When Nicolas Sarkozy was elected President in May 2007, he included in his government Brice Horetefeux at the head of the newly created Ministry of immigration, integration, national identity and co-development. The creation of this Ministry had been an election pledge and was designed to attract the far-right voters and butchly address the illegal immigration issue in France. There has rightly been a lot of fuss over this Ministry's policies and actions, and especially the "quota policy" instaured. In a nutshell, in 2008 the precise number of 28000 reconduites à la frontière (escorts to the border) were to be done. To do this, there has been a massive increase of random police checks for identity papers which has led to shocking news items : an old Chinese man arrested outside his granddaughter's school in full view of the children, several suicides by defenestration when people have thought the police were coming to get them in their homes, people with families (and children born in France) and who have been working here for decades suddenly back on the plane to Africa. People who do not have the magic papiers live in fear of being caught randomly in the streets (it is compulsory to carry ID on your person at all time) while they go to work or collect their kids from school.
This was all true over a year ago (see post here)
That's it for the background, so did Brice Hortefeux make it to 28000? Well yes he did, and more; the Minsitry and the Minister are congratulating themselves for having reached the figure of 29796 reconduites. Not only that, but they are applauding the fact that just over 10000 of these, so around a third, were voluntary.
This is where we pause. Not for subjective moral issues about repatriating almost 20000 people against their will but for accountancy reasons. This figure of 10000 voluntary repatriations needs to be a little more analysed. Indeed, it seems that a pretty hefty proportion of these (I'm not sure anyone has the real figure) are EU citizens. This does not concern carts of Brits departing from the Cote d'Azur, but mainly the Roms, the (semi) nomadic gypsies settled mainly in Romania and Bulgaria which, since January 2007 have been EU members.
This means the Roms can travel freely in the EU. "But!", one could argue, "why would they depart voluntarily, especially if, as it seems, all they do is come back?" Because, believe it or not, the French state gives a repatriation bonus to all those who leave voluntarily of around 300 euros and provide transport back. It would seem, that a vast amount of the "10000 voluntary repatriations" involve busloads of EU citizens being given 300 euros andcarted off, after which they simply return to France and do it again. There have been journalist investigations into this and human rights organisations are denouncing it, but that's about it, and certainly no sound from the government. Weird or what?
vendredi 16 janvier 2009
dimanche 11 janvier 2009
So here we are mourning the veggie box
Bloody farmers.
I will not launch in to a long rant against french farmers (oh go on then) who since the post war period, when parts of Europe were starving, have benefitted from enormous encouragement from the French state and the European Union. The common agricultural policy, of which France has long been the main beneficiary, is the main common policy to have survived and was designed at de Gaulle's insistence. Whatever, the bloody French farmers are used to healthey subsidies and tipping pig manure on the steps of the town hall but right now that is not why they are so annoying. Loic, the farmer who provides us with the vegetables we collect every saturday for the veggie box has decided to pull out, despite our signing elaborate contracts and paying him in advance for vegetables until March. After putting up with his muddy chard and mutant celeriac, HE has deided that our AMAP is not big enough and that we don't help out at the farm enough... Bloody hell, we are paying for the kolkhose. So hopefully we will get our money back and find a new veggie box distributor, one that doesn't require us to spend our January weekends digging up onions.
I will not launch in to a long rant against french farmers (oh go on then) who since the post war period, when parts of Europe were starving, have benefitted from enormous encouragement from the French state and the European Union. The common agricultural policy, of which France has long been the main beneficiary, is the main common policy to have survived and was designed at de Gaulle's insistence. Whatever, the bloody French farmers are used to healthey subsidies and tipping pig manure on the steps of the town hall but right now that is not why they are so annoying. Loic, the farmer who provides us with the vegetables we collect every saturday for the veggie box has decided to pull out, despite our signing elaborate contracts and paying him in advance for vegetables until March. After putting up with his muddy chard and mutant celeriac, HE has deided that our AMAP is not big enough and that we don't help out at the farm enough... Bloody hell, we are paying for the kolkhose. So hopefully we will get our money back and find a new veggie box distributor, one that doesn't require us to spend our January weekends digging up onions.
samedi 10 janvier 2009
So here we are on the Oregon trail
A small part of history by Peggy Elliott
In a nutshell : In 1846, the extended Springer family join the Oregon trail - a collection of 20+ families who decide to go westwards from Missouri to start a new life in Oregon. Written from the point of the view of the women on the trail we follow the hardships they encounter as their wagons cover over a thousand miles of inhospitable lands, with all the trials one can imagine on the way.
