Berlin wall graffiti; Jackson Pollock painting

We who are bred of lean ignorance leave our hands on this wall like ziggy graffiti tagged with tribal symbols of quiet desperation to rage in the Apocalypse. Bring down this Wall Mr. Gorbachev! We challenge the cluttered ignorance of our times to return to the source our ancestors who down from trees reached for the stars. Give us purity of mind - give us heart - give us art - to fill our walls of reason. Tear down the ignorance of Man of religion of death Mr. G*!



Say something if wanted to leave your print. Or say nothing. But for the love of G*d tear down this bloody wall!
Set us free.

"Mister Speaker, judges of the court,

I would like to make use of my right to speak for a few minutes.

Freedom is the most precious of all our attainments and the most vulnerable. People have devoted their lives to it and given their lives for it. Our freedom in this country is the outcome of centuries. It is the consequence of a history that knows no equal and has brought us to where we are now.

I believe with all my heart and soul that the freedom in the Netherlands is threatened. That what our heritage is, what generations could only dream about, that this freedom is no longer a given, no longer self-evident.

I devote my life to the defence of our freedom. I know what the risks are and I pay a price for it every day. I do not complain about it; it is my own decision. I see that as my duty and it is why I am standing here.

I know that the words I use are sometimes harsh, but they are never rash. It is not my intention to spare the ideology of conquest and destruction, but I am not any more out to offend people. I have nothing against Muslims. I have a problem with Islam and the Islamization of our country because Islam is at odds with freedom.

Future generations will wonder to themselves how we in 2010, in this place, in this room, earned our most precious attainment. Whether there is freedom in this debate for both parties and thus also for the critics of Islam, or that only one side of the discussion may be heard in the Netherlands? Whether freedom of speech in the Netherlands applies to everyone or only to a few? The answer to this is at once the answer to the question whether freedom still has a home in this country.

Freedom was never the property of a small group, but was always the heritage of us all. We are all blessed by it.

Lady Justice wears a blindfold, but she has splendid hearing. I hope that she hears the following sentences, loud and clear:

It is not only a right, but also the duty of free people to speak against every ideology that threatens freedom. Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States was right: The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

I hope that the freedom of speech shall triumph in this trial.

In conclusion, Mister Speaker, judges of the court.

This trial is obviously about the freedom of speech. But this trial is also about the process of establishing the truth. Are the statements that I have made and the comparisons that I have taken, as cited in the summons, true? If something is true then can it still be punishable? This is why I urge you to not only submit to my request to hear witnesses and experts on the subject of freedom of speech. But I ask you explicitly to honour my request to hear witnesses and experts on the subject of Islam. I refer not only to Mister Jansen and Mister Admiraal, but also to the witness/experts from Israel, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Without these witnesses, I cannot defend myself properly and, in my opinion, this would not be an fair trial."

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Wilders remarked: “I am delighted with this ruling. It is a victory, not only for me but for all the Dutch people.” He could have added – and for all free people the world over, who can by this ruling stave off at least for awhile longer the attempts to criminalize speaking accurately about a radically repressive ideology that would use our self-enforced silence about its nature and intentions to advanced unopposed. Wilders continued: “Today is a victory for freedom of speech. The Dutch are still allowed to speak critically about Islam, and resistance against Islamization is not a crime. I have spoken, I speak and I shall continue to speak.”

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The eggshells were probably used as containers, and the markings may have indicated either the shells' contents or their owner. Texier points out that until recently, bushmen in the region carved geometric motifs on ostrich eggshells as a mark of ownership.

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The given word unrolls in patterns of our creation. How we give our word reflects upon who we are as individuals. It signifies how we materialize our being, how we create from within our belief, how we project patterns of our creation into greater and greater dimensions of interrelationship until we can span all reality with our personality. It is the mystery of the soul that how we give our word, how we speak, how we agree, are all how we materialize the reality that reflects the personality we are. We are authors in ways we cannot yet understand; yet, how we name things, how we touch them, how we see our world and admire it or communicate with it through our being, are all how we create from within ourselves definitions that set forth a separate universe. It is the universe of our new being, our consciousness, our new identity. How we give our word, through the infinite manipulations of reality, is how we manifest our being. It is who we are.

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Reality moves in and around us like a sea of being that fills every crevice of our existence. This is the energy that is the being of our soul. It is the light that shines from our eyes as personality, it is the handsomeness of our limbs as well as the melody of our speech. It is the creation of the artist or the power of the actor. The soul is intertwined completely with the forces of our being and of personality, forces into which we are born and from which we die. We exist on Earth but for a brief moment, yet how rich and complex our lives can be in that brief span of time. We can have the luxury of loving our children, of teaching others, of building great works, or of creating with beauty and simplicity, of being humble.

