A Thousand Protesters Outside France Inter

Yesterday 1st July a thousand people gathered outside Radio France to protest against the sacking of Didier Porte and Stéphane Guillon . The two humorists are not having their contracts renewed. Stéphane Guillon said in his penultimate “chronique” last week that he found this out by reading “Teleloisirs” a TV listing magazine, in which there was an interview with Phillippe Val the Director of France Inter.

M. Val was on the 7 to 9 sequence this morning presented by Nicolas Demorand, who is also leaving today. The only reason M. Val gave for not renewing the humorist’s contracts was that he was fed up with continually being insulted by them when he gave them every freedom.

Both of the humorists have over stepped the line between humour and good taste many times. They have also upset the politicians more than a few times, but this makes for lively radio.

Nicolas Demorand has a reputation for being a tough interviewer, but compared to the Today Programme presenters he’s a pussy cat. We don’t know whether Nicolas is leaving because he was asked to or he requested it. We do know that he will be presenting a 5pm to 7pm cultural slot on France Inter instead. So the protesters suspect political pressure from above, a possibility that M. Val, who is a smooth tongued political animal himself, was quick to repeatedly deny.

What astound me is that the bosses of France Inter did not foresee the public reaction and prepare for it in advance by leaking the news early and making announcements before the event. There is little culture of news management in France. Even senior politicians rarely use those techniques to lessen or limit the impact of their announcements, with the change in the retirement age being a notable recent exception.

I can’t decide whether this is due to arrogance, incompetence or the fact that there are elements in the culture which prefer confrontation. Perhaps it is all three!!

New Dawn

Jennie and Don Waterman live in La Teulière in an old stone house surrounded by roses. Don is totally passionate about roses and their garden has so many that there is hardly room for anything else. They sell their roses as cut flowers to support the charity that Jennie and Don started which is called New Dawn after one of the roses. On 24th May they ran a fund raising event.

Jennie was teaching in Uganda in 2002 and was appalled by the devastating plight resulting from AIDS of the widows and orphans that she witnessed there. With Don she started to raise money and made more trips to the region. In 2004 they registered “New Dawn” as a charitable association in France.

After working with a project in Uganda they focussed their support on another orphanage and teaching project in Kisumu where they met Nancy and Jonas Okoth. Jennie and Don came to know them well whilst they were working closely together in December 2006 and saw in them both a remarkable young couple, who were totally dedicating their lives to helping orphans and “street” children.

The orphanage was started by Nancy and Jonas in January 2007 to provide care and support to the orphans, street children and widows of the Kisumu area. Nancy used to work for the Imperial Hotel in Kisumu but left her career behind, bought some land about 4km north of Kisumu in the hills overlooking Lake Victoria and together with Jonas and their three children set up the “Arise and Shine” Kogony Orphanage and Community Project. We met Nancy last year at a social event hosted by Marie-Ange and Jean-Louis Dreyer whose daughter Julie has spent three months at Kogony. I did not know about Nancy's work then but I was struck by her self assurance and sense of humour. Others have used the word charisma.

They now have twenty four resident orphans and run a nursery school on the site. Often children in the community are left in the care of aged grandmothers or sick mothers. With the intention of improving the quality of life and the life expectancy of these widows, Nancy and Jonas have reached out to the local community by arranging nine empowerment groups for the many women left widowed by AIDS. They have encouraged these groups to start mini businesses, which sell locally made soap and high protein meal. Other plans are underway which include selling articles made by the tailoring group and vegetables grown on the orphanage land. In April 2009 they asked the community to select twenty widows most in need of help and started the “Desperate Widows Group”. Each member receives monthly food packs, regular home visits and other articles such as mosquito nets, extra blankets etc.

