Well because it's my birthday and having the time of my life in the desert somewhere....
Zoukez, Zoukons!
Well because it's my birthday and having the time of my life in the desert somewhere....
Zoukez, Zoukons!
Posted by Christelle Nadia at 01:26 AM in Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Interesting conversation as always between John McWhorter and Glenn Loury. I just have one question or rather two. What is American character? Does it exist?
I might be trying to suggest with these questions that there isn't such an American identity, that Americans are what they do and that America is an ideal, a noble idea that alas cannot remain good in itself because of Americans aren't always able to live up to it.
Posted by Christelle Nadia at 11:31 AM in contradictions and betrayals, Obama's America, politics, security, terrorism, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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I like John McWhorter and Glenn Loury and their conversation on race is fascinating especially for somebody like me who believes she got beyond race. That isn't to say that race doesn't matter, but rather that it does because people want it to matter in order to make the world simple and to put people within tiny and beautiful boxes.
To talk about Cornel West, I think he epitomizes of the fact that race forces people to be inauthentic and to hold on to bad faith in a pointless, vile and desperate attempt to make race matter more than anything else.
Posted by Christelle Nadia at 04:58 PM in identity politics, multiculturalism, Obama, Obama's America, race, trends, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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To the contrary to BHL (Bernard-Henri Lévy), I take Slavoj Zižek seriously, but I rarely agree with him even though he too tends to oversimplify to make his arguments cute and flashy. That said this video is great (hat tip: Jonathan Glennie)
Posted by Christelle Nadia at 06:44 PM in ethics, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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In this video, Glenn Loury explains perfecty and coherently what are my feelings towards Obama.
Posted by Christelle Nadia at 03:53 PM in identity, identity politics, Obama, Obama's America, politics, race, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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My favorite TV character is Sue Sylvester, the deliciously mean cheerleaders' trainer in Glee, which is my number one reason why I watch the show. I make the prediction that Jane Lynch, the actor who plays her, is going to go places. She has been so hilarious for too long not to make it big by at least having her own show. In this video, she succeeds in making homophobia and gay bashing funny, which is quite an achievement.
Posted by Christelle Nadia at 08:58 AM in Television, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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A great video on Iran in 1975 (via). It's frightening to see how religious or any kind of political revolutions can alter the face of a country.
Posted by Christelle Nadia at 10:57 AM in Iran, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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I'm not a Brit, but I am still appalled by how out of touch Lord Pearson, of the United Kingdom Independence Party, is.(via) What is he doing on TV? That's the kind of people, smart operatives keep in the background especially when there is an election going on.
Posted by Christelle Nadia at 05:07 PM in europe, United Kingdom, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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This video depicts, I'm afraid, a reality that ought to be expected when identity politics become the supreme form of politics and when race becomes supra-essential. How different is South Africa from the United States? Or rather would the United States be South Africa if the majority was impoverished since it too is racialized society
Posted by Christelle Nadia at 03:24 AM in Africa, race, racism, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Posted by Christelle Nadia at 01:19 PM in technology, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Posted by Christelle Nadia at 04:56 PM in Media, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Ending a long, long day. I hate the Rolling Stones ! Well no, I just have a problem with Mick Jagger, but I guess it's the same thing. In any case, for some reason, a stones' song expresses my state of mind except that I still feel anxious about the whole living thing. Ah, it's hard to focus on doing the right things instead of doing things right.
Posted by Christelle Nadia at 05:46 PM in Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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For more on the use of drones in Pakistan and elsewhere by the Obama administration and its implications, read Professor Anderson's excellent article on the subject, Predators over Pakistan. Harold Koh gave a speech defending the Obama administration and its positions on international law. Kevin Heller offers a convincing rebuttal to Koh's arguments.
Posted by Christelle Nadia at 09:39 AM in international law, terrorism, Video, War | Permalink | Comments (0)
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I agree wholeheartedly with Nicholas Sautin on this:
In short, the proliferation of atrocity footage on the Internet has complicated the ethical and aesthetic landscape of how and why we watch the suffering of others. If technology grants every war a dominant representational medium (consider the role of television during the Vietnam War), the digital aesthetic associated with Internet video perhaps most closely inhabits our contemporary anxiety about the wars fought in our name—our ability to see and not see, and our desire both to know and not know. The Internet passively collects the visual dregs of a world where anything and everything can be captured on film. (...) The problem with voyeurism and the Internet, though, is that the idea of “the right to look” may have become obsolete. Atrocity footage has been taken out of the hands of those who would previously have held such moral responsibility—governments, journalists, censors, teachers, etc. The images are simply there for anyone who wishes to look. We imagine their existence, haunted by glimpses of what we have actually seen, and often choose not to look further.
