Dear friends,
Today I want to thank those of you who have used the good old snail mail to write to me and first and foremost the person who wrote me a long (7 pages!) letter and included a fascinating text about the gates of Damascus by Claudia McLaren Lainson which I will read during the next week-end. The included icon was also superb – thanks so much!!
Thanks to BS from Chicago, IL, T from Carrboro, NC, JR from Sequim, WA, DL from Ojai, CA, H from Evansville, IN, JR for a great music CD (!!), SW from Portland, OR (beautiful icon and poem!), KH from (I think) Rochester, NY, R Gowing from the UK (please stay in touch!!) and Chainsaw.
I also want to thank the authors of the anonymous letters from Charleston, SC, Derby, VT, HA Canada and X, also from Canada.
I wish I had the time to answer each one of you with a proper, decent, handwritten reply, but the reality is that I don’t even have the time to reply to emails (though I try!).
Please accept my apologies for that.
What I can say is that there is a very special joy and pleasure for me to get a letter from a person which I never met and who writes to me like if we were old, trusted, friends. This outpouring of trust is very moving even though I wonder what I could have done to deserve such trust. Frankly, I see each one of those heartfelt letters is like a “small miracle”, something which never ceases to amaze me. I will be honest, while I love Florida and while I am grateful to God for having made it possible for me to live here, I often (mostly) feel like some exiled extraterrestrial whose spaceship has crashed on an alien planet and who live surrounded by people with whom he feels very little connection. There are, of course, exceptions, but by and large this the reality of my life here. And then, in some bizarre twist of fate, I get letter from people who live hundreds and even thousands of miles away from me and whom I never met, but who feel like trusted friends, people from the same planet I came from (regardless of their nationality, I would add). This is a very bizarre and, at the same time, exhilarating feeling. And, as I have already mentioned in the past, when I have my “3D days” (disgust, despair and depression) I think of these faraway friends, of how much we clearly have in common, and I feel hope again.
So please know that each and every one of your letters is both a small miracle and a great source of comfort for me. I am, of course, very grateful to those of you who have had the means to include a donation, but please believe me when I say that those letters who “just” express their support in words actually also make a huge difference to me!
So, my faraway friends, all I can say is “thank you!”. Thank you for your trust, kindness and support. You make it all worthwhile.
The Saker
I “sort of” know how you feel.The Saker community here is a “second home” for many of us, I think.Most of the people here I believe, know more (and have a “desire” to know) about the World than most people I’ve met over a lifetime.
Fred checks in (he’s an ex-pat living/writing from Mexico for 10 years or more):
http://fredoneverything.org/spare-r-why-they-hate-us/
Wounds to national pride gall people, and endure. Exactly why, I don’t know, but it happens. Consider China. How many have heard of the Opium Wars of 1839 and 1856? Or understand that the United States and the European powers simply occupied such parts of China as they chose, forced opium sales on China, imposed extraterritoriality, and bloodily suppressed the Boxers? How many people have even heard of the Boxers?
Over a billion Chinese.
My point is not that China is morally superior to the United States. It isn’t. However, if you want to understand why so many countries loathe us, you have to understand how they see us. Whether you agree is irrelevant. Nor does it matter whether their grievances are factual. For example, many South Americans believe their countries to be poor because of exploitation by America. This isn’t true, which doesn’t matter at all.
“many South Americans believe their countries to be poor because of exploitation by America.”
More like “that isn’t totally true”.There is more than US exploitation involved.But still US exploitation is a big factor historically.As a small example: In the late 1940’s and early 1950’s in Guatemala, the Guatemalans tried to enact land reform.Which would have helped the poorest people in that country to improve their lives.They also had passed other reforms to benefit the common people.The US funded and plotted a coup that overthrew the elected government of Guatemala (shades of Ukraine).And the new pro-US,wealthy class government,overturned all those reforms.Leaving the poor in misery for generations.Would Guatemala had been “Germany” today if the reforms had been left alone,doubtful.But millions of people would be much more prosperous,healthy and educated,than they are today in Guatemala.Multiple that example many times over all Latin America.And you see why there is much truth it the idea of the US being the cause of much of their misery.
