Boliva - the referendum..

Supporting Bolivia

The Bolivian people are preparing to decide whether to approve or reject their new Constitution through a referendum. This Constitution will protect human rights, freedom of individuals and deepen real democracy, establishing levels of participation and autonomy that reaches down to the municipalities and communities. This Constitution that recognises in its multi-nationality, the original peoples, discriminated and exploited for centuries and that, without eliminating private property, includes the right of the communities to a collective economy and to recover the sovereignty of the Nation over natural resources. This advanced Constitution that rejects War as a method of conflict resolution – A Humanist Constitution.
It has been an admirable process that Evo Morales has lead with intelligence and courage, confronting the violence of economic power with the methodology of nonviolence.


Nevertheless, radical right-wing groups are forcing things in order to provoke a division of the country. They want to achieve their objectives with bad faith, circumventing democracy and legal process and with total irresponsibility towards the lives of their fellow countrymen. Their objectives are to recover their privileges and appropriate resources that are for all. They call Autonomy what in reality is secession, a separation of the Nation. Separation that of course will leave them with control of the riches and the population abandoned.

Latin American Governments showed great stature in resolving the recent conflict between Ecuador and Colombia and latterly in prioritizing the democracy of each country when it has been in danger. It is necessary that they pronounce once more in support of Evo Morales and the referendum on the New Constitution.
It is important to make the Bolivian people feel that their Latin American brothers and sisters and people around the world are supporting them and that we will not accept fragmentation of the Bolivian State.

The people must proclaim to the four winds that it is no longer possible that someone comes along and subjects them to massacres, because there is a Latin American and Global community that will not allow it. They will not accept that, with interventionist pretexts, like those used in Iraq and in so many other places, democracy is interrupted when it is no longer convenient to the interests of the powerful.
The United States has to understand that Latin America will no longer be a mere object of greed for their businesses and their geopolitical convenience. They must comprehend that our peoples must be treated with respect, valuing the life of every person, because everyone is important.

The response that populations and governments give to the people of Bolivia is very important. If secession is a valid path, soon violent economic groups that do not like the limits imposed by the State will resort to this mechanism to disintegrate nations. It is not indifferent what happens in Bolivia as other liberation processes set in motion in the region will also be affected by the results.
Humanists of the world, in solidarity with the Bolivian people, call on the international community to make statements and other actions to influence those leaders who defend division to renounce their seditious objectives and to sit down and dialogue, taking the process along the path of unity and peace within a legal framework.


We request your support for the Bolivian Government and its president Evo Morales and we ask that you refuse to recognise any referendum that puts Bolivian unity in danger.

Tomás Hirsch
Spokesperson for Humanism in Latin America

Religion – its part of all of us..

Religion forms one of the cornerstones of Humanity. For millennia, it has provided us with social cohesion through common belief. It has provided social order where violent chaos would have prevailed. Within religion was founded the concepts of logical explanation of phenomena, or ‘science’, no matter how far science & religion seem ‘divorced’ now..
It is certain that some of the earliest communication between man was the fundamental questions – Who are we, where do we come from? And it is still the ‘unknown’ that drives Humanity now – the capacity to ask the questions & seek the answers..
It is not possible to ‘suppress’ religious influence. It is part of all of us, whether we wish to accept this or not. We may choose to observe a ‘secular’ life here in the West, but our ‘system of values’ is firmly rooted in the history of Christianity, and the ‘distortions’ of it.
Religion through history has frequently been used for ‘social control’ by opportunists, and the true ‘meaning’ of most religions has become distorted over time to include violent solutions. No widely accepted religion has violence at its true roots. There is no way that religion could be seen as an ‘issue in need of attention’, in itself, if violence were completely absent..
And a religion’s present ‘status’ is determined by how we practise it. If we are ‘violently passionate’ about an issue or perception, it may provide for emotional connection with other like-minded – but the violence is at odds with the true meaning.. Violence does not work, personally or socially.
The Centre of Cultures brings people together to allow for acceptance of all that is Nonviolent within religion and culture. It similarly allows for the rejection of all that is violent, no matter what the source – individual, or a component of a doctrine..

The History of Tibet - but its no excuse for the current violence..

