L’homme cet inconnu (#8)

Chapitre 7 : l’individu

«..La société moderne a commis la sérieuse faute de substituer, dès le plus bas âge, l’école à l’enseignement familial. Elle y a été obligée par la trahison des femmes. Celles-ci abandonnent leurs enfants au kindergarten pour s’occuper de leur carrière, de leurs ambitions mondaines, de leurs plaisirs sexuels, de leurs fantaisies littéraires ou artistiques, ou simplement pour jouer au bridge, aller au cinéma, perdre leur temps dans une paresse affairée. Elles ont causé ainsi l’extinction du groupe familial, où l’enfant grandissait en compagnie d’adulte et apprenait beaucoup d’eux. Les jeunes chiens élevés dans des chenils avec des animaux du même âge sont moins développés que ceux qui courent en liberté avec leurs parents. Il en est de même des enfants perdus dans la foule des autres enfants et de ceux qui vivent avec des adultes intelligents. L’enfant modèle facilement ses activités physiologiques, affectives et mentales sur celles de son milieu. Aussi reçoit-il peu des enfants de son âge. Quand il est réduit à n’être qu’une unité dans une école, il se développe mal. Pour progresser, l’individu demande la solitude relative et l’attention du petit groupe familial.»

Alexis Carrel

Flying robots, the builders of tomorrow

Alison Gopnik: What do babies think? | Video on TED.com

http://www.ted.com/talks/alison_gopnik_what_do_babies_think.html

L’homme cet inconnu (#7)

Chapitre 6 : les fonctions adaptives

«...Au lieu de former des athlètes, nous devons former des hommes modernes. Et les hommes modernes ont besoin d’équilibre nerveux, d’intelligence, de résistance à la fatigue et d’énergie morale, plus que de puissance musculaire. L’acquisition de ces qualités ne peut pas se faire sans effort et sans lutte. C'est-à-dire sans l’aide de tous les organes. Elle demande aussi que l’être humain ne soit pas exposé à des conditions de vie auxquelles il est inadaptable. On dirait qu’il n’y a pas d’accommodation possible à l’agitation incessante, à la dispersion intellectuelle, à l’alcoolisme, aux excès sexuels précoces, au bruit, à la contamination de l’air, à l’adultération des aliments. S’il en est ainsi, il sera indispensable de modifier notre mode de vie et notre milieu, même au prix d’une révolution destructive. Après tout, la civilisation a pour but, non pas le progrès de la science et des machines, mais celui de l’homme. »

Alexis Carrel

Connivence harmonieuse

L’individu

« L’individu, en général, s’attache au paraître plutôt qu’à l’être. »

Tahar Gaïd

L’homme cet inconnu (#6)

Chapitre 6 : les fonctions adaptives

« On s’adapte au milieu social comme au milieu physique. Les activités mentales ont, ainsi que les activités physiologiques, une tendance à se modifier dans le sens le plus favorable à la survie de l’individu. Elles s’orientent de manière à nous ajuster à notre milieu. En général, nous ne recevons pas gratuitement du groupe dont nous faisons partie la position que nous désirons y occuper. Chacun veut posséder, connaître, commander, jouir. Il est poussé par le désir de l’argent, l’ambition, la curiosité, l’appétit sexuel. Il se trouve dans un milieu toujours indifférent, parfois hostile. Il réalise vite qu’il doit conquérir ce qu’il désir. La conscience subit le milieu social en s’y adaptant. Le mode d’adaptation dépend de la constitution individuelle. On s’accommode à son milieu en le conquérant, ou en y échappant. Et souvent aussi, on ne s’y accommode pas du tout. »

Alexis Carrel

Retraite

« Tu peux à l'heure que tu veux, te retirer en toi-même. Nulle retraite n'est plus tranquille ni moins troublée pour l'homme que celle qu'il trouve en son âme. »

Marc-Aurèle

The King's Speech

As the moment approaches, the fear seizes the heart, paralyzes the mind, and suffocates the lungs.

In front of the moment, the tongue gets more tied, the words trapped in the throat, the looks of pity accentuates the discomfort.

The moment seems an endless suffering.

This is how a stutterer lives the moments of his “handicap”.

From the first scene of “The King's Speech” you can feel and live the situation very truly, which made the success of the movie. The message is clear and strong, no matter how bad your situation is, it is possible to overcome it, and don’t worry, you are not alone.

Political language = Two-Face = Lies sound truthful and murder respectable

In 2008, Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate, pandered to pro-Israeli voters and Israel by promising in a speech addressed to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), that Jerusalem would forever remain "the undivided capital of Israel".

