Dear visitors and friends, I wish you a Merry Christmas and look forward to seeing you after the holidays. That this period is for each family the opportunity to recharge and refuel if necessary humanity in these times or expectations and disorders meet and mingle sometimes surreptitiously. This humanity alone saves us astray.
Last November, I met Gaston Kelman Book Fair Romans / Isère: Romance Novels Novels. We talked a while and exchanged memories of Cameroon.
I read his first book "I'm black and I do not like cassava" and just finished result "Beyond black and white" that was kind enough to autograph.
This book is in total harmony with all the ideals on this blog since its inception. It is a wealth of topics with humor and a lot of recoil. I recommend reading it without moderation.
Unfortunately, I forgot to exchange contact, email address, Gaston Kelman. I find myself so frustrated because I would have liked to continue our exchange on the subject of his book. Google has not really helped.
So if you're reading this, Gaston, know that I would be delighted to find a link, even if only through a comment or an email.
But also if you, the visitor, have a track to contact Gaston, thank you also share with me.
Until this bottle into the sea finally fails, I wish you all a very happy holiday season.
Small digression today ' Today around a topical issue: the financial crisis . I digress intentional racism, central theme of the blog, but I remain in the subject regarding the Taboo.
Indeed, how many of our fellow citizens can claim to understand this crisis and the complex mechanisms of finance, which revolve around her? Apart from a few experts, I would say virtually none.
And yet there is no television news in months, which devotes a page each day to the crisis and analysis technically totally esoteric and incomprehensible by the viewer. But the message is nevertheless very well because that does not include factually and rationally see themselves emotionally. The viewer is informed if it is conditioned. Everyone knows now that we are in crisis and that the future will be difficult.
But if nobody really understands the basic mechanisms of finance, why no media approach didactic explain? Because-as the foundation of the monetary system and international finance are topics Taboos .
The video below is very popular on the web and that many users have already received in recent weeks demonstrates a simple, educational and very accessible. Good viewing.
Titophe
Thought came to me by including in the previous post citing Boris Cyrulnik: "Denial, whether mental or physical, is a defense mechanism that allows less affected by adapting to a real inconsistent. "
I think denial is widespread and commonplace when it comes to racism in our society. But our real is it inconsistent to the point that we should adapt for this denial?
is the mirror Which brings me to writing this post. I would characterize this discrepancy by the following formula:
"Please continue to be poor for our wealth!"
How, indeed, even with the lowest incomes in our western world , we still have purchasing power of tens, hundreds or thousands of times higher than in the rest of the world?
Is it not because a Westerner considers normal and legitimate to acquire goods and services that require dozens of men (or women or children) produce in the same time?
What would happen if revenues were balanced and became equivalent wherever in the world? Simply an explosive increase in the prices of manufactured goods! Thus, only the poverty of 85% of terrestrial populations allows the opulence of the remaining 15%. This poverty is a vital necessity!
However, these remaining 15% are most active when it comes to convey moral and humanistic values, when issuing hasty judgments about the reasons of poverty distant, when s 'acts of pity on violence and indecency of human misery.
That inconsistency: How to accept this imbalance crying while not denying these values "humanist"? Only the denial can achieve this feat. Denial of what? But denial and accept that we are well aware of this inconsistency, the denial that we are the beneficiaries (for some time at least), we consider the denial of humanity as heterogeneous and hierarchical, the denial that we consider normal to be at the top of this hierarchy. This certainty of normality is facing transformations West internal increasingly diverse, this normality is racism that continues to be a reflex of survival of a society gone mad.
So yes, we understand a little better this hatred that we generate.
Titophe
In the series of documentaries useful Chomsky and Co. had a special destiny as it is born of a radio show, he was supported by many underwriters who waited for over a year before seeing it on DVD, and it now has a theatrical release. 
Like every year the last Saturday of November, returned for a Buy Nothing Day a few weeks before Christmas, high mass consumption ... This International Day is held in many countries including the United Kingdom , the Germany, the Italy, Israel and U.S. . 
O bama has won, he was president of the USA States. But the special events and historic character of this election is global. For the first time in history, a person related to the cracks of humanity has climbed to the summit, hitherto regarded as unattainable.
This event creates expectations. These will not be satisfied by Obama because, again, he is the president of Americans. Point bar.
is now the world take over, or let him go. The West, previously defined as all the peoples of Europe and North America is transformed into the symbolic event. Part of that West has taken a course, while the rest will now concentrate all grievances this "hatred" of which we speak Ziegler.
The ball is in the European camp, and France one of the major epicenters.
France is not America .