I. For Lords and Lamas
Along with the blood drenched landscape of religious conflict there is the experience of inner peace and solace that every religion promises, none more so than Buddhism. Standing in marked contrast to the intolerant savagery of other religions, Buddhism is neither fanatical nor dogmatic--so say its adherents. For many of them Buddhism is less a theology and more a meditative and investigative discipline intended to promote an inner harmony and enlightenment while directing us to a path of right living. Generally, the spiritual focus is not only on oneself but on the welfare of others. One tries to put aside egoistic pursuits and gain a deeper understanding of one’s connection to all people and things. “Socially engaged Buddhism” tries to blend individual liberation with responsible social action in order to build an enlightened society. A glance at history, however, reveals that not all the many and widely varying forms of Buddhism have been free of doctrinal fanaticism, nor free of the violent and exploitative pursuits so characteristic of other religions. In Sri Lanka there is a legendary and almost sacred recorded history about the triumphant battles waged by Buddhist kings of yore. During the twentieth century, Buddhists clashed violently with each other and with non-Buddhists in Thailand, Burma, Korea, Japan, India, and elsewhere. In Sri Lanka, armed battles between Buddhist Sinhalese and Hindu Tamils have taken many lives on both sides. In 1998 the U.S. State Department listed thirty of the world’s most violent and dangerous extremist groups. Over half of them were religious, specifically Muslim, Jewish, and Buddhist. 1In South Korea, in 1998, thousands of monks of the Chogye Buddhist order fought each other with fists, rocks, fire-bombs, and clubs, in pitched battles that went on for weeks. They were vying for control of the order, the largest in South Korea, with its annual budget of $9.2 million, its millions of dollars worth of property, and the privilege of appointing 1,700 monks to various offices. The brawls damaged the main Buddhist sanctuaries and left dozens of monks injured, some seriously. The Korean public appeared to disdain both factions, feeling that no matter what side took control, “it would use worshippers’ donations for luxurious houses and expensive cars.” 2As with any religion, squabbles between or within Buddhist sects are often fueled by the material corruption and personal deficiencies of the leadership. For example, in Nagano, Japan, at Zenkoji, the prestigious complex of temples that has hosted Buddhist sects for more than 1,400 years, “a nasty battle” arose between Komatsu the chief priest and the Tacchu, a group of temples nominally under the chief priest's sway. The Tacchu monks accused Komatsu of selling writings and drawings under the temple's name for his own gain. They also were appalled by the frequency with which he was seen in the company of women. Komatsu in turn sought to isolate and punish monks who were critical of his leadership. The conflict lasted some five years and made it into the courts. 3 But what of Tibetan Buddhism? Is it not an exception to this sort of strife? And what of the society it helped to create? Many Buddhists maintain that, before the Chinese crackdown in 1959, old Tibet was a spiritually oriented kingdom free from the egotistical lifestyles, empty materialism, and corrupting vices that beset modern industrialized society. Western news media, travel books, novels, and Hollywood films have portrayed the Tibetan theocracy as a veritable Shangri-La. The Dalai Lama himself stated that “the pervasive influence of Buddhism” in Tibet, “amid the wide open spaces of an unspoiled environment resulted in a society dedicated to peace and harmony. We enjoyed freedom and contentment.” 4 A reading of Tibet’s history suggests a somewhat different picture. “Religious conflict was commonplace in old Tibet,” writes one western Buddhist practitioner. “History belies the Shangri-La image of Tibetan lamas and their followers living together in mutual tolerance and nonviolent goodwill. Indeed, the situation was quite different. Old Tibet was much more like Europe during the religious wars of the Counterreformation.” 5 In the thirteenth century, Emperor Kublai Khan created the first Grand Lama, who was to preside over all the other lamas as might a pope over his bishops. Several centuries later, the Emperor of China sent an army into Tibet to support the Grand Lama, an ambitious 25-year-old man, who then gave himself the title of Dalai (Ocean) Lama, ruler of all Tibet.His two previous lama “incarnations” were then retroactively recognized as his predecessors, thereby transforming the 1st Dalai Lama into the 3rd Dalai Lama. This 1st (or 3rd) Dalai Lama seized monasteries that did not belong to his sect, and is believed to have destroyed Buddhist writings that conflicted with his claim to divinity. The Dalai Lama who succeeded him pursued a sybaritic life, enjoying many mistresses, partying with friends, and acting in other ways deemed unfitting for an incarnate deity. For these transgressions he was murdered by his priests. Within 170 years, despite their recognized divine status, five Dalai Lamas were killed by their high priests or other courtiers. 6For hundreds of years competing Tibetan Buddhist sects engaged in bitterly violent clashes and summary executions. In 1660, the 5th Dalai Lama was faced with a rebellion in Tsang province, the stronghold of the rival Kagyu sect with its high lama known as the Karmapa. The 5th Dalai Lama called for harsh retribution against the rebels, directing the Mongol army to obliterate the male and female lines, and the offspring too “like eggs smashed against rocks…. In short, annihilate any traces of them, even their names.” 7In 1792, many Kagyu monasteries were confiscated and their monks were forcibly converted to the Gelug sect (the Dalai Lama’s denomination). The Gelug school, known also as the “Yellow Hats,” showed little tolerance or willingness to mix their teachings with other Buddhist sects. In the words of one of their traditional prayers: “Praise to you, violent god of the Yellow Hat teachings/who reduces to particles of dust/ great beings, high officials and ordinary people/ who pollute and corrupt the Gelug doctrine.” 8 An eighteenth-century memoir of a Tibetan general depicts sectarian strife among Buddhists that is as brutal and bloody as any religious conflict might be. 9 This grim history remains largely unvisited by present-day followers of Tibetan Buddhism in the West.Religions have had a close relationship not only with violence but with economic exploitation. Indeed, it is often the economic exploitation that necessitates the violence. Such was the case with the Tibetan theocracy. Until 1959, when the Dalai Lama last presided over Tibet, most of the arable land was still organized into manorial estates worked by serfs. These estates were owned by two social groups: the rich secular landlords and the rich theocratic lamas. Even a writer sympathetic to the old order allows that “a great deal of real estate belonged to the monasteries, and most of them amassed great riches.” Much of the wealth was accumulated “through active participation in trade, commerce, and money lending.” 10Drepung monastery was one of the biggest landowners in the world, with its 185 manors, 25,000 serfs, 300 great pastures, and 16,000 herdsmen. The wealth of the monasteries rested in the hands of small numbers of high-ranking lamas. Most ordinary monks lived modestly and had no direct access to great wealth. The Dalai Lama himself “lived richly in the 1000-room, 14-story Potala Palace.” 11Secular leaders also did well. A notable example was the commander-in-chief of the Tibetan army, a member of the Dalai Lama’s lay Cabinet, who owned 4,000 square kilometers of land and 3,500 serfs. 12 Old Tibet has been misrepresented by some Western admirers as “a nation that required no police force because its people voluntarily observed the laws of karma.” 13 In fact. it had a professional army, albeit a small one, that served mainly as a gendarmerie for the landlords to keep order, protect their property, and hunt down runaway serfs. Young Tibetan boys were regularly taken from their peasant families and brought into the monasteries to be trained as monks. Once there, they were bonded for life. Tashì-Tsering, a monk, reports that it was common for peasant children to be sexually mistreated in the monasteries. He himself was a victim of repeated rape, beginning at age nine. 14 The monastic estates also conscripted children for lifelong servitude as domestics, dance performers, and soldiers.In old Tibet there were small numbers of farmers who subsisted as a kind of free peasantry, and perhaps an additional 10,000 people who composed the “middle-class” families of merchants, shopkeepers, and small traders. Thousands of others were beggars. There also were slaves, usually domestic servants, who owned nothing. Their offspring were born into slavery. 15 The majority of the rural population were serfs. Treated little better than slaves, the serfs went without schooling or medical care, They were under a lifetime bond to work the lord's land--or the monastery’s land--without pay, to repair the lord's houses, transport his crops, and collect his firewood. They were also expected to provide carrying animals and transportation on demand.16 Their masters told them what crops to grow and what animals to raise. They could not get married without the consent of their lord or lama. And they might easily be separated from their families should their owners lease them out to work in a distant location. 17 As in a free labor system and unlike slavery, the overlords had no responsibility for the serf’s maintenance and no direct interest in his or her survival as an expensive piece of property. The serfs had to support themselves. Yet as in a slave system, they were bound to their masters, guaranteeing a fixed and permanent workforce that could neither organize nor strike nor freely depart as might laborers in a market context. The overlords had the best of both worlds.One 22-year old woman, herself a runaway serf, reports: “Pretty serf girls were usually taken by the owner as house servants and used as he wished”; they “were just slaves without rights.”18 Serfs needed permission to go anywhere. Landowners had legal authority to capture those who tried to flee. One 24-year old runaway welcomed the Chinese intervention as a “liberation.” He testified that under serfdom he was subjected to incessant toil, hunger, and cold. After his third failed escape, he was merciless beaten by the landlord’s men until blood poured from his nose and mouth. They then poured alcohol and caustic soda on his wounds to increase the pain, he claimed.19 The serfs were taxed upon getting married, taxed for the birth of each child and for every death in the family. They were taxed for planting a tree in their yard and for keeping animals. They were taxed for religious festivals and for public dancing and drumming, for being sent to prison and upon being released. Those who could not find work were taxed for being unemployed, and if they traveled to another village in search of work, they paid a passage tax. When people could not pay, the monasteries lent them money at 20 to 50 percent interest. Some debts were handed down from father to son to grandson. Debtors who could not meet their obligations risked being cast into slavery.20The theocracy’s religious teachings buttressed its class order. The poor and afflicted were taught that they had brought their troubles upon themselves because of their wicked ways in previous lives. Hence they had to accept the misery of their present existence as a karmic atonement and in anticipation that their lot would improve in their next lifetime. The rich and powerful treated their good fortune as a reward for, and tangible evidence of, virtue in past and present lives. The Tibetan serfs were something more than superstitious victims, blind to their own oppression. As we have seen, some ran away; others openly resisted, sometimes suffering dire consequences. In feudal Tibet, torture and mutilation--including eye gouging, the pulling out of tongues, hamstringing, and amputation--were favored punishments inflicted upon thieves, and runaway or resistant serfs. Journeying through Tibet in the 1960s, Stuart and Roma Gelder interviewed a former serf, Tsereh Wang Tuei, who had stolen two sheep belonging to a monastery. For this he had both his eyes gouged out and his hand mutilated beyond use. He explains that he no longer is a Buddhist: “When a holy lama told them to blind me I thought there was no good in religion.”21 Since it was against Buddhist teachings to take human life, some offenders were severely lashed and then “left to God” in the freezing night to die. “The parallels between Tibet and medieval Europe are striking,” concludes Tom Grunfeld in his book on Tibet. 22In 1959, Anna Louise Strong visited an exhibition of torture equipment that had been used by the Tibetan overlords. There were handcuffs of all sizes, including small ones for children, and instruments for cutting off noses and ears, gouging out eyes, breaking off hands, and hamstringing legs. There were hot brands, whips, and special implements for disemboweling. The exhibition presented photographs and testimonies of victims who had been blinded or crippled or suffered amputations for thievery. There was the shepherd whose master owed him a reimbursement in yuan and wheat but refused to pay. So he took one of the master’s cows; for this he had his hands severed. Another herdsman, who opposed having his wife taken from him by his lord, had his hands broken off. There were pictures of Communist activists with noses and upper lips cut off, and a woman who was raped and then had her nose sliced away.23Earlier visitors to Tibet commented on the theocratic despotism. In 1895, an Englishman, Dr. A. L. Waddell, wrote that the populace was under the “intolerable tyranny of monks” and the devil superstitions they had fashioned to terrorize the people. In 1904 Perceval Landon described the Dalai Lama’s rule as “an engine of oppression.” At about that time, another English traveler, Captain W.F.T. O’Connor, observed that “the great landowners and the priests… exercise each in their own dominion a despotic power from which there is no appeal,” while the people are “oppressed by the most monstrous growth of monasticism and priest-craft.” Tibetan rulers “invented degrading legends and stimulated a spirit of superstition” among the common people. In 1937, another visitor, Spencer Chapman, wrote, “The Lamaist monk does not spend his time in ministering to the people or educating them. . . . The beggar beside the road is nothing to the monk. Knowledge is the jealously guarded prerogative of the monasteries and is used to increase their influence and wealth.”24 As much as we might wish otherwise, feudal theocratic Tibet was a far cry from the romanticized Shangri La so enthusiastically nurtured by Buddhism’s western proselytes.
II. Secularization vs. Spirituality
What happened to Tibet after the Chinese Communists moved into the country in 1951? The treaty of that year provided for ostensible self-governance under the Dalai Lama’s rule but gave China military control and exclusive right to conduct foreign relations. The Chinese were also granted a direct role in internal administration “to promote social reforms.” Among the earliest changes they wrought was to reduce usurious interest rates, and build a few hospitals and roads. At first, they moved slowly, relying mostly on persuasion in an attempt to effect reconstruction. No aristocratic or monastic property was confiscated, and feudal lords continued to reign over their hereditarily bound peasants. “Contrary to popular belief in the West,” claims one observer, the Chinese “took care to show respect for Tibetan culture and religion.”25 Over the centuries the Tibetan lords and lamas had seen Chinese come and go, and had enjoyed good relations with Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek and his reactionary Kuomintang rule in China.26 The approval of the Kuomintang government was needed to validate the choice of the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama. When the current 14th Dalai Lama was first installed in Lhasa, it was with an armed escort of Chinese troops and an attending Chinese minister, in accordance with centuries-old tradition. What upset the Tibetan lords and lamas in the early 1950s was that these latest Chinese were Communists. It would be only a matter of time, they feared, before the Communists started imposing their collectivist egalitarian schemes upon Tibet.The issue was joined in 1956-57, when armed Tibetan bands ambushed convoys of the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army. The uprising received extensive assistance from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), including military training, support camps in Nepal, and numerous airlifts.27 Meanwhile in the United States, the American Society for a Free Asia, a CIA-financed front, energetically publicized the cause of Tibetan resistance, with the Dalai Lama’s eldest brother, Thubtan Norbu, playing an active role in that organization. The Dalai Lama's second-eldest brother, Gyalo Thondup, established an intelligence operation with the CIA as early as 1951. He later upgraded it into a CIA-trained guerrilla unit whose recruits parachuted back into Tibet.28Many Tibetan commandos and agents whom the CIA dropped into the country were chiefs of aristocratic clans or the sons of chiefs. Ninety percent of them were never heard from again, according to a report from the CIA itself, meaning they were most likely captured and killed.29 “Many lamas and lay members of the elite and much of the Tibetan army joined the uprising, but in the main the populace did not, assuring its failure,” writes Hugh Deane.30 In their book on Tibet, Ginsburg and Mathos reach a similar conclusion: “As far as can be ascertained, the great bulk of the common people of Lhasa and of the adjoining countryside failed to join in the fighting against the Chinese both when it first began and as it progressed.”31 Eventually the resistance crumbled.Whatever wrongs and new oppressions introduced by the Chinese after 1959, they did abolish slavery and the Tibetan serfdom system of unpaid labor. They eliminated the many crushing taxes, started work projects, and greatly reduced unemployment and beggary. They established secular schools, thereby breaking the educational monopoly of the monasteries. And they constructed running water and electrical systems in Lhasa.32 Heinrich Harrer (later revealed to have been a sergeant in Hitler’s SS) wrote a bestseller about his experiences in Tibet that was made into a popular Hollywood movie. He reported that the Tibetans who resisted the Chinese “were predominantly nobles, semi-nobles and lamas; they were punished by being made to perform the lowliest tasks, such as laboring on roads and bridges. They were further humiliated by being made to clean up the city before the tourists arrived.” They also had to live in a camp originally reserved for beggars and vagrants--all of which Harrer treats as sure evidence of the dreadful nature of the Chinese occupation.33 By 1961, Chinese occupation authorities expropriated the landed estates owned by lords and lamas. They distributed many thousands of acres to tenant farmers and landless peasants, reorganizing them into hundreds of communes.. Herds once owned by nobility were turned over to collectives of poor shepherds. Improvements were made in the breeding of livestock, and new varieties of vegetables and new strains of wheat and barley were introduced, along with irrigation improvements, all of which reportedly led to an increase in agrarian production.34Many peasants remained as religious as ever, giving alms to the clergy. But monks who had been conscripted as children into the religious orders were now free to renounce the monastic life, and thousands did, especially the younger ones. The remaining clergy lived on modest government stipends and extra income earned by officiating at prayer services, weddings, and funerals.35Both the Dalai Lama and his advisor and youngest brother, Tendzin Choegyal, claimed that “more than 1.2 million Tibetans are dead as a result of the Chinese occupation.”36 The official 1953 census--six years before the Chinese crackdown--recorded the entire population residing in Tibet at 1,274,000.37 Other census counts put the population within Tibet at about two million. If the Chinese killed 1.2 million in the early 1960s then almost all of Tibet, would have been depopulated, transformed into a killing field dotted with death camps and mass graves--of which we have no evidence. The thinly distributed Chinese force in Tibet could not have rounded up, hunted down, and exterminated that many people even if it had spent all its time doing nothing else.Chinese authorities claim to have put an end to floggings, mutilations, and amputations as a form of criminal punishment. They themselves, however, have been charged with acts of brutality by exile Tibetans. The authorities do admit to “mistakes,” particularly during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution when the persecution of religious beliefs reached a high tide in both China and Tibet. After the uprising in the late 1950s, thousands of Tibetans were incarcerated. During the Great Leap Forward, forced collectivization and grain farming were imposed on the Tibetan peasantry, sometimes with disastrous effect on production. In the late 1970s, China began relaxing controls “and tried to undo some of the damage wrought during the previous two decades.”38In 1980, the Chinese government initiated reforms reportedly designed to grant Tibet a greater degree of self-rule and self-administration. Tibetans would now be allowed to cultivate private plots, sell their harvest surpluses, decide for