So... the Middle East

The Middle East has some major issues. We all know that. But no one seems to discuss it in our everyday lives except on the news. What the hell, i guess it is only on the other side of the world affecting oil prices and thus affecting the prices of everything else and could, at worst, lead to a horrible World War Three nuclear halocaust. But I doubt that. Tho that's not to say it could happen eventaully at this rate. But there has yet to be a SARS or birdflu epidemic as well. But I'd say it's only a matter of time until a new epidemic breaks out. These microorganisms have became smart through millions of years of evolution. To me, that's what makes sense. But I don't want to debate about evolution and religion. I know it's a sensitive topic. Tho I found myself accidentally getting into a debate about it with one of my old school classmates, Peter. At the end of our little debate, the conversation had gotten philosophical. And Peter said to me, "Sam, you should do philosophy!" After he said that I thought "he's right. Why aren't I doing philosophy?" So a couple of days later I went into the library to read a philosophical book about scientific essentialism and fell asleep within 20 minutes. (Here's the Wikipedia entry explaining what it is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_essentialism)

The other day, I had the pleasure of meeting someone from Iran. He was 35 years old and a very interesting fellow with lots of experience and Vincent and I talked to him for a while. Somehow I unknowingly mentioned the one word "dictatorship" and that set him off on a big rant, yet a very interesting rant at that, about what it was like to live in Iran and its differences to the Western world which he talked about for around 30 minutes. He told us of the story about how a few months ago, his 17 year old brother was walking along the street holding hands with his girl friend. He was stopped by the Islamic police and put in a cell where he was given 95 lashings by a whip. He then had to go to hospital afterwards, and I think that would have left a few scars on him too. He also talked about how in Iran you don't have freedom of speech. He said that "if it even looks like you are thinking about acting out against the *government*" then... , and he raised his finger on his right hand and drew it across his throat. He also remarked that Iran should be rich with all the oil it has. But the dictator just takes all the money, spends half of it on himself and his family and spends the other half on military and importing weapons from places like Russia.

After a while he had had enough had went to Germany for a while. And then came here to go to uni. He sold off everything in his home city of Tehran, including his jewellry business to get out of Iran and start a new life with freedom.

Freedom is something that many wars have been fought over and many have sacrificed their lives for, yet I don't think many of us in Western countries know what it's like to not be free.

Good old democracy