The blurb : This book, which was inspired by a book called "Women's diaries of the westward journey" by Lillian Schlissel, is written exclusively through the eyes of the women who followed their men on these incredible westward journeys. Through first person narrative, diary extracts and third person omniscient narrative we are given an account of the journey that is more concerned with the practicalities of keeping families together -and alive- rather than the technical aspects of the trail. A sticker on my edition says "guaranteed to break your heart" and the huge difficulties accompanied by the massive deathtoll of those involved remind us of the truer story of the romanticised "pioneer 'n eldorado" accounts of the trails to the Pacific.
IMHO, this is a very interesting, albeit very chick-litt and sentimental novel. For those interested in the 19th century conquest of the American west, this women's account of an often male-angled part of history, is fascinating. The main interests of this book are seeing the neat separation of men and women's roles in society and in the household, and the gruesome realities of the trail: pregnancy, accidents, illness, friendships through necessity, grim conditions and so on make it run like a soap opera. That said, it reads well and the level of detail is captivating : despite being fiction this author has done her research and we imagine travelling alongside the wagons through the plains, lava deserts and mountains. This book is good for people who would like to read an adult version of "The long winter" by Laura Ingalls Wilder, who like this historical period and, though I hate to say it, are female.
In a nutshell : In 1846, the extended Springer family join the Oregon trail - a collection of 20+ families who decide to go westwards from Missouri to start a new life in Oregon. Written from the point of the view of the women on the trail we follow the hardships they encounter as their wagons cover over a thousand miles of inhospitable lands, with all the trials one can imagine on the way.
The blurb : This book, which was inspired by a book called "Women's diaries of the westward journey" by Lillian Schlissel, is written exclusively through the eyes of the women who followed their men on these incredible westward journeys. Through first person narrative, diary extracts and third person omniscient narrative we are given an account of the journey that is more concerned with the practicalities of keeping families together -and alive- rather than the technical aspects of the trail. A sticker on my edition says "guaranteed to break your heart" and the huge difficulties accompanied by the massive deathtoll of those involved remind us of the truer story of the romanticised "pioneer 'n eldorado" accounts of the trails to the Pacific.
IMHO, this is a very interesting, albeit very chick-litt and sentimental novel. For those interested in the 19th century conquest of the American west, this women's account of an often male-angled part of history, is fascinating. The main interests of this book are seeing the neat separation of men and women's roles in society and in the household, and the gruesome realities of the trail: pregnancy, accidents, illness, friendships through necessity, grim conditions and so on make it run like a soap opera. That said, it reads well and the level of detail is captivating : despite being fiction this author has done her research and we imagine travelling alongside the wagons through the plains, lava deserts and mountains. This book is good for people who would like to read an adult version of "The long winter" by Laura Ingalls Wilder, who like this historical period and, though I hate to say it, are female.
samedi 3 janvier 2009
So here we are reading the pillars of the earth
The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
In a nutshell : This book is a little over one thousand pages of small print long so the nutshell is going to be quite meaty. Ok, here goes. In mid-twelfth century England a builder dreams of building a cathedral. He and his complicated, extended family settle in the south of England and the story of the cathedral over the next 50 years is recounted through the stories of all the different people involved, from monks to peasants, landowners and knights.
