Looking for a hammer

Did God create a red button? There must be one somewhere. You press it and time goes backwards.

Come on, do we really need web 2.0? I think the world is going maso.

Scrapping the bottom of the barrel

From left to right: Nicolas Sarkozy, Right wing UMP candidate; Ségolène Royal, Socialist Party; François Bayrou, centrist party (UDF).

One of these three characters will be the next president of the French banana republic.

The Presidential elections are starting to obsess me. Who am I going to vote for? Like 60% of the French, I distrust both the right and the left. I obviously cannot vote for someone I like - this person does not exist. Those three candidates are loved by a certain category of people, and genuinely hated by another. In fact, the one who will pass the second round of the elections could simply be the least hated by the majority of French. Complex, strange, unexpected; too complex, too strange, too unexpected - French, you would say.

To solve my citizen pain, and improve my banana attitude, I attended a talk on the French elections at the Frontline Club with a compatriot of mine. Entertaining the crowd, Jean-Pierre Langelier (JP), a 50 something French correspondent from Le Monde based in London, and a journalist from the Guardian who'd lived 10 years in France under the Chirac's diktat and whose name I forgot (to honour our calendar, we'll call him Pat). The debate was moderated by BBC's Foreign Affairs correspondent Allan Little.

It all started well, with a big laugh, as expected. The 2 Brits opened the drawer of clichés (the crisis in France, immigration, the CPE law and the relationship between French and Work, the fear of change etc.). However, I was expecting a little more originality from two supposedly educated British journalists who had both lived in France for a certain amount of time - a lot of what they said could have been quoted in Stephen Clarke's "A Year in the Merde". JP couldn't look more French, old fashion and intellectual from the roots of his hair to the left corner of his glasses, which didn't help convincing that France could plant new seeds. Pat was more arrogant than clever, generalising on the French and their habits. Little had no choice but to deal with them.

The initial idea was to present the three candidates as "a new brand of French Politicians". Which is true, they are a breath of fresh air. Presumably in good health, no double life (unlike Mitterand), and no casseroles aux cul or crimes that should lead them to jail after the end of their mandate (unlike Chirac). That is enough to make me happy.

I got back home with three statements:
- France is living beyond its means
- Politicians are corrupted
- The French media represent the Elite, therefore entertain the break between the politicians and the citizens.

I didn't learn anything.

"So, tell me, who is going to win?". Penelope thinks like most people who attended the conference yesterday: Sarko will be the man. It could be Bayrou. Opportunism has always paid.

ps: Bananas we like and respect in France, and the real king of bananas is him, Henri Salvador. Unanymously loved. I might as well vote for him.

Convenient

Tomorrow, for the sake of journalism, we will be surrounded with bikers dressed like fish. We don't know yet how we will catch them but, everything is under control. Everything is under control.


I repeat, everything is...

Bungee Jump

Matan went bungee jumping last week. So Tamer and I filmed him. Interested?

Edited by Matan Rochlitz.

The crisis in the Niger Delta

Now Playing: a radio documentary on the crisis in the Niger Delta I worked on two weeks ago.

The field

Candidates to the French Presidential elections have another 47 days to dare talking about Culture.

In front of the Kids

While I was seating on the steps of the church on the Plaza de las Pasiegas in Granada, three kids were playing football, insulting themselves, trying to behave like adults.

Last year, in Brazil, I met children who, you could tell just by looking at their body, were not older than 5. But their moves, the way they walked or simply itched their nose would make them look ten years older. It is the weight of poverty. They were going by barefoot. A little girl tried to steal my bag once. She was not higher than my waist. She grabbed my empty purse, and shouted at me, staring at me with the ugliest face I had ever seen. She was more scary than a thousand kalashnikovs pointed at me.

Back again.

November 1993. First day in a French school. I am 10 years old and I have been repatriated in Bordeaux after the beginning of a "civil war" in Gabon. I am sent to school alone and find my way to a classroom full of "white idiots". The furniture is old fashion, and kids wear aprons. I am too naive to question anything. The teacher tells me to seat next to Jean Michaux, the most detestable person the earth has ever had to bear. I call the teacher "Maîtresse" (mistress). That's how we called them back in Africa. Michaux looks at me in the eyes with the most intimidating arrogance: "Ici on ne dit pas maîtresse, on dit Madame" ("here we don't say "mistress" we say "Madam""). I bend my eyes. He then grabs his desk with his two fat hands and moves it away from mine. Oh oh, it looks like I'm gonna be in trouble.

With your pure face, you freak me out kid.