The French population has a different history than the U.S. population. Immigration flows are different and the links of the French immigrant with their countries of origin are strong. African Americans are satisfied with a domestic policy more just, while the black French are very sensitive to the rebalancing of foreign relations. Expectations are not only different, they are even stronger.
Zebu, in his excellent blog citation , posted a few days ago it Boris Cyrulnik:
Denial, whether mental or physical, is a defense mechanism that allows less pain adapting to a real inconsistent. But this protective factor prevents resilience when it slows down the search for meaning.
course, I broaden the context of the individual to society, but I think it is true. The have nots of our society, descendants of the colonized countries still flooded from the humiliation, are waiting for resilience. Only this mechanism will leave the sordid communalism today. This resilience requires the denial of their suffering ceases, we all recognize it as an indisputable fact and without developing any guilt by this recognition. So once this recognition is made, the homegrown Obama will emerge Hate that we generate may diminish the injustices that we can export stop.
... time, we do much more. Obama Will it sting necessary? Yet it would be wise to wake up.
Titophe
YES! YES! YES! THEY CAN
I discovered the blog this week Anna, I hasten to add in my blogroll. In a very interesting exchange, Annick me a comment on the collective consciousness that I find fascinating because it introduces a new line of thought on this blog. So I decided to make a ticket this comment: Happy reading!
(...) studies on collective memory have been conducted and it turns out that it obeys rhythms (not fully explained elsewhere)
A scholar Maurice Halbwachs (* ) devoted his work almost entirely to the study of the collective conscience as individuals, human societies experiencing shock and react by removing the depths of their memory of destructive events. The collective consciousness is then, slowly, to tame the horror. Only after a long period of maturation that communication, then the analysis will be possible.
Elie Wiesel in his book "All the rivers run into the sea" and in his speech in 2006 (International Festival of Literature in Mantua) analyzes the mysterious meanderings: the survivors of the Holocaust have long refused to speak and were hardly questioned either.
"Mankind" by Robert Anthelme , testimony of the concentration camps, wrote in 1947, was little read and quickly fell into oblivion. Yet At the time nobody could ignore the extermination of over 6 million people. But the Holocaust was forgotten for more than two generations, streaming into the universal consciousness.
Raul Hilberg is one of the greatest historian of the Holocaust. In 1961, his work "the destruction of European Jews" had virtually no response. In 1985, the reissue of his work known, however, a considerable response.
"We are witnessing the emergence of a another buried memory, that of formerly colonized peoples of the Southern Hemisphere. 'I live a long silence, I live in a hopeless thirst written Aime Cesaire. As Jewish memory, that of former colonial peoples have experienced a long silence, followed by a rude awakening. "(Jean Ziegler )
I draw attention to the fact that child slaves there are hundreds of thousands in Nigeria. With our complicity, of course ... (that of the Banque de France, Shell, to name a few.)
(*) died Buchenwald shortly before the liberation of the camps in 1945.
I heard this morning's editorial on Europe1 Askolovitch Claude. Topic:
"Racial discrimination in France ... not an issue price to pay"
This intervention is interesting because it is a new realization of the non-event-character of this type of news. Policies are quiet, the public is not moved to such a case, at least without any comparison with the outcry reacting to "whistling the Marseillaise ... Another example of institutional racism still kept warm.
I give you the audio recording that I made and the written transcript as posted on the site of Europe.
Marc-Olivier Fogiel: The editorial policy of Europe 1. Claude Askolovitch hello ... the company of hostesses who had organized an ethnic filing of its employees was convicted yesterday of racial discrimination ... But the fine is ridiculously low!
Askolovitch Claude: Yes Marc-Olivier ... We now know the price discrimination for the French justice ... or in any case to the court of Nanterre: 20,000 euro fine, of which 15,000 suspended!
Daytona-c 'is the name of the company sentenced - ranked hostesses and commercial according to their origins ... it undertook to provide hostesses "pure white" I quote ... or "100% French" when his clients asked him ... On arrival, 20,000 less than 15,000, it is 5000 euros net fine! This is not a price to pay! It is even an invitation to start! If you want a comparison, the United States, the discrimination suit in the millions of dollars ...
Last year two delivery drivers of Lebanese descent had received 60 million dollars, because they were treated as terrorists ... by their supervisor!
In 2005, a large catering company, Sodexo, managed to avoid litigation by offering $ 80 million to black employees who suffered discrimination ... and at the time, commentators have found that Sodexo was doing well! They laugh sometimes
of American justice!
But there, racism is worth its weight in dollars. In France, if we look to the courts, racism is not a problem!
Marc-Olivier Fogiel: Why this indifference?
