Showing posts with label USA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label USA. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Build-A-Culture & The Obsolete Concept of Citizenship


Before I start with this blog post, let me say that I welcome all comments and critics as I'm sure they will be constructive. I am about to tackle a very sensitive subject that may anger, scare or infuriate some readers.

In my first blog post ever titled "Culture shifting" back in 2007, I intended to describe how modern telecommunication technologies shaped our present at that time. What I wrote, back then, couldn't be more true now.

Most of us, now, have the technological means of immersing ourselves in a totally different culture than the one we geographically live in. Thanks to the Internet, our everyday newspaper can be one from a city located in a distant continent. The same goes for the television shows we watch or the books we read. We even have the ability to almost call anyone on the planet for free thanks to VoIP.

So what does that really mean?

Thursday, October 21, 2010

The Perversion Of Strike Action


It seems that I have more to say than what I wrote yesterday about the French and their passion for strike action. I am appalled to see that so many French have the audacity to go on strike and hijack their country while so many of their fellow citizens are just striving to keep their jobs or live in the dread of losing it. How does that sound for "fraternité"? How can you throw in the face of someone that has just lost their job the fact that you're lucky enough to still have one but that you're not willing to go do it? Don't you feel at least a tiny bit of compassion? Don't you realize how egoistic and narcissistic you are?

Democracy works in the sense that a government is elected by a majority of voters and is then in charge of a country until the next election. In most developed countries, elected governments usually win by a very small margin (like 51/49). So, what would happen if all the defeated voters were to go on the streets and paralyze a country? Well, it would be almost like what's happening right now in France. By disavowing (the definition of perversion) the rules of democracy, the perversion of a minority is translating for the world into the perversion of a country. The world, indeed, thinks that all the French are alike, perverted to their core, incapable of sustaining frustration and just thinking that they are more intelligent or should be granted more privileges just because they were born in France. This is not democracy, I call it idiocracy!

The French are known for their tendency to criticize the US. Anyone will tell you: "Well the Americans, you know, they don't know much about what's going on outside of their country. They think we don't have electricity or computers in France, they don't know the name of our President". Well, my wife happens to be Brazilian and believe me, she got the same kind of questions from French people when she arrived in France: "Do you guys have electricity in Brazil? do you have cars? Do you own a computer? Is it true you go to work dancing almost naked in the streets?". Ask a French to name the president of Poland, Hungary, Romania etc... Most won't be able to. And yet, they know so much more about the world than Americans, right?

In my book, I can understand why not all Americans are interested about the outside world, they live in a huge country that is the richest of all. Why would a layperson care about the world? But come on, French people? Can you seriously believe that you as a people are better or greater than the greatest nation on Earth? In my opinion, you are just jealous and too lazy to do anything in order to change things. And your passion for strike action certainly isn't going to help in that regard.

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Je Suis Une Saucisse De Strasbourg (JFK 101)



As I recently visited the beautiful, though medieval with a touch of 1960s ugly architecture, city of Strasbourg, I couldn't help myself thinking of what President JFK might have said, had he visited Alsace instead of Berlin in 1963.

His famous words "Ich Bin Ein Berliner" which literally translate in German as "I am a jelly-filled doughnut" could have been in French: "Je suis une saucisse de Strasbourg" (I am a Strasbourger sausage). I believe my ever-growing French audience might find that amusing.

Evidently, I cannot end this post without making a reference to numbers as my thoughts for JFK are, I believe, no coincidence. I was born on the exact same day that JFK was shot in Dallas (Granted I'm talking about the exact same day in a different year) which probably makes me the only person in the entire universe to share this in common with him. Last but not least, the last 6 digits of my phone number in Neverland correspond to the date of his death. Are you superstitious?