themselves what crops to grow, and keep yaks and sheep. Communication with the outside world was again permitted, and frontier controls were eased to permit some Tibetans to visit exiled relatives in India and Nepal.39 By the 1980s many of the principal lamas had begun to shuttle back and forth between China and the exile communities abroad, “restoring their monasteries in Tibet and helping to revitalize Buddhism there.”40 As of 2007 Tibetan Buddhism was still practiced widely and tolerated by officialdom. Religious pilgrimages and other standard forms of worship were allowed but within limits. All monks and nuns had to sign a loyalty pledge that they would not use their religious position to foment secession or dissent. And displaying photos of the Dalai Lama was declared illegal.41In the 1990s, the Han, the ethnic group comprising over 95 percent of China’s immense population, began moving in substantial numbers into Tibet. On the streets of Lhasa and Shigatse, signs of Han colonization are readily visible. Chinese run the factories and many of the shops and vending stalls. Tall office buildings and large shopping centers have been built with funds that might have been better spent on water treatment plants and housing. Chinese cadres in Tibet too often view their Tibetan neighbors as backward and lazy, in need of economic development and “patriotic education.” During the 1990s Tibetan government employees suspected of harboring nationalist sympathies were purged from office, and campaigns were once again launched to discredit the Dalai Lama. Individual Tibetans reportedly were subjected to arrest, imprisonment, and forced labor for carrying out separatist activities and engaging in “political subversion.” Some were held in administrative detention without adequate food, water, and blankets, subjected to threats, beatings, and other mistreatment.42Tibetan history, culture, and certainly religion are slighted in schools. Teaching materials, though translated into Tibetan, focus mainly on Chinese history and culture. Chinese family planning regulations allow a three-child limit for Tibetan families. (There is only a one-child limit for Han families throughout China, and a two-child limit for rural Han families whose first child is a girl.) If a Tibetan couple goes over the three-child limit, the excess children can be denied subsidized daycare, health care, housing, and education. These penalties have been enforced irregularly and vary by district.43 None of these child services, it should be noted, were available to Tibetans before the Chinese takeover.For the rich lamas and secular lords, the Communist intervention was an unmitigated calamity. Most of them fled abroad, as did the Dalai Lama himself, who was assisted in his flight by the CIA. Some discovered to their horror that they would have to work for a living. Many, however, escaped that fate. Throughout the 1960s, the Tibetan exile community was secretly pocketing $1.7 million a year from the CIA, according to documents released by the State Department in 1998. Once this fact was publicized, the Dalai Lama’s organization itself issued a statement admitting that it had received millions of dollars from the CIA during the 1960s to send armed squads of exiles into Tibet to undermine the Maoist revolution. The Dalai Lama's annual payment from the CIA was $186,000. Indian intelligence also financed both him and other Tibetan exiles. He has refused to say whether he or his brothers worked for the CIA. The agency has also declined to comment.44In 1995, the News & Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina, carried a frontpage color photograph of the Dalai Lama being embraced by the reactionary Republican senator Jesse Helms, under the headline “Buddhist Captivates Hero of Religious Right.”45 In April 1999, along with Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, and the first George Bush, the Dalai Lama called upon the British government to release Augusto Pinochet, the former fascist dictator of Chile and a longtime CIA client who was visiting England. The Dalai Lama urged that Pinochet not be forced to go to Spain where he was wanted to stand trial for crimes against humanity. Into the twenty-first century, via the National Endowment for Democracy and other conduits that are more respectable sounding than the CIA, the U.S. Congress continued to allocate an annual $2 million to Tibetans in India, with additional millions for “democracy activities” within the Tibetan exile community. In addition to these funds, the Dalai Lama received money from financier George Soros.46Whatever the Dalai Lama’s associations with the CIA and various reactionaries, he did speak often of peace, love, and nonviolence. He himself really cannot be blamed for the abuses of Tibet’s ancien régime, having been but 25 years old when he fled into exile. In a 1994 interview, he went on record as favoring the building of schools and roads in his country. He said the corvée (forced unpaid serf labor) and certain taxes imposed on the peasants were “extremely bad.” And he disliked the way people were saddled with old debts sometimes passed down from generation to generation.47During the half century of living in the western world, he had embraced concepts such as human rights and religious freedom, ideas largely unknown in old Tibet. He even proposed democracy for Tibet, featuring a written constitution and a representative assembly.48In 1996, the Dalai Lama issued a statement that must have had an unsettling effect on the exile community. It read in part: “Marxism is founded on moral principles, while capitalism is concerned only with gain and profitability.” Marxism fosters “the equitable utilization of the means of production” and cares about “the fate of the working classes” and “the victims of . . . exploitation. For those reasons the system appeals to me, and . . . I think of myself as half-Marxist, half-Buddhist.49 But he also sent a reassuring message to “those who live in abundance”: “It is a good thing to be rich... Those are the fruits for deserving actions, the proof that they have been generous in the past.” And to the poor he offers this admonition: “There is no good reason to become bitter and rebel against those who have property and fortune... It is better to develop a positive attitude.”50In 2005 the Dalai Lama signed a widely advertised statement along with ten other Nobel Laureates supporting the “inalienable and fundamental human right” of working people throughout the world to form labor unions to protect their interests, in accordance with the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In many countries “this fundamental right is poorly protected and in some it is explicitly banned or brutally suppressed,” the statement read. Burma, China, Colombia, Bosnia, and a few other countries were singled out as among the worst offenders. Even the United States “fails to adequately protect workers’ rights to form unions and bargain collectively. Millions of U.S. workers lack any legal protection to form unions….”51The Dalai Lama also gave full support to removing the ingrained traditional obstacles that have kept Tibetan nuns from receiving an education. Upon arriving in exile, few nuns could read or write. In Tibet their activities had been devoted to daylong periods of prayer and chants. But in northern India they now began reading Buddhist philosophy and engaging in theological study and debate, activities that in old Tibet had been open only to monks.52 In November 2005 the Dalai Lama spoke at Stanford University on “The Heart of Nonviolence,” but stopped short of a blanket condemnation of all violence. Violent actions that are committed in order to reduce future suffering are not to be condemned, he said, citing World War II as an example of a worthy effort to protect democracy. What of the four years of carnage and mass destruction in Iraq, a war condemned by most of the world—even by a conservative pope--as a blatant violation of international law and a crime against humanity? The Dalai Lama was undecided: “The Iraq war—it’s too early to say, right or wrong.”53 Earlier he had voiced support for the U.S. military intervention against Yugoslavia and, later on, the U.S. military intervention into Afghanistan.54
III. Exit Feudal Theocracy
As the Shangri-La myth would have it, in old Tibet the people lived in contented and tranquil symbiosis with their monastic and secular lords. Rich lamas and poor monks, wealthy landlords and impoverished serfs were all bonded together, mutually sustained by the comforting balm of a deeply spiritual and pacific culture.One is reminded of the idealized image of feudal Europe presented by latter-day conservative Catholics such as G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc. For them, medieval Christendom was a world of contented peasants living in the secure embrace of their Church, under the more or less benign protection of their lords.55 Again we are invited to accept a particular culture in its idealized form divorced from its murky material history. This means accepting it as presented by its favored class, by those who profited most from it. The Shangri-La image of Tibet bears no more resemblance to historic actuality than does the pastoral image of medieval Europe. Seen in all its grim realities, old Tibet confirms the view I expressed in an earlier book, namely that culture is anything but neutral. Culture can operate as a legitimating cover for a host of grave injustices, benefiting a privileged portion of society at great cost to the rest.56 In theocratic feudal Tibet, ruling interests manipulated the traditional culture to fortify their own wealth and power. The theocracy equated rebellious thought and action with satanic influence. It propagated the general presumption of landlord superiority and peasant unworthiness. The rich were represented as deserving their good life, and the lowly poor as deserving their mean existence, all codified in teachings about the karmic residue of virtue and vice accumulated from past lives, presented as part of God’s will. Were the more affluent lamas just hypocrites who preached one thing and secretly believed another? More likely they were genuinely attached to those beliefs that brought such good results for them. That their theology so perfectly supported their material privileges only strengthened the sincerity with which it was embraced. It might be said that we denizens of the modern secular world cannot grasp the equations of happiness and pain, contentment and custom, that characterize more traditionally spiritual societies. This is probably true, and it may explain why some of us idealize such societies. But still, a gouged eye is a gouged eye; a flogging is a flogging; and the grinding exploitation of serfs and slaves is a brutal class injustice whatever its cultural wrapping. There is a difference between a spiritual bond and human bondage, even when both exist side by sideMany ordinary Tibetans want the Dalai Lama back in their country, but it appears that relatively few want a return to the social order he represented. A 1999 story in the Washington Post notes that the Dalai Lama continues to be revered in Tibet, but . . . few Tibetans would welcome a return of the corrupt aristocratic clans that fled with him in 1959 and that comprise the bulk of his advisers. Many Tibetan farmers, for example, have no interest in surrendering the land they gained during China’s land reform to the clans. Tibet’s former slaves say they, too, don’t want their former masters to return to power. “I’ve already lived that life once before,” said Wangchuk, a 67-year-old former slave who was wearing his best clothes for his yearly pilgrimage to Shigatse, one of the holiest sites of Tibetan Buddhism. He said he worshipped the Dalai Lama, but added, “I may not be free under Chinese communism, but I am better off than when I was a slave.”57It should be noted that the Dalai Lama is not the only highly placed lama chosen in childhood as a reincarnation. One or another reincarnate lama or tulku--a spiritual teacher of special purity elected to be reborn again and again--can be found presiding over most major monasteries. The tulku system is unique to Tibetan Buddhism. Scores of Tibetan lamas claim to be reincarnate tulkus. The very first tulku was a lama known as the Karmapa who appeared nearly three centuries before the first Dalai Lama. The Karmapa is leader of a Tibetan Buddhist tradition known as the Karma Kagyu. The rise of the Gelugpa sect headed by the Dalai Lama led to a politico-religious rivalry with the Kagyu that has lasted five hundred years and continues to play itself out within the Tibetan exile community today. That the Kagyu sect has grown famously, opening some six hundred new centers around the world in the last thirty-five years, has not helped the situation.The search for a tulku, Erik Curren reminds us, has not always been conducted in that purely spiritual mode portrayed in certain Hollywood films. “Sometimes monastic officials wanted a child from a powerful local noble family to give the cloister more political clout. Other times they wanted a child from a lower-class family who would have little leverage to influence the child’s upbringing.” On other occasions “a local warlord, the Chinese emperor or even the Dalai Lama’s government in Lhasa might [have tried] to impose its choice of tulku on a monastery for political reasons.”58Such may have been the case in the selection of the 17th Karmapa, whose monastery-in-exile is situated in Rumtek, in the Indian state of Sikkim. In 1993 the monks of the Karma Kagyu tradition had a candidate of their own choice. The Dalai Lama, along with several dissenting Karma Kagyu leaders (and with the support of the Chinese government!) backed a different boy. The Kagyu monks charged that the Dalai Lama had overstepped his authority in attempting to select a leader for their sect. “Neither his political role nor his position as a lama in his own Gelugpa tradition entitled him to choose the Karmapa, who is a leader of a different tradition…”59 As one of the Kagyu leaders insisted, “Dharma is about thinking for yourself. It is not about automatically following a teacher in all things, no matter how respected that teacher may be. More than anyone else, Buddhists should respect other people’s rights—their human rights and their religious freedom.”60What followed was a dozen years of conflict in the Tibetan exile community, punctuated by intermittent riots, intimidation, physical attacks, blacklisting, police harassment, litigation, official corruption, and the looting and undermining of the Karmapa’s monastery in Rumtek by supporters of the Gelugpa faction. All this has caused at least one western devotee to wonder if the years of exile were not hastening the moral corrosion of Tibetan Buddhism.61What is clear is that not all Tibetan Buddhists accept the Dalai Lama as their theological and spiritual mentor. Though he is referred to as the “spiritual leader of Tibet,” many see this title as little more than a formality. It does not give him authority over the four religious schools of Tibet other than his own, “just as calling the U.S. president the ‘leader of the free world’ gives him no role in governing France or Germany.”62 Not all Tibetan exiles are enamoured of the old Shangri-La theocracy. Kim Lewis, who studied healing methods with a Buddhist monk in Berkeley, California, had occasion to talk at length with more than a dozen Tibetan women who lived in the monk’s building. When she asked how they felt about returning to their homeland, the sentiment was unanimously negative. At first, Lewis assumed that their reluctance had to do with the Chinese occupation, but they quickly informed her otherwise. They said they were extremely grateful “not to have to marry 4 or 5 men, be pregnant almost all the time,” or deal with sexually transmitted diseases contacted from a straying husband. The younger women “were delighted to be getting an education, wanted absolutely nothing to do with any religion, and wondered why Americans were so naïve [about Tibet].”63 The women interviewed by Lewis recounted stories of their grandmothers’ ordeals with monks who used them as “wisdom consorts.” By sleeping with the monks, the grandmothers were told, they gained “the means to enlightenment” -- after all, the Buddha himself had to be with a woman to reach enlightenment. The women also mentioned the “rampant” sex that the supposedly spiritual and abstemious monks practiced with each other in the Gelugpa sect. The women who were mothers spoke bitterly about the monastery’s confiscation of their young boys in Tibet. They claimed that when a boy cried for his mother, he would be told “Why do you cry for her, she gave you up--she's just a woman.”The monks who were granted political asylum in California applied for public assistance. Lewis, herself a devotee for a time, assisted with the paperwork. She observes that they continue to receive government checks amounting to $550 to $700 per month along with Medicare. In addition, the monks reside rent free in nicely furnished apartments. “They pay no utilities, have free access to the Internet on computers provided for them, along with fax machines, free cell and home phones and cable TV.” They also receive a monthly payment from their order, along with contributions and dues from their American followers. Some devotees eagerly carry out chores for the monks, including grocery shopping and cleaning their apartments and toilets. These same holy men, Lewis remarks, “have no problem criticizing Americans for their ‘obsession with material things.’”64To welcome the end of the old feudal theocracy in Tibet is not to applaud everything about Chinese rule in that country. This point is seldom understood by today’s Shangri-La believers in the West. The converse is also true: To denounce the Chinese occupation does not mean we have to romanticize the former feudal régime. Tibetans deserve to be perceived as actual people, not perfected spiritualists or innocent political symbols. “To idealize them,” notes Ma Jian, a dissident Chinese traveler to Tibet (now living in Britain), “is to deny them their humanity.”65 One common complaint among Buddhist followers in the West is that Tibet’s religious culture is being undermined by the Chinese occupation. To some extent this seems to be the case. Many of the monasteries are closed, and much of the theocracy seems to have passed into history. Whether Chinese rule has brought betterment or disaster is not the central issue here. The question is what kind of country was old Tibet. What I am disputing is the supposedly pristine spiritual nature of that pre-invasion culture. We can advocate religious freedom and independence for a new Tibet without having to embrace the mythology about old Tibet. Tibetan feudalism was cloaked in Buddhism, but the two are not to be equated. In reality, old Tibet was not a Paradise Lost. It was a retrograde repressive theocracy of extreme privilege and poverty, a long way from Shangri-La. Finally, let it be said that if Tibet’s future is to be positioned somewhere within China’s emerging free-market paradise, then this does not bode well for the Tibetans. China boasts a dazzling 8 percent economic growth rate and is emerging as one of the world’s greatest industrial powers. But with economic growth has come an ever deepening gulf between rich and poor. Most Chinese live close to the poverty level or well under it, while a small group of newly brooded capitalists profit hugely in collusion with shady officials. Regional bureaucrats milk the country dry, extorting graft from the populace and looting local treasuries. Land grabbing in cities and countryside by avaricious developers and corrupt officials at the expense of the populace are almost everyday occurrences. Tens of thousands of grassroot protests and disturbances have erupted across the country, usually to be met with unforgiving police force. Corruption is so prevalent, reaching into so many places, that even the normally complacent national leadership was forced to take notice and began moving against it in late 2006. Workers in China who try to organize labor unions in the corporate dominated “business zones” risk losing their jobs or getting beaten and imprisoned. Millions of business zone workers toil twelve-hour days at subsistence wages. With the health care system now being privatized, free or affordable medical treatment is no longer available for millions. Men have tramped into the cities in search of work, leaving an increasingly impoverished countryside populated by women, children, and the elderly. The suicide rate has increased dramatically, especially among women.66China’s natural environment is sadly polluted. Most of its fabled rivers and many lakes are dead, producing massive fish die-offs from the billions of tons of industrial emissions and untreated human waste dumped into them. Toxic effluents, including pesticides and herbicides, seep into ground water or directly into irrigation canals. Cancer rates in villages situated along waterways have skyrocketed a thousand-fold. Hundreds of millions of urban residents breathe air rated as dangerously unhealthy, contaminated by industrial growth and the recent addition of millions of automobiles. An estimated 400,000 die prematurely every year from air pollution. Government environmental agencies have no enforcement power to stop polluters, and generally the government ignores or denies such problems, concentrating instead on industrial growth.67 China’s own scientific establishment reports that unless greenhouse gases are curbed, the nation will face massive crop failures along with catastrophic food and water shortages in the years ahead. In 2006-2007 severe drought was already afflicting southwest China.68If China is the great success story of speedy free market development, and is to be the model and inspiration for Tibet’s future, then old feudal Tibet indeed may start looking a lot better than it actually was.

