 Click here to reply (email: maud@fontenoy.com ... Robert(WebGuy) row@fastmail.fm)Chers amis, JOYEUX NOËL ...en famille je l'espere pour vous aussi! De mon coté, last month was packed with meetings conferences and visits to schools, and looking for sponsors (what's new!), preparing everything for my next adventure. The Paris Boat Show was my key to finding all the stuff (sails, electonics and clothes) in one place ... Les choses se mettent en place, je gravis marche après marche, prudemment mais sûrement. The end of this year is full of good news for 2006, (I'll give you a quick run down of it), my short weeks trip to l'île de La Réunion allowed me to get to know the island, its movers and shakers, its enterprises and the people a bit better. Everything seems perfect for my arrival there towards the end of this Summer. La Marine Nationale, an invaluable partner, has suberb facilities which "my yacht and I" (dit la princesse) will be very happy to dock in. What a wonderful Island!! Je vous souhaite de très bonnes fêtes, plein de plaisirs simples et de vrais sentiments, remember happiness is not found simply in reaching the destination but enjoying the journey ... La vie est belle, Je vous embrasse, Maud PS. As a simple gesture to help the planet ... You can give a second life to your Christmas fir tree, even if it's not possible to replant it its wood can be used for firewood and the branches cut up and composted. La ville de Bruxelles organise depuis dix ans la collecte des sapins de Noël en vue de compostage; en France Suresnes et d’autres villes s’y engagent aussi. Pensez au sac à sapin : Handicap International propose aujourd’hui des sacs biodégradables et compostables. Le Mauricien interviews Maud (credit: Maudlyn Gébert, Ile Rodrigues, Océan Indien) ... RADIO MORIS (Choose OPEN) ... TV
Below are some photo's of Maud's trip to the island of Maurice (Mauritius) ... (Why an Egyptian spice market? click collage) and an amazing photo of the beautiful île de La Réunion ... (click photo for tour) ... (Photo: club-invest.com) ... WEBCAMS
|
!!!CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR SUCCESSFUL TRANS PACIFIC ROW EMMANUEL!!!
Emmanuel Coindre has become only the second person to be credited with successfully rowing solo across the Pacific from west to east following in the wake of fellow Frenchman Gerard d'Aboville who also started from Choshi Japan back in 1991. Emmanuel broke a finger and capsized 16 times during the row ... Near the end of his voyage Emmanuel was positioned about 400 miles up wind of his intended destination, San Francisco, and ran out of food having to be resupplied by 2 air drops from a Bighorn Airways Wyoming charter aircraft that flew out to him from Newport Oregon. Chris Eisle of Bighorn said "On the first trip he got two of the three boxes, and at least 1 of the boxes on the second trip” ... As you can see from the google image he was within striking distance of the ports of Coos Bay south east of him and Winchester bay to the North East. In spite of that Emmanuel decided to accept a tow to shore ... Wesley Trull, a Coast Guard spokesman in North Bend, said a whale-watching boat, the Miss Linda from Coos Bay was sent to meet the rower on Tuesday. "We have kind of been monitoring him for the last week," Trull said "I don't think he was having a good time." Emmanuel said that during the trip he rowed 15 to 18 hours a day, ate freeze-dried pasta, rice dishes and protein bars for energy, and made his own water with a desalination machine. He shaved once a week to keep a routine, and prayed twice a day ... Sylviane Coindre, his mother, said "The Pacific Ocean is very dangerous. During his rowing I pray all the days." Being "towed to shore" and "resupplied" means Emmanuel can not be considered to have completed the crossing "unassisted" in the Ocean Rowing Society's record book ... "We've been encouraging him for the past week to try to make landfall," said Kenneth Crutchlow, executive director of The Ocean Rowing Society, but as he decided to accept a tow Emmanuel will go into the organization's statistics as having completed the journey, with a notation that he was towed to shore . . . . . . . PLAY VIDEO (France 3) |
 |
PlayVIDEO warning of 9/11/2001 released in March 2001!!!