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By Ivan A. on Monday, July 15, 2002 - 11:40 pm:
PLATO'S LEGACY TRANSCENDED. (edited 10/28/02)
I will aspire to show in this paper that Plato's legacy, as it has come down to us, is no longer applicable to modern philosophical thinking, and needs to be transcended. The following quote is from --Greek Philosophy-- online: "Socrates (469-399), despite his foundational place in the history of ideas, actually wrote nothing. Most of our knowledge of him comes from the works of Plato (427-347), and since Plato had other concerns in mind than simple historical accuracy it is usually impossible to determine how much of his thinking actually derives from Socrates... The fundamental aspect of Plato's thought is the theory of "ideas" or "forms." Plato, like so many other Greek philosophers, was stymied by the question of change in the physical world." http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/GREECE/SOCRATES.HTM , http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/GREECE/PLATO.HTM * * *

Plato's "ideas" and "form" may not have originated with Socrates, or his gifted pupil, but they were likely currency in philosophical (abstract) thinking of the times. It was believed God is perfection, hence (by extension) there were ideas and forms that defined this perfection, and in so understanding them, we could hope to glimpse into the perfection of God. Plato's (allegorical) cave is such a glimpse, though it is meant only to illustrate that we fail in this, for we can perceive only this perfection's shadows. Now, this idea is persistent unto today, where we philosophically argue in favor our Absolute Truths, and their essences, as a definition of ontological Being. This is truly Plato's legacy, for his writings persisted until modern times, and one for which we must be truly thankful. Or, as Alfred North Whitehead had said, "All philosophy is a footnote to Plato." However, is this representative of reality as we know it today, 2400 years later? That is what I wish to address in this paper. Does the idea of perfect form still fit into current understanding of reality and being? If we start from a platform of idealized perfection, as did thinkers current with Plato, then we are of necessity driven into philosophical models that demand we establish our truths on this platform. However, not to belittle their great thinking, but perfection is not observable in the real universe. Cosmic reality is messy, space is dirty with dust, the planets do not exhibit geometric perfection in their orbits but chaotic ellipticals instead, and worse, life secretes unsavory fluids. This is fact. The way Plato's contemporaries dealt with this fact was to conclude that reality is merely an 'imperfect' manifestation within God's perfection. Human beings were also as much at fault in their imperfections, so that only an "aristocracy" of the best, philosophically more sophisticated thinkers, can hope to aspire for it, and the rest of us, again of necessity, are forced to obey this aristocracy. Democracy, seen thus, was never meant for the common man, or woman, but for the select representatives of an imagined "perfection". So here was the dilemma: Reality does not fit the ideal. In response, then all intellectual efforts are applied to subvert reality's failure in order to establish a more ideal order. In effect, the human mind has to bring order where there is apparent chaos in the manifestation of an imperfect universe. Put this way, it may seem quaint and a little naive for us moderns, if not egocentric(since we have to "fix" what is a "mess" in the universe), but this is the legacy we inherited today. This is not to belittle perfection, nor Plato's ideas, for there is something in the human psyche that would like to see it realized. However, it should be put into perspective from what we now know of our reality. Even the observer affects the observed, as we learned from Quantum physics, so there are no solid foundations from which we can anchor our minds in this search for perfection. In fact, it would seem that the opposite happens, that we as observers, with an intelligence for which we have given ourselves credit, that it is we create who thought; we should instead be aware that in fact we are also perpetually surprised to find the universe has intelligence designed throughout. The universe in its totality is already its own algorithm, as Paul Davies writes in "The Mind of God," and we are merely the faltering observers within it. It is not that we are imperfect beings in the manner of Plato's world, but rather that our minds are imperfect in our reason's ability to capture the whole. We still cannot grasp all of the intelligence built into the universe's ability to become itself. This, therefore, reverses the process, that it is not we who define perfection, but that it has already predefined itself in some way that to us appears generally chaotic, or imperfect. Hence, the dilemma, how do we built on a philosophical platform on that which we cannot understand in the same way it "understands" itself? And this is where we transcend Plato's legacy, for now the perfection of the universe is not in some geometric ideal, which was created by us, but rather in the messiness it exhibits. Or, as Albert Einstein was to have said, "The universe does not play dice", which becomes understandable in that it is we who are unable to guess its design, not that the universe is lacking in its design. So the chaos perceived is in fact, in terms of itself, exactitude, whereas we as observers can only see chaos as the rule, relieved only occasionally by patterns of order we understand. But as to how the universe interacts with itself, this order is already infinitely determined. What we then see is what it is, as it structured itself. So this is the point of departure we have from Plato's times, that the universe is perfection, but not as determined by our minds, or as imagined in Plato's contemporaries mind, but as determined by its own "mind". That the universe can then somehow assemble itself in such a way as to exhibit, perpetuate, and evolve life, or more specifically, evolve consciousness, is then a miracle that is beyond our comprehension. What it means is that "intelligence" reverts back not on our lack of understanding it, but instead on its infinitely incredible algorithmic