When Jennie told us all Janet’s story I was very moved;

“On another visit we found Janet very sick with AIDS and we thought she was going to die. It was decided to bring her back to the orphanage, and with the assistance of the staff, resident children and our American friends, Mary Lynn and Wayne McLemore, part of the cowshed was joyfully transformed into a clean hut for her. After six weeks of medical treatment, good food and loving care, Janet made a wonderful recovery, put on 11kgs, increased her white blood cell count enormously and to everyone’s amazement was able to return home.”

It has since been decided to create a small hospice on the site where people can come, to be treated and cared for or, if they are not as fortunate as Janet, to die in peaceful surroundings.

In 2009 the “Arise and Shine” orphanage hosted a Medical Camp in which 440 people were treated and about two-thirds of them were tested for HIV and received counselling. This was so successful that the orphanage was chosen to host an Eye Camp during which over 500 people from the local bush community were examined and 48 people including five of the ”Desperate Widows”, had cataract operations done by the team of five visiting doctors in the local hospital.

Jennie emphasises that all of this was made possible by a local Indian team “The Bhagini Samaj”, the Dutch aid group “the Klara Foundation”, the Kisumu “Ladies in Action” and Lions Club International.

The New Dawn Association is entirely responsible for the running costs of the “Arise and Shine” project and relies on donations mostly from individuals in France, Switzerland and the UK. You can learn more about it on their website. http://www.newdawn-association.org/

The “Arise and Shine” project is still in need of additional buildings and facilities, an improved water supply and an electrical supply.

In 2009 Edinburgh Direct Aid has made valuable contributions to specific infrastructure projects and in particular they filled a container with much needed items to equip the orphanage. You can see more pictures and read about their involvement on their website. http://www.edinburghdirectaid.org/

A generous contribution from Rotary de Levaux, Switzerland has enabled improvements to buildings, toilets and washing facilities, rainwater collection and storage and will also allow lighting to be installed.

At a time of my life when, I am ashamed to admit, I find myself more and more tending to doze off over a book after lunch, I admire Jenny and Don’s energy and determination. But then, as Jennie said last night, “Each time we go to Kogony, and work with Nancy and Jonas, the children and the widows we come back re-energised and feeling that we get back more than we give”! “It’s just as well, otherwise we wouldn’t do it”!
And of course it is impossible to adequately express my admiration for Nancy and Jonas in a few words. They are truly an example for us all!

Israel and the Aid Flotilla

So this time Israel has finally provoked an international outcry as a result of its incompetent handling of the interception of the Aid Flotilla. For a while I thought that the incident had been so badly handled, and so badly timed, that it must be a politically motivated conspiracy to undermine Nettanyahu. The defence minister, Ehud Barak who ordered it, is after all a political rival. But on further reflection I think that it is a tragic mistake rather than a conspiracy. Sadly Israeli mistakes usually cost other people’s lives.

If you send highly trained killers to undertake a police action and they meet resistance they will kill. It’s what their training is all about. So that was the first mistake. Next you have to ask why Israel launched the assault in international waters leaving them open to be accused of piracy and of disregarding international law. That was their second mistake. But Israel has been so protected from criticism by their international supporters over the years that I suppose they thought that aspect was unimportant and, as Gideon Levy said yesterday in a television interview on the BBC about his article in Haaretz, “Israel considers itself above the law”. http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/operation-mini-cast-lead-1.293417

