Author: Bambi

May 28 is the wedding anniversary of Bambi’ parents (# 54).

How can she go to bed without highlighting this day?!

Congrats/”Mabrouk”! Bless your inspiring love.

Thank you for having shown Bambi (and her sisters) the greatest lesson in life: Love.

A love built on respect and trust. First comes the respect. The trust naturally follows.

Love that is pure.

Love that is flexible to go through discovery, passion, and friendship.

A lasting love to go through life stages and hardships, sometimes with humour.

Love that is solid to survive losses, wars, and pandemics.

Love that is human and simply simple. Yes, with ups and downs but also with wisdom and freedom. After all, love is a constant re-choice…   

Your love has been fruitful with children and grandchildren (despite any loss, along the way).

You always chose to move forward in life. You gave your children roots and wings. For this, Bambi will forever be grateful.

To end on a lighter note now, Bambi will never forget two moments from her trips, visiting you:

The first moment took place a few years ago. Bambi must have been jet-lagged and using her time to work on a project of some sort. Her dad was still awake, editing a family video. In doing so, he must have wanted to chose pictures for his artistic creation. At one point, Bambi saw him looking at her mom’s picture for a long time. He then took his head out of his screen to tell her: “Look at your mom Bambi… how beautiful she is!“. Indeed, her mom is a very beautiful woman and it is cute how her dad has remained a man in love after all these years ?.

The second memory is an older one. Bambi was in her early twenties. She recalls asking her mom on their wedding anniversary: “Mom, what is the secret of your long union, tell me?” Very wisely, her mom said something like: “Love is beautiful at all stages but I guess the key is to accept that it will change with time… Perhaps less of a passion and more of a deeper bond, like a life friend“. Well, Bambi must have been quite silly back then (let’s blame it on her young age ?) as she replied something like “well this is nice…but if this it, I refuse to accept it!“.

Well, after 17 years in love with her spouse, she is convinced that her mom is one of the wisest women she has met in her life!

To conclude this post, Bambi would like to offer you two songs: The first is one of the most beautiful love songs of all times and maybe languages (mom, you can guess it…). It is: “Ne me quitte pas” (of Mr. Jacques Brel) interpreted by Ms. Hiba Tawagi at a concert in Byblos, Lebanon (2015). Finally, the second song is lighter. It is also by Hiba Tawagi, “Les moulins de mon coeur” but in Arabic.

Thank you, mom and dad, for being whom you are and for raising us the way you did. Bambi loves you (are you surprised to hear it ??) Happy wedding anniversary!

Before translating this article, one must remember that any high amount of money is meaningless without purchasing power, as the citizens of Lebanon have been learning way before the start of the covid-19 pandemic.

Of course, it is both nice and necessary to have a helping hand from the state… However, all this money is borrowed, and we will have to pay for it in the future (us or likely the future generations of Canadians).  

Keeping this in mind, here is Mr. Dumont’s interesting article published today in the Journal de Montréal:

https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2020/05/27/des-milliards-qui-rapportent

Now, here is a quick English translation:

“Justin Trudeau’s popularity suffered at the start of the coronavirus crisis. He has been accused of overly lax decisions in border management and the quarantine of travelers.

Things have changed. Today, Justin Trudeau’s popularity is on a solid upward trend, in almost all parts of Canada.

In Québec, the recovery was particularly spectacular. This is where the grumbling against border management was heard most harshly. The rise of Mr. Trudeau and his party is therefore particularly remarkable.

The leader

If an election were held today, one might think that Justin Trudeau would win the most seats in Québec. And he would win a majority government across Canada.

Let’s do an exercise. Let us draw in our heads the popularity curve of Mr. Trudeau for three months. And let’s draw the curve of the billions spent for the same period. Sorry, tens of billions spent.

It’s still striking to see how these two curves would go together in perfect harmony. As if at the rate of these daily press briefings during which billions in aid were announced, the Prime Minister regained the hearts of voters.

No one will deny that government support was necessary. Emergency aid was needed so that households who lost their income could pay for groceries and rent. Lifebuoys were needed to prevent restaurants, shops, and other businesses from sinking.

So easy

That said, there is a growing impression over the weeks that Mr. Trudeau gives a lot of money, and quite easily. So easily that the incentive to go to work has gone out of the window. The CERB [Canada Emergency Response Benefit] for students is also criticized by small and medium businesses, farmers, municipalities, in short by all those who would like to hire students.

Throwing 100% borrowed money wholeheartedly, to the point of demotivating people to go to work, is not a great recipe. Justin Trudeau is severely criticized in economic circles for this.

But on the political level? To distribute money to everyone with very few conditions and restrictions. Did you think it no longer works? This is not what the pollsters seem to be measuring in the field.

