For example Pakistanis are hysterical about a video they did not see. They insult it, but they cannot point out to what they object to.

I did not question your ability in French first, you did, first. That after claiming your tried to speak the language. So you confused me completely. The exchanges showed clearly that you had not read the essay as you wrote I made no quote of the White House, when the essay started with the quote. And then the incriminated cartoon.

Also I did not make a premise, but drew a conclusion. USA Constitution says to NOT RESPECT RELIGION, White House says to respect Salafism. The White House clearly condemned what the Salafists could find “deeply offensive“. That’s not just unconstitutional, it’s uncivilized, despicable, completely in contradiction with what the Franks started to enforce in 486 CE. it’s also completely stupid, except if the aim is to reinforce the Salafists, and, thus, indirectly the MIC (Military Industrial Complex).

I will try to read that book. Indeed, any serious philosopher has to make it a mission in life to lose friends and alienate people. Otherwise one gets all tied up in respect for other people’s religions (formal or not). So I think I am already an expert.
What people mostly want from other people is that they stroke nicely their wisdom. This is in total contradiction with the nature of philosophy (excepet in emergency cases, such as comforting someone who is dying or hopelessly suffering by saying whatever).

Philosophy is about new wisdom, not yesterday’s minds. It’s about devouring the feeble minded.

Ah, language and my terrible English. English was the fourth language I studied. I would surely appreciate that the terrible flaws of my expression could be sometimes pointed out, but you surely have other things to do. For a number of reasons, some pertaining to WordPress, sometimes, there are often typos in what I write, which I detect later, on second or third reading. This is unfortunate, but the shrivelled blossom of the small works of one. The essays are somewhat improved in the first few hours. I actually made the last one more explicit after some of your complaints.
PA

Local Libyans drew their own conclusion. Suffering more than a dozen killed, half of them policemen, people of Benghazi attacked the Salafists’ headquarters, trashed them and burned them. The Salafists have apparently fled Benghazi now, on the order of their chief… The White House knows very well that such people, the Salafists, are financed by feudal plutocrats they had an explicit alliance with since Spring 1945. Without USA support, Salafism would collapse mighty quick.

The Pakistani government put up a $100,000 reward for the killing of the author of the “Innocence of Islam” video (more exactly the minister of railways did from Peshawar).Funny part is that the Pakistani government has long blocked the video, which, therefore, no Pakistani has seen. Too bad, it would have been an occasion for them to consider some aspects of the Qur’an.

Besides the fact the video respects the Qur’an, just illustrates it, it is also interesting part that the author of the video is a Coptic Egyptian, representing a religion, culture, civilization and even alphabet and language original to Egypt, and much older than Islam. Coptic Egyptians are discriminated inside their own country against by the Islamists (there are about ten millions of them, 2/3 of the number of Jews worldwide).

Where are the sanctions against the crazed Pakistani government? Are we waiting for the Pakistanis to atom bomb us?

Good luck with your move to Oregon, you should arrive with the rains…
PA

What struck both me and Jean, with some force I might add, is the power, as in a power of wisdom and order, of a country forming around a constitution that both welcomes freedom of speech and freedom of religious pursuit yet, in and of itself, may not legally respect any religion, viz:

“The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering with the right to peaceably assemble or prohibiting the petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances.”

So until reading this essay, I had utterly missed this aspect of the country that is my new home. It strikes me that any President of the USA, as the custodial figurehead of the Constitution of the USA, should have a secular public persona.

Fascinating! Thanks, Paul

Since you find it necessary to question my ability to speak or read French, I feel free to tell you that I think there are two things preventing you from communicating effectively:
- (1) the somewhat tiresome way in which everything you write makes you sound like you are very angry; and
- (2) the poorly constructed sentences and strange word choices that suggest to me that English is not your mother tongue or that you had a bad teacher.

Can I suggest as therapy, one of the funniest books I have ever read, which is Toby Young’s How to Lose Friends and Alienate People.