Notes:1. Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God, (University of California Press, 2000), 6, 112-113, 157.2. Kyong-Hwa Seok, "Korean Monk Gangs Battle for Temple Turf," San Francisco Examiner, 3 December 1998.3. Los Angeles Times, February 25, 2006.4. Dalai Lama quoted in Donald Lopez Jr., Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1998), 205.5. Erik D. Curren, Buddha's Not Smiling: Uncovering Corruption at the Heart of Tibetan Buddhism Today (Alaya Press 2005), 41.6. Stuart Gelder and Roma Gelder, The Timely Rain: Travels in New Tibet (Monthly Review Press, 1964), 119, 123; and Melvyn C. Goldstein, The Snow Lion and the Dragon: China, Tibet, and the Dalai Lama (University of California Press, 1995), 6-16.7. Curren, Buddha's Not Smiling, 50.8. Stephen Bachelor, "Letting Daylight into Magic: The Life and Times of Dorje Shugden," Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, 7, Spring 1998. Bachelor discusses the sectarian fanaticism and doctrinal clashes that ill fit the Western portrait of Buddhism as a non-dogmatic and tolerant tradition.9. Dhoring Tenzin Paljor, Autobiography, cited in Curren, Buddha's Not Smiling, 8.10. Pradyumna P. Karan, The Changing Face of Tibet: The Impact of Chinese Communist Ideology on the Landscape (Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1976), 64. 11. See Gary Wilson's report in Worker's World, 6 February 1997.12. Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 62 and 174.13. As skeptically noted by Lopez, Prisoners of Shangri-La, 9.14. Melvyn Goldstein, William Siebenschuh, and Tashì-Tsering, The Struggle for Modern Tibet: The Autobiography of Tashì-Tsering (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1997).15. Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 110.16. Melvyn C. Goldstein, A History of Modern Tibet 1913-1951 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 5 and passim.17. Anna Louise Strong, Tibetan Interviews (Peking: New World Press, 1959), 15, 19-21, 24.18. Quoted in Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 25.19. Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 31.20. Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 175-176; and Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 25-26.21. Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 113.22. A. Tom Grunfeld, The Making of Modern Tibet rev. ed. (Armonk, N.Y. and London: 1996), 9 and 7-33 for a general discussion of feudal Tibet; see also Felix Greene, A Curtain of Ignorance (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961), 241-249; Goldstein, A History of Modern Tibet, 3-5; and Lopez, Prisoners of Shangri-La, passim.23. Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 91-96.24. Waddell, Landon, O'Connor, and Chapman are quoted in Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 123-125.25. Goldstein, The Snow Lion and the Dragon, 52.26. Heinrich Harrer, Return to Tibet (New York: Schocken, 1985), 29.27. See Kenneth Conboy and James Morrison, The CIA's Secret War in Tibet (Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Press, 2002); and William Leary, "Secret Mission to Tibet," Air & Space, December 1997/January 1998.28. On the CIA's links to the Dalai Lama and his family and entourage, see Loren Coleman, Tom Slick and the Search for the Yeti (London: Faber and Faber, 1989).29. Leary, "Secret Mission to Tibet."30. Hugh Deane, "The Cold War in Tibet," CovertAction Quarterly (Winter 1987).31. George Ginsburg and Michael Mathos Communist China and Tibet (1964), quoted in Deane, "The Cold War in Tibet." Deane notes that author Bina Roy reached a similar conclusion.32. See Greene, A Curtain of Ignorance, 248 and passim; and Grunfeld, The Making of Modern Tibet, passim.33. Harrer, Return to Tibet, 54. 34. Karan, The Changing Face of Tibet, 36-38, 41, 57-58; London Times, 4 July 1966.35. Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 29 and 47-48.36. Tendzin Choegyal, "The Truth about Tibet," Imprimis (publication of Hillsdale College, Michigan), April 1999.37. Karan, The Changing Face of Tibet, 52-53.38. Elaine Kurtenbach, Associate Press report, 12 February 1998.39. Goldstein, The Snow Lion and the Dragon, 47-48.40. Curren, Buddha's Not Smiling, 8.41. San Francisco Chonicle, 9 January 2007.42. Report by the International Committee of Lawyers for Tibet, A Generation in Peril (Berkeley Calif.: 2001), passim.43. International Committee of Lawyers for Tibet, A Generation in Peril, 66-68, 98.44. im Mann, "CIA Gave Aid to Tibetan Exiles in '60s, Files Show," Los Angeles Times, 15 September 1998; and New York Times, 1 October, 1998.45. News & Observer, 6 September 1995, cited in Lopez, Prisoners of Shangri-La, 3.46. Heather Cottin, "George Soros, Imperial Wizard," CovertAction Quarterly no. 74 (Fall 2002).47. Goldstein, The Snow Lion and the Dragon, 51.48. Tendzin Choegyal, "The Truth about Tibet."49. The Dalai Lama in Marianne Dresser (ed.), Beyond Dogma: Dialogues and Discourses (Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic Books, 1996)50. These comments are from a book of the Dalai Lama's writings quoted in Nikolai Thyssen, "Oceaner af onkel Tom," Dagbladet Information, 29 December 2003, (translated for me by Julius Wilm). Thyssen's review (in Danish) can be found at http://www.information.dk/Indgang/VisArkiv.dna?pArtNo=20031229154141.txt.51. "A Global Call for Human Rights in the Workplace," New York Times, 6 December 2005.52. San Francisco Chronicle, 14 January 2007.53. San Francisco Chronicle, 5 November 2005.54. Times of India 13 October 2000; Samantha Conti's report, Reuter, 17 June 1994; Amitabh Pal, "The Dalai Lama Interview," Progressive, January 2006.55. The Gelders draw this comparison, The Timely Rain, 64.56. Michael Parenti, The Culture Struggle (Seven Stories, 2006).57. John Pomfret, "Tibet Caught in China's Web," Washington Post, 23 July 1999.58. Curren, Buddha's Not Smiling, 3.59. Curren, Buddha's Not Smiling, 13 and 138.60. Curren, Buddha's Not Smiling, 21.61. Curren, Buddha's Not Smiling, passim. For books that are favorable toward the Karmapa appointed by the Dalai Lama's faction, see Lea Terhune, Karmapa of Tibet: The Politics of Reincarnation (Wisdom Publications, 2004); Gaby Naher, Wrestling the Dragon (Rider 2004); Mick Brown, The Dance of 17 Lives (Bloomsbury 2004).62. Erik Curren, "Not So Easy to Say Who is Karmapa," correspondence, 22 August 2005, www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=22.1577,0,0,1,0.63. Kim Lewis, correspondence to me, 15 July 2004.64. Kim Lewis, correspondence to me, 16 July 2004.65. Ma Jian, Stick Out Your Tongue (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2006).66. See the PBS documentary, China from the Inside, January 2007, KQED.PBS.org/kqed/chinanside.67. San Francisco Chronicle, 9 January 2007.68. "China: Global Warming to Cause Food Shortages," People's Weekly World, 13 January 2007

