A Hug... A Weekend Start-up...May go a LONG WAY... This is the SEASON for PEACE...

The hug that Makes Sense...

             Changing the world with a hug…

The Hug

A 12-year-old black boy, tears streaming down his face, and a white police officer embrace in the middle of a demonstration in Portland, Oregon… in relation to Ferguson turmoil…

The boy: Devonte Hart… 12-year-old…crying… because of police brutality…

The police… asks why he is crying…and the black kid talks about police violence… The police responds… “Yes…” and sighs…and continues… “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”… and asks Devonte if he may have one of his hugs…

I am really exhausted by this side blaming the other side… and the other side blaming this side…

To reconcile is very easy… just stop the violence… and do not shoot unarmed people… They may be misguided… but they do not deserve to die…

Granted, policing is dangerous…and that comes with the job… a kick or a punch should not make police respond by lethal force… Gun culture must be changed in the U.S. and gun violence must yield to reconciliation and understanding and peace…

But the initiative MUST come from the more powerful… in this case the police…and the establishment… and the Big brothers…

Stop the chasing of more and more profit… and embrace sharing… with the people… and initiate a GROUP HUG… a PEOPLE’S HUG…

Do I?: Hart was holding a sign at the rally that read 'free hugs,' Barnum saw the boy and motioned him over. Barnum motioned toward the boy's sign and asked 'Do I get one of those?'

Devonte's parents were often surprised by his genuine acts of kindness including when he asked to spend his eleventh and twelfth birthdays raising money for charity

After all, good things come out of good will...

***

Changing the world in a weekend…

A "Start-up Weekend..."

• Note: Start-up Weekends are weekend-long, hands-on experiences where entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs can find out if their start-up ideas are viable.

 AN STARTUP WEEKEND ON THE TURKISH BORDER UNITES TWO COUNTRIES' ENTREPRENEURS

It's not unusual to encounter a “Startup Weekend” somewhere in the world. The trademarked event that brings together individuals eager to build and present it before a panel of entrepreneurship experts and investors is well known and widely replicated.

Yet, when a Start-up Weekend involves Armenia and Turkey, it is not business-as-usual… Yet such a weekend wa organized in November in Yerevan, Armenia…Global Entrepreneurship Week in Armenia collaborated to host Startup

Weekend Armenia-Turkey. It was the first Startup Weekend to involve entrepreneurs from two countries with no diplomatic relations. It was also a rare Startup Weekend to take place in two different cities.

Kicking off in Armenia's capital Yerevan, more than two-dozen men and women crowded into Elite Plaza, a sleek business center. The facilitators, Ece Idil Kasap and Emin Okutan, partners of the Turkish
accelerator Viveka, eased the crowd donned in black Startup Weekend t-shirts into the weekend's activities. It was a slow start, with more feet shuffling and hands in pockets.

Soon enough, however, the room started to buzz. Armenians and Turks broke into six mixed teams and began to work on developing their startup ideas. By the time pitches came around on Sunday afternoon in Gyumri - a city 75 miles northwest of Yerevan - new ventures, along with friendships, had been formed.

…and the rest are details….

The larger picture is that PEOPLE coming together can make ALL the difference and bridge the gap…

The centenary of the Armenian genocide is just a month away… and PEOPLE’S INITIATIVES MUST MULTIPLY…

Do not rely on the GREED soaked Big Brothers… start up PEOPLE’S INITIATIVES…

...But again... the initiative MUST be taken by the stronger side... The Turks should admit the reality of Genocide... and try to amend the past...

DENYING THE GENOCIDE WILL NOT HELP... IT WILL BE A NON-STARTER...

Check below

Erdogan can hide and can deny the Armenian Genocide… but not forever…

Check the photo behind… it is a painting by world famous Armenian painter… Hovhanness Aivazovzky…

The Turkish government cannot hide the truth forever… 

U.S.  Vice President, Birden and Turkish President, Erdogan

On the wall a painting of Armenian painter-Aivasovsky...

 The Truth can not be veiled forever...

The centenary of the Armenian Genocide is next year...

May be the Turkish Government will seize the opportunity and admit the Genocide...