Episode 1 of a Fox TV series called "The Lone Gunmen" was aired on 3/2/2001. In the show, the bad guys fly a passenger airplane by remote control with intentions of crashing it into the World Trade Center... The villains were a Pentagon insider faction... the motive to inflame the public and thereby legitimize new military budgets and operations... PlayVIDEO comment by Larry Silverstein leaseholder of WTC7!!! (PBS/CBS)
New World Trade Center 7 ... "The building was topped out on October 21, 2004 during a ceremony in which Larry Silverstein, the World Trade Center complex developer, and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg were present ... Sep2003 .. Sep2004 .. Sep2005 .. (a construction worker fell to his death on 29 September 2004) |
 |
|
|
On April 4th 1967, Dr Martin Luther King said:  "We must rapidly begin the shift from a THING-oriented society to a PERSON-oriented society... When MACHINES, COMPUTERS, PROFIT motives and PROPERTY rights, are considered more important than PEOPLE, the giant triplets of RACISM, extreme MATERIALISM, and MILITARISM are incapable of being conquered."
|
|
Category 3 Hurricane Rita made landfall at 3:30 a.m. ET Saturday on the extreme southwest coast of Louisiana near Sabine Pass, Texas.
You may remember that many evacuees from New Orleans were taken to Houston Texas which is not a good place to be in a hurricane!!!    |
|
    
|
Fidel Castro protects 2 million Cubans from Hurricane Dennis ... George Bush fails the people of Louisiana
PLAY VIDEO . . . (only 10 cubans killed by Dennis) Dear Condoleezza, PLEASE DO SOMETHING FOR THE DYING, STARVING "??NIGGERS??" OF LOUISIANA. !!!YOUR DAD WAS BORN IN BATON ROUGE FOR GOD'S SAKE!!! IT'S TIME TO THROW OFF THAT FALSE FACADE AND FIND YOUR TRUE PLACE IN LIFE, WITH YOUR PEOPLE WHO ARE SUFFERING AND DYING. YOU ARE SECRETARY OF STATE, USE THE POWER VESTED IN YOU TO ENSURE A COMMUNITY MINDED HUMANITARIAN OUTCOME FOR YOUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS WHO ARE ONLY JUST CLINGING ONTO LIFE AMIDST FILTH SQUALOR AND DEATH ... Are you proud of that Condoleeza ... Robert Have a few words with FEMA boss Michael Brown who reckons the victims should share some responsibility for their plight because they didn't evacuate when they were told ... Get real Michael it was up to you to provide the MEANS for everyone to be evacuated from New Orleans and somewhere for them TO LIVE until the city could be rebuilt ... Imagine if the hurricane had hit the coast just west of New Orleans at category 5 as forecast ... The whole city would have been totalled ... Robert . . . . (zoomable map of New Orleans) Michael Brown ... the starched white shirt that stuffed up?? . . . "There was a feeling that he was not serious and somewhat shallow." ... Coast Guard Vice Admiral Thad Allen will replace FEMA director Michael Brown as the on-site head of hurricane relief operations in the Gulf Coast ... ... U.S. President George W. Bush says he takes responsibility for the federal government's failures in responding to the disaster ... PLAY VIDEO On April 4th 1967, Dr Martin Luther King said "We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered." .... PLAY VIDEO |
| PHOTOS from Croix-Rouge PLAY VIDEO CNN ????New Orleans below sea level???? CNN FSGATE NHC |
  PHOTOS from CBS PLAY Ijahman Levi "Heavy Load" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Oil slick from service station . . . . . . |
   
   ?Warbrokers? ? |
L'heure est encore à la joie après la libération de la journaliste française Florence Aubenas et de son guide irakien Hussein Hanoun. Le journal Libération parle du rôle-clé d'un intermédiaire surnommé l'Imprécateur.Dimanche, la jeune femme a retrouvé le sol français souriante, accueillie par des applaudissements, en arrivant sur la base militaire de Villacoublay, près de Paris, où elle est tombée dans les bras de sa famille et a été saluée par le président Jacques Chirac. La journaliste du quotidien Libération a immédiatement remercié tous ceux qui se sont mobilisés pour sa libération et qui lui ont permis d'être là aujourd'hui. Elle a annoncé une conférence de presse pour mardi matin. Parlant de conditions de détention sévères - accroupie dans une cave, pieds et poings liés, les yeux bandés -, elle a démenti avoir été détenue avec d'ex-otages roumains, contrairement à ce que ces derniers ont affirmé peu après