, passes laws restricting Palestinian property ownership and generally seems to be blocking itself off from Palestinian influence.
Le Figaro: Assisted Death Progresses in Europe. 57% of Dutch physicians report involvement in a euthania or assisted suicide. The TurkeyBlog is a little bit nervous about the use of the verb progresser here, even if it is technically and etymologically applicable.
Libération: Black Destinies. Marie Trintrignat has been returned to France, but is brain-dead. Boyfriend Cantat remains locked up in Lithuania.
Ouest-France has a freshly released story too new to be anything but a headline: José Bové could be free tomorrow. A judge ordered him released early as he was serving a ten-month sentence for destroying GM corn stocks. The prosecution has the right to appeal before he is released.
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Thursday, July 31, 2003
posted by gbarto at 3:16 AM:
French news headlines:Le Monde: Strong rise in unemployment in June. It's now at 9.5% in France.
Also, Trintrignant Affair: A Month of Provisional Detention for Bertrand Cantat. That's so they can investigate the man, accused of pushing down the actress and putting her in a coma. Right now he's up for ten years for battery plus time for failing to get an endangered person help (he waited to call the authorities). No word on what happens should she die. Would the charge be murder? Don't know the Lithuanian system well enough to have any kind of guess.
Le Figaro: The Difficult Hunt For Pyros. Namely those whose actions have much of southern France in flames, and majorly at risk with winds again picking up.
Libération: Blair Sidestepping [questions about Iraq and Dr. Kelly], Bush on the offensive.
Ouest-France: The fear of Iraqi "collaborators" - that is, those who helped us and who are being hunted down by Saddam's henchmen. They are, needless to say, worried. Saddam Hussein, for those who have failed to recall, is the former leader who is so popular that merely by killing those who don't worship him he has kept people from continuing the dancing in the streets that started when he was thought dead.
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Wednesday, July 30, 2003
posted by gbarto at 1:53 AM:
Natalie has a new toy. She sounds like me with a new computer. Here's best wishes for a fun and fruitful time with the Overlocker.* * *
posted by gbarto at 1:39 AM:
Joanne Jacobs has her doubts about trends in summer reading lists. I'm doing my best to be hopeful, since the Campbell Barnes and Noble has a table labeled School Summer Reading that is filled with great classics and has a relatively small number of Grishams and the like.* * *
posted by gbarto at 1:34 AM:
Bjørn Stærk has interesting stuff on Norway's response to the Jessica Lynch story.* * *
posted by gbarto at 1:28 AM:
Says Marcus of Liberia, if the UN is going to save the world, let it do it with French troops, not Americans. Says the TurkeyBlog, "Hear! hear!" We've got our own endeavor going to promote peace, love, harmony and (or at least) stability and the French have been spared any obligation in the matter. As aspirants to world leadership, this is their chance to make up for that!* * *
posted by gbarto at 1:21 AM:
Following up a story from last night, Marie Tritignant, the French actress put into a coma by her boyfriend, has been deemed unlikely to recover. Here's the AFP scoop through Le Monde (in French):Marie Tritignant: "Medically, there's nothing left to try" (doctor).Not to put too fine a point on it, but if the neurosurgeon interviewed is correct in his assessment, the boyfriend could be facing a murder rap within a day or two.
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posted by gbarto at 1:13 AM:
French news headlines:Le Monde: Liberia: Truce refused, UN called. The government says it won't accept a cease-fire till the rebels are completely out of the capital; one gathers the rebels aren't going to leave the capital without a ceasefire. Therefore, the UN is apparently going to get in the middle.
Le Figaro: French firefighters at limit of their capabilities. They're wondering how much longer they can keep at it against fires that have been going since the beginning of the month.
Libé: To fire and ash. So now have gone five people and countless trees, etc., in the fires mentioned above.
Ouest-France: The Var again in mourning with another life taken. Visitors from last night will recall that Var is the region that's taking the worst of the fires.
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Tuesday, July 29, 2003
posted by gbarto at 1:36 AM:
French news headlines:Le Monde: Sharon Dropping Ballast, Bush Keeps Up Pressure. The ballast is Palestinian prisoners Sharon is letting go.
Le Figaro: Fire Kills in the Midi. That's the southern Provençal area of France.
Libération: In Liberia, Civilians between Fire and Famine
Ouest-France: Three dead, 6500 evacuated in the Var area of Provence because of the fires mentioned with Le Figaro.
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posted by gbarto at 1:17 AM:
News of the stupid on two continents:Actress Marie Trintignant In Coma After Quarrel With Her Boyfriend
She was in Vilnius, Lithuania, making a movie about Colette with her mother as director and her brother as assistant director. Then her boyfriend, high on booze and drugs, got angry and threw her to the ground, leading to severe cranial trauma and cerebral hemhorraging and coma. Police are trying to decide what charges to file.