May be the Turkish people will push their leaders to positive action...

After all the People is mightier than the greed of the Big brothers...

Happy Thanksgiving U.S. and ALL the Global Village....

Happy Thanksgiving to All in the U.S. and in the World...
...and look around and count all the blessing and thank for all that...

***

Thank that you were not in Romania when Nicola Ceausescu was the apparatchik and the oligarch and the leader...When people were starving and he built an opulent palace for himself... Check the palace above and be thankful...

Be thankful that you were not in Iraq... when the Western powers attacked the country... and when Saddam was around...

Thank that you are not in Iraq or Syria right now...where the Islamist Jihadists are beheading and murdering and massacring minorities ... Christians and Muslims alike...Check one of the destroyed palaces of Saddam and be thankful...

Ak Saray - Turkish for "White Palace" - boasts more than 1,000 rooms. 

...And the latest blasphemous and sinful luxury that the Turkish president has built for himself by taxpayers money...

It has 1000 rooms... and luxurious halls and costly furnishings...

It is just like from the 1001 Iraqi Nights...

...And here he is...

Unabashed... not ashamed... that the people are hungry...

He is dreaming of a Turkish Empire... just like the one they used to have... Ottoman-Turkic Empire...

But read below... Check the history of the Ottoman-Turks... and be thankful that you are 12 000 km away... safe in the U.S.

Now that he has his place... which he has called the White Palace (paralleling the White House)... he is teaching all how to behave... Check his comments about the U.S......

"Why is somebody coming to this region from 12,000 kilometers (7,000 miles) away? I want you to know that we are against impertinence, recklessness and endless demands," he told a group of businessmen in the Turkish capital, Ankara.

"We will resolve our problems not with the help of a 'superior mind'
but with the help of our people," Erdogan stated.

Now check his comments about women... 

 "You cannot put women and men on an equal footing," he told a women’s conference in Istanbul, according to the BBC. "It is against nature."

Erdogan also said feminists did not grasp the importance of motherhood in Islam.

"In the workplace, you cannot treat a man and a pregnant woman in the same way," Erdogan said, according to the Anatolia news agency.

Women cannot do all the work done by men, he added, because it was against their "delicate nature".

"Our religion regards motherhood very highly. Feminists don't understand that, they reject motherhood," he charged, adding that women needed equal respect rather than equality.

Erdogan with his new White palace... thinks he has the might and he has the brain too to teach the U.S. and women... what to do...

Now read below how Hitler admired Kemal Ataturk, the founder of "modern"Turkey... on which Erdogan is trying to built his empire...

Historians may credit Mussolini with inspiring Hitler's rise to power, but the despot called a different contemporary his 'shining star.'

Adolf Hitler's obsessions, for he was a man prone to unhealthy fixations, were dangerous for the world--whether with himself, with art school, with his dreams of grandeur, with Eva Braun, with his hatred of Jews--or, more obscurely, with Turkey.

To say that the roots of the Third Reich's rise have been thoroughly examined would be an understatement. Yet one element of Hitler's power grab has largely been neglected--the importance of Turkey and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (or as Hitler called him, his "shining star") on the Fuhrer's thinking.

Turkey has been allied with Germany for the TWO WORLD WARS... Imagine if the Germans began to celebrate their invasion if Poland... ! 

If you find that abhorrent... continue and read below ...

ADOLF Hitler wanted no mercy shown as Germany invaded Poland in 1939, telling his generals the Death's Head units were being sent to Poland to kill every Pole - men, women and children.

"Only in such a way will we win the lebensraum (territory for expansion) that we need," he said.

"Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"   Who indeed? 

Hitler was referring to the slaughter of up to 1.5 million Armenians in a process that began on April 24, 1915, on the eve of the landing of the Anzacs ( Australian and New Zeland) at Gallipoli.

The imminence of the Allied invasion in the Dardanelles triggered the order that went out that night in the Ottoman capital of Constantinople (now Istanbul) to round up the Armenian intellectuals - professors, community leaders, lawyers and political activist... who were taken away and secretly killed, followed by orders to deport Armenian from Anatolia into the deserts of Syria... 

