You can't believe in a Dream until you can believe in Yourself

Bonne Fête du 14 Juillet

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 17:25:00 +0200

Bonjour mes ami(e)s,

Je vous souhaite une très bonne fête du 14 juillet. J'espère que vous passez un très bon moment, et que ceux qui habitent en Ile de France seront encore une fois emerveillés par le splendide feu d'artifices du 14 juillet.

Avant de partir, j'ai choisi pour vous un poème de Jacques Brel et deux vidéos, qui j'en suis certain vous feront plaisir.

Mon ami qui croit
Que tout doit changer
Te crois-tu le droit
De t'en aller tuer
Les bourgeois.
Si tu crois encore qu'il nous faut descendre
Dans le creux des rues pour monter au pouvoir
Si tu crois encore au rêve du grand soir
Et que nos ennemis il faut aller les pendre

Dis-le-toi désormais
Même s'il est sincère
Aucun rêve jamais
Ne mérite une guerre

On a détruit la Bastille
Et ça n'a rien arrangé
On a détruit la Bastille
Quand il fallait nous aimer

Mon ami qui croit
Que rien ne doit changer
Te crois-tu le droit
De vivre et de penser
En bourgeois
Si tu crois encore qu'il nous faut défendre
Un bonheur acquis au prix d'autres bonheurs
Si tu crois encore que c'est parce qu'ils ont peur
Que les gens te saluent plutôt que de te pendre

Dis-le-toi désormais
Même s'il est sincère
Aucun rêve jamais ne mérite une guerre

On a détruit la Bastille
Et ça n'a rien arrangé
On a détruit la Bastille
Quand il fallait nous aimer

Mon ami je crois
Que tout peut s'arranger
Sans cris, sans effroi
Même sans insulter
Les bourgeois
L'avenir dépend des révolutionnaires
Mais se moque bien des petits révoltés
L'avenir ne veut ni feu ni sang, ni guerre
Ne sois pas de ceux-là qui vont nous les donner

Hâtons-nous d'espérer
Marchons au lendemain
Tendons une main
Qui ne soit pas fermée

On a détruit la Bastille
Et ça n'a rien arrangé
On a détruit la Bastille
Ne pourrait-on pas s'aimer?

Jacques Brel - La Bastille

Les Inconnus - La Révolution
envoyé par Bloblo450

Je pense bien à vous.

Jean-Marc.

"La révolution, c'est une tentative pour faire aboutir les rêves."

Robert Rosenstone
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Wishing a Happy 4th of July to All my American Friends !

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 16:33:00 +0200

Good morning,

I wanted to take a moment to Wish You a Happy 4th of July.

Thank you for your Friendship, Hospitality and Candor.

“Freedom has its life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of men and so it must be daily earned and refreshed - else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will wither and die.” -Dwight D. Eisenhower

I feel blessed to have met you.

Jean-Marc.
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Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 08:08:00 +0200

Bonjour Papa,

Je viens de trouver une vidéo qui m'a aidé à encore mieux comprendre ce que tu as vécu lors de tes Accidents Vasculaires Cérébraux. Le témoignage de cette personne est rempli de Leçons, d'Emotions et surtout d'Espoir.

Malgré la distance, nos coeurs, nos pensées, nos forces et nos croyances sont liés Je suis heureux de savoir que tu vas de mieux en mieux. Je crois fermement que tu peux récupérer toute tes fonctions motrices. Pour y arriver, il faut que tu le désires plus que tout. Ensuite Le Seigneur et L'Univers t'aideront à réaliser tes rêves.

J'espère te rendre visite dès que possible.

Je t'aime.

Ton fils - Marco

"All that we are is the result of what we have thought."
- Buddha

"Thank you so much Jill for sharing your deep and intimate story.
I feel tremendously grateful now that I better understand my dad's experience, who recently survived from 4 strokes.
I feel blessed to have come across your story, and I can't wait to read your book.
God Bless You."

