Friday 18 December 2015

PROJECTS ON FREEDOM

Here there are the different presentations of the students on the concept of freedom. 

ALAZNE - MARÍA - IKER - GAIZKA




FREEDOM
1-A free person has the legal allowance to do whatever he or she wants as long as he or she does not offensively harm or force other people against those other people's wills. The limitation is a logical requirement. Freedom obviously cannot include the legal right to limit other people's freedom because that would be illogical.
2- Having the privilege of freedom means that some people don’t really know what they want to do or what they want to choose, so that insecurity produces fear. Fear of making wrong decisions. Fear of freedom. That’s why lots of people prefer having fewer options or less freedom because it’s easier for them to make decisions.
3- Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth. George Washington. I agree with this quotation. The more freedom and responsibility we have, the more dangerous we can be. If people start thinking that they can do what they want, they will start doing things that can probably damage other people, that´s why freedom needs control. 
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth. John F. Kennedy. On the one hand, I don´t agree with this quotation. Sometimes conformity can make people more decisive as they have fewer options at the time of choosing something. Freedom can also make us ambitious, because the more choices we have the more we want. On the other hand, conformity can make people be more narrow minded, so this way they give fewer opportunities to grow as a good society.
Responsibility is the price of freedom. Elbert Hubbard. I totally agree with this quotation because freedom requires some rules. These rules are the laws that government has imposed to people, that limit what people can do. You can do what you want as long as you don´t hurt anyone and your actions don´t involve other people. 
4- True freedom is being able to do what you want, without anyone over you. However, some things that some people want to do would infringe on the freedom of others, their rights. So basically what freedom means is being able to live your life the way you choose, being you without anyone’s permission. If you follow the government's laws, you have a better life than if you don’t follow them, and if you don’t follow them, you are forced to do whatever the government tells you to do.
5- Our society is mostly free. There are some governments which are tolerant and responsive to the wishes and concerns of the public with transparent and flexible political systems. Some states don’t keep secrets. Some governments and societies aren’t authoritarian and common or social knowledge belongs to everyone. Freedom and human rights are the most important factors of a good society.
Spain has been a free country since Franco the dictator died.
Unfortunately, people from North Korea, Burma, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Chechnya (Russia), Belarus, Chad, China, Cuba, Eritrea, Laos, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Zimbabwe, Western Sahara (Morocco), South Ossetia (Georgia) aren’t free.

 6- UNFREEDOM FLIM:
Unfreedom is a film about a society without freedom in the religion and sexual choices. It happens between New York and New Delhi. The film joins two powerful stories about religious intolerance, one of which follows a Muslim terrorist attempting to silence a liberal one, while the other is about a young woman who escapes an marries in secret because she fell in love with a woman and they have a lesbian romance.
2 MEN ARRESTED FOR HUMAN TRAFFICKING:
On Friday, November 6 the police of Wichita found a 15-year-old girl who told them that she had just gotten away after being kidnapped days before.
She told that 16-year-old girl and she were walking when a man pulled up and offered them a ride. They accepted and when they got in, he takes out a gun and demanded sex.
Polices went to the home and found the 54-year-old man and 16-year-old girl and they arrested the man.
79 COUNTRIES WHERE HOMOSEXUALITY IS ILLEGAL:
The ILGA (International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association) lists 75 countries with criminal laws against sexual activity by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or intersex people. The death penalty can be imposed in eight of these countries if someone practices sex with a “wrong” person.
In Europe there isn’t a country against the homosexuality.



GORKA - ALEX - JON - XABIER






1. Find a philosophical definition of freedom and state your opinion and give reasons.
Freedom of action is the property of being free from constraints, especially from external constraints on our actions, but also from internal constraints such as physical disabilities or addictions. Political freedoms, such as the right to speak, to assemble, and the limits to government constraints on associations and organizations such as media and religions, are examples of external freedom.

- In our opinion this definition of freedom is right, but we disagree because addictions are addictions until you give up with them and you do whatever you want. At the same time addictions sometimes don’t let you get rid of them so they don’t let you be free. Everything depends on how addicted you are and how much willpower you have.

2. What do you understand by “fear of freedom”?
What we understand is that when you give too much freedom to people it is like when you watch Spiderman and they say that a big power entails a big responsibility,
so big freedom entails big responsibility and you have fear of it.

3. Find quotations of famous people about freedom.

“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor, it must be demanded by the oppressed.”
-       Martin Luther King
                               

“Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.”
-       John F.Kennedy

4. What is freedom for you? Write your point of view.
We think freedom is a kind of lifestyle in which you can do whatever you want. For example you can create a company, to act politically in society, to live in any country, etc. But all people can´t have this lifestyle, for example African people were considered a lower ethnia.

5. Is our society free nowadays? Find examples of countries where people are not free.
We think our society isn´t free, because the laws which we have to accept, for example; we can´t kill people, we can´t steal, etc. For example in Siria they kill people just because they don’t agree with them.


