I just looked at my all time views. Get this. 5 view originating from Saudi Arabia. Holy crap. I don’t care if it is the same person 5 times. It just proves they do not have a tight lid as they might think. And whomever is the individual viewing my page from that country, stay safe. I have seen other people on other social media who live in fear and silence that live there but express on line they wish they could change things. I will always value anyone from any country who values freedom and art and poetry. I hate that people like in China, or Cuba have to live in fear of arrest or injury or even death for expressing opinions country to political leaders or the state.

I wish Saudi Arabia and Iran would lose their theocracies and get with the western world and open up. Especially for the welfare and education of their girls and women.

It saddens me to see here in America the growing control over the lives of females, and the rising anti intellectual anti science growing on the right. I am very blasphemous of every religion, even including Jews and Hinduism and Buddhism. As well as Islam.

Having said that, my biggest priority is human rights above and beyond my personal positions on what someone else might claim. I abhor violence. I was bullied as a kid for being different, for being sensitive. So I can only imagine what it is like for someone risking their lives in closed dictatorships and theocracies to even look at something like my poetry here.

But claims to me are just that, claims, until they gain universal consensus through scientific method and independent peer review. And the truth is, be you Jewish or Hindu or Buddhist or Christian or Muslim. Be you born in China or Argentina, or Kenya or Australia or Japan, or Mexico we all started out as the same species in our current form, in Africa some 200,000 plus years ago, long before politics and religion were written ideas. Long before the idea of nations.

OUR DNA is the same. Our differences are only that which we mostly get sold from birth, long before we can formulate adult critical thinking skills. I think most humans are good. But unfortunately we also far to often tend to hide behind bullies out of fear of the other, and we like any other species are tribal.

I fear for my liberal friends in Iran who are fighting for female equality. I fear for Saudis who do not like living in their theocracy. I fear for Chinese citizens who can be yanked off the street and be held for years over trivial things or disappear completely. I fear for those in North Korea who secretly hate Un but have to live in silence. I fear for Russians who fear Putin and also have family who live in Ukraine. I fear for Ukrainians who live in occupied territory.

I feel sad when I think about these things. But I also think of John Lennon’s song Imagine, and that lets me know there are good people in every nation, and it is only the greedy and those who lust for power that oppress others. Stay safe Saudi reader/s, stay free in your thoughts as well. Your brains belong to you, and you are allowed to use them independently.