Posted to YouTube July 23, 2015.
Posted to YouTube August 16, 2012.
Posted to YouTube March 8, 2013.
Posted to YouTube July 28, 2009.
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27 Monday Jul 2015
Posted to YouTube July 23, 2015.
Posted to YouTube August 16, 2012.
Posted to YouTube March 8, 2013.
Posted to YouTube July 28, 2009.
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31 Sunday May 2015
Eight hundred years ago next month, on a reedy stretch of riverbank in southern England, the most important bargain in the history of the human race was struck. I realize that’s a big claim, but in this case, only superlatives will do. As Lord Denning, the most celebrated modern British jurist put it, Magna Carta was “the greatest constitutional document of all time, the foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despot.”
Hannan, Daniel. “Magna Carta: Eight Centuries of Liberty.” The Wall Street Journal, May 29, 2015.
‘No free man shall be arrested, imprisoned,
dispossessed, outlawed, exiled or in any
way victimised, or attacked except by the
lawful judgement of his peers or by the
law of the land’
This right is most famously contained in the American Bill of Rights embodied in the constitution of the United States of America.
Hereford Cathedral. “Magna Carta: An Introduction”.
Posted to YouTube – 6/19/2015.
Posted on this page with permission.
British Library. “Magna Carta: Law, Liberty, Legacy”.
United Nations. “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights”.
United States Bill of Rights. Wikipedia.
United States Constitution. Wikipedia.
United States. Bill of Rights. 1789. National Archives.
United States. Constitution. Authenticated. PDF. Government Printing Office, July 25, 2007.
United States. Constitution. Transcript of original. National Archives.
United States. Declaration of Independence. July 4, 1776.
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28 Thursday May 2015
War robs you of everything including your humanity. After the war, things are never like they used to be – it takes several generations to eradicate or simply to forget its tragic consequences.
However, all the valuable things, including peace, have their price. Most Europeans naively believe that it’s been paid by their grandparents and great-grandparents during WWI and WWII, but the truth is that this valuable thing is extremely fragile and requires continuous work to keep it alive.
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28 Thursday May 2015
07 Thursday May 2015
Posted in A Little Wisdom
As our institutions acquire growing amounts of data about what best suits people in their different situations, a lot of us might well become increasingly willing, even eager to choose not to choose. When is that a mistake? The answer depends mostly on two crucial factors: whether it is a big bother or instead interesting and fun to make a choice; and whether people are likely to be better or worse off if they make decisions on their own. If the question involves mystery novels, vacation spots, religious affiliations, political candidates, or romantic partners, most of us would do best to make active choices. But if the question involves computer settings, retirement plans, mortgages, or health insurance, good default rules can be a blessing, even an act of mercy, for a lot of us.
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10 Thursday Jul 2014
“I believe that every girl has the right to go to school,” said Yousafzai, who’ll turn 17 on July 12. “And girls in Nigeria also have the right to go to school. It’s their right to go to school to get education, as it is the right of girls in the developed countries.”
http://www.voanews.com/content/malala-speaks-up-for-abducted-nigerian-girls/1950493.html – 7/3/2014.
Perhaps in Goodluck Jonathan’s state, it will be the women who finally go to take apart Boko Haram.
Also, July 14 – Bastille Day and Malala Day: anyone else in want of their own Freedom Day?
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22 Sunday Jun 2014
Blindly
Obedient?
Finished
Owned
Subjugated
Enslaved —
And not by God
Oh no —
Jerks
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01 Thursday May 2014
“All for All” is a better deal the “All Against All”.
The spirits of each monotheist construction — taken as divine, oral history, written history, scholarly poetics, etc. — have each their ways of talking out of both sides of their mouths.
In the bloody American civil war, both sides held their Bible high.
To help everyone get off the self-destroying triangle and on to a better interlock (I’m about to change the popular perception of the Star of David, lol), I refer often to the intellectual who challenged, revolutionized, and revitalized the Judaism of his day and whose thought set the stage for Jesus, Paul, and Constantine and later Muhammad: Hillel the Elder.
http://www.amazon.com/Hillel-Not-When-Jewish-Encounters/dp/0805242813
I can take myself — mind and spirit — more deeply into this area only with funding that covers the specialization, as much in this area (reading-writing) and other parts of my life absorb greater time and energy. So far, we don’t have robust mechanisms for getting beneath independent scholarship. So I’m kind of stuck. Nonetheless, I hope a few will venture into Hillel’s thought not merely as a rabbi but a mortal “Everyman” of his era intent on developing wisdom within the sphere of divinity, as the conversations we have with one another may be also perceived as part of humanity’s great conversation with God, nature, and the universe.
Our survival as a species may also encourage greater emphasis on greater bonding over universalized principles and values, e.g., “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights” against those who would degrade or negate them.
Such has been part of my reasoning when aggregating “Putin-Assad-Khamenei” as a unit representing autocratic absolutism that by its nature indulges in and promotes kleptocratic state-exploiting and state-based theft serving the grandiose aspirations or needs of the “great leader”.
Dictatorship.
The bands of this theme, the despotic vs the democratic, the malignantly narcissistic vs a still boisterous humanity but one capable of containing itself and keeping itself within bounds as regards the exploitation and subjugation of others, are global.
Putiin-Assad and others at polar extremes have wanted to cast their conflict set as “secular vs religious” or, in their own eyes, perhaps, “Heroic Secularism” vs “Heroic Religiosity”.
That’s a small war, generally, and for many reasons having to do with the appeal of the cause and true motivation of the individual. In light of such, I’ve called the current set of conflicts infused with religious dogma and confused by it “The Islamic Small Wars”; however, the same may not comprise The War — shall I type “The True War”? — which is the defense of a varied humanity overall — a creative and gregarious species supporting about 6,980 languages and the cultural perception and self-concept each represents — from greater subjugation by the despotic through he set of mafia-type methods and systems — first, they make you shut up (state control of the press): then deceit, flattery, intimidation, patronage, and murder — that produce and sustain idolatrous totalitarianism.
That’s the bare bones script I see.
The story to come is what the reader writes in the course of the political aspect of his living.
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