The blurb : this epic monster of a book spans half a century of turbulent Medieval English history and a cast of a dozen or so main characters spanning 3 generations and every social rank. The building of the cathedral is the background of the story and provides the reason for following monks, priors and bishops, stonecutters and masons, earls and knights, market traders and farmers against a backdrop of Civil War. It is a huge tapestry of a book with many connections between the characters and a nice amount of detail (those 1000 pages had to say something!) and by following half a dozen or so characters throughout their lives you have a good sense of time passing. Follett is a thriller writer and he uses time in a interesting way, speeding up some of the more important events (attacks, quarrels, walks across Europe) and slowing some of the more descriptive bits. This gives an interesting twist to the suspense, especially as Follett uses a lot of rape, violence and plain ol' nastiness to hook you.
IMHO this is a cool, addictive read. The characters are sometimes a little absent or incoherent, the dialogue is nothing ground breaking, the historical accuracy is debatable, the anacronysms blatant, the descriptions of medieval England are interesting but no more and the pace of the book sometimes feels a little odd but it is still an addictive whopper. The likeable/hateable characters are good, the plot charges around and people go from riches to horror and back again . The religious/royal politics described are gripping and the whole thing has a satisfying ending. That said however, ironically for such a huge book, the end feels a little rushed but the first 800 pages or so were very hard to put down. Recommended holiday reading.
In a nutshell : This book is a little over one thousand pages of small print long so the nutshell is going to be quite meaty. Ok, here goes. In mid-twelfth century England a builder dreams of building a cathedral. He and his complicated, extended family settle in the south of England and the story of the cathedral over the next 50 years is recounted through the stories of all the different people involved, from monks to peasants, landowners and knights.
The blurb : this epic monster of a book spans half a century of turbulent Medieval English history and a cast of a dozen or so main characters spanning 3 generations and every social rank. The building of the cathedral is the background of the story and provides the reason for following monks, priors and bishops, stonecutters and masons, earls and knights, market traders and farmers against a backdrop of Civil War. It is a huge tapestry of a book with many connections between the characters and a nice amount of detail (those 1000 pages had to say something!) and by following half a dozen or so characters throughout their lives you have a good sense of time passing. Follett is a thriller writer and he uses time in a interesting way, speeding up some of the more important events (attacks, quarrels, walks across Europe) and slowing some of the more descriptive bits. This gives an interesting twist to the suspense, especially as Follett uses a lot of rape, violence and plain ol' nastiness to hook you.
IMHO this is a cool, addictive read. The characters are sometimes a little absent or incoherent, the dialogue is nothing ground breaking, the historical accuracy is debatable, the anacronysms blatant, the descriptions of medieval England are interesting but no more and the pace of the book sometimes feels a little odd but it is still an addictive whopper. The likeable/hateable characters are good, the plot charges around and people go from riches to horror and back again . The religious/royal politics described are gripping and the whole thing has a satisfying ending. That said however, ironically for such a huge book, the end feels a little rushed but the first 800 pages or so were very hard to put down. Recommended holiday reading.
So here we are thinking about numbers
Happy new year 2009! I am feeling happy we have left 2008 for 8, while being a favorite number in Chinese culture, has never really appealed to me : a fat little man who has no direction except in the face of infinity. 9 however... 3 to the power of 2! and, even better I turned 27 a couple of weeks ago, which of course is 3 to the power of 3, and 3 being my favorite number, well...
Paul Auster personnalises numbers, and puts it beautifully : "... each number has a personnality of its own. A twelve is very different from a thirteen (...) Twelve is upright, conscious, intelligent, whereas thirteen is a loner, a shady character who won't think twice about breaking the law to get what he wants. Eleven is tough, an outdoorsman, who likes tramping through woods and scaling mountains; ten is rather simpleminded, a bland figure who always does what's he told; nine is deep and mystical, a Buddha of contemplation (...)"
Some of this is cultural of course : thirteen is the traitor Judas and ten is the kid at school who always got top marks. But some numbers possess the extraordinary qualities and this is when we leave the biased lands of cultural associations and disappear down the rabbit hole of the study of numbers and their properties, which started with Pythagoras ("numbers are everything") and continues today to fascinate mathematicians and amateurs. Let's go back to twelve, Auster's natural leader. Twelve is a very useful number, as it can be divided by 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6, but that does not make it perfect mathematically. For this, as defined by the Pythagoreans, a number must be equal to the sum of its divisors. Six is the first perfect number as its divisors (1,2,3) add up to 6. Twenty eight is the next as its divisors (1, 2, 4, 7, 14) add up to itself.