Israel never fails to miss opportunities for peace. They go through the motions usually without any real intention of ever resolving the Palestinian issue. They seem to like living under the siege mentality that the resistance to their persistent occupation of Palestinian land engenders. Or is it that the only way to unite the country, which is so politically diverse and fractious, is to have an external enemy?
Every time a rocket is fired from Gaza it is a propaganda opportunity for the Israeli government, who are very well organised on that front. Labelling Hamas a terrorist organisation and persuading western governments not to recognize a legitimately elected government was masterly.
Of course their supporters in the diaspora are well placed to label any criticism of Israel in the West as anti-Semitic and few in Europe or the States dare to criticise Israel directly. It is not anti-Semitic to criticise a government capable of launching a war against the population of Gaza and killing over 1,300 Palestinians principally in an attempt to get themselves re-elected. (Winter 2008-2009). The Israeli casualty count in that three week conflict was 13 of which 10 were defence force personnel. A 100 to 1 casualty ratio is not untypical for Palestinian Israeli conflicts, a grotesque extension of the biblical “an eye for an eye” doctrine, which seems to be considered acceptable in Israel and in the West.
I have great difficulty in understanding how a state, founded on the ashes and corpses of 6 million Jews and brought into being after a Zionist terrorist campaign in Palestine, can behave so inhumanely to the citizens of the land which it continues to occupy illegally. The oppressed have become the oppressors and they have persuaded the West to accept that what they do is legitimate.
If the outcry over the Flotilla incident hardens into a loss of patience with Israel perhaps 9 more people will not have died in vain. Egypt has lifted the blockade of Gaza and must put an end to it for good. Western governments should openly criticise Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians and demand that they negotiate a real peace. The initiative is with Obama but he is just the last of a long line of Presidents scared of the Jewish lobby in the States and, although he has now called for the blockade to be lifted, will he actually do anything?
Meanwhile individuals should boycott Israeli produce until some results begin to come from peace talks. In the UK I boycotted Israeli produce for many years. In France there is very little on sale so I am forced to resort to blogging instead.

What Harry Potter Did Next - A Sequel to the Deathly Hallows

You can't work outside when it's raining so I recently re-read “The Deathly Hallows”, to extract the maximum from the many plot links and references to previous events. I think it's the best one of the Harry Potter series. But after all their adventures what did Harry and his friends do next?

Harry didn’t want to go back to Hogwarts, where he would always have fingers pointed at him and constantly be a focus of attention for the younger girls, but neither was he keen to continue brooding at Grimmauld Place with Kreacher. He was besieged by book offers but turned them all down! He felt that he no longer had a role in life. Recent events were still too raw in his mind and he felt guilty concerning his friends and acquaintances, and all the others, who were killed by Voldemort and his Death Eaters whilst he solved the puzzle of the horcruxes. If only he could have worked it out sooner!

Hermione eventually persuaded Harry that he needed to finish his schooling because, as he freely admitted in later years, “there were just so many things I didn't know”! The opportunity to be with Ginny for the school year was the deciding factor. Or was it Quidditch?
Having finally completed his N.E.W.T.s and then his Auror training he took Ginny and set off on a world tour, giving lectures about how he defeated You-Know-Who, and with Hermione’s help, making enough galleons in a couple of years so that he didn’t have to work at all if he didn’t want to. His message was always the same; “I am not anyone special and I had a lot of help! Voldemort himself picked me out and marked me as his equal; and he made lots of mistakes because he didn’t value love and self-sacrifice”. Harry was granted honours wherever he went and was voted a special pension by the American Ministry of Magic in exchange for the occasional week of consultancy concerning special relations with Muggles. He was awarded Witch Weekly International’s award for the most eligible bachelor but Ginny refused to let him go to the presentation ceremony saying “If you want to be part of that nonsense I’ll never marry you”! Harry didn’t need any more persuading.

Harry also started a charity called Youthwatch whose principal aim was to locate young wizards in the Muggle world and help them to avoid being subjected to child abuse by frightened and ignorant parents.

Only Rita Skeeter managed to find anyone with any harsh words to say about Harry and that was of course Malfoy. Ms Skeeter, glossing over the fact that he still bore the Dark Mark, quotes Draco Malfoy as saying, “Harry Potter was always obsessed with power. At Hogwarts he even set up his own army! He thinks he’s going to be Minister of Magic one day”. To be charitable, it was thus revealed how little he actually knew about Harry.  He was also still very angry over the recent death of his father. By the way anyone carrying the Death Eater’s Dark Mark, if they survived their sentences in Azkabhan, was banned from any form of public office and refused entry to the Ministry of Magic. Many of them went to live abroad in one of the smaller countries of South America, where they took over some of the established drug cartels.