Three years later, Obama is on another pre-campaign trail in order to improve his chances for re-election in 2012. As part of this campaign, he has made a new round of half-hearted attempts to revive the stalled "peace process" completely under Israel's terms.

In his latest speech addressed to AIPAC, Obama promised Israel everything short of allegiance by reaffirming America's commitment to Israel's political and security goals. His speech denied the right of Palestinians to declare a nation and he even vowed to block any peaceful Palestinian efforts to claim their legal rights at international organisations.

Obama's lip service to Palestinian "self-determination" is nothing more than vacuous rhetoric - as he clearly implied that Israeli interests, especially its security, remain the top priority for American foreign policy in the region.

He mechanically repeated his commitment to the vision of a two-state solution - establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel. However, as expected, he left the borders and terms of the creation of such state subject to Israel's "security interests".

His reference to resuming peace negotiations on the basis of the 1967 borders (also known as the Green Line) means neither a complete Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories nor the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state on all of the land within the Green Line, including East Jerusalem.

There is a significant difference in negotiations "lingo" and even legal language between saying that the establishment of a Palestinian state "will be based on" 1967 borders as opposed to saying it "will be established on" the 1967 borders.

The first leaves ample room for Israel to continue occupying and even annexing vast settlement blocs (and perhaps even all of the illegal, Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem) for "security reasons".

Take whatever you can

Just in case his pro-Israel support base misunderstood the thinly veiled statements from his Middle East speech last Friday, Obama made sure to clarify to his definitively pro-Israeli view that there is no going back to the true 1967 borders:

"[The statement] means that the parties themselves - Israelis and Palestinians - will negotiate a border that is different than the one that existed on June 4, 196... It allows the parties themselves to account for the changes that have taken place over the last forty-four years, including the new demographic reality."

In clearer words, the president is effectively, although not explicitly, equating the presence of Palestinians on their own land with the illegal presence of Israeli settlers living on land confiscated forty-four years ago from the Palestinians.

Basically, despite the fact that settlers live on that land illegally under international law, because they are physically there, the land becomes theirs.

This confirms the belief of many in the region that the construction of Israeli settlements and of the Separation Wall inside the 1967 borders is Israel's way of slowly completing a de facto annexation of Palestinian land.

This latest of Obama's statements may be the closest the president has come to legitimising illegal Israeli settlements.

Obama's message to Israel appeared to confirm that he is ready to keep former president George Bush's 2005 promise that Israel would be able to keep their largest settlements blocs as a result of any negotiated solution for the conflict.

In other words, Obama's idea of Palestinian self-determination is for Palestinians to accept whatever Israel decides.

In his AIPAC speech, and the previous speech addressed to the Middle East, Obama seemed to have either  been out of touch with, or to have simply ignored, the changes brought about by the Arab Spring. For while he argued that Israel should understand that the Arab Spring has altered the political balance in the region, and that Israel should understand it now has to make peace not with corruptible Arab leaders, but with the Arab people themselves.

So much for hope and change

In fact, when it comes to the Palestinian cause, Obama is speaking and acting as if the Arab Spring has not taken place. He has to remember that even America's most loyal Arab allies in the region could not openly support the American-Israeli formula for peace with the Palestinians. So, why then would it be acceptable to millions of pro-Palestinian Arabs?

The Arab Spring may have affected the semantics of American discourse on Palestinian rights but it has not created anything close to a real shift in American policies.

Once again, Obama has succumbed to political blackmail by Netanyahu - whose main goal of raising objections to the peace process is to make sure that Israel continues undisturbed with its expansionist polices, and not because of any real fear from the president's weak demands.

Yes, there is no doubt that Netanyahu wants to see any reference to 1967 borders dropped from the discourse, because Israel is currently busy drawing its own militarily imposed future borders, he could not have misunderstood Obama's clearly pro-Israeli statements.

As the American president pointed out in his speech, he has made good on his declaration of "full commitment" to Israeli interests and security needs: "That's why we've increased cooperation between our militaries to unprecedented levels. It's why we're making our most advanced technologies available to our Israeli allies."

"And it's why, despite tough fiscal times, we've increased foreign military financing to record levels."

Obama has not only been consistent in maintaining full US support for Israel but has also articulated a new, more decisive stance which explicitly confirms the long-standing American policy of blocking any peaceful Palestinian efforts through international law and the United Nations.

"...The United States will stand up against efforts to single Israel out at the UN or in any international forum. Because Israel's legitimacy is not a matter for debate", he promised the gathering of the staunchest and most influential supporters of Israel.

By siding with Israel against the Palestinian Authority's plan to seek United Nations recognition of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, the US has in effect declared war on all Palestinians, the Palestinian Authority and activists alike.

He will unabashedly thwart any efforts to pursue legal and peaceful means of challenging the continued Israeli colonisation of their land.

