François-Marie Arouet (French; 21 November 1694 – 30 May 1778), known by his nom de plume Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher famous for his wit, his attacks on the established Catholic Church, and his advocacy of freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and separation of church and state.
Voltaire was a versatile writer, producing works in almost every literary form, including plays, poems, novels, essays, and historical and scientific works.
~~Wikipedia~~
Do you think that Voltaire is looking upon us today and is telling us what is happening?
He could be telling us what has happened through history.
Mainstream media (MSM) is mass media reflective of prevailing currents of thought, influence, or activity. It may be contrasted with alternative media which may contain content discordant with prevailing views.
Large news conglomerates, including newspapers and broadcast media, which underwent successive mergers in the U.S. and elsewhere at an increasing rate beginning in the 1990’s, are often referenced by the term. This concentration of media ownership has raised concerns of a homogenization of viewpoints presented to news consumers. Consequently, the term mainstream media has been widely used in conversation and the blogosphere, often in oppositional, pejorative, or dismissive senses, in discussion of the mass media and media bias.
According to philosopher Noam Chomsky, media organizations with an elite audience such as CBS News and The New York Times, successful corporations with the assets necessary to engage in original reporting, set the tone for other smaller news organizations which lack resources by creating conversations that cascade down to smaller news organizations using the Associated Press and other means of aggregation.
An elite mainstream sets the agenda and smaller organizations parrot it.
Luther Standing Bear (December 1868-February 20, 1939) (Ota Kte, “Plenty Kill” or “Mochunozhin”) was an Oglala Lakota chief notable in American history as an Native American author, educator, philosopher, and actor of the 20th century. Standing Bear fought to preserve Lakota heritage and sovereignty and was at the forefront of a Progressive movement to change government policy towards Native Americans.
Standing Bear was one of a small group of Lakota leaders of his generation, such as Black Elk, Gertrude Bonnin and Charles Eastman, who were born and raised in the oral traditions of their culture, educated in white culture and wrote significant historic accounts of their people and history in English. Luther’s experiences in early life, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, Wild Westing with Buffalo Bill and life on government reservations present a unique view of a Native American during of the Progressive Era in American history.
Standing Bear’s commentaries on Native American culture and wisdom educated the American public, deepened public awareness and created popular support to change government policies toward Native American peoples. Luther Standing Bear helped create the popular 20th century image that Native American culture is holistic and respectful of nature. Luther Standing Bear’s classic commentaries appear on college reading lists in anthropology, literature, history and philosophy, and leave a legacy and treasure of Native American wisdom.
10 Quotes From a Sioux Indian Chief That Will Make You Question Everything About “Modern” Culture
Raised in the traditions of his people until the age of eleven, he was then educated at the Carlisle Indian Industrial Boarding School of Pennsylvania, where he learned the english language and way of life. (Though a National Historical Landmark, Carlisle remains a place of controversy in Native circles.)
his native roots were deep, leaving him in the unique position of being a conduit between cultures. Though his movement through the white man’s world was not without “success” — he had numerous movie roles in Hollywood — his enduring legacy was the protection of the way of life of his people.
Here, then, are 10 quotes from the great Sioux Indian Chief known as Standing Bear that will be sure to disturb much of what you think you know about “modern” culture.
Praise, flattery, exaggerated manners and fine, high-sounding words were no part of Lakota politeness. Excessive manners were put down as insincere, and the constant talker was considered rude and thoughtless. Conversation was never begun at once, or in a hurried manner.
Children were taught that true politeness was to be defined in actions rather than in words. They were never allowed to pass between the fire and the older person or a visitor, to speak while others were speaking, or to make fun of a crippled or disfigured person. If a child thoughtlessly tried to do so, a parent, in a quiet voice, immediately set him right.
Silence was meaningful with the Lakota, and his granting a space of silence before talking was done in the practice of true politeness and regardful of the rule that ‘thought comes before speech’… and in the midst of sorrow, sickness, death or misfortune of any kind, and in the presence of the notable and great, silence was the mark of respect… strict observance of this tenet of good behavior was the reason, no doubt, for his being given the false characterization by the white man of being a stoic. He has been judged to be dumb, stupid, indifferent, and unfeeling.
We did not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills, the winding streams with tangled growth, as ‘wild’. Only to the white man was nature a ‘wilderness’ and only to him was it ‘infested’ with ‘wild’ animals and ‘savage’ people. To us it was tame. Earth was bountiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery.
Kinship with all creatures of the earth, sky and water was a real and active principle. In the animal and bird world there existed a brotherly feeling that kept the Lakota safe among them. And so close did some of the Lakotas come to their feathered and furred friends that in true brotherhood they spoke a common tongue.
This concept of life and its relations was humanizing and gave to the Lakota an abiding love. It filled his being with the joy and mystery of living; it gave him reverence for all life; it made a place for all things in the scheme of existence with equal importance to all.
It was good for the skin to touch the earth, and the old people liked to remove their moccasins and walk with bare feet on the sacred earth … the old Indian still sits upon the earth instead of propping himself up and away from its life giving forces. For him, to sit or lie upon the ground is to be able to think more deeply and to feel more keenly. He can see more clearly into the mysteries of life and come closer in kinship to other lives about him.