A deficit of two hundred billion, two hundred and fifty? This could cool voters. But it looks like a deficit, even out of proportion, becomes less horrible if you have received checks yourself. This is the beauty of this money distributions signed by Justin Trudeau: there are not many forgotten.

This week, the Liberal Prime Minister killed two birds with one stone. He announced another generous piece of good news: ten days of paid leave for all! And at the same time, it is cutting the grass under the feet of the NDP [New Democratic Party], which was promoting this idea.

How much does it cost? Who pays? Secondary questions. Because politically… it will pay off!”

A judge of the Federal Court has accepted to fast-track Rebel News lawsuit against Mr. Justin Trudeau.

This is good news for democracy, regardless of the colour of our government and regardless of the name of our PM.

This is also encouraging as it shows that independent judges do exist.

Good luck for the July 13 hearing, regardless of the outcome.

Sadly, Dr. Saad is right. At the end of such a slippery slope, political correctness can kill the scientific approach and lower the calibre of science in Canada.  

Is this what we want for our scientists?

If we keep down this path, science will lose. Ideology will prevail.

Too much ideology, with little critical thinking, can lead to collective stupidity.

Is this what we want for Canada?

First, here is a Radio-Canada (French CBC) article in French, followed by its translation:

https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1705455/epicene-montreal-suprematie-masculin-feminin-francais

And here is a quick translation:

https://translate.google.ca/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fici.radio-canada.ca%2Fnouvelle%2F1705455%2Fepicene-montreal-suprematie-masculin-feminin-francais

For those who do not know Ms. Valérie Plante, she always seems to follow the latest fashions of the UN. For instance, its new recommendations/rules for languages, supposedly meant to make our world more “inclusive” and more equal, etc. Earlier, she offered the key of Montreal to Greta Thunberg. She is also a globalist in her mindset, just like our PM. However, we can give her the credit of having been wiser than him at the very beginning of the pandemic. Indeed, she understood faster the dangerous times ahead. In addition to collaborating with Mr. Legault, she did not hesitate to send her own public health staff to the airport when our PM was stubbornly still reluctant to close the borders (just like the Liberal government of Nova Scotia).

Of course, Ms. Plante is the mayor of a large and populated metropolis, which logically has a different geo-ethno-socio-health reality/needs than the rest of the more semi-rural parts of the province. We all know that. However, she is also too much into her globalist mindset that she seems to “forget” sometimes that Montreal is still part of Québec. Specifically, she completely forgot about Bill 101 (French being the official language of her province).

To give you a meaningful example, she delivered her first speech as a Mayor… in English. No single word in French (her mother tongue!). As a Francophile (+ phone), it is shocking for Bambi. Imagine how this must have offended Québeckers. To justify this political mistake after the fact, she reported not realizing which language came out of her mouth.

Bambi can partly understand the above (if true). She herself speaks four languages (likely all badly!). When she is either jet-lagged or too sleepy, she finds herself speaking the wrong language with the wrong person. However, Bambi is not a Mayor. Thus, her mistake does not affect populations… just her spouse or close ones who may laugh at her ?.  

To come back to globalization as a political agenda or ideology, there is a limit to it: It is called self-knowledge or self-respect. Knowing one’s root and identity (or chore part of all the identities that shape us to make us whom we are) makes us better prepared to reach out to other civilizations and humans (our brothers and sisters from the global village).  

How ironic that it is the same Ms. Plante who “forgot” to speak in French in her first official talk as a Mayor is the politician who “intends to have a regulation adopted to train elected officials and employees in “gender-neutral (or epicene) communication”, as quickly as possible”.

One must keep in mind here the following: Each language is unique. Each language has its beauty.

Contrary to the English language, French is more defined in terms of its grammatical rules (gender, etc.) that have been around for centuries. For instance, in addition to words specific to this language, grammatically speaking, the masculine includes the feminine.

Another example is the charming German language, which includes the masculine, feminine, and neutral (grammatically speaking). This has nothing to do with any new fashion.

We can even think of the beautiful Arabic language, which has a beautiful term, “El Insan”, which is neither a male nor a female (likely both). Perhaps “human kind” (or would that be “peoplekind”?) would be the closest.

To come back to Ms. Plante’s regulations, she intends to spend public money, in difficult economic times, on the immediate training of Montreal public servants. Is this really the top priority now?

Is Ms. Plante a bit too “illuminated” or is she just flirting with a certain minority of the electorate who are so much into political correctness? The UN lately came up with such language, as reported above. How odd to see an international organization so much into political correctness, even in the middle of a pandemic.

