LifeItself

My Dear Western Friends, Many of you have read my previous letter , dated May 4, 2015, and responded by email. Thank you. I think we still have a little problem: Your replies have been much too U.S.-centric.  Unfortunately,  the world today is far too interlinked, in good part because of the U.S. policies over the last 35 years, and all problems are global.  Please parse the last sentence again and try to understand that you can no longer get away with being over there and ignoring what is happening here and everywhere else.  The cheap clothing and industrial products you buy in the U.S. come at a very high price to all other parts of the world.  High price means environmental and social deterioration. Since hardly anyone cares about the environment until they can't breath, have no water to drink, food to eat, drown in floods or mudslides; or alternatively fall sick with cancer, Ebola, cholera, AIDS or Hepatitis, let's focus on the social deterioration an...

Finally I am in Saudi Arabia.  So many new impressions and new thoughts. I customarily watch here Al Jazeera International and the French News 24 Channel, and I never watch American TV.  I am simply tired of American navel gazing and the low quality of U.S.-based programming available here. Today, on Al Jazeera I saw a program about a group of Iranian and French women and men, who wanted to have a public concert in Iran.  After a long struggle, the authorities relented and the group sang.  And what a concert it was! This was the introduction by an Iranian female singer: We are the free men, who are not scared We are secrets that never die We are voices of who resist We are free and our world is free. At the end, another Iranian woman sang in the most beautiful voice: Of the just and the unjust They only spoke and did nothing Oh, God! Oh, God! See the chasm between their words and their actions. In-between they sang the "Bird of Dawn," a metaphor for h...