Jean-Marc.
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Talks Tony Robbins: Why we do what we do, and how we can do it better

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 07:26:00 +0200

Coucou my Friends,

I just wanted to say hello and share another interesting finding with you.

I was introduced to the web site, TED, and I'm telling you this portail contains powerful ideas, which can really help you grow.

Enjoy Tonny Robins' talk and feel free to share your comments.

Jean-Marc.

Crêpe Party !

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 06:08:00 +0200

Coucou my Friends,

Just wanted to say hi.

This afternoon, I had a wonderful time eating crepes and drinking cider with some friends. Trust me my crepes with Nutella and Pineaple jam or Cheese and Turkey were horribly yummy!

I look forward to throwing a "Accrass" Party ! I'm sure they will love it as well.

Before I take off, I wish you a great week.

Take care

Jean-Marc.

"To get what we've never had, we must what we've never done."
Anonymous

Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to do About It

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 06:37:00 +0200

Hi my Friends,

I stopped by to say a quick hello, and to share with you my last reading.

I just finished "The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber", and I have to admit it was a tremendous enlightment. Needless to say that I highlty recommend it to those who are in Business or want to start a Business.

This book will teach you some fundamental concepts you must have to survive in the business arena.

The E-Myth will also drive home the importance of "working on the business" and "not in the business.".

Finaly, this updated edition will share with you some case studies that will bring new insight to how you look at yourself in relation to your life, career, and business.

I'm sure you will love it.

You can get it on Amazon !

E-Myth Worldwide Executive VP Susan Weber discusses the E-Myth approach to business success & how to use systematizing so that a business becomes systems dependent rather than people dependent.

Jean-Marc.

PS : On Sunday afternoon, I'm throwing a "Crepe" party at my place, so I might have some cool pictures to share with you later.

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Happy Birthday to my Adorable Friend, Rose !

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 08:31:00 +0200

Bonjour mon Amie,

I stopped by to wish you a very Happy Birthday and the best in your endeavours. I'm sure that blue skies, bright horizons, joys, opportunities, rewards and magical rose gardens are just waiting for you.

I have two gifts for you.

First, I retained this lovely poem for you:

Birthday Blessings Instead of counting candles,
Or tallying the years,
Contemplate your blessings,
As your birthday nears. Consider special people
Who love you, and who care,
And others who’ve enriched your life
Just by being there. Think about the memories
Passing years can never mar,
Experiences great and small
That have made you who you are. Another year is a happy gift,
So cut your cake, and say,
"Instead of counting birthdays,
I count blessings every day!" By Joanna Fuchs

Also, I selected some of our pictures, which should remind you some great moments!

See you tomorow.

Your Friend, Jean-Marc.

“We are friends for life. When we’re together the years fall away. Isn’t that what matters? To have someone who can remember with you? To have someone who remembers how far you’ve come?” Judy Blume

My second quarter at UCLA went extremely well !

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 08:32:00 +0200

Hi my Friends,

Hope all is doing well for you.

On my side, I feel good. I just completed my second quarter at UCLA, which was a success. I had a phenomenal opportunity to work on my Business and Marketing plans and to present them. Believe me, it was an extreme enlightening experience.

Once again, I'm thanking my intructors:

Harry Redinger, Developing a Business Plan
Frank Kholer, Entrepreneurship and New Venture Formation
David Novak, Marketing, Advertising, and Sales Promotion for Entrepreneurial Businesses

I'm also expressing my gratitude to my classmates and friends:

Yadira Macias Tejeida
Peggy Lim
Diogo Gomes
Hao-Yu Yang

Next week, I'm starting the following courses:

Accounting for Non-Accountants with Darrell Lindgren
Maximize Success and Sustainability : Solutions for Business with Scott Hindell
New Business Development and Pitching the Perfect Presentation with Nance Rosen

Before I take off, let me share some pictures with you.

Talk to you soon.