List of South American authoritarian regimes supported by the United States
1876–1911 Mexico Porfirio Díaz[13][14]
1898–1920 Guatemala Manuel Estrada Cabrera[17]
1908–1935 Venezuela Juan Vicente Gómez[16]
1929–2000 Mexico Institutional Revolutionary Party[15]
1930–1961 Dominican Republic Rafael Trujillo[19]
1931–1944 Guatemala Jorge Ubico[17]
1936–1979 Nicaragua Somoza family[27]
1952–1959 Cuba Fulgencio Batista[18]
1954–1986 Guatemala Efraín Ríos Montt Junta[21][22]
1954–1989 Paraguay Alfredo Stroessner[30][31]
1957–1971 Haiti François Duvalier[28]
1964–1985 Brazil Brazilian military government[12][26]
1968–1981 Panama Omar Torrijos[29]
1971–1978 Bolivia Hugo Banzer[24]
1971–1986 Haiti Jean-Claude Duvalier[28]
1973–1990 Chile Augusto Pinochet[32]
1976–1983 Argentina National Reorganization Process[25]
1979–1982 El Salvador Revolutionary Government Junta of El Salvador[23]
1979–present Equatorial Guinea Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo[58]
1983–1989 Panama Manuel Noriega[29]
Most of these countries are poor because of these US supported “Governments” and so by extension US exploitation. So I think most South Americans have a very good point.
anytime a south american country works for its own interests it is sacked by the us why
see “war is a racket”
what about economic exploitation do you need thousands of examples?
Saker….now you’re going to get millions of hand written letters…funny.
Saker – I have just posted a comment from a ‘soccer mom’ who has ‘fallen in love’ with Syria and President Assad and prays for them every day on the ‘Syria – Part lll’ thread.
She posted on the excellent link supplied by Penelope on the same thread which gives a potted history of the Assads and Syria. Not at all how it has been spun by the Anglophone media. Everyone should read it.
It is people like this – from the most ‘unexpected’ places/backgrounds that should also give you hope. It proves that most adherents to the great world religions are perfectly capable of rubbing along/co-existing if they are properly informed and we have a global wealth-distribution system that is non-exploitative.
So glad these letters help you. But remember there are many more out there who are on the same wavelength who don’t make direct contact/are unaware of the Saker blog.
Perhaps the day of the troll is drawing to an end on the internet?
Fondest regards to you and yours,
Eimar
This is a lovely post, Saker – we all need to connect and feel we are making a difference, even when we are like that little bird in the folk tale brushing our beaks against the tip of the mountain throughout the eons. So many people all thinking the same thought – how can we best do this?
In that spirit, I found this article posted at counterpunch.org so heartening and well written, containing all the information we need to inspire us – in the heart of the beast, so to speak, and after all the years of quiet resistance, a great movement has formed. May we all be part of the same!
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/24/jeremy-corbyn-a-man-who-didnt-try-to-fashion-a-career/
For any and all of you who feel like a Submarine in the Desert, or that you feel like an alien from another planet and that maybe you don’t even belong here on this here crazy planet, this is the book for you: The Three Waves of Volunteers and The New Earth by Dolores Cannon. The testimonials in this book are based on hypnotic regression, which can be very controversial, but not entirely non-scientific. On the back of the jacket of the book it says this:
Dolores in her hypnosis work has discovered three waves of these volunteers. Some have come direct from the “Source” and have never lived in any type of physical body before. Others have lived as space beings on other planets or other dimensions. Because all memory is erased upon entry to the Earth dimension, thy do not remember their assignment. Thus these beautiful souls have a difficult time adjusting to our chaotic world. These souls have a vital role to play as they help all of the rest of us ascend to the New Earth.
Hmmm, sounds like the Saker might be one of these beings….and that without even knowing it, he is carrying out his assignment to change the world and help it ascend to a higher level of consciousness.