Aussie youth - the problems are becoming obvious..

The SMH has covered the youth welfare crisis in Sydney admirably this week, and the conclusions are obvious.
This problem goes straight to the core of all that is wrong in Western society.
The breakdown of family support systems, combined with the fracturing of the family unit caused by socio-economic pressures, acceptance of drug & alcohol abuse etc. all stem from the capitalist, materialistic, politically neo-liberal rubbish we are still fed and forced to 'value'.
I think it could be time to change this situation..

International pressure on China, Now!

As the violence escalates in Tibet, the rest of the international community sits back and waits for a conclusion – without accepting that it is ‘they’ who must apply the necessary economic pressure etc to quell China’s violent mishandling of the ‘Tibet demonstrations’.
The usual hypocrisy is noted well in the absence of any comment from the US administration, and the UN has commented benignly as expected. The economic ties between China & the West are distorting the political response.
Not dissimilar to the recent situation in Burma, the conventional media in Tibet is suppressed. Internet access is shut down, and the media is tightly controlled domestically in China. Most information is coming through India & Nepal, both also having some immediate involvement in this. The Nepalese Government appears to be aligning itself with the wishes of China, and the Dalai Llama, in his Indian exile, must take great care as to what he says, due to conditions imposed by the Indian Governments agreement with China.
But the personal digital camera is ‘leaking’ those graphic images that take the attention of the world. Modern communications make the once previously hidden available to millions, so we are all seeing the violence.
Dialogue must be opened at all levels over the Chinese occupation, and must include the international community. China must remove its insurgent troops from the streets of Lhasa, and allow the ‘usual’ local systems to resume immediately.
The Humanist Movement & the Centre of Cultures will take measures to promote a full international boycott of the Olympic Games if China refuses to relinquish over their current ‘Tibet occupation’.
It is unacceptable on all levels for the Violence to continue..

Sorry - the hardest word..

Today, the Australian Government apologised for all of the injustices metered out to the Australian Indigenous population since population by Europeans..
For the last 238 years, Aboriginal Australians have been used, abused, and sometimes cared for by our British based law. Individuals have hated & sometimes genuinely loved & respected our co-inhabitants.
Over the last 50 years in Australia there has been recognition of the plight faced by the Aboriginal Nation and a number of attempts to improve the lot of our Brothers. Through reports prepared by the Labor Keating government, it was recommended that an ‘official’ apology be announced to the Aboriginal Nation – a symbolic recognition of the injustices suffered under previous (& present?) Australian Governments,
Until now, the Howard led ‘Liberal’ Government has steadfastly refused to take part in such an event. Yesterday, the recently elected Labor Government, led by Kevin Rudd, took over where Keating left in 1996, & apologised to the Aboriginal Nation.
It was an emotional moment. The word ‘Sorry’ used 6 times in a speech by Kevin Rudd was almost universally accepted. Programs were announced, inviting the Liberal Party opposition into the decision making process. The Liberal party head responded in kind, but in attempts to qualify some of the questionable actions of the past, had the backs of many turned toward him at gatherings across the Nation.
It was also universally agreed that this is merely another step in the path to reconciliation, to finding the balance between cultures..
Every now & then, something comes from the Australian ‘condition’, and accumulates into something great & progressive in the sense of world cultural democracy..

Scott Wilkie.

Screwing the average citizen..

