Wow! I can’t Believe it – Well, Almost…

No, probably not all of these, but, at least, part of them!

Sometime Sunday night to early Monday morning, I passed another milestone.  This one is very special to me because I have a hard time even believing it.  During that period of time, my blog has now been viewed by 102 countries!

When this blog began, I am not certain that I even knew there were over 100 countries.  I never thought I would have had at least 1 person from over 100 countries look at my lowly blog.  I have come to the realization that it is you who are responsible for this wonderful goal being met.

I know what had to have happened.  I watched as you viewed my posts.  I viewed your posts.  Then people who had viewed you viewed me.  Then people who were viewed by you viewed me.  Then the search parameters based on my blog posts and my tags kicked in.  Little by little a country was added here and another one added there.

There are, at the time of this post, 196 countries in the world according to about.com .  Many of these countries I had never heard of.  The full list of ones that have viewed me so far is below.  I decided I would post it when I went over 100.  I will try to get back to my story and its conclusion in the next few days.  At the moment, I would like to give a bit of information on one country I had never heard of:

Myanmar  – Now, actually, this is the second time I have read through and typed all of this.  Just as I went to hit “update” after typing in the entire report, my Internet company lost connection to me for about 3 hours.  We were having rain, but I did not think about the power to the net going out.  It did not seem that bad.  It, evidently, was not quite local as the company knew it was down and left that message for our zip code on their phone system.

Back to Myanmar.  Okay, it is the country of Burma, now called Republic of the Union of Myanmar, but some countries don’t like that, so they still say Burma.  I didn’t even pronounce it correctly.  I clicked on sound and it said, Mee-on-MAR.

It has a perimeter of about 1200 miles and a population of 60-61 million people spread out over 65,000 villages.  The two largest cities – Yangon and Mandalay have a combined population of just a little over 5.8 million.

It is very rich in resources, but quite poor, partially because a lot of countries have put economic sanctions on it (including the US) because the country has violated human rights so much.  These violations are in things like genocide, rape, child labor, and human trafficking, along with others.

It is a military state.  HIV/AIDS is fairly common throughout the country.  It is mainly Buddhist and Bamar culture.  It is a country of civil war and unrest; the people are treated poorly and a lot of things given out about the country may be false coming from the military regime.

The wiki entry for this small country was huge and well worth reading if you can make the time.  Simply click on the name at the beginning of this account.

The list of countries which have had at least one view of my blog is below.  I find it more than a little fascinating that Myanmar was one of them.  YouTube was just recently unbanned from the country’s view.

Namaste,

Scott

_____________ List ______________________________

Country Name

Albania

Algeria

Argentina

Armenia

Australia

Austria

Azerbaijan

Bahrain

Bangladesh

Belarus

Belgium

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Brazil

Bulgaria

Cambodia

Canada

Chile

Colombia

Costa Rica

Croatia

Czech Republic

Denmark

Dominican Republic

Ecuador

Egypt

El Salvador

Estonia

Finland

Former Yugoslav Republic

France

Germany

Ghana

Greece

Guam

Honduras

Hong Kong

Hungary

Iceland

India

Indonesia

Iraq

Ireland

Israel

Italy

Jamaica

Japan

Jordan

Kenya

Kuwait

Latvia

Lebanon

Lithuania

Malaysia

Malta

Mauritius

Mexico

Mongolia

Montenegro

Morocco

Myanmar

Netherlands

New Zealand

Nicaragua

Nigeria

Norway

Pakistan

Panama

Paraguay

Peru

Philippines

Poland

Portugal

Puerto Rico

Republic of Korea

Réunion

Romania

Russian Federation

Saudi Arabia

Serbia

Singapore

Slovakia

Slovinia

South Africa

Spain

Sri Lanka

Sweden

Switzerland

Taiwan

Thailand

Trinidad and Tobago

Tunisia

Turkey

Ukraine

United Arab Emirates

United Kingdom

United Republic of Tanzania

United States

Uruguay

Venezuela

Viet Nam

Virgin Islands

Yemen

“Battle Royale”

I watched a movie the other day (I have discovered “Amazon” direct renting! Wow.) entitled “Battle Royale”.It reminded me of “Hunger Games” (Awesome Movie) and bothered me a bit for the same reason. Both movies take a group of children and pit them against each other to the death until one is left.

Not a new idea, but with children, it is different. Anyway, the children don’t want to fight each other, for the most part. However, as the movie progresses (Like in “Lord of the Flies”) they learn to and some even become possessed with the idea.

Here’s my thing: The fighting is not for the children’s good; it is for something else – government, freedom (the idea), celebration, prevention, whatever. The children in these two groups are not warriors, not fighters, many had never even picked up a weapon until chosen.

I take issue with this as I think it points out a lot of society’s problems. Mainly, not that we are too violent or ideas like that; it’s that we make a decision and, Wham!, everyone has to do it and is expected to not cause any grief over it.

Law? you say? Yes, I understand law. But, the last I knew of true law, true freedom, and the true spirit of people, we did not suddenly decide to butcher each other for something that is not a life/death thing (though they made it that way by dumping them and telling them only one can win).

I think people would really like to trust each other and love each other; too many times we (government, large groups of people) try to take those things away by force or by trying to convince the group(s) that they “have to”.

Both movies have a saving grace (won’t spoil them), and I believe that life often does, too. But, I think our actions remain too influenced by the larger thought processes (though not always thinking) of the society in general.

Why do I have to hate all members of another race, religion, gender, country, occupation, belief, simply because a section of society I consider “important” says it is wrong? Why is it that, whenever something/one is different, they are wrong?

I have friends who belong to different religions, different sexual orientations, are Wicca, Buddhists, Black, Chinese, Taiwanese, Bi-sexual, Gay, Nerds, the list goes on and on…Why should I have to drop one friend to keep another happy?

Well, my answer is, “I won’t.” If you don’t like the friends I have, then you may just have to take yourself out of that group. I try to never judge. You are pretty much allowed to feel, act, believe however you choose and we can be friends. However, when that is smacked in the head by severe conflict, I will tend to choose the path of love which discrimination never falls toward.

Okay, looking back, I have not only given a long speech, but found nails and boards and built the soapbox I gave it from!

‘Nuff said!” (Old comic book line).
Let me know what you think. I am very interested.
Namaste,
Scott