“A Sliver of Light”, the book that was written by the three American adventurers that were taking a leisurely hike along the border of Iraqi, Kurdistan and Iran in 2009 and were subsequently arrested by Iranian authorities and held for two years, mostly in solitary confinement before being released a few years ago and writing a book about their experiences. I haven’t read the book, but I’ve read excerpts from it and read about the purpose and content of the book. It explains the harsh conditions in which they were held and all of the things they were made to endure during they’re detention. It sounded like a pretty terrible time to me. They even went on to explain how they felt like they were imprisoned Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility.

I’d like to go visit the new ski resort in North Korea. I’ve seen pictures of the mountains of North Korea and they look stunning. Hell, I’d like to visit Somalia as well because I’ve seen pictures of the beautiful beaches they have there, but there is something that just keeps getting in the way of my travel plans: it’s my common sense, and it actually ruins a lot of my fun plans these days, but I suppose I have my common sense to thank for me not being dead or in jail so I shouldn’t complain too much about it. I have actually been to the place in question in their book. I spent a fair amount of time in Iraqi, Kurdistan and while I do agree with the three hikers that it is a very beautiful place and somewhere that would perfect for a nice challenging hike. The scenery is beautiful, in most cases the people are friendly, but the fact that it is sandwiched between two of the most dangerous countries in the world for American’s to visit gives me some reservations about going there. It may come as a shock to some but after a decade of war in that area, some of the locals don’t think very highly of American’s.

I’m not a fan of using torture in any form to extract information from prisoners or just everyday people should they be randomly kidnapped. I would think that if I was made to endure torture I’d probably admit to being a conspirator in the JFK assassination if that’s what they were trying to get out of me. It just causes more problems in the long run than problems it solves in the short term. But blaming and comparing poor treatment in an Iranian prison to the abuses at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba is a bit out of line since Iran has a history spanning hundreds of years in the art of human rights abuses and Guantanamo Bay has been a detention center since 2002, though it does make for an easy scapegoat should you find yourself detained in an Iranian jail.

We have certain rights as American citizens. They protect us from a lot of abuses that people in other countries aren’t lucky enough to have. The problem is that those rights don’t necessarily follow us around when we travel to war torn countries that seem to have some disdain towards us and our way of life. Unfortunately we live in a pretty tense world, and that world has a lot of boundaries. And those boundaries are often protected by mean and scary men that carry guns. It would be best to remember that in this world we are all pretty insignificant creatures. We are not more special than the next person, and the entire world is not our oyster. We are just plain not welcome in some places. You can’t trespass in your neighbor’s yard because you feel like you’re entitled to do so, and you most certainly can’t walk into country that’s adversarial to the one you’re from and expect to be treated like royalty, even if you happen to disagree with your own countries foreign policies. Common sense should tell us that, but clearly some of us are plagued with a lack of it.