Weekend Reflections...

The Highest Peaks of Europe...

Fabled to some – unfamiliar to many – the Caucasus Mountain region of Svaneti is home to high mountain peaks, villages dotted with thousand-year-old defensive towers and a passionate indigenous people known as the Svans. Although they bear an ethnic relationship to their fellow Georgians, the Svans have been living in Georgia’s remote northwest for centuries, creating a language and lifestyle that is all their own, and still navigating the fine line between modernizing and keeping past traditions alive...

And a village tucked in the valley under the auspices of the mountain...

I woke up today with an immense desire to be out there... on the top of the mountains... away from the pollution of noise and pollution in general... But the most I could achieve was to go for hiking on a nearby hill... for few hours and then return back the the deafening noise pollution of the city...

These are feelings deep inside me... and they intensify with approaching religious festivities ... an spiritual mood rises withing me like the curls of incense... enchanting and magical...

I listen to St. John Passion... and imagine the highest peaks of Europe... and those small villages tucked within the valleys...

I yearn for PEACE and tranquility... I wish for harmony within people and between peoples and Nature...

I hope... They say where there is life... there is hope...

From the highest peaks of Europe to the deserts of Africa... Amazing and magical...

Sulphurous hot springs, salt-encrusted wastelands, temperatures that soar as high as 50C – it’s hard to imagine a harsher spot to call home than Africa’s Danakil Depression. Not only is it one of the planet’s hottest places, it’s also one of the lowest, driest and most tectonically active. But for the adventurous few who journey to Ethiopia’s remote northwestern corner, the rewards are two-fold: a glimpse of kaleidoscopic terrain unlike anywhere else and a peek into the self-reliant Afar people who continue to survive living there and and still navigating the fine line between modernizing and keeping past traditions alive...

Dallol, the Danakil’s lowest point at 116m below sea level, is known for its mix of sulphur, iron oxide and other mineral deposits, which form a shocking rainbow of hues. It’s a raw, shifting, bubbling terrain. This strange earth, alongside all the other out-of-this-worldly landscapes of the Danakil region, is the result of three deep rifts that geologists call the Afar Triple Junction. This warring trio, tearing the earth apart with incredible force, has birthed the Danakil’s volcanoes, hot springs, sinkholes and bizarre land formations. Scientists estimate that when the rifting is complete in about 10 million years, the Red Sea will completely engulf the Danakil and create a new ocean. 
But I guess non of us will witness it... It's wonderfully limited infinity... 10 million years... How many human lives will that be...?
***

I went to hiking and took the world with me... It was wonderful... the valleys below were blooming and the fragrance of the citrus trees was intoxicating... Now I am in the city again... and patiently awaiting the "happy hours" that will come later in the day...

***

Meanwhile I will be amused with the pettiness of people and the stupidity that suffocates both culture and civilization...

I go through the e-papers... the e-media on the internet... I have my coffee (not spiked as yet)... and check things... and learn new ways of coping with stupidity...

I came across a high school in New York...  The school's foreign language department organizes for different pledge translations to be read in celebration of National Foreign Language Week. But then the "human" stupidity jumps in... The school in New York state issues an apology after receiving complaints because a student recited the US Pledge of Allegiance in Arabic. Later in the afternoon, the school's principal makes a school-wide announcement to explain why the pledge was read in Arabic and apologizes again to those who had taken offence. ...And, The school district superintendent, Joan Carbone jumps in... She apologized "to any students, staff or community members who found this activity disrespectful" and said the reading was intended to "promote the fact that those who speak a language other than English still pledge to salute this great country". The school's student leader, Andrew Zink, who is in charge of the morning announcements, told the media that he knew the reading would    attract controversy. But, He permitted it to go forward, because he believed it was "the right thing to do". he added; "What makes you American is not the language you speak, but the ideas you believe in..."  Sadyia Khalique, a spokeswoman for the New York chapter of the Council of American-Islamic Relations, said: "All Americans who value our nation's history of religious and ethnic diversity should be concerned" by the reaction and subsequent apology. ... And concerned I am...  I am concerned that our rights are under attack from these holier-than-thou funny people...  I am concerned that our free speech is being abused by the "politically correct" ass h...s... I am concerned that the "First Amendment" rights in the U.S. are being trampled... by these supposedly patriotic charade...

...And I am not alone...
In an opinion that Justice Oliver Wendell Holes has written is an excellent departing point to start...

He wrote:

"But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas -- that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That, at any rate, is the theory of our Constitution."
Indeed,

The dominant theory in First Amendment jurisprudence that Justice Holmes gave us  is "the marketplace of ideas." 
... And the marketplace functions by the free flow of ideas...not by attempting to muzzle EVERYONE and 
EVERYTHING that we DO NOT LIKE...

***

And the police continue "to serve and protect"...

This time a student who is on the honour roll... He did not have a fake ID... and later after he was bloodied, the lab report proved that he was not intoxicated too... 

Martese Johnson is a third year student at the University of Virginia

The white agents said Mr Johnson "was very agitated and belligerent".

But Bryan Beauburn, a University of Virginia (UVA) student who photographed the arrest, said police acted with unnecessary force. "He didn't need to be tackled. He wasn't being aggressive at all," Mr Beaubrun told...

We are protected from "Arabic" announcements... and we are protected from "Honour students"...
What else the Big Brothers... and the holier-that-thou bleeding-heart asses will protect us from...?

***

I browsed more... 

and came to a church in San Francisco...

St Mary's Cathedral is the principal church of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco

And check what the church did...
They have installed sprinklers to drive the homeless away from GOD'S HOME...
And now that the shit hit the fan...
The church in San Francisco has promised to remove controversial sprinklers it installed to deter rough sleepers.

After an outcry, the city's archdiocese admitted it had been "ill-conceived" for St Mary's Cathedral to treat homeless people in this way.

The water system was put in place two years ago for safety reasons, it said, to stop needles and excrement being left in alcoves near the back door.

San Francisco has many rough sleepers

Wow....!

First we are protected from "Arabic"... then we are protected from "honour sudents"... and now the church is protecting us from "rough sleepers"...

What the f... else...?

What else will the Big Brothers and Organized religion protect us from... next...?

Is to write... "what the f..." a blasphemy...?

***

The civilized world Remembers...

and 

The Turkish Islamist-Fascist regime MUST

reconcile itself with its past ... and must 

recognize the genocide of Armenians and 

Pontic Greeks and Assyrians...