Within days reports had reached the US that up to half a million Armenians had perished in what was believed to have been a calculated campaign of ethnic cleansing...

What ensued were death marches and burning people live who were gathered in the churches... more than half the Armenian race was destroyed... over the next few years...

*******

A century ago, in a misconceived encounter on the history-soaked precipices of Asia Minor, the sons of Anzac received their battle initiation against the German-trained forces of the Ottoman Empire.

Now, in an annual event that grows in mythology and status in proportion to the passing of the years, is celebrated the shared combat ordeal of gallant "Johnny Turk" and the Bronzed Anzac.

And why not?

The Turkish forces, well prepared behind excellent defences, used their tactics to good effect, ably led by a professional
officer who was to go on to bigger things, such as the fire destruction of Smyrna - namely, Kemal Ataturk.

But, pause for one moment to consider a slightly different scenario.

Let us suspend historical reality for the purposes of this exercise.

What if, say, instead of Gallipoli, the Anzac forces were going into combat with an SS Battalion somewhere in Poland during the Second World War? Would we then, decades later, be joining up with our comrades in battle to celebrate what both sides had gone through, our enmities forgotten? Can one commemorate the shared experiences with enemy forces who acted as the military arm of a state carrying
out a terrible genocide at the same time?

For it was the night before the landing at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915 in the capital of the Ottoman Empire, then called Constantinople, when occurred the arrest, detention and subsequent liquidation of 625 intellectuals, priests and leading figures of the Armenian nation.

This event is widely held to signal the onset of the first major
genocide of the twentieth century, the most blood-drenched period in human history.

What followed was a mass murder of an entirely innocent group of citizens in the Ottoman Empire by means that are still horrifying to contemplate. By the time Turkey sued for peace in 1918, up to 1.5 million Armenians had been slaughtered, decimating the population of a group of people who had lived in the Fertile Crescent since the dawn of human settlement.

And it did not stop there. The Assyrian people suffered at least 75,000 victims, three-quarters of their population; the numbers have not been made up to this day. Later the Greeks in Asia Minor, in some of the bloodiest scenes of city sacking since the fall of Nineveh and Tyre,
were driven out of ancient homelands, never to return. And, largely lost in the high tide of bloodletting at the time, there were pogroms of Jewish settlements in Anatolia.

Definitely be thankful that you are not under the Turkish magic wand...and part of their imaginary empire ... You do not want to be part of a blood stained history nor part of an arrogant and adventurous future...

***

... And a BIG question on this Thanksgiving day...

Why it is okay to mock Christianity and dangerous when it comes to other minority religions...?

The Holy Virgin Mary is a painting created by Chris Ofili in 1996. It was one of the works included in the Sensation exhibition in London, Berlin and New York 

Where the chest is open ready to feed the child...

Piss Christ is a 1987 photograph by the American artist and photographer Andres Serrano. It depicts a small plastic crucifix submerged in a glass of the artist's urine. 

Where Adam and Eve are connected with a snake...

Now imagine all this paintings...art... about ANY other religion... You will be lucky if they do not demand your death... or they do not sentence you to death... or actually you are beheaded...

Be thankful for the right to think... for the right to speak... for the right to dress the way you like... for the right to express yourself freely without the fear of percussion or death... be thankful that you have enough to celebrate Thanksgiving... maybe you do not have a “white Place” of more than 1000 rooms... For ALL the shortcoming – Ferguson and all- be thankful that you are here and not there...

Happy Thanksgiving...

Be Thankful that you live in a more tolerant society... Of course things are not what they can be... but still it is much...much better... than what they have out there in Turkey and the Middle East...
...And now FERGUSON...AND BEYOND

More than 400 arrested as Ferguson protests spread to other U.S. cities...

Be inspired by the demonstrators...
Demand justice...
Celebrate your freedoms... and
Be Thankful and get involved...for a better tomorrow... 
Where incidents like Ferguson...and the shooting of a 12 years old...DO NOT HAPPEN...
Check below...
The 12-year-old boy shot by police in the US was told to show his hands three times by officers before they opened fire, a senior officer says.

Tamir Rice was shot by police on Saturday afternoon and died in hospital early on Sunday morning...

