Joy or sadness?

On my way home today, I was listening to the new version of one of my favorite Iranian songs. The lyrics, the singer's voice, the music, the very low traffic highway, the horizon, the beautiful, scenic and lively green nature..., everything had hand in hand to make the moment so emotional and so beautiful. I cannot describe how much I was enjoying the moment. I cannot describe how much I was enjoying life. I felt like I was desiring that the moment wouldn't end. I was singing along with the song. I was enjoying the moment so much that I had tears in my eyes. These were tears of joy telling me how beautiful life was to me at that time. ...It was an excellent time.

While I was floating in my dreams, I suddenly remembered the miseries of so many people around the world, right at the same time of my enjoyment. Whatever I knew about these miseries crossed my mind; one after another. Story of my life: my beautiful time quickly turned to the time of pause, and confusion and then even with a faster speed turned to sadness combined with anger. The only thing that didn't change was having tears in my eyes. But no, this time, these tears were not out of joy. They were out of desperation. They were out of helplessness. They were because of realizing how powerless I was.

I quickly remembered that earlier in the day I had read that Red Cross fears U.S. is hiding detainees. The report tells of how the US authorities, with the help of other governments' agencies around the world are holding so many people without disclosing their locations and are constantly moving them around in order to hide them from the visiting Red Cross representatives. One has to put self in the position of those detainees to realize how deeply criminal and inhumane this is. Regardless of guilt or innocence, regardless of whether the US authorities have any moral authority to detain people, holding detainees is one thing, and holding them without anybody, not even their families particularly their children, knowing about them is another. Imagine, you are detained with a very uncertain future, perhaps physically and mentally tortured; as was exposed recently, humiliated and.... and no one knows where you are, you are not accounted for. No matter what happens to you, no one will know. Just pause for a second and imagine that situation. How would you feel? How is this possible? This is perhaps what the US has in common with world's dictatorship regimes, including Iran and most of the US allies around the world as this is a common practice in all of those countries. But how could a country that calls itself "the center of world democracy" be so brutal? How could the leaders of such country sleep at night? How animal-like have they become? How could these animals be given so much power that has opened their dirty hands to so much crimes? How could a sane nation vote for these criminal? What a sick and twisted world we live in.