But by labeling such campaigns aimed at recognition of a Palestinian state as an attempt "to delegitimise" Israel, the president is inadvertently recognising that those Israeli policies themselves lack legitimacy.

A rights based discourse?

Furthermore, while Obama's assertion that UN recognition alone cannot create a Palestinian state is technically true, it will restore the topic within a legal rights discourse - which would not be defined by Israel's security concerns as it has in the past.

Such UN recognition, of course, would work towards the establishment a Palestinian state defined by the 1967 borders - meaning that all Israeli settlements within that border would have to be evacuated. Without this, it would only legitimise and perpetuate the American-Israeli negotiations formula.

But Obama has not taken any risks in order to promote peace.

He fears foiling decades of American policies that have aimed to veto any UN resolution pertaining to Israeli crimes and, starting a new discourse about the conflict that would be rights-based.

It was no surprise either when Obama declared the reconciliation agreement between Fateh and Hamas, signed earlier this month, to be an "obstacle" to peace in the region. After all, in his purely pro-Israeli mindset, any attempt at Palestinian unity - regardless of how feeble - does not serve Israeli interest and its tried and true "divide and conquer" method has prevented any real progress for years.

Obama's repeated refrain about Hamas being an unacceptable peace partner, sounds not only like a broken record, but also like a lame excuse for Israeli extremism and intransigence.

If he wants to know who the true unacceptable partners for peace are, all he has to do is get an English transcript of discussions from the Israeli Knesset (parliament) and read how members from the political right call Arabs "animals" and make all manner of racist slurs against Palestinians.

But if Obama is willing to encourage Israeli policies such as 'land transfers', which aim to displace whole Palestinian communities and refers to them as mere "demographic changes", then why would he care about racist rhetoric and threats by right-wing Israelis?

In his latest speeches, Obama did not refer once to the events that took place on the May 15 'Nakba Day' protests. During these peaceful demonstrations, the Israeli military responded in a predictable way, in the only way they know - by firing indiscriminately on unarmed protesters. By the end of the shooting spree, more than 20 people were killed at the Syrian and Lebanese borders.

Perhaps the most disturbing part of Obama's speech is his exaggerated attempt to adopt the Israeli narrative and by default, his complete denial of Palestinian national rights.

In the end of his speech, Obama's claim that Israel's history could be characterised by a struggle for freedom (a repeat from his 2008 AIPAC speech) says it all:

The American president refuses to see Israeli oppression and repression. He refuses to recognise the legitimacy of the Palestinian struggle for freedom - because if he did, he just might hurt his chances at winning a second term as US president.

Lamis Andoni is an analyst and commentator on Middle Eastern and Palestinian affairs.

Source: Al Jazeera

L’homme cet inconnu (#5)

Chapitre 5 : le temps intérieur

« … Notre croissance ne se fait qu’au prix d’un émondage constant de nous-mêmes. Nous possédons, au début de la vie, de vastes possibilités. Nous ne sommes limités dans notre développement que par les frontières extensibles de nos prédispositions ancestrales. Mais à chaque instant, il nous faut faire un choix. Et chaque choix plonge dans le néant plusieurs de nos virtualités. La nécessité de choisir une seule route, parmi celles qui se présentent à nous, nous prive de voir les pays auxquels les autres routes nous auraient conduits. Dans notre enfance, nous portons en nous de nombreux êtres virtuels, qui meurent un à un. Chaque vieillard est entouré du cortège de ceux qu’il aurait pu être, de toutes ses potentialités avortées. Nous sommes à la fois un fluide qui se solidifie, un trésor qui s’appauvrit, une histoire qui s’écrit, une personnalité qui se crée. Notre ascension ou notre descente dépendent de facteurs physiques, chimiques et physiologiques, de virus et de bactéries, de l’influence psychologique du milieu social, et enfin de notre volonté. Nous sommes construits à la fois par notre milieu et par nous-mêmes… »

Alexis Carrel

Triumph of evil

« The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. »

Edmund Burke

May 8th 1945

In France, may 8th 1945 was a day of celebration; finally France and Europe are free from the NAZI Germany, on the other side of the Mediterranean in Algeria (occupied by France), the beginning of this day was a celebration for the Algerians too, because they participated in the liberation of the world and especially France, and believed that the sacrifice was for “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” as the French leaders told them. With this spirit Algerians asserted their will of independence, but France denied their promises and the celebration day turns to the massacre day, the repression led by the French Army takes a higher level against the Algerian population.
It is a paradoxical celebration; an affirmation of the political lies.

The Polar Sun

The images are taken from the documentary : Earth

References :
enseignant.unjoursurterre-lefilm.com
loveearth.com

Batman has a new recruit, but…!

