Reality

The bullet proof glass screens that protected Barack Obama

It is a country where inspiring people get killed: Lennon, King, Kennedy… Obama’s life is now changed forever, let’s hope for the best.

As a peaceful person it soars my heart to see that this warm man now has to be protected because of what he is and thinks.

I don’t want to see drama after such a triumph.

Barack Obama

A real demonstration of hard work, presence (prestance) and courage to believe in oneself, Barack Obama became the 44th elected president of the U.S.A. tonight.

I’ve never felt so proud to be on the same continent as this country. For the first time in my life, I consider myself an American more than a Canadian (or Quebecois). Even if we don’t agree on everything, as people living in different countries we share the same values regarding hard work, ideals and involvement.

For once, I feel like the americans (the citizens of the USA) are our brothers and we must be proud. Half of them decided while the other half will learn to accept it.

Tonight I am proud, we are turning the page on too many years of darkness, there shall be light. Nothing should stand in their way to progress. It is their moment, it is their time. It is our moment, it is our time. Yes they can. Yes, we can now.

…

All my props for this inspiring man who lost his grand ma yesterday night and became president of the United States on the next.

Transgender Children

What a month has it been. Sorry for letting the blog derive away like that.

I wish to continue sharing my excitement for the latest Atlantic Monthly edition (discussed in my latest post).

Check Hanna Rosin’s article A Boy’s Life on transgender children. The journalist follows a country living mother and her son Brandon who wants to be a girl. It is a very insightful piece on the contemporary history of gender, feminism while showing the possible horizon of acceptance towards gender-identity disorder.

“Brandon, God made you a boy for a special reason,” she told him before they said prayers one night when he was 5, the first part of a speech she’d prepared. But he cut her off: “God made a mistake,” he said.

A Boy’s Life by Hanna Rosin

Sneaky – Think Again

 

You should check out this month’s edition of The Atlantic Monthly for two reasons (so far). 

First, man check the new design (more than just a facelift) it got from Pentagram’s Michael Bierut and Luke Hayman (see the process here).

Stunning.

Second, the article The Things he carried by Jeoffrey Goldberg relates his courageous adventure testing the security measures in different airports. It is well written, very thoughtful and scary, yet funny.

Because I have a fair amount of experience reporting on terrorists, and because terrorist groups produce large quantities of branded knickknacks, I’ve amassed an inspiring collection of al-Qaeda T-shirts, Islamic Jihad flags, Hezbollah videotapes, and inflatable Yasir Arafat dolls (really). All these things I’ve carried with me through airports across the country. I’ve also carried, at various times: pocketknives, matches from hotels in Beirut and Peshawar, dust masks, lengths of rope, cigarette lighters, nail clippers, eight-ounce tubes of toothpaste (in my front pocket), bottles of Fiji Water (which is foreign), and, of course, box cutters.

Obama: McCain Scoring ‘Cheap Political Points’ (ABC)

Good interview on ABC, Oct. 8, where Obama clear up it’s act (again) concerning his ‘affiliations’ with ex-Weather Underground Bill Ayer:

Why don’t we just clear it up right now,” Obama told ABC News’ Charlie Gibson in an exclusive interview for World News. “I’ll repeat again what I’ve said many times. This is a guy who engaged in some despicable acts 40 years ago when I was eight years old. By the time I met him, 10 or 15 years ago, he was a college professor of education at the University of Illinois . . . And the notion that somehow he has been involved in my campaign, that he is an adviser of mine, that . . . I’ve ‘palled around with a terrorist’, all these statements are made simply to try to score cheap political points.

VOTERS REJECT NEGATIVE CAMPAIGNING

At the same time, according to “a moving graph at the bottom of the CNN screen during Tuesday night’s presidential debate measur[ing] the reactions of uncommitted voters in the swing state of Ohio, [...] it seemed to bear out the theory that negative campaigning draws negative voter reactions.” (CNN website, via HuffingtonPost)

Presidential Debate no. 2

Touché.

 

A very opiniated, but good overview article on the Presidential debate : Arianna Huffington: The Winner of Debate II? “That One”

You could fault Obama for not being particularly inspiring, but you could not miss the rock steady competence he exuded — authoritatively delivering substantive answers to questions on the economy, health care, taxes, and foreign policy.

T.S.A. Communication

For non-U.S. residents like myself, TSA stands for Transportation Security Administration.