Be thankful that you have the right to change...Get involved and change everything for the better…

VIOLENCE IS THE ABSENCE OF DEMOCRACY AND WARS DO NOT PROMOTE DEMOCRACY...

Democracy is not just the right to vote...

Democracy is:

• Economic opportunities for all to work and have a decent living... Hungry kids, homeless people, and unemployed are cracks within "democracy"...
• Education opportunities fro all... Elite universities like Harvard and Yale and Stanford, to name just few... are cracks within "democracy"...
• Election donations to candidates... are cracks within the "democratic" system... the more you pay the better your chances of having what you want... In fact, election donations are another facet of bribery... and not "democratic"...
• Police violence... is a huge crack within the "democratic" system... especially if the police force and police-people are tainted with biases and racism and profiling... When unarmed African Americans and poor people are killed by police for whatever the reason and pretext is...
• Universities tolerating rape so as their reputation will not be harmed... Their reasoning... "who wants to attend the rape-university...?" is another huge crack within the "democratic" system...
• Gender bias and gender inequality is another big crack within the "democratic" system...
• Discrimination against immigrants is yet another crack within the system...

Now add all these cracks...definitely the sum will indicate at most a dysfunctional "democracy: at best or not "democratic' at all as the case may be...

The result is disenchantment and Afghanistan type upheavals... Hong Kong type student protests... Ukrainian type wars... and Ferguson type violence...

The result is disenchantment that leads to a "non-voting" MAJORITY... 

In the U.S. mid-term election Republicans won, but Obama shrewdly minimized the impact and in a moment of truth suggested the two-third of the electorate DID NOT PARTICIPATE in the elections...

So let us do the math... ONLY one-third of the electorate voted... and even if the Republicans, or to that matter Democrats..., won by let assume by a 75% landslide, which is a huge exaggeration, then actually the winners have received only 25% of the electorate...

Of course they will justify and declare that everyone had the opportunity...to vote... But I listed some of the reasons why people do not vote... The cracks add up... the cracks create disillusion... and disenchantment... and abstaining from voting... since whether Democrat or Republican, whether conservative or liberal, whether Torys or Labour... whether the socialist Big Brother or conservative Big Brother... as long as the system has cracks like the list above... then the "democratic" system is dysfunctional... 

One Big Brother can blame the other Big Brother... CNN can blame Fox... The BBC can blame Radio Liberty/Voice of America... Putin can blame the non-Putins... and China can blame the West and Japan can blame the Tsunami... 

The cracks demonstrate that the system is dysfunctional... and then... 

YOU CANNOT EXPORT "DEMOCRACY"... "DEMOCRACY IS NOT A COMMODITY"...                   READ THE NEWS...................................

1) Two NATO Troops, 6 Civilians Killed in Afghan Bombings... The attacks came a day after a suicide bomber killed dozens at a volleyball tournament.

CHECK THE BOMBS...YOU CANNOT BOMB PEOPLE INTO "DEMOCRACY"

24 November 2014 – A brutal terrorist attack which killed at least 50 civilians in Afghanistan over the weekend is an “atrocity” and may amount to a war crime, the top United Nations envoy to the country declared today as he condemned the indiscriminate suicide bombing in “the strongest terms.”

On 23 November, a suicide attacker detonated an improvised explosive device in a sports field in the Yahyakhail district of Afghanistan's southeastern province of Paktika. At least 50 civilians who were attending a volleyball match were immediately killed while another 60 were injured. According to reports, many children were among the dead and injured.

This is NOT Ferguson...Missouri 

An Afghan shop owner carries a water container as he attempts to extinguish a raging fire at the central market of Mazar-i-Sharif late on November 14, 2014. More than 200 shops were destroyed ...

Suicide bomber kills 45 in Afghanistan 

At least 45 people were killed and 60 others wounded Sunday when a suicide bomber attacked a crowd watching a volleyball match in the Yahyakhil district of Afghanistan's southeastern Paktika province, according to a spokesman for the provincial governor.

The bombed stadium in Afghanistan becomes a crime scene...

"Democracy" can neither be created by bombs nor be enforced by troops... independent of the flag they are carrying...

