[Lazarus] Do we really need a PaintSwastika procedure?

[Juha Manninen]

On Thu, Jan 7, 2016 at 1:41 PM, Terry A. Haimann <terry at haimann.us> wrote:
> As someone of Jewish heritage I say get rid of it.

Mattias actually removed the function, obeying like a good German boy
when somebody with "Jewish heritage" tells him. Uhhh, I can't believe
he did so!

I planned to write "let's stop this nonsense before this project is
pulled into politics", but now it is too late.
Removing an ancient graph which is part of human heritage only for
political reasons has a strong symbolic meaning.
This project had no political or religious connections before this
thread, at least that I knew of.
The symbols drawn by the lib were not presented in any political
context. Nobody saw a problem during the years.
Anthony, I am surprised by your attitude and lack of perspective. Your
thread practically turned this project into politics. Damn!

Swastika is used in far East in Hinduism, Jainism, Buddism and others.
It is not only history, it is used currently today.
Its meanings are prosperity, security, glory, "good luck", "God's energy" etc.
Anybody from India reading this? This mail thread must appear rather
weird. Many Indian people don't know what Judaism or Nazism are
exactly, or at least don't have strong emotions about them.

More perspective: I would welcome a PaintHammerAndSickle procedure to
the lib from Dmitry, although it carries negative association in my
country and in other ex-Soviet neighbours, and for a reason.
Still, it is just a graph. The purpose of this project is not to judge
any graph symbol. They happen to exist for whatever reason.

Historical fact is that Stalin's governance killed MORE people than
Hitler's. He was MORE evil by any measurement.
He just killed a minority after another without any plan by pure evilness.
If you read what happened in countries occupied by Soviet Union, it
matches the Holocaust. However those people could not complain to
anybody, the propaganda made them look guilty instead.
Why was Stalin not convicted as a war criminal and hung? Well, because
he happened to win the war!
The history is always written by winners. I think it was politically
incorrect to write critically about him now.
However it is politically correct to criticise Nazis. When somebody
with "Jewish heritage" tells to remove an ancient symbol only because
Nazis happened to use it some 75 years ago, everybody must obey and
nod their heads in acceptance.
Uhhh, this sucks badly!

What about USA? They have attacked countries around the world during
decades, sometimes secretly, sometimes openly, killing people only
because they didn't happen to like the government. That is evil, too.
Should we ban all symbols associated with USA?

No, censoring graph symbols would be a never-ending swamp. This is an
international project but the world is unjust.
Always there is some group who is treated bad by some other group and
want to ban their symbols.
This project must be outside of politics! If there is a graph library,
it must be allowed to draw any important symbol.
Actually that is the best way to advance world peace. When symbols are
side by side, it dilutes their associations in people's minds and
makes them more neutral.

This library is for simple graphs which can be easily drawn
programmatically which is true for most old well-known symbols.
The Star of David qualifies for sure, as do most other religious
symbols. Some people may be offended by Star of David, namely
Palestinians who are treated very badly by Jewish people.
BTW, why is that? It looks like Jewish people learned only the
violence from their WW2 experiences.
Yes, I feel justified to ask this because you wanted to affect our
project for political reasons.

Anyway, I have a plan:
Seppo has made routines to draw many other graphs, including hundreds
of national flags. They don't belong to LCL but could be added as a
package with a demo application.
The procedures from ExtGraphics should be moved there as well. Then
more old well-known symbols can be added there, too.
The package will contain swastika, too. If somebody is not happy with
it, he must find a "politically correct" project then.

This project must not be "politically correct", it must remain
"politically neutral".

Juha