T.S.A. Communication stands for

T.S.A. Communication is a project that alters the airport security experience and allows the government to learn more about you then just what’s in your backpack. Thin 8.5 x 11 inch laser-cut sheets of stainless steel comfortably fit in your carry on bag, simultaneously obscuring the contents you don’t want the TSA to see while highlighting ideas you do want them to see. Change your role as air traveler from passive to active.

TSA Communication: art.

Evan Roth’s website is pretty clear about the project, but I gotta post this quote taken from Networkworld.com.

When asked how serious he is about the project, he answered:

So far I have traveled with the plates three times (I’m actually answering these questions in the Hong Kong airport having just passed security 20 minutes ago) and I plan to continue doing so.

I fly all the time, and a big part of doing this project is simply so I have something to look forward to when I go to the airport. I hate flying, I hate airports, I hate security, I hate wasting time, and most of all I hate being forced to play a role in the theater of security.

Of course having to take off my shoes and throw out my 4oz Jell-O isn’t the end of the world, but by passively going along with it I feel as if I am agreeing to take part in the ruse. Taking off my belt is not going to make flying any safer. What would make flying safer is if America would stop being such an international a*****e. But since neither of these situations seems very likely to end any time soon, I would rather go through the dance of airport security as an active participant rather than a passive one.

WSJ: ”Dow Dips Under 10000 As Bank Woes Persist”

To many Wall Street veterans, a painful, long recession unlike anything the U.S. has suffered in decades seems increasingly likely, with the fallout likely to spread to other countries. WSJ

Fuck.

It didn’t take long in 1929 to really get fucked up, 3 days.

The Wall Street Crash of 1929,also known as the ’29 Crash, the Crash of 1929, the Great Crash of 1929, the Great Crash of October 1929, the Great Wall Street Crash of 1929, 1929 Great Crash, or the Great Crash, was the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States, taking into consideration the full extent and longevity of its fallout.

Three phrases—Black Thursday, Black Monday, and Black Tuesday—are used to describe this collapse of stock values. All three are appropriate, for the crash was not a one-day affair. The initial crash occurred on Black Thursday (October 24, 1929), but it was the catastrophic downturn of Black Monday and Tuesday (October 28 and 29, 1929) that precipitated widespread panic and the onset of unprecedented and long-lasting consequences for the United States. The collapse continued for a month. (Wikipedia)

It reminds me of this great monologue at the beginning of Dead Flag Blues an instrumental piece by the disbanded Godspeed You! Black Emperor

the car’s on fire and there’s no driver at the wheel
and the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides
and a dark wind blows
the government is corrupt
and we’re on so many drugs
with the radio on and the curtains drawn

we’re trapped in the belly of this horrible machine
and the machine is bleeding to death

the sun has fallen down
and the billboards are all leering
and the flags are all dead at the top of their poles

it went like this:

the buildings tumbled in on themselves
mothers clutching babies picked through the rubble
and pulled out their hair

the skyline was beautiful on fire
all twisted metal stretching upwards
everything washed in a thin orange haze

i said: “kiss me, you’re beautiful -
these are truly the last days”

you grabbed my hand and we fell into it
like a daydream or a fever

we woke up one morning and fell a little further down -
for sure it’s the valley of death

i open up my wallet
and it’s full of blood

Extreme Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis

  

 

 

Copyrights http://www.xdrtb.org

I forgot to come back to you about it. James nachtwey’s TED prize wish. He made a photojournalistic project about Extreme Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis. Images speak louder than words. Click on the picture on the right to see the video.

The pictures are breath taking and the goal is nonetheless to raise awareness as he said on the TED video he posted before. Here’s my favorite quote from his acceptance speech I shared a few days ago: 

The press is certainly a business and in order to survive, it must be a successful business; but the right balance must be found between maketing considerations and journalistic responsability… Society’s problems can’t be solved until they are identified. On a higher plan, the press is a service industry and the service it provides is awareness.

Changing subject

Here’s the AP article about Sarah Palin qualifying Obama as “palling around with terrorists”. It made a lot of noize, especially because AP wasn’t quite objective (harsh) on it… I mean they had to – such nonsense.

AP: Palin’s Ayers Attack “Racially Tinged” at Huffington Post.

Palin’s words carry racial tinge

“It’s a giant changing of the subject,” said Jenny Backus, a Democratic strategist. “The problem is the messenger. If you want to start throwing fire bombs, you don’t send out the fluffy bunny to do it. I think people don’t take Sarah Palin seriously.”

The larger purpose behind Palin’s broadside is to reintroduce the question of Obama’s associations. Millions of voters, many of them open to being swayed to one side or the other, are starting to pay attention to an election a month away.