Everything was possessed of personality, only differing from us in form. Knowledge was inherent in all things. The world was a library and its books were the stones, leaves, grass, brooks, and the birds and animals that shared, alike with us, the storms and blessings of earth. We learned to do what only the student of nature learns, and that was to feel beauty. We never railed at the storms, the furious winds, and the biting frosts and snows. To do so intensified human futility, so whatever came we adjusted ourselves, by more effort and energy if necessary, but without complaint.
… the old Lakota was wise. He knew that a man’s heart, away from nature, becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans, too. So he kept his children close to nature’s softening influence.
Civilization has been thrust upon me… and it has not added one whit to my love for truth, honesty, and generosity.
In 1877, the Ponca people were exiled from their Nebraska homeland to Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. To honor his dying son’s last wish to be buried in his homeland, Chief Standing Bear set off on a grueling, six-hundred-mile journey home. Captured en-route, Standing Bear sued a famous U.S. army general for his freedom — choosing to fight injustice not with weapons, but with words. The chief stood before the court to prove that an Indian was a person under the law. The story quickly made newspaper headlines –attracting powerful allies, as well as enemies.
This high definition documentary weaves interviews, re-creations and present-day scenes to tell a story about human rights — one that resonates powerfully in the present. “I am a man,” Chief Standing Bear said at his trial. “The same God made us both.”
“SOMETIMES IT’S THE PEOPLE WHO NO ONE IMAGINES ANYTHING OF THAT DO THE THINGS THAT NO ONE CAN IMAGINE”
~Quote from the movie~
It is already a c. I just saw “The Imitation Game” … a movie depicting Alan Turing’s story, the decoding of “war messages” by Germany & his personal story. He was an exquisitely talented man … tormented by his hidden, illegal homosexuality. Convicted in England. He chose chemical castration rather than jail time. He committed suicide at 41 years of age. He’s the “father of computers”.
Humanity owes him quite a lot! Hats off, Mr. Turing!!
Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS (23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was a British pioneering computer scientist, mathematician, logician, cryptoanalyst, philosopher, mathematical biologist, and marathon and ultra distance runner. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalization of the concepts of “algorithm” and “computation” with the Turing machine, which can be considered a model of a general purpose computer. Turing is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence.
During the Second World War, Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park, Britain’s codebreaking centre. For a time he led Hut 8, the section responsible for German naval cryptanalysis. He devised a number of techniques for breaking German ciphers, including improvements to the pre-war Polish bombe method, an electromechanical machine that could find settings for the Enigma machine. Winston Churchill said that Turing made the single biggest contribution to Allied victory in the war against Nazi Germany. Turing’s pivotal role in cracking intercepted coded messages enabled the Allies to defeat the Nazis in several crucial battles. It has been estimated that the work at Bletchley Park shortened the war in Europe by as many as two to four years.
After the war, he worked at the National Physical Laboratory, where he designed the ACE, among the first designs for a stored-program computer. In 1948 Turing joined Max Newman’s Computing Laboratory at Manchester University, where he assisted development of the Manchester computers and became interested in mathematical biology. He wrote a paper on the chemical basis of morphogenesis, and predicted oscillatingchemical reactions such as the Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction, first observed in the 1960s.
Turing was prosecuted in 1952 for homosexual acts, when such behavior was still criminalized in the UK. He accepted treatment with oestrogen injections (chemical castration) as an alternative to prison. Turing died in 1954, 16 days before his 42nd birthday, from cyanide poisoning.
The autopsy concluded that the cause of death was asphyxia due to cyanide poisoning and ruled a suicide.
An inquest determined his death a suicide; his mother and some others believed it was accidental. In 2009, following an Internet campaign, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an official public apology on behalf of the British government for “the appalling way he was treated”. Queen Elizabeth II granted him a posthumous pardon in 2013.
The Imitation Game is a 2014 historical thriller film about British mathematician, logician, cryptoanalyst and pioneering computer scientist Alan Turing, a key figure in cracking Nazi Germany’s Enigma code that helped the Allies win the Second World War, only to later be criminally prosecuted for his homosexuality. It stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Turing and is directed by Morten Tyldum with a screenplay by Graham Moore, based on the biography Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges.
“It will work”
It had its world premiere at the 41st Telluride Film Festival in August 2014. It also featured at the 39th Toronto International Film Festival in September where it won “People’s Choice Award for Best Film”, the highest award of the festival. It had its European premiere as the opening film of the 58th BFI London Film Festival in October and was released theatrically in the United Kingdom on 14 November, and in the United States on 28 November.
In THE IMITATION GAME, Benedict Cumberbatch stars as Alan Turing, the genius British mathematician, logician, cryptologist and computer scientist who led the charge to crack the German Enigma Code that helped the Allies win WWII. Turing went on to assist with the development of computers at the University of Manchester after the war, but was prosecuted by the UK government in 1952 for homosexual acts which the country deemed illegal.
It Is What It Is 