Numbers which are equal to a power of two (4, 8, 16, 32, 64 and so on) are never perfect, but the sum of their divisors is always equal to the number minus one. For example : 2 to the power of 2 is 4 but its divisors (1 and 2) add up to 3. 2 to the power of 3 is eight but eight's divisors (1,2 and 4) are equal to 7. 2^4 is 16, whose divisors (1,2,4 and 8) add up to 15. Euclid established a link between perfect numbers and the number 2. It showed that every perfect nmber (6, 28, 496) is the product of a power of 2, multplied by the next power of 2 minus one.
ie 6 = 2^1 x (2^2 -1)
28 = 2^2 x (2^3 - 1)
496 = 2^4 x (2^5 - 1).
A cool derivation on perfect numbers are what Fermat called friendly numbers, of which he discovered 2 pairs: 220 and 284. the sum of 220's divisors add up to 284 and vice versa. In 1636 he discivered the pair 17296 and 18416. Same goes for 1184 and 1210, discovered by a sixteen year old Italian called Paganini, two hundred and fifty years later. Descartes discovered a pair in the 9 million region and Euler compiled a list of sixty two.
And despite 2009 being neither perfect nor friendly, I wish you both and more this year: Happy New Year!
Paul Auster personnalises numbers, and puts it beautifully : "... each number has a personnality of its own. A twelve is very different from a thirteen (...) Twelve is upright, conscious, intelligent, whereas thirteen is a loner, a shady character who won't think twice about breaking the law to get what he wants. Eleven is tough, an outdoorsman, who likes tramping through woods and scaling mountains; ten is rather simpleminded, a bland figure who always does what's he told; nine is deep and mystical, a Buddha of contemplation (...)"
Some of this is cultural of course : thirteen is the traitor Judas and ten is the kid at school who always got top marks. But some numbers possess the extraordinary qualities and this is when we leave the biased lands of cultural associations and disappear down the rabbit hole of the study of numbers and their properties, which started with Pythagoras ("numbers are everything") and continues today to fascinate mathematicians and amateurs. Let's go back to twelve, Auster's natural leader. Twelve is a very useful number, as it can be divided by 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6, but that does not make it perfect mathematically. For this, as defined by the Pythagoreans, a number must be equal to the sum of its divisors. Six is the first perfect number as its divisors (1,2,3) add up to 6. Twenty eight is the next as its divisors (1, 2, 4, 7, 14) add up to itself.
Numbers which are equal to a power of two (4, 8, 16, 32, 64 and so on) are never perfect, but the sum of their divisors is always equal to the number minus one. For example : 2 to the power of 2 is 4 but its divisors (1 and 2) add up to 3. 2 to the power of 3 is eight but eight's divisors (1,2 and 4) are equal to 7. 2^4 is 16, whose divisors (1,2,4 and 8) add up to 15. Euclid established a link between perfect numbers and the number 2. It showed that every perfect nmber (6, 28, 496) is the product of a power of 2, multplied by the next power of 2 minus one.
ie 6 = 2^1 x (2^2 -1)
28 = 2^2 x (2^3 - 1)
496 = 2^4 x (2^5 - 1).
A cool derivation on perfect numbers are what Fermat called friendly numbers, of which he discovered 2 pairs: 220 and 284. the sum of 220's divisors add up to 284 and vice versa. In 1636 he discivered the pair 17296 and 18416. Same goes for 1184 and 1210, discovered by a sixteen year old Italian called Paganini, two hundred and fifty years later. Descartes discovered a pair in the 9 million region and Euler compiled a list of sixty two.
And despite 2009 being neither perfect nor friendly, I wish you both and more this year: Happy New Year!
lundi 29 décembre 2008
So here we are reading the Man Booker winner 2008
The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
In a nutshell : Balram Halwai is from a village in the center of India, where the local elections are rigged, the local landowners are corrupt and thieving and where the water buffalo is more valuable than most people. We follow his life, leaving the village to become a driver for a rich family in Delhi.