The control of economic inflation & social equality…
by Scott Wilkie
Here in Oz, official (reserve bank) interest rates are on the rise & we now have the highest rate in 10 years, with no sign of abatement.
The rate rises are in response to growing ‘inflation’ of the $Au in the market place, and a therefore perceived overheating of the economy.
Now, the approach to restoring low inflation levels appears to be this. Reserve Bank sees prices & wages ‘on the rise’. In an effort to stop this spiral, it introduces a ‘sudden jump’ in the cost of purchasing through the only easy & traditional means it has – the official interest rate, the cost of its own money. This allows no time for ‘absorption’ by the economy & so some companies/people stop spending, forcing a retraction in the marketplace. When this takes hold, the RB quickly follows this with an interest rate drop, correcting the economy.
The above may be an oversimplification, but I’d like to comment..
Official Interest rate changes (through the banks) affect the average person, (through mortgage & credit interest rates), the entrepreneur, the service industry & any speculative enterprise. The people we should value (& leave unhurt) most, in my opinion.
Large corporations & banks in particular are left to pass on any cost imposed. For them, it is merely a matter of colluding and balancing the books, increasingly in their favour through the rate rises (lending & investment differential) so that the profit margin is increased, appeasing the shareholder.
I say fuck the shareholder (apologies) at this point, but only because the Banks & major financial businesses aren’t forced to take on some of the costs of inflation. I’m sorry but the value of shares should drop appropriately at this point, as they have recently. Things should be seen in proportion to human need. The partial loss of the value of your ‘shares & investments’ should not be protected in favour of those having their primary household residences repossessed, for example.
And why does the Fed Govt insist on adding to inflation by overtaxing basic ‘working class’ commodities such as beer? The retail tax rate beer & cigarettes in Australia is linked to the CPI (consumer price index) and such commodities are subject to an automatic, twice yearly tax increase. And its no small percentage, either. While we’re here would could also take a look at the virtual monopolisation of the ‘supermarket’ industry by Woolworths here in NSW. Woolworths have a terrible reputation for screwing their suppliers for every last cent and not passing on these cost reductions to the consumer..
The ultimate solution to all this is ‘detailed’ price control, but in this capitalist economy, post Bob Hawke’s floating of the $Au & the new world of global economics, this is certainly unpopular with the big end of town. Control of wages & the labour market are the ‘traditional’ method of cutting the cash flow
If this Federal Australian Labor Government truly wishes to serve its constituents, it should increase costs on ‘luxury’ items (through tax) on a sliding scale into the ‘necessities’. To me with this logic, we maintain the aims of the roots of democracy, & go a long way toward satisfying the concepts of equality and ultimately basic Human rights. We intend to not financially ‘nobble’ the people who are least capable of handling it.
All of this can be handled through a sliding ‘GST’ after careful examination of the flow-on impacts generally, especially at the ‘housing’ level (housing is a ‘basic neccessity’), the aim here to keep the effects of inflation (& effects of ‘mass’ correction) minimised where it matters, for those who can ill afford it..

Noam Chomsky comments on World Democracy..

ISLAMABAD (February 02 2008): Noam Chomsky, a professor of
Linguistics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who is a
well-known writer, thinker and political activist. In this interview
that he gave to Business Recorder's and Aaj TV's Fahad Faruqui Professor
Chomsky analyses Pakistan's political scenario, its foreign policy and
relationships - over the years - with the West.

He also talks about Democracy and its abuse worldwide. He comes up
with some solutions with a view to making this world a better place. The
following are the excerpts:

Q: One of the characteristics of a failed state that you highlight
in your book -Failed States - is America's increasing failure to protect
its own citizens in relation to war-on-terror. Can you draw a parallel
with how Pakistan has participated in this global push and has suffered
the consequences in the form of increasing numbers of suicide bombings?

A: I'm afraid to say Pakistan is the paradigm example of a failed
state and has been for a long time. It has had military rule, violence
and oppression, Since the 1980's, it has undergone an extremely
dangerous form of radical Islamisation, which has undermined a good part
of the society, under the Zia-ul-Haq tyranny.

Now it is in danger of collapsing, there is a rebellion in
Balochistan, the FATA territories are out of control and always have
been - and it is getting worse. It is possible that the Bhutto
assassination might increase the severe unrest in Sindh, where there has
been plenty of oppression, and this may lead to another secessionist
movement.

The are recent polls of Pakistan, good polls, which show that the
Pakistani population is in favour of Democracy, possibly with an Islamic
flavour, but not this one of oppression, but those hopes are not even
near being realised in the existing political and social system.

Q: Don't you feel that democratic regimes can at times be authoritarian?

A: That is when they do not function. If you have formal democratic
structure, but they do not function, yes, it can be authoritarian, it
can be totalitarian! The old Soviet Union also called itself a democracy.

Q: What solutions do you propose for Pakistan in order for it to
become a true Democracy rather than a failed state?

A: By developing political and social arrangements in which the
population can actually determine effective policy. That is what
democracy is.

Q: How can Pakistan form a democratic regime with an Islamic flavour
when its Western allies buck the notion of Clash of Civilisations, which
is at odds with everything that belong to the East?

A: The Clash of Civilisations is a concept that was invented
actually by Bernard Lewis, a scholar of Islam, who has a bitter hatred
for Islam. It was picked up by Samuel Huntington, a well known political
scientist and he made it famous. The conception is supposed to be that
the United States and its Western allies are civilised, enlightened and
liberal, all sorts of wonderful qualities. And, the Islamic world is
developing in the opposite direction, what is sometimes called
Islamofacism - backward, regressive, violent, which doesn't understand
their elevated ideals and so on and so forth.

Looking at the facts such as Iraq which is the center of concern,
the US Military carried out regular intensive studies of public opinion
in Iraq because it is a core part of military occupation to try to
understand the opinions of people you are trying to control and
dominate. They released the study a few week ago, which was reported in
the Washington Post, the main national newspaper, on December 19th 2007.
The military experts say that they are very encouraged by what they call
"good news from Iraq." The "good news" is that the Iraqi's have "shared
beliefs." That is supposed to refute the idea that they can't come
together and that they are involved in tribal warfare and so on, so it
is very encouraging, until you look at what the "shared beliefs" are. To
which they say that the United States is responsible for all of the
atrocities and disasters that have taken place, since the invasion and,
therefore, the United States should get out. The aggressors should
leave. That is the Iraqi position.

Notice that the Iraqis accept the ideals United States professes,
for example, the ideals of the Nuremburg Tribunals, the American-run
Tribunal, which tried Nazi criminals and hanged them for their crimes.
The worst crime was the crime of aggression and which the Tribunal
called the supreme international crime, which includes all of the evil
that follows. So, in the case of Iraq, which is a textbook example of
aggression - US and British aggression - includes all of the evil that
followed: including sectarian warfare, the catastrophic affects on the
society, the hundreds and thousands of excessive deaths, millions of
people who were displaced, all of that is included in the supreme crime
of aggression. And, Iraqi's agree with it. Off-course! Americans don't
agree with that, nor does Europe, they don't agree with the ideals they
profess; in fact, they dismiss them with contempt. Any mention of what I
just said would be barely understood in the United States or the West,
by intellectual opinion, but the Iraqi's understand it.

Now let's compare the United States. There is much debate about what
the United States should do about Iraq. On January 20th 2008, The New
York Times (newspaper for the record) had a lead story - by its main
military correspondent, Michael Gordon - on Iraq and the elections,
which reviewed the various opinions open to the United States and
reviewed the opinion of the government officials, military experts, the
political candidates, commentators, specialists and so on - a very
extensive review.

Only one voice was missing, the voice of the people of Iraq. They
are not people; they are what are sometimes called un-people, not
people, so their voice doesn't matter. We, should ask ourselves if there
is a clash of civilisations, who are the enlightened liberal people.

Q: Pakistan has shifted in and out of democracy without stabilising
in any one position, is it possible for Pakistan to yield towards the
right direction?

A: For Pakistan, its alliance with the United States, I think, has
been quite harmful throughout its history. The United States has tried
to convert Pakistan into its highly militarised ally and has supported
its military dictatorship. The Reagan administration strongly supported
the Zia-ul-Haq tyranny, which had a very harmful affect on Pakistan, and
the Reagan administration even pretended they didn't know that Pakistan
was developing nuclear weapons.

Off course they knew, but they had to pretend they didn't, so that
Congress would continue to fund their support for Pakistan, for the
army, and for the ISI, all part of their support for the Mujahideen in
Afghanistan, which was not intended to help the Afghans.

We know that very well, just from what happened afterwards. It was
intended to harm the Russians, so the Reagan administration was using
Pakistan as a way to kill the Russians. Actually, that was the term that
was used by the head of the CIA station in Pakistan that "we have to
kill Russians," not that the poor Afghans would suffer, but who cares.

Q: Can Pakistan ever become a true Democracy when it is continually
expected to pander to external pressures, to act in ways which has a
negative impact on the people of the country?

A: Yes, it can. I mean there is a lot wrong with India, horrible
things in India, but it is more or less a functioning democracy.
Pakistan could move to that level, but, I think, it has to disentangle
itself from the domination from the United States. Right now the US is
supporting Musharraf - is that a way to democracy?

Pakistanis have been polled extensively and we know information
about Pakistani opinion. A large number of Pakistanis want Democracy -
with an Islamic flavour - but that could be a functioning Democracy.
Their problem is to create it, and I think that the US influence has
been an impediment to that.

Q: Can a Democracy with an Islamic flavour be acceptable to the
world - especially its Western Allies?

A: It doesn't matter if it's acceptable to the Western countries,
what matters is what is acceptable to Pakistanis. The Western countries
would like to rule the world, but they have no authority to do that. I
think they have a lot of problems with their own democracies, for
example, take Iraq again, I said that the voice of Iraqis is missing in
these reviews, but I could add that the voice of Americans is also missing.

What Americans want doesn't matter, the large number of Americans
agree with Iraqis that US forces should withdraw from Iraq. Americans
are not as civilised as the Iraqis are in recognising that the US
aggression is to blame for the trocities.