As a conclusion to this post, Bambi would like to echo the comment of one reader, Ms. Marianne Longfield:

“I love the French language. Thus, it saddens me to see our wonderful language abused like that by people who invent a convoluted “political correctness”, that is sometimes unreadable, sometimes inaudible, depending on whether we read or listen to their speech. Their message becomes incomprehensible because they keep adding so many useless words or deleting useful words. We reach the end of the sentence by wondering “what exactly did they say?” [“J’adore la langue française, et ça me désole de voir notre merveilleuse langue ainsi malmenée par des gens qui inventent un “politiquement correct” alambiqué et tantôt illisible, tantôt inaudible, selon qu’on lit ou qu’on écoute leur discours, lequel, à force d’ajouter autant de mots inutiles ou de supprimer des mots utiles, en vient à rendre le message incompréhensible. On arrive en bout de phrase en se demandant “ils ont dit quoi, au juste?”].

Bambi worked today listening to her favourite internet radio station from Los Angeles, called Radio Mount Lebanon.

A community radio station with much music and no advertisement. From time to time, they have shows with entertainers located in Dubai. They interview artists from Lebanon.

They are a truly inclusive radio (not in the politically correct sense). For instance, today is the Eid. They highlighted it. By the way, Bambi would like to wish “Eid Mubarak” to all her friends in Canada, Lebanon, and everywhere! They also celebrate catholic or orthodox Easter, Virgin Mary month, etc. Really not much, just a few sentences, or songs, here and there.

Sometimes, we can guess the original political preference of some entertainers. Very rarely yet regularly, they play songs from war. Every time Bambi listens to one, she spontaneously turns her volume down. She has never been into this particular political side, let’s say. Perhaps she also does not want to awaken the ghost of war in her memories…

This being said, Bambi has always thought that, in a long civil war, fighters from all sides had blood on their hands but they are victims of their times, especially younger people. They all loved “their” Lebanon in their own ways. So, she does not have resentment or residual anger toward anyone.

She is saying the above, even if she has witnessed scenes of horror more than once in their neighbourhood, like her sisters. Her family lost close loved ones (like so many people). Plus, one cousin got injured in his school and lost his best friend. In addition, some of her neighbours were kidnapped. Some even killed by people from the “other side”. During the last year of civil war, the fights became more fratricidal… These are Bambi’s last memories before immigration.

Anyhow, this post is not to talk about these memories but about what do with them. Specifically, a guest on today’s show is a renown actor, Mr. Badih Abou Chakra:

https://badihabouchakra.com/

One of the topics discussed was his war-related artistic concert (in addition to being an architect and an actor, he sings to!).

To put things into perspective, Lebanon does not teach the recent civil war in its official curriculum yet, it seems. However, Mr. Abou Chakra, took a professional risk for a project that meant a lot to him. He decided to compile all the war songs (of all sides!) and put them into a concert in Beirut. Most, if not, all of his colleagues discouraged him from doing so. They thought it may be risky because war may have not ended in 1990… perhaps it just took a different form. Why the risk?

Well, he believed in his idea, convinced that it would be cathartic. His concert of one night only lasted for two years! He described how people knew the songs of all the sides and started singing with him. At one point, they joked. One table standing up to sing their “own” songs louder. In turn, other tables started the same game and so on. No one fought. All laughed.

The entertainer, Ms. Abir from LA (a pharmacist who volunteers at this community internet radio), told him that she is sorry but, after many decades in the USA where she is happy to live safely, she is still reluctant to listen to war songs.

The artist was very thoughtful in his reply to her. He explained that for him, it is all about putting oneself in the shoes of others. Seeing the other perspective makes us see more of the truth.

The other entertainer, Mr. Vatché, shared memories of his childhood were young people used to listen to the radio to capture the songs of the other side(s). They knew them by heart, just like their own.

To conclude this post, back to the title’s question: Is singing trauma cathartic? From the reaction of the Lebanese audience, over two years, the answer is obvious. From a clinical psychological perspective, one must confront his/her fears and phobias to overcome anxiety. Ironically, this seems to be out of fashion in Canada nowadays where everyone appears to be “triggered” by something. Our society has become a bit overprotective. Sadly, from time to time, some of those triggered seem to be acting like bullies.

Regardless of the opinion expressed, this shocking story is well summarized in the tweet at the end of this post:

Basically, a journalist from the St-John’s Telegram (major daily in Newfoundland & Labrador), Mr. Brian Jones, criticized public sector workers in the covid-19 pandemic, likely “in a column approved by his editors“, to use Mr. Levant’s own words:

https://www.thetelegram.com/opinion/local-perspectives/brian-jones-pandemic-is-an-extended-holiday-for-public-sector-workers-451623/

Guess what happened two days later? He was fired!

Are these our Canadian values now?

Is this the reality of the Maritimes now?

Are these our liberal values :(?

Where are our politicians of high calibre from the same party in power to denounce this story? Bambi is sure they would have not allowed this to happen.

