Nice to meet you, 92.xx. You ask some very good questions. I'll be glad to answer them. -)
One of my great passions in life is learning about a broad variety of different topics: computer sciences, physics in a general sense, world history, geography, biological life, etc. But above all else, I am extremely passionate about human rights. In the most general sense, I support freedom for everyone, regardless of their life situation. With regards to most of the causes that I support, not only have I taken the time to read about them on the side, but I've also followed news developments pertaining to them very closely. For example, I oppose the ruling family of Saudi Arabia because of their hardline Islamist ideology and authoritarian methods. To start with, I consider Saudi Arabia guilty of gender apartheid against its women, who aren't even allowed to leave the house without wearing an abaya and being in the company of a male consort. It's the only country in the world where women are not permitted to drive. They are also known for severely discriminating against expatriate workers from throughout Asia and Africa, abuses against the Shiite community in the Eastern Province, and publicly beheading people for nonviolent offences — they literally still perform executions on charges of witchcraft and sorcery.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg in a laundry list of reasons why I detest the Saudi monarchy. What makes it worse is the fact that there doesn't seem to be any outrage over their human rights record, which deeply troubles me.
Granted, I don't think Saudi Arabia is a controversial state to denounce. Some of the ones I've listed are no-brainers to most people: a free Burma, the end of totalitarianism in North Korea, etc. But then there's the more divisive issues, such as Kosovar independence or the Syrian civil war. I have been following the latter since before the uprising even began in March 2011; already very familiar with the human rights situation in Syria, I was fully anticipating the Arab Spring to arrive there sooner or later. I also knew it would be far more complicated than any other Arab country, if for no other reason than for the fact that it has a society divided along sectarian lines. I support the downfall of Bashar al-Assad. I believe that he and his regime have committed large-scale crimes against humanity for the sake of retaining power (yes, I do think he deployed sarin gas in Ghouta). However, unlike many others, I do not see opposition to Assad as being mutually exclusive from opposition to al-Qaeda and its affiliates, including its Syrian branch Al-Nusra. They too have committed atrocities, specifically against the Christians and Alawites. The long and short of it is, I support a free, democratic, and secular Syria. Easier said than done, but it never hurts to be optimistic. Now, Kosovo is an entirely different story. The region has a very complicated history, especially during the existence of Yugoslavia as an independent state. I'll spare you the lengthy explanation of the context, the situation after the breakup of Yugoslavia, the guerrilla war conducted by the terroristic Kosovo Liberation Army against ethnic Serbs, the resulting ethnic cleansing campaign against the Kosovar Albanians conducted by the regime of Slobodan Milosevic, the UN presence in Kosovo, the 2008 declaration of independence, etc. All you need to know, as it pertains to my support of Kosovar independence, is the fact that the vast majority of people in Kosovo support it. Everything else is immaterial to me; it's what the people want that I care about. The issue of Kosovar Serbs should be resolved through negotiations between Serbia and Kosovo. Those are just two examples of my less popular stances.
Asperger's Syndrome is considered a pervasive developmental disorder on the autism spectrum. At its most basic, you could say it is simply a mind form of autism — but that in itself would be a drastic oversimplification of what is a very unique condition. Every case is different, and I have a particularly mild diagnosis. Most people would never guess that there was anything different about me. It's more in the negative way that I would oftentimes interpret subtle nuances of socialization. For example, if I overheard two people having a conversation and discerned my name, I'd get nervous and assume that