capabilities. When seen this way, it is no longer that the universe is some idealized perfection, of which reality is its messy imperfection, but rather that the perfection of the universe is made manifest in what the human mind would call imperfect, or messy and chaotic, though it is perfect within itself. And that is the idea of our times: The universe is perfectly what it is. So this is the point of departure, for here we truly transcend Plato and enter into a new way of seeing reality, and our place in it. The question that arises, of necessity again, is how is man, or human beings, to find a place within such a universe? If we live in a universe that is only perfect in its perceived imperfections, then what hope is there to use this understanding as a foundation of philosophical thought that would in some idealized way lead us to the truth? A daunting prospect, but not insurmountable, and one that leads us away from the errors of Plato's contemporaries into a whole new dimension of philosophical thinking. We are who we are, in the same way the universe is what it is, and from this platform then, again of necessity, requires that we have a better understanding of who we are within this reality. Think of this as being a very modern idea, so much so that it is not yet mainstream. And if so, then how do we interact with each other, so as to not damage that understanding of who we are? How do human beings respect their uniqueness within reality not as imperfect beings, though our consciousness is still far from perfect, but as real definitions of being, of identity? Again, we are not imperfect beings within the manifestations of an imperfect reality, but rather we are who we are within the perfection of this reality. If so, then what, and who, each one of us represents is a true and valid being, one which must gain respect in that same way that we have learned to respect that the universe is what it is. And the only way to do so, to gain this respect, is to show it in relation to each other, in effect, to do by agreement, and not by coercion. This transcends Plato's legacy, for it now places us into a new dimension of philosophical thinking, where each human being is validated, and for whom there are certain unalienable freedoms. These freedoms are then not dictated by an aristocracy of the "best" social Guardians, as postied by Plato's thinking, but rather is embodied in our laws of agreements that safeguard who we are. This new law of agreement, formalized in our social contracts, is universal to us all. If there is to be an aristocracy of social Guardians, it would be only that they are the most conscious of our human rights, and thus they insure our rights' inviolability. None of this was foreseen by Plato, nor his contemporaries, for in his day slavery was accepted. Today, it is not. The universe of Plato's world was run by an ideal (God like) perfection we humans could never aspire to, for we were too imperfect. Instead, the universe of the neo-scientific modern age accepts it is totally imperfect, yet it is a perfection within itself. We are then in the new legacy of that new way of seeing things, that each human being, as an evolved human consciousness within this universe, has value within that infinitely ordered algorithm of reality, as it interrelates within itself. It thus becomes, for each one of us, who we are. I should point out that this way of seeing reality is not yet germane for us, for we are still deeply rooted in the methodology of the ancient thinkers, especially as it applies to religious and moral values (Christian, Moslem, Jewish, etc, fundamentalism). However, this does not negate that a growing body of thought has built up around this new awareness of reality, though predominantly secular, and that from this new platform is growing a new philosophical awareness of human beings as free agents, who then have the right to be who they are. And to do this, they need only to seek to do through agreement with other free agents, as opposed to doing through coercions, and to be protected from these coercions, or trespass, by social (democractic and constitutional) contract. So this is the future of philosophy, that the absolute values of perfection are already built in, into this universe that by appearance is anything but perfect. The challenge is then to validate our existence in terms of how this universal reality has manifest, itself, in such a way that human beings within it have the ability to develop a conscious mind. And from that new philosophical awareness will evolve a journey of a newer consciousness of ourselves, and of the universe, so that 2400 years hence, we will think fondly of our philosophical predecessors as quaint mythmakers, though not the authors of Absolute Truth. In time, human consciousness will transcend the legacy of our past thinkers, and there will be a new awareness of our place in the universe, not according to how our minds define it, but according to how the universe is in the process of defining itself, and us. And that will be a giant philosophical leap forward. Many thanks for your patience with my intellect's imperfect ability to bring to understanding something that is in fact already far more perfect than I am.
Ivan D. Alexander

• Need for recognition on a large scale
• Publicly lavish gifts on others with pomp
• Show of affection and caring publicly
• Shine in the limelight of promotion
• Often larger than life self-promoted extensively
• Employ popular folk wisdom philosophy
• Multi-cultural appeal for all, while exclusive self-culture
• Personally avaricious while publicly beneficent
• Usually tend towards obesity in oneself
• Appearing mellow outwardly while privately harshly demanding
• "I did it, you can do it" inspirational message to mass public
• Mass consumption on a conspicuous level, lavish personal settings
• Outwardly altruistic, while personally self-protective-acquisitive
• Loud, lacking in restraint, grace and humility

1. keep a cool head (steady on the tiller); 2. keep your winners (as long as they are really good); 3 stay the trend (even when it hurts); 4. watch what the 'dealers' are doing (they bet against the crowd.. that's you); 5. avoid panics or euphoria (catch yourself if you feel it happening inside); 6. keep your own council (don't be fooled.. take profits quietly); (and finally, when you made the bucks) 7. don't brag about it.