The US citizens don't accept the professed American ideals to the
extent that the Iraqis do, but that is result of propaganda, deception
and so on, but their voice matters. This is not the only example in
which US policy is radically divorced from the public opinion.

Even with the issue of Iran-US and Iranian public opinion have both
been studied extensively by a leading polling agency in the World, and
they tend to agree on most issues such as how to resolve the problem,
and that Iran has the right to nuclear power, like any signatory of
non-proliferation treaty, but it does not have the right to acquire
nuclear weapons.

They also agree that there should a nuclear weapons free zone in the
whole region that would include Israel, Iran and Pakistan. An
overwhelming majority of Americans and Iranians agree with that.

Furthermore, a huge majority of American (over 80 percent), thinks
the United States should live up to its obligations under the
non-proliferation treaty and make good faith efforts to eliminate
nuclear weapons altogether. A large majority of Americans are even
opposed to any military threats against Iran, which they see as a crime.

If United States and Iran were both functioning democracies in which
public opinion mattered, this crisis, which is a serious one, could
probably be resolved. Unfortunately they are not, and that's not due to
a clash of civilisations because the problem is right here in the United
States. In fact, the opinions of the American population are not only
not implemented, but they are not even reported.

Q: You've highlighted public opinion. So, my concern is, is it
possible for Pakistan to steer towards the right direction, when 65% of
its population is illiterate and has no active participation in politics?

A: Yes, it's very possible; in fact, one of the dramatic and
successful achievements of Democracy, in recent years, has been in
Bolivia. Bolivia is the poorest country in South America. Extremely
impoverished population, illiterate and so on, but they carried out what
was a real triumph of Democracy - something that cannot be imagined in
the West.

In December 2005, the indigenous population, the Indian population,
which happens to be in majority in Bolivia, for the first time entered
the political arena and were able to take political power through the
vote and elected someone from their own ranks, who is committed to
cultural rights, letting the population control their own natural
resources, and many other moves towards justice and equality.

That is a remarkable exercising Democracy; it doesn't take place in
United States or Western countries. And, it was poor and the level of
literacy was quite low. These were the people who were fighting for
their rights for years.

The election didn't come out of nowhere. A few years earlier, the
Indian population had driven the World Bank and major corporations, like
Bechtel, out of the country because they were trying to privatise water.
Privatising water may look good in the study of economics at graduate
school, but for the population it means that they can't purchase water
for their children, so they rejected and they struggled in which many
killed. The drove the corporations and the world bank out.

Q: As you may know, elections in Pakistan will be held soon and
public polls on television depict a lack of confidence in the political
system. The poor masses have more immediate concerns such as rising
prices of flour and wheat, scarcity of gas and electricity in the
country, than bothering with who to vote for - if at all. What are your
thoughts on this and how can governments gain the confidence of people
and get their active participation in Politics?

A: Governments will gain active participation for the populous, if
the issues that concern the population like getting shoes for your
children or having water to drink or having cultural rights or
controlling your own natural resources, if those issues are open to vote
on then they'll vote, just like in Bolivia. If the vote is a matter of
picking one or the other member from the wealthy and oppressive elite
then people won't vote. The voting is very low in the United States for
similar reasons.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2008

The founder of the Humanist Movement - informal, informative conversation

This is a summary of a conversation between two friends. One is the founder of the Humanist Movement.