'Game' of punches kills S.J. boy, 16
By Lisa M. Krieger / Mercury News
A test of manhood between friends turned tragic early Sunday morning when a blow to the chest killed Jacob Salas, 16, at his home in San Jose.
Monday, July 28, 2003 (Mercury News)
They were punching each other in the chest as hard as they could to see who would be the first who couldn't take it anymore first. I imagine the 19-year old winner isn't going to Disneyland, but he isn't going to jail either, as prosecutors have ruled the death accidental.
And we wrap up with this winner of a guy on the subject of speeding (from a Gary "Mr. Roadshow" Richards column in the Merc):
OK, I go 80 mph in the fast lane, but I'm not the problem. It's drivers going below 65 mph. They make me swerve and change lanes because they won't go with the flow.Yup. He's got it all under control.
Dan McCall
San Jose
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Monday, July 28, 2003
posted by gbarto at 3:59 AM:
Last banjo, etc. note for the night: Here's the post from Reflections in d minor that led to Dr. Weevil's provocations against the banjo.* * *
posted by gbarto at 3:39 AM:
Following up on the banjo questions raised at Dr. Weevil: Dropped by Barnes and Noble tonight and listened to some Bela Fleck. Much of it was too bluegrassy or country for my taste, though that seems to me the fault of the music, not the banjo. But two albums were top-notch.Perpetual Motion, mentioned somewhere down below, is named for Paganini's Moto Perpetuo, a showcase for the violinist based on a work whose name I really should recall but don't. The album consists of a series of classical pieces arranged for banjo and other instruments by Fleck and Edgar Meyer. A few of the pieces, notably the Debussy transcriptions, didn't quite work. On the other hand, you haven't heard Bach until you've heard him played on banjo and marimba. The most striking thing is that the pieces that worked best were, in fact, the Bach selections. I found this interesting since Bach is among the few greats who wrote "pure music". Mozart, Beethoven and others seemed acutely aware of what instruments they were composing for, which is what a) makes their pieces so marvelous when performed as per instructions and b) makes performances on original instruments so desirable. Bach, on the other hand, can be - and is - played on just about everything. A banjo-marimba rendering of some of the two-part inventions may not even be the strangest combination ever seen. But since it's pure music, i.e. elegant counterpoint in action with nothing fudged, it works. I recommend the album highly for those who are awed by Bach's talents and possibilities and in the mood for something a little different.
Tales from the Acoustic Planet is not classical. Rather, it's in Bela Fleck's particular genre, jazz for the banjo. While several of his discs struck me as a bit much, a bit too country or - in a few cases - too jazzy, this is a wonderful album again showing that it's possible to play music on the banjo that is good enough for one to get past the banjo associations and just listen and enjoy.
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posted by gbarto at 3:21 AM:
Puerto Ricans are shocked to discover that you may lose the income from having a Navy Base nearby if you eliminate the purpose - practicing maneuvers - of that base. A Dog's Life tells the tale.* * *
posted by gbarto at 3:19 AM:
Cicero has a good write-up on the botched rescue of Ingrid Betancourt by the French that's mentioned under Ouest-France in our news bulletin.* * *
posted by gbarto at 3:11 AM:
Here come your French news headlines. Of course the obvious big news is the conclusion of the Tour de France with the second five-time winner in its history. That winner, of course, is Texan Lance Armstrong.Now, to the papers:
Le Monde: The American Noose Seems To Be Again Tightening For Saddam Hussein.
Libé: Americans No Longer Traveling to France. From the tone of the thing, some feelings are hurt. And wallets.
Ouest-France: The Operation That Should Have Brought Back Ingrid. That's Ingrid Betancourt, a politician with Columbian-French dual citizenship who's being held by FARC, the rebel guerillas in Columbia. Brazil is ticked that a military plane showed up at one of its airports and the operation seems to have been scrapped since there's now badwill on all sides towards a French government that with the best of intentions acted unilaterally and left potential allies shut out. Hmmm.
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posted by gbarto at 2:55 AM:
For all you photo fans, new photos up at gbarto.com. In addition to the sky pictures (posted earlier), there are pictures of the fog rolling over the Santa Cruz Mountains in the morning and slightly abstract waterscapes taken at the Lighthouse Beach at Santa Cruz. They're all linked on the gbarto.com main page. Here's one in miniature:
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Sunday, July 27, 2003
posted by gbarto at 7:28 AM:
Here we go folks. An early Sunday morning (on the West Coast anyway) French news headlines. Will it make it past the dreaded Blogger archive bug? We shall see.Le Monde: Military Mutiny Comes to End in Phillipines. With soldiers returning to barracks and life returning to normalcy, the summary seems to suggest.
Ouest-France: The lead is about the A-Account, a government funded passbook account for which the interest rate has arbitrarily been lowered not by a Federal Reserve style body but by budget architects trying to come up with more money for other programs. Most say they'll keep using the accounts anywa.
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