Sometimes it's useful to just reflect on what we have, and where it came from, and that if we're not careful we can easily lose it.
I'm talking about our affluent civilization and all the godlike benefits that come with it.
Consider the hardship of this blogger Afghan LORD, for example, who is writing from Kabul, Afghanistan.
That is, he blogs when electricity is available. From his profile,
Sohrab Kabuli, aged 23. I born in the land of pains & injustice. Whatever I want for myself, I wish for others. I write from Kabul, what I see and what I hear from.He writes under a pseudonym because of death threats. Shockingly, apparently some of these threats are traced to a member of the BBC!
Kabuli, who blogs in English as Afghan Lord under a pseudonym in order to protect himself, has received numerous threats posted to his blog from the same IP address which belongs - shockingly - to the BBC. One of them, which Kabuli emailed to Global Voices, asks: “Do you think I do not know you?” Then it continues on to threaten: “There were a number of people like you, who did not remain alive. They were all buried in graves. You have to be taken off from this land so that better human beings could take your place. For, you are dirty.”If one didn't believe the media (and especially the BBC) was infiltrated by terrorists, this should remove all doubt.
The message, posted in the comments section of his blog, was written anonymously and posted from a computer with the IP address 132.185.144.120, which, according to a WHOIS query, belongs to BBC Internet Services Operations.
Attempting to enter our magic world of technology which we so take for granted -- and which the terrorists so desire to bring down through sheer friction by undermining the fragile web of trust it rests on -- Kabuli has such heart-breakingly "simple" requests as:
Second, I kindly asking you if anyone knows how to make the Paypal account. Third, how is it possible to get Net MD recorder or any voice recorder I will pay through western union bank, because in Afghanistan these tools are not available.Because Kabuli dreams of podcasting interviews in English and Farsi. Meanwhile, this is the kind of thing he observes:
This winter, three children with their mothers died from exposure, who were lying down in front of a giant building in which the bottom contained the Cinema Pamir, a place which shows Indian Bollywood films.He has a photo on his blog labelled, simply, "small shepehrd [sic] in central part of Afghanistan."
Not very far away are UN offices and other international NGOs who drive by in their modern luxury cars every day.
Follow that link, ponder those hands, and give thanks for the benefits bestowed on us by our forebearers.
And recall this comment from Belmont Club:
I think the Third World will provide the strategic surprise. They are not -- they were never -- what the Left thought they were. People happy to live out their lives under a tyranny dancing under the mango trees before retiring in the dusk to their darkened huts to the sound of communal singing. They want cell phones, air travel and dental floss. They wonder what the stars are made of and how the world began. Worst of all for the Left they want freedom. The most monstrous lie in history was the one the Left repeated incessantly. How happy the masses were under Uncle Joe Stalin or the Great Helmsman. Do they know what poverty is? Poverty is watching your little son die because you can't afford a five dollar bottle of medicine. And burying him with all the homemade toys your hands made.