NATO HAS FAILED IN IRAQ...IN AFGHANISTAN... AND CHINA WILL FAIL IN HONG KONG AND RUSSIA WILL FAIL IN THE UKRAINE...

2) Lawmaker 'Long Hair' among 80 arrested amid clashes at Hong Kong protest site...

YOU CANNOT IMPOSE DEMOCRACY BY POLICE... IF THE HONG KONG STUDENTS AND YOUTH FEEL DISENFRANCHISED... THEY HAD A DISCUSSION WITH THEM... AMEND THE SYSTEM...
WHAT IS BIG BROTHER AFAIRD OF...?

3) Ferguson errupts in violence...

African Americans feel left out... disenfranchised... 

Police are accused of racist discrimination and stereotyping   

...and this is not Afghanistan...This is Ferguson, Missouri...burning

...Youth are rioting... 

 Bricks thrown at police, 2 police cars burned, gun seized by police. Tonight was disappointing.
When people are resorting to violence... then it means the cracks within the system are EXTRA huge...It means a dysfunctional... "democracy"...

The U.S. will Increase Military aid to Ukraine...

On the anniversary of the first protests to break out in Kiev’s Maidan Square, Ukrainians are still struggling to make sense of their year of chaos. U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, currently visiting Kiev, is expected to announce an increase in non-lethal military aid to the embattled country’s armed forces. But the NEWLY elected legislators, like Senator John McCain are demanding that America offer lethal weapons instead...

Exporting arms will at most... defeat Russia... BUT WHAT ABOUT DEMOCRACY...?

It looks like people are opting for... "Our cracks are cuter than your cracks..." theory...

Even the Pope wants a share of the pie...

Pope Francis was greeted by the President of the European Parliament...

 "The absence of mutual support within the European Union runs the risk of encouraging... solutions which fail to take into account the human dignity of immigrants, and thus contribute to slave labour and continuing social tensions."At the European Parliament, he spoke of a need to reinvigorate Europe, describing the continent as a "grandmother, no longer fertile and vibrant" and saying it risked "slowly losing its own soul".

Europe thrives on immigrants from Africa and Middles east and India and Pakistan...

The U.S. thrives on immigrants from Latin America and the rest of the world...

the exploitation if immigrants is yet another HUGE CRACK... within "democracy"...

My hope is that a new generation will realize and plug the holes, repair the cracks... and may be establish new democratic norms... where people abstain from violence and Big Brothers do not lead countries into wars...

Our Money and GREED based culture suffocates democratic norms... and leads us into war after war after war...

Wars do not permit democracy to flourish...

Police violence can just buy more time for the Big Brothers...in Russia and China and the West...

Use it or Lose it... Your brain... and you logic...and reasoning...

Be Inspired...Get Involved... Be a Pharos and light the way... Make a Difference...

The Pharos of Alexandra...Drawing by archaeologist Hermann Thiersch (1909)... and a modern day light house... 

The lighthouse of Alexandra, called also the Pharos of Alexandra… was a haughty and lofty tower built during the Plotemaic Kingdom circa 280-245 BC… it was a 450 ft about 137 m tall.                                   It was one of the tallest man-made structure on Earth for many centuries… and was one of the seven wonders of Ancient World… it was badly damaged by earthquakes and was abandoned…

Still some ancient languages…Armenian and Greek use “pharos” as synonym to lighthouse…

It is called pharos after the island that it was built on...and lead to Alexandria...

The passage from ancient Greece to Egypt was safer because of the pharos... 

Now that we know better about the origins of lighthouses... be a pharos and give light to the paths in your community... Lead them and enlighten them... Let people come to peaceful harbours and BAN wars... 

Language is a breathing and living entity... and evolves through time and space... technology is revolutionizing many things... Globalization of the economy... Globalization of culture and civilization... and now Globalization of language... technology is introducing many terms and idioms which are being used in many languages all over the world...

• Global economy... will smash the borders...  
• Global civilization... will make nation states more and more redundant...
• Global culture... will bring nations closer to each other...                     
• Global language... will make the world youth communicate better... and                  understand each other more... May be it will lead to banning wars...

This father's advice to his son... in Hamlet has always fascinated me... !