l'annonce de sa libération. Il avaient été enlevés le 5 janvier à Bagdad. Pas de rançon? ... rancon ou pas? . . . (LeSoir)PAPHOS, Cyprus Jun. 12, 2005 16:19 ( The Jerusalem Post) French journalist Florence Aubenas arrived in Cyprus Sunday, hours after leaving Iraq where she was held hostage for five months, airport officials said. French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy met Aubenas, who arrived in Cyprus in a C-130 military aircraft. Together they boarded another plane which departed for France almost 30 minutes later, airport officials said. Aubenas and her Iraqi assistant, Hussein Hanoun al-Saadi, were released Saturday and the journalist with the Liberation newspaper departed Baghdad for Paris at about 12:30 p.m. (0830GMT) Sunday. PARIS (Reuters) - A French reporter and her Iraqi driver released after being held hostage in Iraq for five months are in good health, President Jacques Chirac said on Sunday. "They are in good health," Chirac said in a televised speech, adding that reporter Florence Aubenas and her Iraqi driver, Hussein Hanun al-Saadi, had been released. Aubenas was on a plane heading for France, he said. Aubenas and her driver were taken hostage after leaving their Baghdad hotel on Wednesday January 5th ... (Maud arrived in Lima Peru on Sunday January 2nd and rowed out of Puerto Callao on her way across the Pacific Ocean on January 12th ... Marcel Mochet (AFP), Laurent & Christian Bex arrived in Lima to cover the story of Maud's departure on Saturday 8th January) 
Ingrid Betancourt dared to speak against her Government and was kidnapped!!! "A rescue, yes, absolutely ... but not any kind of rescue, rescues are either successful or they shouldn't happen," Ingrid said, twisting rosary beads around her hand. "It is very important that it is the President (Álvaro Uribe Vélez of Colombia) who evaluates the risk, and for that matter the chances of success ... ... I trust him." If The Brazilian Workers Union had no luck negotiating with the FARC for Ingrid's release, what hope did you have??? If the FARC was indeed a left wing Marxist guerilla group they would not have kidnapped Ingrid in the first place. I would think it must be quite obvious to anyone with half a brain that the FARC is in some way connected to the government of Columbia & so to the USA. Ingrid gave us a BIG HINT ... "It is very important that it is the President (Álvaro Uribe Vélez of Colombia) who evaluates the risk, and for that matter the chances of success ... ... I trust him." Is Ingrid trying to tell us that President Álvaro Uribe Vélez of Colombia is responsible for the FARC and so it is ONLY HE who can bring about her release??? If indeed Ingrid was seriously ill why didn't the FARC release her, you would think they had enough problems without having to care for a seriously ill hostage ... Robert |
British troops whose commander in chief is Prime Minister of the UK Tony Blair
destroyed a police station/prison in Southern Iraq to break out 2 british special services operative who were arrested by iraqi police
while dressed in traditional arab garments over their t-shirts and jeans, armed with heavy weapons and driving an
iraqi car full of exposives. The 2 british soldiers resisted arrest wounding one iraqi policeman in the leg
and shooting another dead in the subsequent car chase. The 2 british soldiers were not in the
prison as they had been taken to a safe house by the iraqi police. However british forces found them and removed them
from iraqi custody. All the other inmates of the jail were allowed to escape by the british soldiers driving tanks and armoured cars
that flattened the iraqi jail.
Judging by the violent response of the two british special services operatives to their arrest they were not part of a team trying to stop special explosive devices entering Iraq from Iran to blow up US tanks & armoured cars as put forward by the british Ministry of Defence some time after the event (there are a large number of such explosive devices already in Iraq from Saddam's army that have been used with spectacular effectiveness against US tanks since the official end of the invasion of Iraq by the USA so the iraqis don't need explosives from Iran) A more likely explanation is that the British were trying to stir up sectarian violence between Shiites and Sunnis. This incident may be just the tip of the iceberg ... |