This new era of more junior politicians (like our PM and the official opposition) is sadly mediocre. Too much into empty words and virtue signalling. Too little into meaningful gestures rising above partisanship. Didn’t Mr. Trudeau himself tell us that he would do politics differently?

Why is this “different” politics influencing free press? Is Canada in the old communist Russia now or is it still in the Western world? Is the latter still a place where journalists can still express diverse opinions?

If our times are stupid for all our society, they are also stupid for our leaders… The latter, although disconnected from their people, come from the society itself after all.

To conclude this post on an ironic yet sad note for us, even in Beirut (Lebanon), people can still criticize the government.

According to Naharnet (see the screenshot at the end of this post), Nasrallah said today “The WHO has admitted that the health system in Iran is among the strongest”.

Good for Iran if it is managing its health crisis well despite its sanctions and regional wars by proxy. Bambi is relieved to hear this because she cares for the Iranian people (NOT their government), including her friends still stuck there because of the pandemic.

However, can Mr. Nasrallah explain to the people of Lebanon why he seems to care more about the Iranian healthcare system than about the Lebanese one? And what about the economic tragedy in his own country to which his loyalty should have been in the first place?

Perhaps he is saying all this because deep inside of himself he knows that if Iran takes a hit, his military future would be jeopardized?

Of course, this in addition to his ideological loyalty (religious/ethical, etc.), that sadly seems to be bigger than his concern for his economically agonizing fellow citizens.

Here is a documentary by Euronews, for you Mr. Nasrallah, in which the World Bank is cited by the journalist as estimating that “more than 45% of citizens are now living in poverty, according to the World Bank, and it is estimated this could rise to 75% by the end of the pandemic.”

The above SAD reality is largely because you and your fellow politicians turned Lebanon into a kleptocracy. The latter is a government where corrupt leaders mainly seek personal gain/status at the expense of their governed people.   

First, here is the story from Rebel News, one of our independent media (not dependent on governmental bail out):

We used to complain about Mr. Harper’s methods with scientists. Why aren’t we concerned about Mr. Trudeau’s methods with journalists now?

Why aren’t we congruent? Bambi is asking this question even if she has never ever voted for Mr. Harper.

Why the double standard, Canada?

To conclude this post, for the record, here is an earlier post by Bambi on Mr. Trudeau’s “human side” on TV in the “Tout le monde en parle” show:

The human side of Mr. Trudeau and fun TV moments

Here is the article recently published in the New Wark times:

MLA Megan Mitton calls for more government help to keep small businesses afloat

First, in the link above, we can read that Ms. Mitton is discussing other proposals including grants that “would help small businesses get advice from consultants on how to adapt and recover from COVID-19 restrictions”.

How can such an idea concretely help entrepreneurs and fuel the economy? Who would decide which list of “consultants” would be acceptable?  

Second, is the business we would get between Amherst and Port Elgin/Sackville worth the risk of undoing all the excellent work by our government in this pandemic, namely by acting fast and closing our borders with three neighbours struggling with covid-19 cases (Québec, NS, and Maine)?

With all due respect to our MLA and her party, Bambi trusts Premier Higgs’ more vast expertise with business. More recently, like her fellow New Brunswickers and Canadians, she has also witnessed NB’s good job when it comes to pandemics.

Of course, blunders happen with the implementation of new emergency regulations (i.e., borders). Sadly, we saw an excessive case at the airport last month with a young man coming from Ontario:

Both Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Ford did not respect travel bans to go to their cottages whilst a 19-year-old youth is arrested in NB, fined $292, and sent back to Ontario

We may have also seen some “unclear” stories at our land border. So, thanks to Ms. Mitton for her concern with this regard.

However, all in all, we can only say that NB has been doing an excellent job thus far with the pandemic.

Even if we are a smaller, less populated province, we surely acted faster than the federal government with the borders at the beginning (i.e., the increased cases at the beginning of the pandemic in Montreal has made the latter a hot spot for a while now).  

Finally, if we read Mr. Kelly Alder’s comment on the New Wark Times, we learn from it that sadly his family small business (near Bambi’s place) did not get Ms. Mitton’s support when she was a town councillor (which Bambi remembers from earlier posts).

Back then, Ms. Mitton preferred to favour bigger players at the other exit of Sackville (i.e., the Irvings, Esso, etc.). Now, during the pandemic, she seems to change her colours, asking our federal government not to support big businesses who may be minimizing their taxes.

With all due respect to all political parties and elected people, including Ms. Mitton, Bambi tends to agree with Mr. Alder: It is hard to trust politicians. However, despite the tough nature of politics, we can come across public servants who earn our trust, slowly but surely. They may perhaps demonstrate their logical approach or their congruence, or reliability (even if we may not agree with them at times or even if they make mistakes). One must also add that crises are golden opportunities to sometimes discover the leadership or greatness of some men and women.