The blurb : the book is written as a long letter from Balram to the Prime Minister of China, in which our hero describes the trials and tribulations of his life as an example of Inidan entrepreneurship. The book is clearly written in a cynical tone that suits the narrator's opinions and early on we realise that the character has a very dark -murderous- side to him. All in all this is a story of a modern Indian, squeezed between a modern India of call centers and money, and a traditionnal one of castes and corruption. The character, with characteristic cynicism and philosophising, muses on how one finds his place in this.
IMHO this was extremely disappointing for a MB winner. Not a bad book, but neither (again IMHO) "a masterpiece" and certainly not "blazingly savage". If anything it reminded me of a slightly darker Transmission by Hari Kunzru. One reviewer raved about the contrast between the "Indias", "where call center workers tread the same pavement as beggars" and though this is interesting it is not anywhere like in the same league as Rohinton Mistry. It was quite gripping at first but then seems to bumble along a bit. Nothing is predicatble, but mainly because not a lot happens. Some good descriptions and an interesting central character but somehow disappointing.
In a nutshell : Balram Halwai is from a village in the center of India, where the local elections are rigged, the local landowners are corrupt and thieving and where the water buffalo is more valuable than most people. We follow his life, leaving the village to become a driver for a rich family in Delhi.
The blurb : the book is written as a long letter from Balram to the Prime Minister of China, in which our hero describes the trials and tribulations of his life as an example of Inidan entrepreneurship. The book is clearly written in a cynical tone that suits the narrator's opinions and early on we realise that the character has a very dark -murderous- side to him. All in all this is a story of a modern Indian, squeezed between a modern India of call centers and money, and a traditionnal one of castes and corruption. The character, with characteristic cynicism and philosophising, muses on how one finds his place in this.
IMHO this was extremely disappointing for a MB winner. Not a bad book, but neither (again IMHO) "a masterpiece" and certainly not "blazingly savage". If anything it reminded me of a slightly darker Transmission by Hari Kunzru. One reviewer raved about the contrast between the "Indias", "where call center workers tread the same pavement as beggars" and though this is interesting it is not anywhere like in the same league as Rohinton Mistry. It was quite gripping at first but then seems to bumble along a bit. Nothing is predicatble, but mainly because not a lot happens. Some good descriptions and an interesting central character but somehow disappointing.
jeudi 11 décembre 2008
So here we are debating climate change
Last Friday, my dear friend Olivia who works for the Mairie (town hall) of the tenth on town planning and sustainable development issues asked me along to a play/debate on climate change. Out of solidarity and a little curiosity I agreed : it seemed original- a play put on by journalism students- and was free.
It was playing by the canal at the espace Jemmapes. A nice room with a fair sized stage, decorated to look like a café and terrace. The play was uneven: at best amateurish, at worst hopelessly incompetent. The plot was pretty good : we are in an undetermined near future, the warming of the planet is significant and the government & scientists have injected the atmosphere with sulphur to cool it down. (FYI: this is a real theory and solution put forward by... the Nobel prize winner for chemistry). However acid rains, respiratory problems and hideous climate change in other regions of the world have appeared as a result, though all this is hushed up by the government.
So various characters wander through the café giving their opinions and showing the various positions that people have on the issue. One girl is conspiracy-theoried up, suspects the government and is depicted as being closest to the truth. Her aunt is a farmer whose crops are suffering. There is a incompetent journalist who doesn't research anything but is spoon fed her story by a stern and corrupt climatologist. The plot gets a bit complicated as the long-forgotten murder of a climatologist is introduced and trails off, which is disappointing as the general idea was pretty good, though perhaps portrayed in a slightly black & white way (EVIL government! NICE hippie!). The acting was very uneven, some good, some forgetting their lines. Little things like empty glasses and crappy props made it difficult to suspend disbelief. That said, the one hour didn't feel too long.