Of course for Hermione there was no choice. She had to take her N.E.W.Ts.so that she could go on to do her P.h.D.D. (Particularly hard and Difficult Dissertation) which was on the subject of the mastership of wands and how they interact with their owners. Later, having acted as Harry’s manager for a few years, she married Ron and after she had established her academic credentials by publishing various articles and papers in prestigious wizarding journals, she wrote the definitive biography of Harry Potter. This was, of course, a worldwide best seller in many languages. She was invited to teach at Hogwarts but turned the offer down preferring to be with Ron, to write books and to bring up the kids. Apart from her family there was something else of which she was most proud.  After a long campaign her "Charter of Rights for House Elves" was finally passed in the Wizengamot.

Ron was deeply affected by the loss of his brother Fred and stayed at home recovering for a while. He didn’t go back to Hogwarts but joined his brother George in the joke shop business, opening the Hogsmeade branch while Hermione studied for her exams. Later, after he married Hermione, he ran the sales and marketing side of the business while George progressively concentrated more and more on product development. At one stage he bought an ice cream van, and told everyone that he was going to sell Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Ice Cream. In reality it turned out to be a mobile joke shop, which he asked Reginald Cattermole and his wife to run.

As JKR says in the postscript to The Deathly Hallows, Neville became the herbology professor at Hogwarts and kept in touch with the members of the DA. After Luna’s father died Neville married her and, during the school holidays, they went on happy and successful trips all over the world looking for, and finding, rare specimens of magical plants to include in Neville’s book, which Luna illustrated. As Luna said to a smiling Hermione one day “looking for rare things with her father was very good but it is even more exciting to actually find them with Neville”!

Read JK Rowlings interview for NBC about what the characters did next http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/19959323/ and in the Scotsman http://news.scotsman.com/scotland/JK-reveals-what-Harry-did.3606806.jp

Mostly Irises

Here are some photos of our garden.



At this time of year the main interest is the irises. We bought them in May 2007 from a nursery called Les Senteurs du Quercy in the south of the Lot, where they have several hectares of irises growing in their fields. This is their website. http://www.senteursduquercy.com/   We first read about "Les Senteurs" in a magazine and decided to visit them. As well as irises they also specialise in sages and plants that like dry conditions. We could not resist the beautiful fields of irises and ordered six different varieties for collection in late July. Since they were in flower we could easily imagine the colour combinations but it still took us several hours. While we waited for them to be lifted I prepared the planting sites with loving care and this is the result. When we collected them they gave us quite a few free plants as well and they are just as lovely. Everyone has pale blue irises here, they are so easy to grow and need little care, but the more unusual colours are not often seen. A couple of the local gardeners, have already asked for some plants when we divide them next year!
The blue wild flowers are native sages in our meadow. Interestingly some of them have mutated into an attractive pink.

Raku!

Annick Cammarata makes graceful figures in pottery using Raku techniques. You can see some of them here. http://www.jardindanhtuyet.com/annickCammarata.htm We first met her a couple of years ago when we went to collect one of her pieces that we had bought at an exhibition. Since then we have been asking her when she was going to do a course and finally, after she had moved house, just over the border into the Aveyron, and her husband Paul had built a studio, we went there in April and May.

We needed two days because in April we made the items, then they have to thoroughly dry and have their first 1000 deg C biscuit firing. I made four bowls and an angora goat. Christiane made a bowl, an irregular shaped box with a lid and a large platter. I had told Christiane before we went that I wanted to make a goat like the ones at La Ferme de Siran above Autoire http://aux2pigeonniers.net/siran/ and even when I was over halfway through the modelling process she was sceptical. Fortunately I seem to have a minor talent for this sort of thing and with some helpful advice from Annick it turned out very well. Annick remarked on the speed with which I was able to make the bowls. We timed the last one and it took twenty minutes. This was using a turntable and my fingers, not a potter’s wheel which would be far quicker but is much more difficult.

