In a week, Sweden will criminalize underage marriage even if marriages have taken place outside of Swedish borders. This is a great thing happening for Swedish people and world. Most underage marriages are forced by parents.
Even if underage marriage is not forced by parents, it’s still child abuse. Sadly, some countries don’t recognize such marriage as child abuse and they allow it.
Legal age for marriage is 18 in most countries. However I, personally, think it should be 21. Marrying a person when you’re young is not wrong but may have terrible impacts. Now imagine what terrible impact it has when you’re underage.
Some people in United States have taken down some statues of slave owners in Washington, D.C. and some other cities. I believe there’s no good point in having them statues up. Protesters have set them on fire and I’m really glad this happened as it can be a symbol of people’s anger towards racism and racist people.
I also believe nobody should harm a racist person and the only good way is to talk to them and educate them and if it wasn’t enough, then leaving them alone. If they have no harm, then leaving them is not a bad idea. However, harm is not only physical. If a person harms another person, he should be punished, of course in a proper humane way.
We should respect human liberties no matter if they are offensive to us. Punishment is not against human rights but we should not punish people in a way that it violates their humanly rights.
Not the atom bomb, nor even fear of it, because if the atom bomb fell on Oxford tonight, all it could do would be to kill us, which is nothing, since in doing that, it would have robbed itself of its only power over us — which is fear of it, the being afraid of it.
Our danger is not that. Our danger is in the forces of the world today which are trying to use man’s fear to rob him of his individuality, his soul, trying to reduce him to an unthinking mass by fear and bribery — giving him free food which he has not earned, easy and valueless money which he has not worked for.
That is what we must resist, if we are to change the world for man’s peace and security.
It is not men in the mass who can and will save Man; it is Man himself, created in the image of God so that he shall have the power and the will to choose right from wrong, and so be able to save himself because he is worth saving.
Man, the individual men and women, who will refuse always to be tricked or frightened or bribed into surrendering, not just the right but the duty too, to choose between justice and injustice, courage and cowardice, sacrifice and greed, pity and self — who will believe always not only in the right of man to be free of injustice and rapacity and deception, but the duty and responsibility of man to see that justice and truth and pity and compassion are done.
So never be afraid. Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion, against injustice and lying and greed.
If you, not just you in this room tonight but in all the thousands of other rooms like this one about the world today and tomorrow and next week, will do this, not as a class or classes, but as but individuals, men and women, you will change the earth.
In one generation, all the Napoleons and Hitlers and Caesars and Mussolinis and Stalins, and all the other tyrants who want power and aggrandizement, and all the simple politicians and time-servers who themselves are merely baffled or ignorant or afraid, who have used, or are using, or hope to use, man’s fear and greed for man’s enslavement, will have vanished from the face of it.
Ruby Bridges was the first Black child to attend an all-white elementary school in the US South when she was 6 years old. For her to attend school her first day, federal marshals with guns had to make way through a crowd of grown men and women screaming “nigger”, spitting on her, threatening her life, and waving confederate flags. They even carried a small coffin with a Black baby doll inside, which caused Ruby nightmares at the time. In her classroom, all her classmates were either withdrawn by angry parents or abandoned the class refusing to sit with the 6-year-old. Nearly all the teachers abandoned the school except for one. For the entire school year, Ruby went to school to a classroom that was just her and the one teacher that didn’t refuse her. She refused to eat any food that wasn’t pre-packaged and sealed because they threatened to poison her. Ruby is only 65 years old today. It wasn’t a long time ago that a lot of racist people were living among us; now many people consider racism a crime. However, we are facing a systematic racism and discrimination everyday and we should fight against it.
We should know that there’s a lot of people like Ruby who we should support to make changes. Our fight continues.
Marshals protecting Ruby Bridges at age six
Racist white people protesting against Ruby Bridges going to all-white school
As a person who lives in a country under heavy U.S. sanctions, I know how discrimination feels and looks. What the United States has done to us is a good example of how discrimination affects people. My country is under heavy sanctions from U.S. and even basic stuff are facing troubles for import or export.
Whenever I talk about computers or software services, people suggest me different stuff to use or buy and every time I explain how I, like another people here, are deprived from having those stuff because of U.S sanctions.