What got me a little worked up however was the debate that followed. There were three experts : a young chick, a funkily dressed man and a quiet older guy. The chick knew nothing and kept turning to funky man for answers, figures and arguments. The funky man I quite liked: he had the guts to say that we were potentially all fucked and that it was possibly to late to do anything about climate change, and was also stern about some of the hypocrisy that underlies the climate change debate (do as I say not as I do, especially rich countries vis a vis poor ones). Then the third chap started to talk. He said that it was't so hard to save the world: we "just" have to cut out CO2 emissions by 4. So : if you have a car, always fill it up: by driving four people around instead of just one, you are cutting emissions by 4. Er... He then said that we had much to learn from the developing world. "Look at Senegal!" he said. Taxis and busses only leave when they are full. So let's do that in Paris! Er... Finally he said that we had a lot to learn from Ethiopian housing, which is biodegradable and moveable as made of mud. Great! It also lacks plumbing and electricity would dissolve in the rain, but who cares! It's all about saving the planet right?!
I left after he suggested this master world-saving solution. I am all for saving the planet and do my utmost to reduce at my own little level my CO2 emissions (public transport, veggie box, no shitty imports, avoid planes, recycle and so on.) but live in a mud hut in Paris? Lol. We could also suggest only having electricity one day in four (at the local hospital e.g) and that would also save energy.... This is the problem : we need feasible solutions that won't actually make the situation worse, so let's forget mud huts, car sharing and sulphur injections... and reopen the nuclear debate...
It was playing by the canal at the espace Jemmapes. A nice room with a fair sized stage, decorated to look like a café and terrace. The play was uneven: at best amateurish, at worst hopelessly incompetent. The plot was pretty good : we are in an undetermined near future, the warming of the planet is significant and the government & scientists have injected the atmosphere with sulphur to cool it down. (FYI: this is a real theory and solution put forward by... the Nobel prize winner for chemistry). However acid rains, respiratory problems and hideous climate change in other regions of the world have appeared as a result, though all this is hushed up by the government.
So various characters wander through the café giving their opinions and showing the various positions that people have on the issue. One girl is conspiracy-theoried up, suspects the government and is depicted as being closest to the truth. Her aunt is a farmer whose crops are suffering. There is a incompetent journalist who doesn't research anything but is spoon fed her story by a stern and corrupt climatologist. The plot gets a bit complicated as the long-forgotten murder of a climatologist is introduced and trails off, which is disappointing as the general idea was pretty good, though perhaps portrayed in a slightly black & white way (EVIL government! NICE hippie!). The acting was very uneven, some good, some forgetting their lines. Little things like empty glasses and crappy props made it difficult to suspend disbelief. That said, the one hour didn't feel too long.
What got me a little worked up however was the debate that followed. There were three experts : a young chick, a funkily dressed man and a quiet older guy. The chick knew nothing and kept turning to funky man for answers, figures and arguments. The funky man I quite liked: he had the guts to say that we were potentially all fucked and that it was possibly to late to do anything about climate change, and was also stern about some of the hypocrisy that underlies the climate change debate (do as I say not as I do, especially rich countries vis a vis poor ones). Then the third chap started to talk. He said that it was't so hard to save the world: we "just" have to cut out CO2 emissions by 4. So : if you have a car, always fill it up: by driving four people around instead of just one, you are cutting emissions by 4. Er... He then said that we had much to learn from the developing world. "Look at Senegal!" he said. Taxis and busses only leave when they are full. So let's do that in Paris! Er... Finally he said that we had a lot to learn from Ethiopian housing, which is biodegradable and moveable as made of mud. Great! It also lacks plumbing and electricity would dissolve in the rain, but who cares! It's all about saving the planet right?!
I left after he suggested this master world-saving solution. I am all for saving the planet and do my utmost to reduce at my own little level my CO2 emissions (public transport, veggie box, no shitty imports, avoid planes, recycle and so on.) but live in a mud hut in Paris? Lol. We could also suggest only having electricity one day in four (at the local hospital e.g) and that would also save energy.... This is the problem : we need feasible solutions that won't actually make the situation worse, so let's forget mud huts, car sharing and sulphur injections... and reopen the nuclear debate...
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