It's fine to be concerned with free software, and to my way, I'm working, but it is also essential and even essential to be concerned about the freedom of the press.

What just happened in Paris at the headquarters of Charlie-Hebdo is unspeakable and disturbing because it seems that these vile assassins are French nationals.

I am personally very sad, for two reasons. First, jce I just said, and secondly, I was a Charlie Hebdo player for a good fifteen years.

I put here one of the last designs Charb which appears in the latest issue which appears today. Unfortunately, this is sadly prédictoire
...


Sad ...

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Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/12/2015 10:22AM by JujuLand.

I can't make it to Paris, but if I could my sign would read

Je suis Charlie

Quote
JamesD
I can't make it to Paris, but if I could my sign would read

Je suis Charlie

My sentiments exactly.

soccerfan

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Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/12/2015 10:25AM by JujuLand.

Je suis Charlie!

I would never scorn, or put down, or mock, another person's religion. I just wouldn't do that.

What we are physically or mentally ABLE to do has very little to do with what we are wisest in doing. I have never seen freedom of the press in my lifetime, but it is way off to the side in this case.

All my life--I'm 69 now--I've been looking for a solution to our human disharmony on this planet. It has been my main preoccupation. So far, I have not provided a solution. That being the case, I don't feel smug enough to belittle other people's most important faiths in the universe.

I have learned that the two most powerful currencies on this planet are joy and respect. I'm not sure what a "right" is: I suppose I could cross the street on a green light and shout out my "right" to do that at the driver of a truck bearing down on me against a red light. Yes, I would be well within my "rights" in my last words.

Actually, not. In Canada the law is actually that a person may progress on a green light when it is safe to do so. But if I were to insult another person's faith, it's a much easier case to judge. It has nothing to do with what is legal, or what my "rights" are, or whether I'm being irresponsible, and--worse--unkind in calling down his most cherished beliefs. It doesn't even have anything to do with possible ramifications, legal or not.

Western culture is entirely quantitative. We build jet planes. It is our expertise; our obsession. We judge ourselves quantitatively. The world we attempt to dominate--and to hell with anyone's freedoms or rights; they go right out the window when we are the perpetrators--resents our controls and our bombs, but, very likely to a much greater extent even than life or death, it resents our ineptitude in considering things qualitatively. We Westerners are very good at building excellent houses for ourselves, but perhaps you've noticed all our houses have all their windows facing just one direction. Have you noticed that?

We take great pride in our freedoms. I could viciously insult your wife, maybe scatter around gross cartoons showing her in just any way I had the right to, or I could deny anybody's holocaust, and we'd all take it as a jolly good joke, right? Good sports that we are, blessed with our sacrosanct freedom of our choice of our one and only hegemony--oh, I'd better not go there, because how and why should our press be sacrosanct when we don't respect someone else's sacrosanctity of faith? Ooops.

Faith is not logical. Logic is a yardstick; a way of quantitatively measuring our world. We can use it to build jet planes. If you could defend your faith through logic, you would not have a faith. You might have a philosophy or a scientific perspective, but not a faith.

Someone said that a fool is a person who still doesn't know something that you learned yesterday. There is a great danger in being smug or contemptuous within our own vast knowledge of the universe: we never know quite whether the other guy is tagging along way behind us, or whether he is about to lap us. When you read Moby Dick--assuming that book is within the "general knowledge" of wise people of the West--you recall this question was presented by the old sailor, who, having taken pride in teaching the young sailor a simple knot, stopped and caught himself up: for all he knew, he realized, the young lad was Pythagoras himself, coming around again in a subsequent life.

That makes sense, doesn't it? It should, as we pride ourselves so much in our awareness of, at least, quantitative skills.

We all know that "killing the freedom of the press" was not even one iota of the motivation here. First, the press is not free. But that is of no consequence in this case. Retaliation by one or a few people would be pretty basic human behaviour.

As far as murdering people, or murdering people because we hate them, I think the West should know a lot about that. We do it so often. In fact, don't our taxes go mostly for murdering people?

I don't know about these things. I am just learning. If I were to violate your most cherished beliefs in the most hideous way, I would never do so because it might or might not be my right. And I would not refrain from doing so because of your likely revenge, either.

I would not jeer at what you hold most precious, because I don't think in so doing I'd be trading in joy and respect. Those two currencies (really both aspects of each other) govern human societies and nature too.

Power is not the ability to destroy. Power is the ability to create, say, a living dragonfly in your basement downstairs. Go downstairs and spend a few hours at your workbench. Out of nothing animate, build a beautiful, living, breathing dragonfly, that can fly and mate and live by its own rules. Do that, and I shall call you powerful.

If you are so wealthy, then help out someone who has less wealth.
If you are so intelligent, then help someone less bright.

But never mock another person's understanding of the world. His love, his family, his cultural heritage: don't decry those things. That would be a small thing to do. It is not funny.

And not because you think he might kill you. That would just be a business arrangement. "I don't insult you; you don't kill me." No, that is not the idea at all.