How many of the thoughts and idioms we still use... Check it out and count... 

Indeed learn from Polonius... learn from the best... Learn from Shakespeare...

beautifully said...and excellent advice...even today...

Yet here, Laertes! aboard, aboard, for shame! 55

The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,

And you are stay’d for. There; my blessing with thee!

And these few precepts in thy memory

See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,

Nor any unproportioned thought his act. 60

Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.

Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,

Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;

But do not dull thy palm with entertainment

Of each new-hatch’d, unfledged comrade. Beware 65

Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,

Bear’t that the opposed may beware of thee.

Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;

Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, 70

But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy;

For the apparel oft proclaims the man,

And they in France of the best rank and station

Are of a most select and generous chief in that.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be; 75

For loan oft loses both itself and friend,

And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.

This above all: to thine ownself be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man. 80

Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!

Check the English idioms above... and check the Chinese below...

Both fascinating... both artfully articulated... 

Beautiful stuff... is how Gods communicate... on Olympus... 

Exquisitely said... that's how saints associate in heaven...

After a long journey…”one encounters the shade of a willow…” and after a long journey everyone will appreciate the shade…

 

There is a poem from the Southern Song dynasty that reads: “After endless mountains and rivers that leave doubt whether there is a path out, suddenly one encounters the shade of a willow, bright flowers and a lovely village.”

Figure of a rhinoceros, Zhou Dynasty, China

 …and read this strange idiom… “Hearts With Magical Rhinoceros…” which is used by Chinese even today…

Rhinoceros horns are powerful, supernatural objects in old Chinese sayings. Check the lines below written by Li Shangyin… a poet from the Tang dynasty (7^th-10^th B.C.)

“Even though my body is not a colorful phoenix with two wings to fly [to my lover], we have hearts that understand each other immediately as though connected with a magical rhinoceros.”

A Red Apricot Blossom Peeks Over the Yard Fence…

Apricot tree is a pretty plant, but then it is so much more… and ye Shaoweng, a Song dynasty poet, wrote the lines that follow…in “On Visiting a Garden, When Its Master Is Absent.” 

“[The] whole garden can no longer confine the lively energy of spring; a spray of red apricot blossom [already] peeks over the fence.”

Modern readers see this as symbolizing a infidelity to spouses. The “red apricot blossom” symbolizes a young and attractive woman, while “peeking over the fence” shows her sneaking out.

Even today, Chinese people will say, behind gossipy hands: “Behind her husband’s back, she [is like] ‘a red apricot blossom peeking over the yard fence.’”

...and also read the idiom coming of of another poem...

Reach a Higher Level on the Tower…

The idiom comes from the poem “On the Yellow Crane Tower” by Wang Zhihuan of the Tang dynasty. After climbing the famous tower, Zhihuan writes:

“[I] desire to see thousands of miles [from this tower], [so I need to] climb to a higher level.”

To see farther, you need to stand higher. This poem is often used to encourage students and workers alike to set higher goals.

Now you know why Chinese students work so hard. You would, too, if you had to memorize idioms like this from a young age.

It is difficult... It is unique... but open up your vision and visit a non-Latin culture... visit and taste the Chinese outlook... learn Chinese too... and realize that there are culture other than the Judeao-Christian one....

having a global vision is wonderfully refreshing... ghettos are confining and suffocating... get out of the narrow wedge and embrace the global culture... learn more... appreciate more... You will be happier for that...  

Some languages are dying... and it is estimated that half of the languages in the world will be extinct in two decades...

What a pity... the world will be poorer for that... But yet we cannot do much... everything is in evolution... everything evolves... languages dye... and people disappear and get assimilated into others...

Tribes are absorbed into other bigger and larger, culturally more powerful groups...

and technology is opening up a whole new dimension of linguistic evolution...

 The Globalization of Language... 

...as we know it...

Technology is introducing new words that are used bu all cultures... Latin, Chinese, Hindi and African and Latin American...

Technology democratized communication... and now will try to Globalize language...

Open up to new cultures...

Open up to new technology...

Playing games is not enough... my neighbour, a judge, repeats on every opportunity... "Use it or lose it..." referring to the brain...

It is better to use... than to lose...