At their core, such images remain visible traces of what has happened, even if they seem incomprehensible. In their democratic lack of artifice and ornamentation, they suggest the closest approximation we have to reality; this makes them intolerable.
I have the feeling that atrocity footage of wars, violence or any other barbarity is the way of the future not just because modern society has accepted a legitimized a certain form of voyeurism, but also because we like in an age where as Agassi would have said 20 years ago, image is everything. Furthermore, "modern wars" (that's an oxymoron) are becoming so gadgetized and sterilized that people will want/need to experiment sensations, which brings them as close as possible to the experience of war because we live in the video-game era where anything real, brutal, and more importantly illicit is irresistible especially when it can be found on the internet and more also because we have become so desensitized to violence that only shocking images of the suffering of others can make us believe in its realness. It is the same feeling that explain for example why the media coverage of the earthquake of Haiti needed to be so gruesome and spectacular to provoke an outpouring of charitable feelings.
Posted by Christelle Nadia at 06:47 PM in America, ethics, technology, Television, trends, Video, violence, War | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Posted by Christelle Nadia at 05:34 AM in Africa, contradictions and betrayals, culture, ethics, identity, international politics, tradition, trends, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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I'm in a desperate need of a spark...
Posted by Christelle Nadia at 03:06 PM in Music, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Posted by Christelle Nadia at 08:44 PM in Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Sam Tanenhaeus's latest, The Death of Conservatism is on my must-read list for the end of the year even though I find the title of his book io be a pompous cliché designed to create buzz. Anyway, he is fun to listen to, which I hope means that he will be fun to read for those things don't always go together.
Posted by Christelle Nadia at 07:58 AM in America, Books, culture, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Posted by Christelle Nadia at 04:53 PM in Music, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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I found this video of Idi Amin Dada, the former dictator of Uganda talking his ability to dream the future not only funny, but enlightening. Not very much has changed for the perceptions remains and when one looks at things today in Uganda and elsewhere, it is difficult not to think of Alfred Jarry's famous play Ubu Roi except that here it is not the French middle class, which is at the center of the theater of the absurd in this case. What is alarming is that there are some who believe that Dada was great partly because he was a thorn to the sides of the Brits and to the Israelis. In other words, the standard for political greatness in many African leaders is standing up to the former colonizers and to foreigners and being a menace to the world as leaders such as Dadis Camara and Omar Al Bachir show just to name two of them.
Posted by Christelle Nadia at 03:58 PM in Africa, different perspective , disintegration, international politics, tradition, trends, Video, violence, west | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Some have trouble acknowledging it, but the best French music in our time is made in the West Indies. Now, what does that tell us is about French national identity (I have Eric Besson, the French immigration minister, om my mind) if the the Brel and Gainsbourg of today live in the DOM-TOMS? All you have to do is to listen to this song to get it. Zouk is in my opinion what Jazz was 50 years ago, that is at it. Since I just can't just write a cheerful post on a artificial day, I just hope that Zouk doesn't get Americanized in the bad sense of the word (yes, there is such a thing as good and even great Americanization).
Posted by Christelle Nadia at 03:51 PM in culture, France, identity, Music, trends, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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I don't know about you but watching two guys men talk about love just make me realize that romance, love, relationships are the new spirituality tools to make people avoid facing the scary reality existence is absurd and that sex can be satisfying, valuable in itself. I find the religionization, the merchandization of love, sex, relationship creepy. Something tells me that very soon there will love classes in colleges.
Posted by Christelle Nadia at 03:26 PM in culture, trends, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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I would find this video outrageously funny if it wasn't about the fate of a poor, small, and martyred African nation, Guinea, in desperate need of leadership taken hostage by a dangerous and manly idiot who believes that God made him king. Even by the worst or the most generous of standards, Captain Dadis Camara is a clown who should have never been allowed to rule Guinea. He is convinced that to be Guinean, African, and finally a statesman means to be just as Harvey Mansfield would say manly that is to scream when he can neither reason nor convince and to crush the people who contest his authority. It's heartbreaking to say, but the fact that an African country can have such an idiot as its head of state shows that its future generations, because they were lied to by a previous group of political leaders, which was more or less polished and "western," will in the hope for change (here those two hypnotizing words again) be tempted to follow manly fools who will try to convince them that to be authentically African (whatever that means) is to defy reason and civilization.
