Word: guianas
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...rest of the world vote for your President. Before you snigger, there are ample precedents for my proposal. Those lucky enough to be conquered and made honorary citizens of ancient Rome were polled once in a while, and the citizens of French territories like French Polynesia and French Guiana still vote for a French President every five years. The rest of the world may not be an official American colony, but it sure feels that way sometimes. And if the CIA used to decide how elections turned out in other countries, then it's about time we foreigners played...
...goes according to plan, Flight 158 will take off this week from Kourou in French Guiana, soaring up and away over the tiny South American country's lush equatorial forests and sandy Atlantic beaches. Flight 158 is no ordinary tourist shuttle, though. It's an Ariane-5G rocket that will launch the Rosetta spacecraft on an ambitious journey halfway across the solar system to intercept and land on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which is currently streaking across space at more than 100,000 km/h inside the orbit of Jupiter. "What's totally obsessing me is that we're launching into a comet...
...also have something to do with votes. After 1980 the left and right were so close in the opinion polls in mainland politics that the combined weight of the four overseas départements - the others are Guadeloupe, Martinique and French Guiana - could swing an election. As a result these tiny colonial hangovers have formed a compulsory pilgrimage destination for any candidate seeking national office. "Our overseas territories are like a woman," Jacques Chirac told an audience in Réunion during the last presidential campaign. "You have to love her. And when you love her, you can't refuse...
Marty's windsurf from Dakar, Senegal, to French Guiana took 37 days. He refused even to allow his support boat to tow him while he slept: "I didn't want to gain a single mile unless my wrists and arms felt it," he later told a magazine interviewer. "For me, freedom is being able to choose my own challenges. I am not afraid of losing, because there are honorable defeats." Among them, surely, his defeat last week...
...chain saws and bulldozers leveling forests elsewhere. Though colonized centuries ago by the British, Dutch and French, the area became known for its penal camps and slave rebellions and never had enough appeal to draw huge numbers of European settlers. Today the population of Suriname, Guyana and French Guiana totals only 1.3 million people, nearly all of whom live in coastal cities. Up to now the city dwellers have put little pressure on the forests or the few thousand indigenous Amerindians who live in the woodlands. But economic hardship and the lure of logging revenue have begun to make...