The Top 10 Camcorders

Pride and memories of youth

The first time I noticed something fishy was in a youth magazine. So I guess I was between 10 and 15. Is it necessary to specify at that time, all I knew about politics was the name of the president? And the blacks that I went, well, they were in my family so we were friends.

After these details (which do deter people calling me a racist), that's my story.

I read letters to the editor of the magazine Jenesaisquoi when I came across the message of a young lady who announced "I am proud to be black."

What was the context? Why was she proud? Why did she say? I do not know. I think she was referring to his ancestors, slaves.

From the bottom of my total innocence, I thought it was fishy.

At first I thought it was silly, because I was not proud to be white. I am not yet in fact, even if it took another dimension. I do not see why I should have been. It was not something I had done but j 'struts, since my birth. Same for the ancestors. And reasoning applied to all skin colors.

Then I found this strange, because I understood that not only this girl had written it, but Above all, the magazine had chosen to publish .

Would they accept a letter from a reader saying "I am proud to be white"? No. It was totally obvious. But they had selected and displayed, without comment, that "I am proud to be black." I remember my discomfort and my annoyance at finding that what was considered bad for whites was encouraged to blacks.

In the same age, while I was in college, our history teacher geo we had spent a video on the triangular trade. Nantais a descendant of a slave owner, showed the ship plans he had found. And he stated on camera that he knew he would be ashamed of what had been his ancestor ... but in fact he was proud of him.

That it is no shame, it seemed perfectly normal, because, again, we are not magically responsible for acts of our ancestors - either good or bad. But he is proud? And proud of what? That his grandfather became rich by selling men and women? I do not understand, and I still do not understand.

That's why I decided to justify the "pride" in the black. I put it on account of racism, but especially, of course, on account of racism. Something like: "This is totally stupid, but blacks feel proud because there is still racism." As long as there would be people to feel proud of their slave ancestors, there would be people to feel proud of their slave ancestors.

The same reasoning that justify me a few years later, under gay pride. "This is not strictly speaking be gay pride, but pride of being openly despite the difficulties" or else, more simply, "gays claim they are proud because some want them to be ashamed. "

Today I think we are proud when we still have a little shame, really.

Or when, in fact, we are surrounded by people who want to convince us be ashamed.

Or when we are encouraged by three hundred associations subsidized by the state, of course ...

I do not deny in any way the importance of inheritance, succession, call it you want. Of course we can be proud of the accomplishments of his ancestors, as we can be proud of those younger than oneself. We are proud of those we inherited, we are proud of those who inherit from us .

But I understand that pride in an "active", for lack of a better term.

"I am proud of my grandfather who was a hero during the First World War and try to draw inspiration from his courage," "I am proud of my father who started with nothing and I hope to be worthy of him, "" I am proud of my grandmother and I want to perpetuate his memory in my children, "it all seems well and good.

And if the father, grandmother and grandfather were all thugs? So be proud not to be like them, I guess. Or find something in them that deserves respect: people are only rarely of crap, anyway. (Even the robbers may be good "big brothers", it seems.)

course it's important to be part of a chain, as they say. Be proud to be French (or white, or I do not know what) to me it means respect the accomplishments of those who came before, and try to show them with dignity and in turn pass on something to generations that follow. That put the individual in context to enhance both, so to speak.

That applies to the material legacy, too. Why is it that the descendants of a writer get money on sales of his books? Have they done anything to deserve it? Probably not. But the writer deserved to pass something.

It is the same pride. Do not be proud of his heroic ancestor, it's a little spit on his grave. We are not heroes, we do not deserve to take credit for his actions, but he deserves our remembrance.

But if that pride is a vague abstract concept, which allows you to parry the virtues of others to admire himself in a mirror before wallowing in mediocrity, I pass.

Techno Counts 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

All is well! Abortion

One night we shoots a gun at cops twice. How would you describe the events?

"Calm"? "Somewhat quiet? "Relative calm"? "Very quiet"? "No outbreak of violence?

With a bonus video about the Eden that was the perky Villeneuve forty years ago:



First, it is "utopian, to live an urban project together ". Living together? "All social classes", of course: at no time did we talk about immigration, except to say that the district was "praised for its diversity."

Everything was wonderful, the neighbors returned from each other (my dream) and was rich associational life (ditto). Then the middle class decide to flee this earthly paradise. Really, they do not know what's good for them.

And once there is more social mixing, we buy heavy weapons, they rob banks and then afterwards we all Crame. Logic.

Kates Playground Cramped

An interesting article recently by .


I asked myself questions. But a woman's right to choose his own lifestyle is paramount.

In the Cradle Tower "Tower London an interactive exhibit asks visitors to vote on whether they are ready or not to die for a cause. Mmm, let's see. I love dolphins, but if we really had a choice, farewell Flipper. I'm ready to berate a linesman Uruguayan when my country calls me, but I'm not ready for me to take a break with paper for England, let alone a bullet.

Standing in the place where religious martyrs were tortured and detained during the turbulent British reform, I could only think of one reason why I should be ready to play my life: a woman's right to be educated to have a life beyond his home and be recognized by law and by custom order his own life as she sees fit. That includes full control of its own fertility. But something strange affect this belief has been for so long the heart of my being: my moral certainty about abortion flickers, my absolutist position is under siege.

This is not a baby is a fetus, band of activists of God, I would have swung the pro-life teenager. This is the woman's body, and its choice point, would I proclaimed in any dialect in use at that time. The report of the College Royal gynecologists and obstetricians published last week saying that the human fetus can not feel pain before 24 weeks would have been triumphantly waved to anyone who crossed my path, with an invitation to learn what it means pain. Because it is not, you know, a rational debate, but a discussion of any tribal passion and vitriol.

