Wednesday: Chansons françaises

This Parisian artist is fascinating. Indila is extremely popular in France, mostly because of ballads like this one with multi-generational appeal. Many of her works contain lyrics in more than one language which increases the breadth of her allure. This particular song is indie/dream pop, but she also works in rap and fusion raï — the latter a form of Algerian folk music.

It’s no surprise that some of Indila’s work fuses raï with other genres. She’s of Algerian descent, though she’s said she’s also Indian, Cambodian, Egyptian and Moroccan. Indian influences her work with band TLF in Criminel, African cultures shape her collaboration with Youssoupha in Dreamin’ (the video is set in Arizona, oddly enough), and Middle East in Poussière d’empire with artist Nessbeal.

Do surf YouTube for more of her solo work when you’re in the mood for something sweet and angst-y.

Troubles continue abroad

I-spy

  • UK oversight struggles with MI5’s bulk collection (The Guardian) — Jeepers, it’s like MI5 took lessons from U.S. law enforcement on resisting oversight.
  • Canada’s intelligence agency likewise resists oversight (CTVNews) — Communications Security Establishment (CSE) won’t disclose what information has been shared with other non-Canadian entities which may result in human rights violations. CSE may not spy on Canadians anywhere, but compliance can’t be proven with censored records.
  • Not even going to bother with the Trump+Russia crap here, because it’s all over social media. Probably well-fanned smoke to hide his refusal to release tax returns.

Dick moves
These are among some of the stupidest, rudest, dickiest things in my timeline today. Perps deserve a whack along side the head. Don’t like my language? Tough rocks.

Long-listen
If you have the stomach for it, listen to this Bloomberg podcast in which Laurence Ball, Department of Economics Chair at Johns Hopkins, says the U.S. could have avoided the 2008 crash by rescuing Lehman Brothers. Hindsight is 20/20 — in this case, it’s nauseating, too. Fecking Bush administration…

Hasta pasta!

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2 replies
  1. rugger9 says:

    O’Lielly needed to read Abigail Adams’ letter before saying that. She was there when they were building it, and it’s clear that O’Lielly is wrong. He’s wrong about a lot of things, including Malmedy, that are easily verifiable on the internet.
    *
    I’ll be impressed with Hannity’s “manliness” when two things happen: he stops skimming off the 80-90% overhead on his wounded vets boutique charity, and he actually gets waterboarded like he said he’d do (and IIRC Bill Maher said he’d pay $1000 per second that Hannity could handle). Otherwise, he’s just a lowlife chickenhawk.
    *
    On Erdogan’s dictatorship, I wonder how long NATO will permit the establishment of a new Caliphate complete with Islamic fanaticism. Turkey’s past wish to join the EU (allegedly torpedoed by France and Germany on fiscal grounds, wink, wink) is also thoroughly finished since I cannot see any version of the EU accepting what Erdogan’s doing if they would not accept the earlier post-military secular state.
    *
    What the PRC needs to remember is that when a state claims total control over everything, it is going to get blamed when anything goes wrong. However, some low-level apparatchiks will get arrested and the root causes for the problem papered over as it usually is.

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