In May we returned to do the glazes and the dramatic second firing. Annick had mixed various glazes and fired a sample piece so that we would have an idea of the colours that are possible. Glazes can be painted on using a brush like the bowls or poured on like the platter.

It is during the second firing that the Raku process is used to make the glazes produce their colours and the characteristic cracked finish. The pieces are heated to 950 deg C in the kiln and then quickly removed and put on a bed of sawdust and wood shavings in a container. More sawdust is thrown on top and the container is sealed. The smoke blackens unglazed surfaces and restricting the ingress of air generates reducing conditions which creates the colours and sheen of the metal oxide glazes. At the same time the thermal shock cracks the glazes and sometimes the smoke penetrates the cracks making interesting patterns.

When they have cooled you have the excitement of revealing the colours as you clean the pieces up with water and a scouring pad. Raku is rather a chancy process and colours don’t always come out as expected. Sometimes you get fewer colours and more metallic sheen, at other times a particular glaze gives neither colour nor sheen and ends up grey, but even then it usually looks interesting. Both of us really like what we produced. The only real investment is a kiln and I could easily imagine taking up Raku as a hobby.

By the way, in case you were wondering, the angora goat is called Mildred.

Panic on the Markets or Cyber Attack?

This one is a bit technical! Last Thursday 6th May there was a massive 9% drop on the Dow Jones. In just a matter of seconds it fell 500 points. http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/markets/article7119054.ece 

There is speculation that some unfortunate trader made a very big mistake with a zero or two, giving the market the downward nudge that then unleashed a series of program trades, which then pushed it down a further few hundred points. An investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is underway. Because there was no underlying reason for the market to suddenly drop it recovered during the next trading session, but the event sent shock waves around the world’s markets.

Back in the mists of time, circa 1968, when I was studying control systems as part of my chemical engineering course at Exeter, I was taught about how to ensure that a control system was stable and didn’t shoot off to one extreme or the other at the slightest perturbation. In spite of having an analogue computer to demonstrate it, rather like the one on the right, I didn’t really understand it at the time, not intuitively anyway! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_computer It was only later, when I was able to see the effect that changes to the control parameters had on real systems, that I began to appreciate what my lecturers had been trying to teach me. In a three term controller you have three settings: Gain, Derivative and Integral time all acting on a system with inertia, in other words a system which takes time to react to the change in the setpoint value. This article explains it very well.

http://newton.ex.ac.uk/teaching/cdhw/Feedback/ControlTypes.html

It is clear to me that program trading has increased the sensitivity, “the Gain” in the stock market. On the other hand the system inertia, the period of time it took for traders and investors to hear of an event and to decide what to do, has been shortened to milliseconds. The integral control term, which over time brings the system back to its new state of stability, still exists because not all trading is done using computers, people do act in the market, and eventually, if there is no rational reason for the market to stay down, then there is money to be made by buying and waiting for it to rise.

So if regulators want to avoid the sort of unnecessary panic that was created last Thursday, then they need to either delay program trades or limit their size. The problem is that the smart guys can use their program trades to make money. By being able to react so quickly they can take advantage of smaller investors who are not so well equipped. So whilst the smaller investors are still selling, reacting to the original drop in value, which may have happened a few hours ago, the smart guys have programmed their computers to buy as soon as the price starts to rise and are buying up the bargains in the basement. The smart guys, who are all large financial institutions with lots of political pull, will not want anything changed to limit their money making opportunities so the SEC is unlikely to take any action, which in any case would have to be by international agreement.

There is another aspect to consider. In such an unstable system what if there was a politically motivated “cyber attack” designed to assault the capitalist system at its heart.
I wonder what the security protocols are for connecting to the Stock Markets, how easy is it to crack them and who might be motivated to do so?  What are the authorities doing about it? Anyone who knows is very welcome to reassure me!