Then came a baby, and everything changed. I think of them as the riddle of Anna Karenina. If you've read that book teenager, you will support all his choices with the passion of youth. Love before the conventions, go Anna! After that you have children and you realize that Anna abandons her son to live in the sticks with a beautiful soldier, then his daughter when she throws herself under a train. It becomes a selfish witch. Having a baby leads to repaint the world in a whole new color. White and black are no longer quite the case.

The abortion issue revolves around the notion of life. The pro-life position is clear: a baby is a life with rights, since the moment of conception. The pro-choice position insists instead on the fact that we are only talking about a potential life without rights. And the embryo is not a person.

To put it bluntly, the debate is that of human fetal cons reproductive rights. But you'll never see a dispassionate wording also from the militant. Both sides are using a language that allows them to advance their positions. Women terminate their pregnancies or kill their babies, it all depends on who is speaking. In the pro-life propaganda, the details are recounted with a gory delight purulent: During a suction abortion, the fetus is "decapitated and dismembered."

If scientists had established that a fetus can feel pain from a very young age, rather than the reverse, the pro-life it would be seized, but in truth it has little impact on the main arguments on both sides. Either a fetus is a life from conception, or it is not: the ability to feel pain is not in itself a determining factor.

In fact, it is extraordinarily difficult to arrive at a definition of life. Friedrich Engels said: "Life is the state of being protein. But no single definition does not imply membership of scientists and philosophers. Some scientists argue that the universe is arranged so that the spontaneous emergence of life is inevitable - Christian de Duve, Nobel Prize-winning biologist, described life as a "cosmic imperative". Others argue that the existence of life is so unlikely that it is a miraculous stroke of luck. In both cases, there is something absolutely extraordinary in the notion that we are all recycled material - that our atoms were once part of something else, animate or inanimate, and a kind Miracle assembly has created you and me.

Life Is defined by consciousness or self awareness? Is it simply the ability to breathe? Take some time to try to define what being human and alive. That's it? Not easy, is not it?

What becomes increasingly clear to me is that without an objective definition, the fetus is a life, whatever the subjective yardstick one adopts. My daughter has been formed to design, and all this barely understood alchemy that transformed the happy accident of the encounter of the sperm-egg-there with the brat in there baby, this little stuffed personality, was produced in that moment. She is so obviously herself, her own person: Forged in my breast, not by my mothering.

Any other conclusion is a lie convenient for us, pro-choice side, telling ourselves to feel better about the act of taking a life. The little creature shaped hippocampus floating in a womb is hosting a miracle of life growing up. In a hostile womb it is no longer a life, but a fetus - that can kill.

So here we are with a problem. A growing movement in America, led by Sarah Palin, feminism is pro-life. He tries to decouple the feminism of abortion rights, arguing that one can believe in a woman's right to autonomy without believing in its right to abortion. Its proponents point to a slide substantive support among young women looking to reinvent the ideology of their mothers.

But we can not separate the rights of women of their right to control their fertility. The single most important factor for women's liberation was our new ability to impose our will on our biology. Abortion was legal for thousands of years if they were men whose hopes for the future and the careers that had suddenly been blocked by an unexpected pregnancy. The mystery on which we looked over many outings with the girls is how the deuce men, that God we keep them, have managed to keep political and cultural hegemony over such a long period. The only possible answer is that they are not subject to their biology as far as we are. Look at the map of the world: the right to abortion on demand is almost exactly correlated with the expectation that one may have to live a life free of misogyny.

As always, when an issue we thought black or white becomes more nuanced, the answer is to choose the lesser evil. The nearly 200,000 babies aborted every year in the United Kingdom each year are the lesser evil, regardless of how to define the life or death. If you're ready to die for a cause, you must be willing to kill for it, too.

I could comment on specific points, but that would be nitpicking. The title says what I think: abortion is murder, but the right to abortion is the lesser evil. I think this woman has real courage: she will be insulted by the pro-life because she is pro-abortion, and she will be insulted by feminists because it speaks of murder.

Salon Beige has also cracked a terse comment that also ridiculous "What lies ahead for the delightful little girl Antonia, the when she learns that her mother would have to sacrifice on behalf of his "lifestyle"? "

Really? That's all they have to oppose a text as intelligent?" What about your daughter's that you are for-l'avortement-what-will-say-that-would-you-could-kill it? ". But it did not, exactly.

is one of things deplores the author in his text: the emotion is passed first, and is transformed into a serious subject for grabs. Some doctors posing for Satanic butchers, and others that we should abort the heart as light as if you cut off a fingernail.
And
then, the term "lifestyle" makes me cringe. This is life, and choice, quite simply. When we say that a woman aborted for "lifestyle", we immediately imagine a trail that did not even know who the father was and who was in her third abortion. There are, I suppose. How many are there others who were using contraception but became pregnant anyway, while they were students? I'm probably spoiled a Westerner, but for me, finishing his studies instead of ending up with the OCA and a baby forever is more than "preserve style life ". And how many abortions because their boyfriend / husband / plumber friendly does not want children? It's easy to blame those who, after a mutual choice, which is perhaps even more reluctant is that going to the clinic, because yes, the uterus, it is she who has it.

Personally, I believe that if we offered more help for women who become pregnant without desired there are a number who miscarried not. Unfortunately, feminists cry out that it is a violation of the right to choose (!) and pro-life are too busy making video montages filled with bits of chopped baby .

For those who want an abortion anyway, they will. What can I say?

My grandmother told me about this old woman in her village, which has limped all his life. His mother wanted to abort. With a pin. The little remained well hung, but she had the hip pierced. So for those who want the pathos, here: what this woman has suffered all his life, knowing that each meter was that his mother had tried to kill her?

My mother was for abortion, but my hip is doing well, thank you.