U.S has the power over a lot of countries to force them do what it likes but this is unacceptable. I agree that Unites States wants to make sure they and their allies are safe but setting unfair laws and rules is not only unacceptable but also a terrible way and reason.
What might they do? Storing nuclear codes or programs in private repos? This is what I’m talking about. A lot of rules and limitations are only ridiculous. I wrote about the GNU+Linux distro Fedora and the notice on its download page before. What? Iranians may use Fedora to build a nuclear bomb and they won’t download it because if this notice?
Some rules are only stupid and ridicules. They are discriminatory and offensive to human beings. Currently, the software community of Iran is experiencing a lot of difficulties and suffers from these discriminatory laws.
I believe discriminatory laws should not be respected. We should not obey them. We should fight for better.
If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.
Desmond Tutu
Most people are neutral in situations of injustice. They say that they’re not political or don’t have anything to do with politics. That’s very wrong.
Politics and politicians affect our lives everyday. Everything we do is affected by politics. Information we receive everyday, news we see, our communications, our movies, our belief, etc. are all affected by politicians and politics.
Everything we do has been reviewed by governments once before to examine its consequences. We created governments to be protected, now we have become slaves of governments.
We created governments to be protected and we ended up protecting governments. Don’t be neutral. Being neutral made this situation. We should act.
A wise man once said that “if you don’t read the newspapers you’re uninformed, if you read them, you’re misinformed.” That’s very true. Newspapers and in general news agencies are focusing on speed, not the truth.
They’re in a competition with other news agencies to deliver news, often no matter true or fake, as fast as possible. What we need, however, is truth. People will prefer truth over speed.
You may be the last one who delivers news to us but as long as you tell the truth and we know we can trust you, we’ll want news only from you.
Journalists and news companies have responsibility over this. They’re responsible for misinformation in the society and they’re responsible for every consequence of spreading news because words effect people and people effect each other.
What we need is truth, not speed.
Image
Inequality: Unequal access to opportunitiesEquality: Evenly distributed tools and assistanceEquity: Custom tools that identify and address inequalityJustice: Fixing the system to offer equal access to both tools and opportunities
Update: After reading the full notice on Fedora download page, Mr. Stallman says that Fedora didn’t require users to promise anything therefor it’s not a violation of free software terms.
If you study it carefully, it does not require the downloader to promise not to do certain things. Rather, it requires the downloader to affirm awareness of these US rules, which may or may not apply.
Because of this, it does not contradict the GPL.
However, as our discussion shows, it is easy for people to misundestand and get the wrong idea about what it actually requires. They mey THINK it requires something that would violate the GPL even though it actually does not.
Richard Stallman
Original note:
Following my email message to Mr. Stallman, I had a lot of other discussions with different people but I think the best response was from Mr. Stallman himself.
He stated that the notice on Fedora download page makes it nonfree and the limitations are not compatible with GPL license.
Here’s Mr. Stallman’s email message:
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden’s example. ]]]
> I believe parts of this notice are violations of software freedom. The notice says that Fedora complies with “Unites States Export Administration Regulations (the =E2=80=9CEAR=E2=80=9D) and it’s prohibited for use in connection with the design, development or production of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, or rocket systems, space launch vehicles, or sounding rockets, or unmanned air vehicle systems.”
As stated, that would make Fedora nonfree. However, Fedora cannot impose such requirements on GPL-covered programs unless Fedora has the copyright.
The GNU Project encryption programs were developed outside the US and I think users get them without passing through the FS.
> The other part says “You may not provide Fedora software or technical information to individuals or entities located in one of these countries or otherwise subject to these restrictions.”
Isn’t it a violation of freedom 2 (The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others)?
Yes, it would be — but I don’t think anyone can enforce it on you if you are outside the US and you download Fedora. That is why I did not make a fuss about it.
> So does that mean that I, a typical user of free software, am restricted from using and distributing a software that is licensed free? Do you and free software movement accept this discrimination?
The reason for section 8 is to prevent patents from being used to make a program effectively nonfree.
If in country C some company Q threatens to make the program priorietary by suing the users using Q’s patent, that would in effect make the program proprietary.
Using section 8, the developer can say, “You can’t make my program proprietary. With section 8 I make it not available at all in country C. Give my program liberty or give it death!.”
In other words, “I’d rather destroy my program than let you turn it into your proprietary product.”
