The elevator in Via Eugubina, 101
Perugia Corso Vanucci, in front you see the ooold Duomo
and still Perugia
The Ospedale, the beginning of Via Eugubina

Erasmus 2008/2009 - the beginning of a new Era

Dear Fellows,

I have decided to follow Henrique's idea and I'll give continuation to this wonderful "Ian Project" to keep in touch with all of you!

The saudade is killing me, but also other things are doing it! :D

So I'll try to post everything acording to the cronology of the events;)

And you, dear fellows, try to keep in touch!

Those in Portugal send me news, all the other "lost", try to post your adventures!

Have a nice year without me! Hehehe!

Lots of Love,

xxx Marie

My arrival at Perugia "airport"! This is all of it! Haha

And Freedom of Speech and Press?

That's another point, a very important one, since journalists are there to inform, to tell us more or less what's happening in the world!

Unfortunately there a great conspiracy against journalists, how many have been killed in the past? In the recent past? In dictatorial countries, and even in countries in development, where political leaders don't want to expose the reality of their country, erasing those parasites aka journalists is part of the authorities' job!

But I'm not saying nothing that you don't know already, right?


So, as an example, we have the case of a journalist in Iraq, threatened to death by the brother-in-law of the Iraqi President,Halo Ahmed, just because this wise man thought that the reporter was insulting his late father! And this was just a threat... By the way, let's see if he doesn't show up to be dead by next week!

Oh: His apologies...:

"It was 11:30 at night when I read his article," said Ahmed. "I was really upset that he had written about my father in an insulting way.
"I had a terrible reaction and I wrote those nasty words, which now I regret."

Sooo heartbreaking! Can't you start crying please?

In Rwanda, freedom of expression is also under attack. Amnesty International is concerned at the ongoing persecution of, and violent attacks against, journalists and members of the civil society in Rwanda, but specially journalists, who fear death because of writing agains the Rwandan Patriotic Front. Amazing is the fact that the authorities just don't want to deal with it. So, as I said, journalists aka parasites. As they are the pest, nothing is lost if they get killed.

More famous are, of course, the menaces against western journalists in more civilized countries, because you surely don't get to know what is happening where God lost hope anyway!

Ana Politkovskaya, a russian journalist and great human rights activist, was shot 4 times and fell dead on the floor, in front of her house! As you see, a journalist only gets killed if he defends the primary values of the western world.

So we could face the Chinese ban on reporters as a good thing, even though not democratic, they keep away from fire and they don't get burned, and so may stay calmly at home researching about the US and the Middle East, that's stuff enough to publish anyway!

No, really! How is that possible, as you can see on worldinahurry.blogspot.com??

How can you isollate a country in the 21st century???

Unbelievable, unconceivable! Where are the U.S.? Oh, sure, they don't have interests in men and rice! But where are the United Nations? How can China still be recognized and taken seriously?

Anyway...

(to be continued...)

P.S. Take a look at this: http://www.wan-press.org/3may/1999/essays/blancornelus.html

Again, my presentation!

Oh! I told you! My English teacher is completely out of order! I thing I'm insane... ;)

So... Moving to the next stop... We heard about that "cartoon story", the danish journalist who just wanted to be scandalously funny... And who risked peace on Earth for the sake of Alah! But there was that huge drama around that story, and then there was that horrible statement by the Pope:

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

That was highly more offensive than those harmless cartoons!

It was an invitation to war by the Pope, who later did apologize and saw his image burned all over the islamic world, litteraly!

For God's sake! How could The Pope do that? Is this freedom of speech?

I do apologize, but it is not!

Would you ignore somebody who offended your family? Of course you wouldn't, however agressive you might react!

And that's where freedom should be stopped... There's that horrible vulgar saying, "your freedom ends where the freedom of your neighbour starts". It is trivial, but just fitting into my point!

To be continued...

Freedom of Expression

Fellow Colleagues,

tomorrow is my Grand Day, I will be presenting the above mentioned issue during my English lesson...

It must be a 15 minute speech, and I'm worried... Do I have enough to say for a 15minute speech? Funny, isn't it?? I barely keep my mouth shut for 2 minutes, and now I have a problem... The weird thing about this presentation is that our teacher is sitting right in front of us writing notes in his laptop! I suppose it must be hard to be speaking to a crowd (I'm not counting on more than 10 people looking at me!!!) and there is somebody evaluating you who is just writing and not really looking at you. So at least I think I don't have to concentrate myself on my own posture.;)

And here are some curiosities about my presentation issue!...

First of all I believe I will focus on Freedom of Religion, then on Freedom of Speech... Above all, I would like to make people notice that from the moment we started seeking for those liberties, we just lost them... Mankind can only face an issue if it is mean enough to imagine it... And that's what happened to FREEDOM, freedom of all, let it be speech or religion.

Mark Twain wrote :

"It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have these three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence to practice neither."

I do agree with him...

The ethics of Freedom means that it is just understandable and healthy if we do know when and when not to say something, when to express or just to shut up, and this is important. It is important to recognize that those who do really respect this modernity of free conscienceness and free expression are those who know when not to say or do something.

If we consider that freedom of religion is just there because there are religions we can think about it... Every kind of freedom we may fight for is just a result of our creation of a conflict.

There was a time, many many years ago, when Catholics and Muslims just had to fight each other, and that was okay... They didn't do it because Alah was better than God, or not only, they did it because the world's condition, the natural state of every empire, was WAR. Religion was just a political identity and, after all, the only one to that time. The world was divided into Christians (catholics) and Muslims.

And this is my point: Do you really believe that the two main religions of the world do something else but following the "doctrine of negation"? Religion turns out to be the major nihilistic group that there can be... Deny, deny... Complaining about a belief that is their own. This is an overwhelming story.

One should ban "official religions", one should take the legal authority from religions...

What do you think???

Further more...

Are we what we are because of some God?

Watch... They're simply marvellous...
And there's Salman Rushdie!

Muslims are fascistic, right?

Tell me more...


http://www.pbs.org/moyers/faithandreason/portraits_rushdie.html


About S. Rushdie, his latest book, Shalimar the Clown... Have you read it? It is a wonderful book, an appealing story and you will fall in love with the characters!

That is discipline...

I wonder if we are that good in whatever seems to be our "gift"...

And this is not a question of education... It is "just a gift"! Is there any creativity? I don't know... What do you think?

"If you cannot be wrong, you cannot be creative..."

http://blog.ted.com/2006/06/sir_ken_robinso.php#more

I would strongly emphasize this point. If you check the link above, you'll listen to a very interesting (and surpirsingly funny!) speech by Sir Ken Robinson. Not that I would vehemently advise a "knight" to have this posture, because I wouldn't, but since we should vote at the age of five... I just don't believe the unbelievable!

Have a nice weekend!

**

Since we should vote at the age of 5...

Well well well...