It is not something new that Batman hires a man to be his “agent” in other cities in the world, since he launches the “Batman Incorporated”, but this time the new man is a MUSLIM in Paris and will be the French savior. Many people dislike this situation (as they call it), and find it completely absurd.
I am very disappointed, because every day I see, I hear and I read the same attitude, from men that have, like me and you, a brain to analyze things and put them in the right context and give them the right value, but they don’t, they just shutdown their brains, and follow the racial stereotype flow.
I ask them one question. How do we define a good or a bad man?
For many a good man is defined by his color, his race, his religion …
Me, I believe it’s by what you decide and do every day in right action and courage for the helpless ones; you will be a good man. Or not.

Spreading light

« There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle, or the mirror that reflects it. »

Someone

L’homme cet inconnu (#4)

Chapitre 4 : les activités mentales

«...Nous sommes immergés dans le milieu social comme les cellules du corps dans le milieu intérieur. Comme elles, nous sommes incapables de nous défendre de l’influence de ce qui nous entoure. Le corps se protège mieux contre le monde cosmique que la conscience contre le monde psychologique. Il se garde contre les incursions des agents physiques et chimiques grâce à la peau et à la muqueuse intestinale. La conscience, au contraire, a des frontières tout à fait ouvertes. Elle est exposée à toutes les incursions intellectuelles et spirituelles du milieu social. Suivant la nature de ces incursions, elle se développe de façon normale ou défectueuse.
L’intelligence de chacun dépend, dans une large mesure, de l’éducation qu’il a reçue, du milieu dans lequel il vit, de sa discipline intérieure, et des idées qui sont courantes à l’époque et dans le groupe dont il fait partie. Elle se forme par l’étude méthodique des humanités et des sciences, par l’habitude de la logique dans la pensée, et par l’emploi du langage mathématique…
…Seuls, les livres sont vraiment essentiels. Il est possible de vivre dans un milieu social peu intelligent et de posséder une haute culture. La formation de l’esprit est, en somme, facile. Il n’en est pas de même de la formation des activités morales, esthétiques et religieuses. L’influence du milieu sur ces aspects de la conscience est beaucoup plus subtile. Ce n’est pas en assistant à un cours qu’on apprend à distinguer le bien du mal, et le laid du beau.»

Alexis Carrel

PHOTOGRAPHE DE LA NATURE - L'OURS FANTOME

L'ours kermode est une sous-espèce de l'ours noir. Egalement appelé "l'ours esprit", il vit dans les forêts de la côte ouest du Canada, en Colombie Britannique.

Fait rare, un ours noir sur dix naît avec un pelage blanc, en raison d'un gène récessif. Cette particularité le rend légendaire : peu de gens l'ont vu, c'est un vrai fantôme.

Mais comment photographier un fantôme ? Paul Nicklen veut absolument prendre un cliché de l'un de ces quelques cent ours kermode pour sensibiliser le public à la sauvegarde de son habitat naturel.

Après deux semaines de guet, interdit de douche comme de parfum pour ne pas signaler sa présence, Paul en aperçoit un...

PHOTOGRAPHE DE LA NATURE - L'OURS FANTOME - Documentaires - France5

The Last Airbender

I saw almost all the movies of Mr. Night Shyamalan: The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs and The Village; and I have an idea about his other movies: The Happening and Lady in the Water. The Last Airbender is completely out of the usual style of its predecessors, Mr. Night use to give us a new perspective of known and unknown things, simple and complex, with an intelligent storyline, strong believable characters, and a message. None of those things is present in “The Last Airbender”, it is completely shallow.

Because I respect Mr. Night and his record, I did a little search about the work, and found first that the story is an adaptation of an animated series: “Avatar: the last air bender”, which was a big success according to the ones whom watched it, they even say that the movie has completely destroyed the spirit of the series. Secondly I found that the movie was hated by the majority (specialists and audience) -so it is not just me-, and it received with the director respectively the worst picture and the worst director award of 2010 (which I think is exaggerated).

From a talented and an intelligent writer and director like Mr. Night, this movie can not be a mistake, it must be deliberately and purposely done this way, I don’t believe he is the one who puts to much effort and money in something he knew that it will be a disaster, I think it is a kind of an audacious experiment he is conducting on us, which we will see the results in the coming years.

Roger Ebert: Remaking my voice | Video on TED.com

When film critic Roger Ebert lost his lower jaw to cancer, he lost the ability to eat and speak. But he did not lose his voice. In a moving talk from TED2011, Ebert and his wife, Chaz, with friends Dean Ornish and John Hunter, come together to tell his remarkable story.

Roger Ebert: Remaking my voice | Video on TED.com