Jean-Marc.
"There are three things you must do in order to become wealthy. You must have the right mindset, discover your purpose in life, and find a business that expresses that purpose." — Andy Fuehl: Author and authority on money and wealth psychology

For Blacks in France, Obama’s Rise Is Reason to Rejoice, and to Hope

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 22:25:00 +0200

June 17, 2008 Abroad By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN
Source : New York Times PARIS — When Youssoupha, a black rapper here, was asked the other day what was on his mind, a grin spread across his face. “Barack Obama,” he said. “Obama tells us everything is possible.” A new black consciousness is emerging in France, lately hastened by, of all things, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president of the United States. An article in Le Monde a few days ago described how Mr. Obama is “stirring up high hopes” among blacks here. Even seeing the word “noir” (“black”) in a French newspaper was an occasion for surprise until recently. Meanwhile, this past weekend, 60 cars were burned and some 50 young people scuffled with police and firemen, injuring several of them, in a poor minority suburb of Vitry-le-François, in the Marne region of northeast France. Americans, who have debated race relations since the dawn of the Republic, may find it hard to grasp the degree to which race, like religion, remains a taboo topic in France. While Mr. Obama talks about running a campaign transcending race, an increasing number of French blacks are pushing for, in effect, the reverse. Having always thought it was more racially enlightened than strife-torn America, France finds itself facing the prospect that it has actually fallen behind on that score. Incidents like the ones over the weekend bring to mind the rioting that exploded across France three years ago. Since it abolished slavery 160 years ago, the country has officially declared itself to be colorblind — but seeing Mr. Obama, a new generation of French blacks is arguing that it’s high time here for precisely the sort of frank discussions that in America have preceded the nomination of a major black candidate. This black consciousness is reflected not just in daily conversation, but also in a dawning culture of books and music by young French blacks like Youssoupha, a cheerful, toothy 28-year-old, who was sent here from Congo by his parents to get an education at 10, raised by an aunt who worked in a school cafeteria in a poor suburb, and told by guidance counselors that he shouldn’t be too ambitious. Instead, he earned a master’s degree from the Sorbonne. Then, like many well-educated blacks in this country, he hit a brick wall. “I found myself working in fast-food places with people who had the equivalent of a 15-year-old’s level of education,” he recalled. So he turned to rap, out of frustration as much as anything, finding inspiration in “négritude,” an ideology of black pride conceived in Paris during the 1920s and 30s by Aimé Césaire, the French poet and politician from Martinique, and Léopold Sédar Senghor, the poet who became Senegal’s first president. Its philosophy, as Sartre once put it, was a kind of “antiracist racism,” a celebration of shared black heritage. Négritude and Césaire are back. When Césaire died in April, at 94, his funeral in Fort-de-France, Martinique, was broadcast live on French television. The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and his rival Ségolène Royal both attended. Just three years ago, Mr. Sarkozy, as head of a center-right party and not yet president, supported a law (repealed after much protest) that compelled French schools to teach the “positive” aspects of colonialism. The next year, Césaire refused to meet with him. Now here was Mr. Sarkozy flying to the former French colony (today one of the country’s overseas departments, meaning he could troll for votes) to pay tribute to the poet laureate of négritude. That said, as a country France definitely sends out mixed messages. “Négritude is a concept they just don’t want to hear about,” Youssoupha raps in “Render Unto Césaire” on his latest album, “À Chaque Frère” (“To Each Brother”). A regular short feature on French public television, “Citoyens Visibles,” hosted by a young actress, Hafsia Herzi, celebrates French artists with foreign origins. At the same time, it’s against the rules for the government to conduct official surveys according to race. Consequently, nobody even knows for certain how many black citizens there are. Estimates vary between 3 million and 5 million out of a population of more than 61 million. “Can you imagine if French officials said, ‘Well, we’re not sure, the population of France may be 65 million, or maybe it’s 30 million’?” declared a somewhat