Month: December 2022

Some songs make our hearts melt. “Petit papa Noël” [Little Santa] is one of them for Bambi; maybe because it reminds her of her happy childhood. Yes, all the magical Christmas times (despite the ongoing crazy civil war). Indeed, for a very long time in her early and not-too-early years of life, this melody was her preferred song. Is it still the case in her middle-age, at least during the month of December of each year? If you wish, you can take a guess :).

Bambi refuses to go to bed without sharing what her friend Mona kindly sent her today. Yes, you can hear and see the grandaughter of the late Mr. Charles Aznavour singing “La Bohème“.

How beautiful… How moving. Bravo for her talent, obviously running in the family!

Thank you Mona for this discovery. Bambi loves you and misses you so much ❤️.

Grandaughter:

Grandfather with English sub-titles… May his memory be eternal:

Bambi learned from a tweet by journalist Roula Azar-Douglas who works with L’Orient Le Jour that the latter won the prestigious Francophonie Award of the Académie Française. Bravo! “Mabrouk”!

Below is the evidence in a tweet, a picture, and a video… of course all in French :).

Following this, Bambi will congratulate L’Orient Le Jour, with its more recent twin English-speaking sister L’Orient Today, with two songs: (1) The first is about the beauty of the French language, obviously in French, by Mr. Yves Duteil; and (2) the other is about heartfelt congrats with the Lebanese-Arabic song “Mabrouk” [ or Congrats] of Mr. Ramy Ayash.

Thank you l’Orient Le Jour for keeping us informed about Lebanon, the Middle East, and about the world, including sometimes fast and accurate news related to us here in New Brunswick and Canada!

Bambi just learned from a Le Devoir article thar Radio-Canada [the French CBC] has suggested to its hosts and journalists offer their apologies live in the event of an unexpected mention of the n-word. Not only that; it has also announced that reruns of its programs will henceforth be purged of all offensive language that has no “editorial rationale“.

Here is Le Devoir article, by Mr. Boris Proulx, with French content: https://bit.ly/3AYImow

Here is a video by Le Devoir with French content: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/previews/kXfibmga

And here is are the guidelines of the French CBC: https://bit.ly/3OOHTLD

Please pause for a few seconds and think of the following, with Bambi:

Does this mean that our great Canadian author and pride, Mr. Danny Lafferière, cannot mention the name of his OWN book, “Comment faire l’amour avec un Nègre?” without apologies followed by censorship?! As a reminder, or for those who do not know it, Mr. Laferrière is of Haitian origins (no, this is not a self-identification of a so-called “blackness“. For those not familiar with the French language, the term used above is different from the English connotation.

Does this also mean that a host who happens to be a historian, for instance, can no longer mention the title of Vallières’ book, “Nègres blancs d’Amérique” chosen on purpose to score the whole historic point of his book about French-Canadians (https://bit.ly/3VKQEIz)?

Does this mean that an expert, whether academic or from the general public, educating an audience about the harm of mockery, insult, and racism cannot use an example of a bad word in French anymore? What if it is someone sharing a personal experience?

Since when the French language and culture is as vulnerable to this modern form of neo-colonialism of an exported and extremely authoritarian wokeism, like in the rest of Canada?

Why is the French CBC increasingly diving into the business of censorship and cancellation now?

When will we take a break from our collectively insane times to reflect on such guidelines and their impact on our society? Do we want to live in fear-based society where we are all walking on egg shells? Is this socially healthy and wise? And what’s next?

Are we resorting to such guidelines out of conviction? Or out of fear of extremists of the left (similar to fear of the right or of religious extremists of all kinds)? Or are some of our decision-makers or elites of our society extreme themselves to that extent?

It is one thing to have private media taking such decisions. We understand and they are free. It is another thing to have our public media engaging in such authoritarian practices that the majority of tax-payers do not endorse; whether they talk about it publicly like Mr. Proux, Dr. Mathieu Bock-Côté in le Journal de Montréal (ttps://bit.ly/3FggdvY) or all the non-expert citizens and deer like Bambi.

Think of it, even the organizers of the Stanford Academic Freedom Conference (November 4-5, 2022), that resulted in MANY signatures of courageous scholars openly supporting academic freedom-freedom of expression, got scared of an aggressive mob. Dr. Frances Widdowson, one of the speakers, was precisely defending the right of journalist Wendy Mesley to reference Vallière’s book cited above at the time. What did the conference organizers do? They censored “this part for fear that it would be used to delegitimize the conference“. These were the words of Dr. Widdowson herself in an update about her legal case. Bambi is proud to have supported the latter and is eager to read her writing about what she perceives to be the problems of all this in the January issue of the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship Newsletter.