Posted by Christelle Nadia at 01:08 PM in Africa, conflict, different perspective , disintegration, identity, international politics, justice, trends, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Posted by Christelle Nadia at 04:55 PM in America, international politics, Obama, power, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Outrageously funny ! (hat tip: Alice Fishburn)
Posted by Christelle Nadia at 11:24 AM in culture, Darfur, international politics, trends, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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I don't know what to say or do except shake my head and deplore the fact that some men are still apes. Is virginity still a sign of virtue in our times? If it is, why does it only apply to girls/women especially when they are victimes of rape? By the way, Mickey Kaus shouldn't talk about anything other than basic American politics.
Posted by Christelle Nadia at 02:49 PM in contradictions and betrayals, culture, gender, trends, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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I can't help thinking while watching this scene from Nixon, probably the last decent movie Oliver Stone made, that we live in an era where where politicians are great at acting and bad at politics.
Posted by Christelle Nadia at 03:01 PM in politics, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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I'm speechless after watching this tape. I'm not just asserting it, I'm really describing my state of my mind. I have the feeling that America is stopped in the middle of nowhere and that it is going to waste a lot of time not on becoming a good country, but an impossible "clean" country. If I wanted to be bluntly cute, I would wonder at aloud whether if wouldn't have been a good thing for the US if the South had been able to form its own country.
Posted by Christelle Nadia at 07:42 AM in America, Obama, politics, race, racism, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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I don't love the Beatles (one shouldn't love the same singers as one's parents), but I love this song even though it is too corny to be true and that its message is too syrupy to be simply erroneous.
Posted by Christelle Nadia at 03:12 PM in Music, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Posted by Christelle Nadia at 11:26 PM in America, politics, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Posted by Christelle Nadia at 07:58 AM in America, identity, Obama, politics, race, racism, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Hat tip Harry's Place
Posted by Christelle Nadia at 03:46 AM in America, Israel, Obama, politics, racism, Video | Permalink | Comments (1)
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No words are necessary, but wow, are we really so far away from Nazi Germany for people to have amnesia or to just be too ideological to care about reality and abusive metaphors? I guess Clive James was right to talk about cultural amnesia.
Posted by Christelle Nadia at 03:54 AM in America, conflict, culture, fundamentalism, Obama, politics, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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I love Pepé Le Pew. To me, he is the epitome of the manly man who so sure of the superiority of his manliness that he can't see that he isn't seducing the creature of his desire. In other words, when I watch Pepé Le Pew, I see Harvey Mansfield.
Posted by Christelle Nadia at 03:21 PM in gender, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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I have given up on trying to understand why women have no problem being vicious to other women. I'm not going to comment this video and on the speakers but I will say is that they are the reasons why I have stopped watching flashy, fluffy, empty, and debasing political shows especially on cable. TV can be an addictive drug, but if you have to be addicted to something, it shouldn't be crack.
Posted by Christelle Nadia at 01:09 PM in America, gender, politics, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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There was a time when nothingness could be philosophical and cool (when existentialism was revolutionary and Sartre could still read what he was writing), this conversation about third wave feminism (who knew that existed) just proves that today nothingness is not only meaningless, but annoying and maddening. Just listening to this conversation, made me want to take my pencil and stab myself just to make sure that ennui didn't kill me while I was listening to it (the feeling was so enjoyable that I thought I would spread the joy by posting the video). Is it just me or do American women have a unique way of reminding us that feminism is dead?
Posted by Christelle Nadia at 11:03 AM in America, feminism, gender, trends, United Kingdom, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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I'm not a parent so it is easier for me to find this funny. What makes me uneasy is my suspicion that it isn't too far from reality (hat tip: 3quarksdaily)
Posted by Christelle Nadia at 06:10 PM in Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Because it is necessary to make fun of all religion... (hat tip: Pavani at SepiaMutiny)
Posted by Christelle Nadia at 01:19 PM in Religion, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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This song describes perfectly how I'm feeling this morning. I'm sick and the rain isn't helping.