exasperated Patrick Lozès, founder of Cran, a black organization devised not long ago partly to gather statistics the government won’t. When he sat down to talk the other morning, the first two words out of his mouth were Barack Obama. “The idea behind not categorizing people by race is obviously good; we want to believe in the republican ideal,” he said. “But in reality we’re blind in France, not colorblind but information blind, and just saying people are equal doesn’t make them equal.” He ticked off some obvious numbers: one black member representing continental France in the National Assembly among 555 members; no continental French senators out of some 300; only a handful of mayors out of some 36,000, and none from the poor Paris suburbs. To this may be added Cran’s findings that the percentage of blacks in France who hold university degrees is 55, compared with 37 percent for the general population. But the number of blacks who get stuck in the working class is 45 percent, compared with 34 percent for the national average. “There’s total hypocrisy here,” Léonora Miano said. She’s a black author, 37, originally from Cameroon, whose recent novel “Tels des Astres Éteints” (“Like Extinguished Stars”) is about race relations as seen through the eyes of three black immigrants. “For me it was really strange when I arrived 17 years ago to find people here never used the word race,” Ms. Miano said over coffee one afternoon at Café Beaubourg. Outside, African immigrants hawked sunglasses to tourists. “French universalism, the whole French republican ideal, proposes that if you embrace French values, the French language, French culture, then race doesn’t exist and it won’t matter if you’re black. But of course it does. So we need to have a conversation, and slowly it is coming: not a conversation about guilt or history, but about now.” “The Black Condition: An Essay on a French Minority” by Pap N’Diaye, a 42-year-old historian at the School for Advanced Study of the Social Sciences, is another much-talked-about new book here. “We are witnessing a renaissance of the négritude movement,” Mr. N’Diaye declared the other day. The surge in popularity of Mr. Obama among French blacks partly stems from the hope that his rise “will highlight our lack of diversity and put pressure on French politicians who say they favor him to open politics up more to minorities,” Mr. N’Diaye said. “We in France are, in terms of race, where we were in terms of gender 40 years ago.” He laid out some history: French decolonization during the 1960s pretty much pushed the original négritude movement to the back burner, at the same time that it inspired a wave of immigrants from the Caribbean to come here and fill low-ranking civil service jobs. From sub-Saharan Africa, another wave of laborers gravitated to private industry. The two populations didn’t communicate much. But their children, raised here, have grown up together. “Mutually discovered discrimination,” as Mr. N’Diaye put it, has forged a bond out of which négritude is being revived. The watershed event was the rioting in poor French suburbs three years ago. Among its cultural consequences: Aimé Césaire “started to be rediscovered by young people who found in his work things germane to the current situation,” Mr. N’Diaye said. Youssoupha is one of those people. He was nursing a Coke recently at Top Kafé, a Lubavitch Tex-Mex restaurant in Créteil, just outside Paris, where he lives. Nearby, two waiters in yarmulkes sat watching Rafael Nadal play tennis on television beneath dusty framed pictures of Las Vegas and Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson. A clutch of Arab teenagers smoked outside. In modest neighborhoods like this, France can look remarkably harmonious. “Césaire is in my lyrics, and I was upset when people misinterpreted what I wrote as anti-white because négritude is the affirmation of our common black roots,” Youssoupha said. Ms. Miano, the novelist, made a similar point. “There is no such thing as a black ‘community’ in France — yet — partly because we have such different histories,” she said. “An immigrant woman from Mali and another from Cameroon view the world in completely different ways. You also shouldn’t think there isn’t racism among blacks in France, between West Indians and Africans. There is. But ultimately we’re all black in the face of discrimination.” Then she smiled: “Too bad I forgot to wear my Obama T-shirt.” Source of the article : New York Times.

One of my Mentors, Paulo Coelho

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 23:33:00 +0200

Hi my Friends,

I wanted to say Hello and share with you this video of one my mentors, Paulo Coelho.

I higly invite you to read one of his books, The Alchemist.

Have a great week-end and have fun with your Dads.

Jean-Marc.