Monday, May 13, 2013
Yearggghhh Me Matey's
I have started my pirate ship sailing. So, now as I sail the seas, metaphorically, what adventures will I encounter. Now, I simply need an intelligent topic to respond to, as the pen is mightier than the sword. Gnomes are a kind of dwarfs, in fairy tales, living underground, and guarding the treasures of the earth. +Catherine Daly
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How about a list of just darned stupid topics?
ReplyDeleteThis is one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_really,_really,_really_stupid_article_ideas_that_you_really,_really,_really_should_not_create
But, in fact, I think any of these could be darned interesting, with the right mighty captain at the wheel.
The protests are amazing. There are over a hundred thousand in Taxim Square. They have bands, food, and music. Every night everyone goes there. When the sun sets everyone turns their lights on and off in Yeni Levent, we bang pots and pans, and you can here everyone in Istanbul doing the same thing, at the same time. We watched a group of people march through the neighborhood the other night. It is very peaceful, and beautiful. Everyone send their love, we talked to Yashar on facetime yesterday for his birthday. Anneanne is very happy to have us visiting.
ReplyDeleteThey gassed the demonstrators last night in Taksim. Every night at sunset we bang pots and pans. Mom and I banged pots with wooden spoons in unison last night as they began marching through our neighborhood. All of the violence has been contained in Taksim Park, and does not reach Yeni Levent.
ReplyDeleteOn the broadest scale, there are demonstrations in over 75 cities, against political and social oppression by the prime minister. It began two weeks ago when a proposed project for building a shopping mall in Taxim Square and Gezi Park, brought a number of protesters. These two parks have symbolically been used for social protests, for over sixty years. Gezi park was slated for the removal of it's trees, in a city which has lost a lot of it's nature, and national character. The prime minister has been in office for ten years. Over that time, he has created a significantly more conservative party, centralized power, removed individual freedoms from a secular representative democracy, and slowly eliminated all of the voices of opposition.
ReplyDeleteA large part of what the prime minister does is create large construction projects, for friends and relatives. He has slowly eliminated the freedom of expression in a country that was an elected official representative secularist democracy. The prime minister has imprisoned journalists and political opponents, who have been awaiting trial for over two years. He has decreased the voice of women, limited the military's power, silenced most media, recently put limits on the sale and consumption of alcohol, used state funded money for religious projects, and outlawed kissing.
During these peaceful protests, where there is music and food, children, grandparents, bands, camping, libraries and medical centers built, he has released teargas and water cannons for over three weeks straight attacking the civil peaceful protests.
I have been getting a lot of information from facebook, and twitter, as a lot of the national media is censored by the prime minister. I think a lot of the protesters have left Gezi Park. There have been local police attacking protesters, and gassing, with water cannons continue. I think the voice of the people is too strong to be silenced. And, there is a lot of international support. There are very similar protests in Brazil, where over a million have shown up. There are protests in Bulgaria as well.
Right now I believe there is a ban on public demonstrations in Gezi Park, but people throughout the country are showing protest by just standing, and reading from books in different locations. A lot of this is again met with violence. But, I think the will of the people, the core of this revolution, and the diversity of the people represented young, old, Armenian, Kurd, LGBT are all i too strong to be silenced.
Politically, I am extremely far to the left. I saw people marching every night when I was on the European side, and I supported them by banging pots and spoons. I think that the roots of this protest are vast, and vastly symbolic of the struggle against tyranny and oppression.
ReplyDeletesocial protest is very much at the heart of Brazil and Turkey. People have left the country because things have changed so much. I do not think there is any way for this awareness and protest to go away. In is also brilliant and full of humor. The first night of the protests the PM had the state influenced news channels play documentaries on penguins. So, now people wear penguin shirts with a fist in the air. He called them capolgu meaning thugs, so now they print shirts with capolgu on it, because young and old, they are now rebel thugs.
ReplyDelete