The idea is to live in a way in which there is the hope of harmony. Facing an intimidating boardroom table of powerful men, begin your address with: "Happiness, Gentlemen." Always good to remind everybody: if we are not doing it for happiness, then why are we doing it at all?

I don't really need an answer. I'm just sharing a question. Thanks.

That was an excellent reading.
Thanks Carson!

Hi, Carson,

I think you do not know the French tradition of caricature and the press that was pursued by the authorities since about the 1850s (Daumier ...). These were not muslims.

You do not know what is Charlie-Hebdo. Not an ordinary newspaper but a newspaper that lampooned people acting selfishly or violent manner towards others. And Muslim fundamentalists are those. They are also not the only ones, and Catholics also have their own, albeit less violent but potentially draconian.

Charlie has also had more problems with Catholics than with Muslims.

When some Muslims feel insulted a one that the prophet told all his trouble face these fundamentalist barbarians, they are mistaken, because it is not the Muslims who are stigmatized, but the fundamentalists. Moreover, the one that followed the attack is unequivocal, there is voist Muslims who run after journalists Charlie, but they are not alone, and are accompanied by many more Catholics, and other representatives various religions.

Ask the thousands of Muslims who live under the yoke of Daesh, with their share of violence and attacks on freedom and life, if they feel the same as murderers Daesh ...

Another point you do not know about France, it is compulsory separation of religion and state, which is obviously the opposite in many Muslim countries, but also in the US, where the president swear the bible at his inauguration ...

In short, culturally, you will not let go of all these respects to French.

Having said this, I am of course convinced that European states (I'm including Russia) and North America have a heavy responsibility on all geo-political unrest that shook the world.

I am a pacifist, convinced anti-militarist, but never, I lower my arms in front of barbarism ...

I have, like you, an age that suggests that this is now deeply rooted in myself and maturely reflected.

Do not confuse otherworldliness on one hand and pacificisme or tolerance on the other hand ...

A +

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Speaking of radicalization and the global war on terror - an interesting documentary film from ARTE

La guerre de l'ombre au Sahara:
http://news360x.fr/guerre-de-lombre-au-sahara/

Schattenkrieg in der Sahara:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDJFy-efo98

Sorry, I can't serve an English version of the documentary

Last but not least something a little bit more funny from Paris:
https://vimeo.com/15104826

Carson2, you make some very good points here, and I agree with most of what you say. I hesitated to comment, until I stumbled over this:

Quote
Carson2
We Westerners are very good at building excellent houses for ourselves, but perhaps you've noticed all our houses have all their windows facing just one direction. Have you noticed that?

:s

Hopefully you are only speaking figuratively here! I live in Canada, and every house on my street has front and side windows; most have rear windows, as well. The same goes for the houses in other parts of town. I've been a Canadian citizen since 1973, but grew up in the U.S., in a house with windows on all four sides. (We're of the same age, by the way.)

As for building excellent houses for ourselves, how excellent can they be if they are unreachable by so many people, who can't afford them without making huge mortgage payments for the rest of their lives and passing the debt down to their heirs? A run-down old bungalow can top a million dollars in many parts of the country. Members of the working class may not even qualify for mortgages. Rental housing is just as bad, with average apartment rents higher than $1000/month; in some cities it is more like $1400. The classified sections of newspapers even list single rooms for rent at $800. To be affordable, housing isn't supposed to exceed 30 percent of a person's income, but 40 or 50 percent is the average these days.

Oh, and yes, western culture seems predominantly quantitative, but artistic and humanistic people think qualitatively, and have just as much of a voice here as they do in other parts of the world.

I guess I'm starting to ramble off topic now, but this is what happens when I trip over something in an otherwise excellent post. Thank you for it!

REALLY I do not know . . .

I looked - in mind - out to the possible - usual four - directions.

There I found a fifths,
I said, I do not know; so - just a joke (at first), that I had to laugh about it myself - :
the look, the direction, to the sky; cood be ment.

At least as - still a possible - direction already at all, for still also possible windows.

Not easy to find, that direction, with all that roofs in all the houses.
And there ARE windows in roofs.

Take a Green-House. Windows to ´all´ directions, ´without exception´.
(I know, there are Green-Houses with windows in not ´all´ directions, too. There are a few with window to one direction, horizontally AND to sky; but before getting only already in(to) the near of misinterpretable politically . . .)


AND, PLEASE, for not to be misunderstood:
I am talking ONLY ABOUT windows in buildings.


". . . have all their windows facing just one direction.": horizontally . . . ´direction´ . . . (?)
There wants to be something told, which is still untold, I think.


When religions are used for the rules for the living together, and not the human dignity, the mutually respect, basicly, . . .

This which also easily is not to understand, the human dignity. And not really, too, respect and health and harmony in - from - the human rights, in democratic constitusions.

And one historical development from/with religions - the Age of Enlightenment, as last - is democrazy.


[joke]
On this occasion: I am leaving.
I hope, nobody is set under pressure from this.
[/joke]



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/24/2015 05:48AM by visionhelp.