...no, I'm the jester of this courtyard...

I spent the first half of yesterday at a massive fundraiser for Free the Children hosted generously by Lone Star Cafe in Richmond Hill, in which we raised over $10,000.00 to build a school in Kenya in the name of Joe O., one of the best people I've ever known, I'm sorry if you never met him.

When I take the time to consider FTC's growth and think about the number of children we have affected, the number of schools and leadership centres we've built, the amount of school and health supplies we have shipped... it blows my mind. Just the most incredible organization, the most incredible people. People who share the belief that education is the only way to change the course of this world, and to start turning the tide against child poverty. One of my friends mentioned that it was annoying to realize that outside of our location are millions of people going about their days in Toronto not caring about the fundraiser, living out their selfish North American existances.

Which is horribly unfair of her to say, I think - everyone has their issue. Maybe child poverty isn't their current concern, maybe they spend hours and hours planning fundraising events for breast cancer awareness and curse those of us who aren't at that event.

Everyone's got their issue, as I said. Everyone has their opinions, and a right to them.

Except when it comes to culture and nationality of course, because at that point, don't even try taking another stance - take me for example, when keeping my opinion means... that I'm not Persian? Now how does that work? Well, apparently because I don't see a blatant insult pointed our way from the folks at National Geographic, I'm clearly not worthy of my own culture, and some can arbitrarily take it away from me. Obviously it makes perfect sense that the people like me who aren't itching to take up arms over this issue should be considered not Persian. Because clearly, this issue is the be all and end all to Persian idenity. To me, not only is this more offensive than the magazine's inclusion of an alternate name on a map (an inclusion that by no means replaces the correct name, I should mention), but dismissive and divisive attitudes like that are clearly more inherently dangerous to our culture.

This reminds me of when, in a moment of religious purity, my father told me I wasn't Muslim, didn't deserve to be. That's nice - clearly you are all very wise and mature. Thank god "this or bust" believers like that don't run the world. Wait, forgot about Bush... it's funny because just look at that example. That attitude is exactly how we found ourselves in these messes to begin with.