Claude Askolovitch: Because that there is no political will to fight brutally discrimination.
Most trials come from the work of one man ... His name is Samuel Thomas, he is vice-president of SOS-Racism ... and it is very lonely in a country that is not the war on racism! He awaits trial for years, an exemplary punishment! But
in France, we are in a culture of arrangement ... It was explained to employers that it is wrong to discriminate, we do charters for diversity!
And there are always excuses ...
In the case of Daytona, the court held that the company was less culpable because it was content to follow requirements of its customers racist!
Marc-Olivier Fogiel: So it should have been prosecuting clients ...
Claude Askolovitch: The problem is that does not always! Last year, there is an exception ... The company Garnier and the temporary employment agency Adecco have been condemned all discrimination ... ca cost them 30,000 euros fine, again, it was not fatal!
Garnier launched a hair product, and a subsidiary of Adecco had provided hostesses BBR: Blue Red White ... is the code name for that white, French comforts of home! Everyone knows what code ... and counting! A final element
now ... Marc-Olivier ... and you will have the full extent of the problem ... The case
Garnier / Adecco was born in 2000, it was found in 2007 and the case was tried Daytona yesterday in Nanterre, dating back to 2002! Justice is slow in France ... we know. But when it comes to racial discrimination, it is very slow! And officials are too often silent ...
When the Marseillaise was booed by provocateurs at Stade de France ... are promised for prompt and exemplary punishment ...
But when young people are flagged according to their origins, there is less of a scandal ... Yet between files BBR ... and whistled the Marseillaise, there must be a relation of cause and effect?
For once, it's not me saying it! But j'acquiesse!
Titophe
Reference: The site Europe 1
P atriotisme : What lurks there behind that word? What sense to give him a transformed society over the past 5 decades?
I went on Wikipedia , and have found the definition header as follows:
Patriotism (Latin pater, father) is a sense of belonging to a country , which strengthens the unit according values Commons.
is a state of soul / of spirit that drives someone to feel the love and pride and defend interests of his country.
We distinguish patriotism from jingoism , which is the manifestation excessive or aggressive. Patriotism is also distinct from nationalism, which is an ideology policy.
The first concept that I note is that feeling of belonging to a countries, coupled with the strengthening of unity .
Let now a little empathy and put us in the position of a person "visibly minority" (I hate that phrase!) And try to think "feelings" who may live in his mind French society today.
We will assume that this person is not delinquent, was born in France, is administratively quite French, and descends from a line after a former colony.
This person has attended school as a child of the republic. At this school, she learned the history of his country, France. Can she do her own story? This story of "France" is still the story of all the French, or has it become the story of "certain French" more than "some others"? No shortage there not some keys to our topic feel concerned by this story?
Moreover, during this education, child will discover its "singularity" by the inevitable experience of bullying, excluding the behavior on the part of his comrades more "conventional", these so-called comrades were importing only school they have more or less absorbed in their surroundings and family.
Our subject will then learn, from childhood to evolve in a society in which he must win if he does not want to continually be marginalized.
Later, further experiments will complement the list of tests to pass, all related to nature, or the identity of our subject, regardless of his faculties or his behavior. Housing, find internships and jobs, being accepted by-laws, steps will be always a little more "Challenging" as a person "visibly majority."
not forget that our subject is an ordinary person, that is to say neither a flaw nor a genius. These successive events are perceived as pain and can, in some cases, prove insurmountable. It is the experience of failure. These tests will be experienced as a succession of injustices in every way yet "Injusticia. What does this mean? This means that the corporation is to say, all symbols of the nation, proved incompetent to give a little justice and alleviate suffering. Even worse, these are silent suffering, minimized, see negated by a company behind icons (Declaration of Human Rights, birthplace of human rights, etc ...). Our subject therefore has the choice to remain silent and "live with".
So my question: Our subject will he easily develop a sense of belonging in this country who frustrated? Our subject is it in a environment "unity" as defined by Wikipedia strengthened? The first "common value" should not it be the sense of justice?
So when the "well-intentioned people" are offended by whistles football, I take offense to me this silence and denial of this deafening. This company crisp and crunchy, which already put in his time Brassens pissed off, she has to wonder.
Titophe
Last week, the Marseillaise was booed during a friendly match between the Team Tunisia our national team.
It was an immediate outcry from the politico-media, with the key measures of emotional rapids highly demagogic. 
speech, again, focused on the event itself, calling for immediate sanctions and condemnation. I have not seen much critical discourse the question of why this event, the question "why?" this animosity vis-à-vis a symbol of our country: anthem.