6. Try to support your ideas with a piece of news or an article you find in the web.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2015/oct/26/refugees-on-slovenia-croatia-border-drone-video-footage

In this article we can see Sirian people trying to pass to Europe, but they can pass a only from a few places, an example is Croatian small cities, and increasingly more cities can´t pass to Europe.
                       

ANDER - IÑIGO - GAIZKA G. - AINTZANE




FREEDOM
Definition: Freedom starts with a principle of self-control. In a free society, each and every person has legal control of their own body and mind. It refers specifically to equal empowerment. In other words, a free society is one with an equal distribution of legal rights and in which each and every person has as much legal rights as possible.
We agree with this definition of freedom because the more limitations you have the less free you are. But we also think that freedom obviously cannot include the legal right to limit other people’s freedom because that would be illogical.
The fear of freedom means that more choices doesn’t mean more freedom. So, when we get out of our “fishbowl” we think that we are going to feel better because we are going to choose our own decisions. Instead, it isn’t like that, because when we get out, we feel fear of everything because if we choose the wrong choice it will be our fault and we get shocked.
Freedom is the possibility of doing whatever you want, whenever you want and do it in the way you want if and when it’s inside your principles. As Barry Schwartz said, everyone needs a fishbowl, but in my opinion that fishbowl is our principles, so all of us have got different fishbowls, and when we break the fishbowl and we have to go to another one, it’s obvious we are going to be afraid of what to do.
Also, having a lot of choices doesn’t make us free. The thing that makes us free is to know what to choose.
There are different points of view about freedom; for example, Luis Antonio de Villena said “It’s amazing seeing how when the theoretical freedom goes up, the practical freedom goes down”. There are more famous quotations; Bill O’ Brian said “People think they are freedom when they don’t care about external thoughts, but they don’t know that they are overwhelmed of a wore fact; they only have one thought”. Other famous quotation is “Free people let other persons to be free” but the person who said that was unknown.
Saudi Arabia
The freedom of women in Saudi Arabia is null. Here we have seven things that women cannot do in this country:
1- Leave home alone. Saudi women must leave home accompanied always by a man of the family, whether for shopping or to visit the doctor.
2- Driving. Officially women are allowed to drive, but in practice they cannot do it because it is not allowed by the highest religious authority.
3- Wearing clothes or make-up that shows their beauty. The majority of women in Saudi Arabia wear abaya, a garment that hides them the body completely. In the country there is also the religious police, which controls the feminine garment and tends to be very strict, and they can be fined a woman for simply show a toe.
4- Competing in certain sports. Saudi sportswomen participated for the first time at an Olympic Games in 2012 in London, where two women from the Arab country competed in the tests of judo and athletics. It was a historical fact that has not repeated since then. However, Riad has pledged to send to any athlete to the games in Rio de Janeiro.
5- Interacting with men. In Saudi Arabia, virtually all public spaces are segregated by sex. The majority of public buildings has an entry for men and another for women.
6- Trying on the clothes when shopping. Women should buy clothes and try them at home. Only the abaya in some luxury shops testers can be removed.
7- Using a hotel gym.Virtually none of the hotels in the country allows the entry of women in the gym.
A part from the women issue, when journalists do not make as they told the Government of Saudi Arabia, they are sentenced to lashes and is allowed to crucify people.

NEWSPAPER ARTICLE
Spain puts 'gag' on freedom of expression as senate passes security law
Despite a global outcry, Spanish legislation, expected to be ratified next month, lays out strict guidelines on demonstrations that come with steep fines
The Spanish senate has voted to push forward with controversial changes to the country’s public security laws, cracking down on Spaniards’ rights of freedom of assembly and expression despite opposition from activists and human rights groups.
Recent years have seen millions of Spaniards take to the streets to voice their dissatisfaction with the rightwing People’s party government, protesting against crippling austerity measures and attempts to roll back the country’s abortion laws. Now the government has hit back with legislation, dubbed the “gag law” by critics, that seeks to limit protests by laying out strict guidelines on when and where they can take place and penalizing offenders with steep fines.
The legislation includes fines of up to 600 euros for failing to notify authorities about demonstrations in public areas, even in the case of peaceful protests. Once approved, marches that veer from the approved itineraries could face fines of up to 600 euros.
The fines climb to 30,000 euros for protests that result in “serious disturbances of public safety” near parliament and Spain’s regional government buildings. Unauthorized protests that take place near key infrastructure, such as transportation hubs, nuclear power plants, refineries and telecommunications installations could result in fines of up to 600,000 euros.
Personal opinion
I think that having freedom for what you want to do is something that everybody should have, above all if what you want is to protest peacefully, because everyone has the right to be heard and the freedom of expression.
Removing these rights means that society in this country is being controlled by the government, and it’s a signal of corruption. This violates The Human Rights, and creates something like a dictatorship.