You got paid to spend a week in paradise?

Yes, Solomon!

Costa Rica is indeed special.

Did you know it was the first country in the world to abolish the army – in 1948 no less.

Wow, those interviews are so informing! Mona your such a great public speaker, your just as clear and deep as your writing.

I know that Canada is no Costa Rica, especially this time of year (sigh*) but I hope we get a chance to HEAR your lectures.

Many thanks, Amina.

I spoke in Vancouver and Toronto earlier this year and would love to come back to give more lectures in Canada!

Mona, I esp enjoyed the interview with Gabriela. It must be hard at times, to be misunderstood by both cultures. Keep on buzzin’.

Just a few comments before I head off to work at the farm this morning.

I just watched the three interviews, finding all of them interesting.

You are, in many ways, a puzzle, Mona. Now while this is true of all women to some degree, it seems to me more true of you. You are a feminist, yet you wear jewelry, you don’t have typical Janet Reno styled hair, and generally have no problem with a feminine identity.

You also do not appear to like stereotypes, yet you have no problem applying stereotypes yourself to, for example, a typical Fox News viewer.

You are employed by and are a part of the traditional media, yet you seem to support the new media of the Internet and the blogosphere.

The biggest puzzle of Mona is that you are obviously very intelligent, and yet you do not hold conservative political views. Why is that? Perhaps in a few years you will grow wiser.

Fluid identity, indeed!

… and no, I am not a Fox News viewer. I do listen to some conservative talk radio, but mostly, I get my news, as you observed, from the Internet. Never heard of the comedy show youm mentioned, though. I am not, at age 52, though, especially young. My contention is that its not the age so much as the mileage. I’ve got a lot of mileage… hard mileage.

Kinzi – thanks for your support. As long as I get people on both sides going then it’s all ok!

Dale

News flash – feminists are women too!!!

Thanks for your thoughts but I have to clarify I don’t work for the traditional media. I’m totally freelance/independent. I’m published in various places but as a freelancer.

I’m a huge fan of the blogosphere in the Arab world because as I mention in my talks and writing, it has given a platform to young people and women who have been marginalized for too long from mainstream/traditional media in the region.

Welll…. some of those alleged women feminists I have doubts about, though I am not curious enough to want to find out for sure. Then there are also men feminists… though, come to think of it, some of them also wear jewelry. You may be a feminist, but you are atypical of feminists in my estimation.

You may well be freelance, but your work is generally published by and you are generally paid by, the mainstream media. You are fairly new to blogging.

I look to blogs for much of my news for the same reason the mainstream media condemns them: there is nobody to “oversee” the work save for the blogger him/her self. Bloggers certainly have individual agendas just like the mainstream media does, but it is not a unified one, so if one reads a variety of blogs, one gets a more accurate world view than one would get from reading the local newspaper or watching the news.

There are bloggers promote the most liberal causes in the world and there are bloggers who promote things as extreme as White supremacism (or insert your least favorite -ism) Some want to overthrow governments by means of violence. Others know that all wars are ultimately won by farmers.

There are also blogs and forums that deal not at all with politics, merely with things like what load might work best in a Thompson Center Cherokee .32 caliber rifle. Those are the best ones to get opinions from because they don’t have a political agenda. A blogger who grows orchids in Senegal is the proverbial man on the street. His is ultimately the only opinion that really matters.

I have digressed again (heavy sigh). I will end with a quote, one of my favorites, which really doesn’t apply to myself and is unrelated to the topic at hand, but since I am digressing anyway: “Beware of the man who only owns one gun, for he surely knows how to use it!”