In July 2006, I wondered what became national sentiment in this country . Today I come to the conclusion that we are far from this, and despite the successive generations, some still do not feel French. It is a fact. Yet another component of our society is ready for the "feel French? Here is the question! If this were the case, the daily injustices experienced by the very people who whistle would be marginal. In my post from March 2007 named "Between justice and injustice" , I note that this marginality is actually a generality.
should therefore French in France which are not regarded as such by other French, and which therefore do not feel French themselves. It is a form of schizophrenia or traumatic perfectly these "second-class French" are in fact rejected everywhere. Do not forget that in the country of origin of their parents or grandparents, they are anything but "home". Unlike
analysis to conclude that punch so behind that they need only return "home", I argue that these whistles are illustrating their attachment to France . And then there! "He smoked the Titophe what?" Will tell you!
Let me explain: These whistles are an expression of pain, a constant frustration for the rejection and consistently downplayed or even denied. It is pain to dream finally full members of this society one of whose symbols is his anthem. They would be able to sing in unison, with all their fellow citizens, their commitment to a country that considers them part of his. But this is not the case. So, refusing hypocrisy, these whistles are reacting to the rejection of which they experience every day. Is directly related hatred of the West mentioned Jean Ziegler.
This speech, you say, is much easier. Every twist is not only one side and plovers are also sometimes the architects of their own rejection. True, but it's a vicious circle he'll have to open one day, if we do not want that to continue in was increasing dangerously.
These whistlers when they are treated as ordinary citizens, will be the first to defend the Marseillaise, as it will also be their anthem with them. For now, they do not simply. Offer them!
I close with a somewhat provocative question: La Marseillaise, is not one of the strongest symbols of the colonial era?
I can not resist the temptation to share this version of La Marseillaise given by the eternal Graeme Allwright:
La Marseillaise
For all children of the earth
Singin 'love and freedom. Against
all the hatred and wars
The banner of hope is lifted
The standard of justice and peace.
Gathering Strength, courage
To overcome the misery and fear reign
That deep in our hearts the joy
friendship and sharing.
The flame that enlightens us,
Crossing borders
Let's go, go, friends, supportive
Walk toward the light.
Graeme Allwright, Sylvie Dien
Text Royalty free, courtesy of the authors, to be distributed without moderation.
Titophe
The A Sine Hebdo number 7 ...
I understand that my optimism about Obama's candidacy was false. You're right, it's because my opponent ... I finally agreed to introduce myself!
Monday, October 20: I apologize to visitors, but the video below does not work. I leave this post just to not delete the associated comments.
J ean Ziegler, well known to those interested in the rest of the world, was the guest yesterday of Daniel Mermet on France Inter on the occasion of the release of his new book, " The hatred of the West " . In his introduction, Jean Ziegler renames his book "The face to face humiliating and humiliated"
This topic is dear to me because it illustrates very well a break Contemporary: what we called euphemistically "the North-South divide" turns into a real hatred and can lead to an explosion if we do not know. Indeed, this gap becomes a chasm. Two phenomena turn this abyss of hatred:
- The rejection of the West through anti-immigration policies increasingly tight that enclose the unreached account and not hope, therefore life.
- The lifting of taboos on both sides of this line, highlighting the role more than engine the West during recent history and still today, in the impoverishment of world. The rules of the global economy today, without any principle of humanity and responsibility, provoke revolt and incomprehension of those who suffer, fear and rejection of those who benefit and hope that this continues ...
If, like me, the France Inter podcast you ask a lot of problems with proxies, here is a simple installation that does not require any other application:
For a long time, I looked at tools like the sewing machine as signs of exploitation of women and therefore as objects violently to reject proven as a feminist. Clearly, this object was associated with the housewife, operated and without resources, thank you for her husband encravaté ... 
O ne can not deny the special events of the candidacy of Barak Obama. Never before the presidential campaign American has raised much excitement outside U.S. borders.
Miscegenation Democratic candidate, which identifies a large proportion of black people worldwide, is a first. That said, this event raises many questions:
Marjane Satrapi Persepolis 
I had in stock this issue cycle C is not Witch " France Television whose title" Men of all colors " is sufficiently eloquent. Warning: The duration is 26 minutes, but I recommend watching her anyway because:
- This show, not to mention the topic of the day, is a gem of pedagogy.
- In this episode, are removed one by one all the workings of racism with as main concern does not fall into the politically correct causing the inevitable omissions.
- The scientific, sociological and historical are beautifully bound and chained. It is not only intended for a younger audience, because I believe the weakness that everyone can learn something, regardless of its age ...
So, for curious passersby to the blogosphere, for the faithful and the skeptics, I say: "Enjoy!"
Titophe