Posted by Christelle Nadia at 09:23 AM in Music, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Posted by Christelle Nadia at 06:42 AM in America, Books, culture, education, literature, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Posted by Christelle Nadia at 12:37 PM in Music, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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I didn't watch the Bill Maher's soft take down of Obama and his love of TV last week on his show because I stopped watching it more than a year ago. I thought that he had stopped to be funny because he wanted so much to believe in the audacity of hope. In an op-ed in the LA Times, Maher writes:
I'm
still a fan, but there's a fine line between being transparent and
being overexposed. Every time you turn on the TV, there's Obama. He's
getting a puppy! He's eating a cheeseburger with Joe Biden! He's taking
the wife to Broadway and Paris -- this is the best season of "The
Bachelor" yet!
I get it: You love being on TV. I love my bong,
but I take it out of my mouth every once in a while. The other day, I
caught myself saying to a friend, "Don't tell me if he's fixed the
economy yet, I'm Tivo-ing it."(...) It's getting to where you can't turn on your
TV without seeing Obama. Who does he think he is, Dick Cheney? Come on,
sir, you don't have to be on television every minute of every day.
You're the president, not a rerun of "Law and Order." Save some
charisma for a rainy day. (...)I'm glad that Obama is president, but the "Audacity of Hope" part is over. Right now, I'm hoping for a little more audacity.
I guess the fact that he can criticize Obama by daring to ask him to be more substantive rather than to act as if he were president in a Hollywoodian movie means that it may become easier for comedians even when they are first and foremost fans, to make fun of the president. Who knows may be change is coming...
Posted by Christelle Nadia at 08:53 AM in America, Bush , Obama, politics, Television, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Posted by Christelle Nadia at 02:26 PM in Music, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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I'm not sure how to feel about the fact that it is becoming possible for old women (women in their sixties) to give birth (hat tip: Chicken Yogurt). I have trouble condemning it because old men who will more than likely not see their kids grow up do it all the time, but at the same time, I have always found that creepy and selfish. I am against old people having kids period especially if they are not going to raise them. What bugs me about the video is that the comic is perpetuating the assumption that old women are so gross, so useless, so repulsive that scientists shouldn't focus their energy on giving them what Nature/God didn't (wisely) want them to have. To make my point concise and clear, I'm against old people giving birth but since selfish old men have been having kids for years, it is only fair or at least less gross that old women be able to have kids. I just hope that they have them with younger men. I have to say that I love the idea of women of my mom's age going out with men who are my age. Why? Because they are the patience to baby them, to help them grow up, to teach them things, which their mothers didn't/didn't teach them and that frankly, I don't have. Cougars (I hate that term) are the new humanitarians of the twenty-first century because they are performing a great service to society.
Posted by Christelle Nadia at 06:50 AM in different perspective , gender, identity, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Posted by Christelle Nadia at 04:14 PM in America, contradictions and betrayals, ethics, politics, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Posted by Christelle Nadia at 08:08 AM in America, France, international politics, Obama, politics, Sarkozy, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Posted by Christelle Nadia at 04:56 PM in Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Posted by Christelle Nadia at 04:03 PM in Music, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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i
I agree almost totally with Kenan Malik except on his views of Multiculturalism, which suffers, in my opinion, from a lack of nuance and willingness to contest received ideas on that subject.
Posted by Christelle Nadia at 03:47 AM in identity, multiculturalism, race, Religion, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Listening or reading Bernard-Henri Lévy (BHL) is like listening to a hip-hop; both the lyrics and the music have to complement one another for the experience to be pleasant, The problem for BHL is that in his latest book Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism, there is no symphony and that the lyrics are uninspired because he doesn't say anything new and more importantly because he seems to want to engage in an original debate by provoking valuable discussions in America without the proper distance to understand its soul and without invoking his frenchness. Bhl can be great, but in this excerpt where he talks about Sarah asserting that she is on the right on the Neoconservatives, he misses the mark because he loves too much Blue America to get America and to accept the so-called Red America (which is supposedly going to disappear now that Obama is president) and listening to him is like eating an Americanized version of Coq-au vin made with excellent products while drinking awful Californian pinot noir.
Posted by Christelle Nadia at 11:51 AM in America, Books, culture, Religion, Video | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Henry David Thoreau: Walden and Civil Disobedience (Penguin American Library)
Judith Butler: Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (Routledge Classics)
Samuel Beckett: The Letters of Samuel Beckett: Volume 1, 1929-1940
Kenan Malik: From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and Its Legacy