Informal Conversation with Silo
Mendoza, 15th January 2008
(Notes by José S. and Marlon O.)
These points are non-textual notes. Fragments of a fragile memory that attempts to reconstruct an inspirational conversation. Its thematic structure contextualises some aspects of the moment of process in which new initiatives are emerging and Halls of Silo’s Message are multiplying.
Introduction:
The conversation started with a few comments about the last meeting of the General Assembly of GCs. The theme of the inter-node connections was highlighted and the Acrobat Connect system that is found to be in a process of being perfected. In a few months everything will be ready. It was seen to be interesting that signals were sent from the parks at La Reja and Caucaia and the connection from the halls. He commented, in addition, about the connection tests done in the previous days between the halls and specifically from Manantiales, where he was present and which worked with a system of cell cards.
The times
The contra
He referred to the advance of the parks and halls around the world, recent advances like those in Toledo, Attigliano, Red Bluff, Caucaia and others, where their development is presenting diverse characteristics. However, he dwelt on the consideration of the difficulties presented by the installation of Alexandria Park and the relationship with the contra. How do the contra arrive?... through different channels and now they come from Egypt, where we are accused of attacking morality and the good customs of Islam and working against it. Now they accuse us of being Zionists. Their way of working is always the same: first they make noise with the press, this creates the appropriate climate for the police to come and attack us, to the point that there was the deportation of one of our people who comes from Portugal.
We will not leave it there. We will withdraw for now, without leaving aside our interest in reaching these cultures, Arab, Islamic, Asian, that are millions. Not because there is resistance in the place do we have to abandon everything else. We should advance.
The contra is fundamentalist, it has no clear arguments. To have good contacts with the director of Alexandria Library has not been sufficient either. In reality, it is the same thing that has been repeated since our beginnings: a whole army to take down a hermitage. It is like something paranormal, it would seem that they sense that something is going to happen. It is not an organised question, but rather it arises simultaneously in the human consciousness. Nor is it something intentional, it is more visceral. It is they themselves who put on the self-bomb.
Destructuring
It recently started, and we have no idea what will be produced by growing destructuring. Destructuring is going to be around for a long time. It recently started, both inside and out.
The system is starting to be destabilised and strange things are starting to appear. It is no longer the times of the anti-heroes, where the husband went to work, his boss shouted at him and he bowed his head, he arrived back home, she threw the plates at him and he said nothing. We are no longer living in these times. Now we are living in times where personalities are emerging who dare to say and do interesting things. They are breaking schemes. Here are appearing strong personalities like Chavez, Evo, Correa, Ollanta and even Kirschner.
Chavez is interesting, but if he could listen he would be better. He made a mistake in his last referendum. He committed a communication error: “Homeland for everyone, socialism or death”… State socialism. Don’t say that! Don’t use phrases that produce rejection in the population and especially in young people. These are phrases that correspond to another landscape. He still doesn’t understand that his campaign was rolled out from his formation landscape. It cost him his failure with the youth who didn’t vote for him. They don’t want to hear talk of death. Different to Evo who speaks of life. Chavez doesn’t listen, the compulsion of his personality overpowers him. He must be careful with the spur of his energy. His error was in the communication… Don’t say that!... You have to locate yourself in these times! You can’t continue reproducing schemes of a world that has passed. It fulfils everything that we have said: every generation in power is out of date.
Then he commented about the incident produced by the phrase “why don’t you shut up!” being part of the surrealism of the times. This situation made things complicated for Zapatero , who of course is not a strong personality. This social democrat “is boring” as the Chileans say, he didn’t know which side to take. The situation overwhelmed him, he wasn’t expecting it, he wanted to be friendly with both of them, to make his handwriting look nice (Chilean Expression), so that his image stays good, more worried for his profile, how he will be in the photo, to always be well presented, but everything went wrong for him.
And he continued that strong personalities in negative are appearing like Bush, Aznar and Uribe who disorientate and could carry out actions, also with the support of many people.
What the President of Guatemala said when elected is interesting. He made it clear that his government will take charge of the poor because when their situation improves, “this will be good for everyone”. This proposal is very interesting as it opens possibilities to these human groups: that the poor improve their situation, is good for everyone. Not that it is bad for the power structures. On the contrary, it is good for all, because everyone would benefit, when the situation for poor people improves.
If you look at it from the productive point of view, which of course doesn’t correspond to our look, even production would improve, if the marginalised sectors are included. For example, it would be interesting to open possibilities of participation and expression of women who are 50% of the population. Half of the global population has been left to one side. The same with young people, who have historically had their possibilities of expression closed. This is bad for everyone. It is the oppression over half the production: women, workers, young people. It is the closing off of human consciousness. If someone says that something is good for everyone, it also means that what is bad for some is also bad for everyone.
Globalisation is characterised by the effects of destructuring. Countries are destructuring, but also the USA. For them it is good that countries disappear, apart from theirs. They don’t want to see that destructuring also reaches them.
Disturbances
These times are characterised by disturbances. It is the time of the disillusioned soul (Ortega y Gasset). The revolution is not fed by things that happen, but rather by profound changes that occur in the consciousness. There is a moment in revolutions in which there is a struggle against someone, against an unjust system; people protest against abuses of this unjust system. After the demands against oppression, come the denouncements against their uses. People protest against the uses of the times, not against the abuses. So it is when social disturbances are produced and the strange things that sociologists don’t know how to explain.
The Media
The TV in its dynamic has diversified, it is also part of the destructuring: before there was only one channel; then various, subsequently Cable TV; and now a great multiplication of alternative websites.
The media has been democratised, but through people pressure. They have been obliged to do so in order to remain with customers. The ratings have marked a turning point. In their polls they have discovered what people want to see and they have adapted to the demand. Who is interested in producing programmes that no one sees? That’s why they had to adapt and this is part of the destructuring. They have not wanted to sidestep the people. The ratings are at the base of this democratisation of the media.
Fall of ideologies:
In front of the fall of ideologies, dogma appears and then come the slogans. Now they take the few loose ideas that remain. Slogans today are supplanting ideologies. Slogans are put together, adding some to others, producing some strange mixtures. They are mixing something that worked in one thing with others. For example, they take “quality of life” and mix it with another slogan that may have worked, until they obtain a marketing product.
Control of the system:
The Human being is living inside a system that is tending to control it and prevent its expression. The consciousness of the human being is trapped in self-censorship, censorship and the control that this system exercises over people. The system impedes people’s expression. It fixes conduct, behaviours, ways of thinking and being. It tries to maintain and fix things from a world that has already passed. People in power are tending to reproduce these schemes and models of conduct in which they were formed and that correspond to a world that has already passed. It tries to control, to exercise control and thereby to oppress human consciousness.
In his moment, Gorbachev made a contribution. He allowed the opening of the Soviet State, facilitating the conditions for these human beings to be able to liberate themselves from this oppressive system.
The contribution of Luther , was in the same direction. He opened the reflection in front of a dogmatic religion. He opened the doors to free interpretation. He tried to liberate the believer of institutionalised religion from the control of the church.
The same things happened in China. “Let a thousand flowers bloom” and then Mao appeared and his followers monopolized them.
On the other hand Rationalism has not has not yet passed the test of History… Its censorship has affected the human process. The inquisition of other times, is not the only thing that has had an affect, but also and with greater seriousness, rationalism.
The profound
PdV has its nocturnal view. The appropriate lights. They are very gentle. We are not talking about lights like the ones in Las Vegas (lights in the desert). That doesn’t arrive. We are interested in reaching and connecting with more interesting spaces. Why do things that are already done? What’s the point? We have to do things that are not done, intangibles, that hit against other intangible, yet existing, worlds. This gentle thing reaches and connects with those other worlds that exist in each person, but that you cannot see.
There is an inner world that moves things. There are worlds that are there although they can’t be seen. There are internal states from where things are inspired. And if not, from where do poetry, painting, and great actions come, if not from these states? They aren’t done by people to whom nothing happens on the inside. They were people who did things with a lot of strength and from there they brought great changes or produced things with such strength that they changed the course of things and of their times.
The historical changes happen when human consciousness connects with the profound and it is from here where evolutionary changes and steps are made, the other things that “history” teaches us are anecdotes. What moves history is this inner motor. It is from the profound that inspirational things happen.
There is something that moves things, something that you can’t see. People describe things, but they don’t notice what moves them. You describe the car, the wheels, the steering wheel, etc but you don’t notice the motor. It is this motor that moves the car.
But, how can I connect with the profound if my mind is restless, my heart troubled and my body tense?
The inspired consciousness
People can connect with other states of consciousness, like the inspired consciousness. It is a way of being in the world. They are structurations of consciousness. More profound states, from which something more interesting for the human being can emerge. States that if they are connected between people, can produce a sort of contagion, although the word contagion is not correct, because it is more associated with illnesses, but it is a phenomenon of transmission that can allow the human consciousness, trapped by this system, to be liberated. It is from the emergence of this inspired consciousness that can appear new evolutionary possibilities for the human being. It is a theme to go deeper in. We already referred to it in Psychology IV.
Translation of signals of the profound
There are moments in which one connects with certain states that they didn’t know they had in them. They are states that move you, many things move you. It is important to attend to the signals of the profound in oneself, how these signals are expressed and translated in the world. How are these signals given by the consciousness translated? They can be translated with kindness but also they can be translated negatively. Hopefully this translation may open towards the positive.
In any case, even when they end up being expressed negatively in the world, life will continue opening the way as it has done throughout history. Life expresses itself and opens the way and the consciousness has advanced, life has grown. We can see the positive and also the negative.
Other expressions of the profound:
In the indigenous culture, Pachamama, Mother Earth or Mother Nature, is very important. And so, as nature allows us to connect with states of inner peace, when we contemplate it and it allows us to connect ourselves with this inner world, with this register of peace with nature, in the indigenous world the same thing also happens. Surely they experience this love for nature when they evoke their Pachamama.
Their shamans for example carry out certain practices; they put themselves in a certain way in order to connect with their inner world. It’s good how they do it, how they connect. Shamanism is the most widespread religion on the earth, although they say it isn’t. They carry out certain ceremonies like the ones they did together with us in Tiahuanaco, prior to the Regional Forum. They carry out their ceremonies and we also did ours and very good. No problem to share with indigenous people ceremonies in our halls.
It is interesting how in the field of cultural anthropology and only in this speciality, they have advanced in their interest in what happens within cultures, and not only externally. It is interesting that they are going into what happens internally in people.
Females:
The Pachamama or Mother Earth is also a feminine entity.
It could be very interesting to open the doors for them to participate in our halls. Females, young women, very interesting their protagonism. They have demonstrated it. They have qualities to take things forward.
To open participation to women is very important. It is the moment of females, not of males. Females go and men cry. Females have the future assured. It is the moment for females. It is the moment for the mothers’ revolution. It is sure that there is everything between females and males. There are also bad copies that try to reproduce the male model, like certain female executives. But of course it’s not all of them. This is understandable, because now is their moment after centuries of oppression.
The vocational
To not kick aside the spur of the vocational in oneself, to not suffocate the vocation in oneself as this is the inner voice that is searching a way forward. To develop the vocation in oneself is to generate conditions to produce inspiration in human consciousness, this is good for everyone. The vocational allows you to channel energy towards the world because you are part of it, let everyone develop their vocation in the social, artistic, cultural fields, etc where ever you like, don’t hold it back. It is important to compare the experience of some with others, the comparison is important.
Don’t kick aside the spur of your vocation; don’t stop listening to your inner voice. Everyone has their own vocation, in different fields. Don’t suffocate your vocation.
Purpose
You must differentiate two types of purpose. The purpose of life, that has to do with your own dynamic that you don’t need to worry about, because it doesn’t depend on you. This purpose goes on by itself and takes care that life advances and the other purpose that is more intentional. The intentional Purpose has to do with what I visualised previously, with what I want to do and decide to do and then act co-presently; once you clarify your purpose, it will continue to operate on you co-presently even though you are no longer thinking about it. After defining it precisely, you release it so that it may act co-presently. It is different to aspiration; the latter does not have the strength that purpose has.
Personal crisis and Message
Collapse of beliefs
When you realise that you are not going anywhere, you search experience.
If your beliefs collapse, they will not be internally reconstructed through reconstructive arguing. Some use another mechanism: “have faith”, but we go with the Message, through Ceremonies. We are trying to create conditions to facilitate things, we are not putting up fences; on top of the fact that people are not well, we cannot put more obstacles.
In front of personal crises, to work with what is proposed in the Message, here is the essential, let the mental direction be reordered and reorganised. To go deeper into the procedures and the practices proposed in the Message and hopefully accompanied by others.
Everyone can reach the sensation of crisis through various ways. Everyone can reach these states through different paths. Everyone is living the crisis in their own time, everyone is in their moment, you can’t do anything from outside.
The message counts on a system of small tools so that people can immerse themselves in their internal experience. We need to learn to interchange what happens to us with others, with our friends. With a friend we can develop a same level of interchange because we have the same pre-predicates. About ones own themes, one talks with friends. It is not a discussion of ideas, nor a dialogue of knowledge. We mean an interchange of experiences, where we are all enriched, one is enriched by the experience of the other, it happens differently to the other, and vice versa. Interchange is based on an affectionate tone, in a reciprocal intention to help to improve things, connected by a mental direction. In the way I put myself internally in front of you, I suppose that you do the same. From this internal posture, is born the interchange with the same pre-predicates. One would have to work in this dimension of the personal. Because the vocational allows you to work in the world, in the social, but to channel your mental direction is something that is achieved with internal work.
How to read the book of the Message
He emphasises its format. Hard cover and new type of edition (he shows us the Argentine edition). It is not a book to read on the move. There are pages with little writing, with a lot of blank space. It is meant to be read page by page, paragraph by paragraph and to meditate. To take your time. Without hurry.
Parks and Halls
Punta de Vacas Park:
The characteristic of Punta de Vacas is that alongside runs the road along which a lot of transport travels that connects Brazil, Argentina, Chile. As it is a point of connection and business interchange between countries, the roads are maintained. They clear the roads quickly if there is snow for example. There are machines that pass by cleaning the road and in two days it’s done. In this sense we are well looked after when we speak of road cleaning.
But this happens outside PdV, within the park, we have to look after it ourselves. The place where the park is built is not easy. There are 240km/h winds. They are strong winds. To build a park in these conditions is very hard. The wind has taken various things, among them a door that it uprooted with bricks and everything. They are difficult conditions that arise in certain times of the year. The “skull has white bones” (in reference to who puts themselves in something has to take responsibility). No good crying about it. The conditions are strong, complicated and we are responding with gentleness, we are putting gentle lights…
People say to you, and why has it been built so far away… And you’d prefer we did it in front of your house? You cross the road and there it is, what’s that about? The challenge is important. Everything that is difficult has value. If you put it in front of your house, what importance does it have?
Adaptation of the halls
In reality they are born from a state of inspiration in those who want to set things in motion. They are adapted to each place and are built in accordance with the conditions of each point. Some will start with the land and then the monolith as they have done in Red Bluff. Others with the facilities that they may already have. The people of each place participate. There are parks that present different degrees of complexity and technology in the construction. They are adapted to each place. In accordance with the conditions of each point. From free interpretation and free organisation, the people see how they can do it and with what materials.
Functioning of the parks:
The parks are conditions from which a reference irradiates. They are not called the same thing in all places. For example in India they are called Ashrams, which means: Cultural Centres.
The human consciousness comes equipped, it has the instrument, the equipment, but in order to be able to take a leap and do it, it needs conditions. We are working on the creation of conditions so that change happens, not the carrying out of those changes.
The parks and the halls aim to create the conditions so that the profound can express itself; they are the catalyst for inner experience. Nothing controlled, many ways of organisation and interpretation, just like the Message works.
They are ambits where it’s a question of creating conditions that will help the human consciousness express itself and for that it is necessary to generate environments, places where the people can compare, interchange, and find out that there are others who are and who feel as they do, so that they can jointly inspire each other, and find solutions together. This is the function that the Halls and the Parks fulfill.
The halls are a nuclear reactor.
Change
Disillusioned consciousness
We are experiencing what Ortega y Gasset called the epoch of the disillusioned consciousness, the epoch in which dogs howl at the moon asking for something, and they don't know exactly what it is. That is exactly the dangerous part because they tend to grab onto anything however hot it may be.
If I don’t have the answer to the question “Where am I going?” it may be that there is someone who will tell me the answer (a strong personality, for example), although it can also happen that ones dependence becomes evident and one decides to break away from this dependence advancing toward the inner world. This should be studied.
The issue is what opening will there be for us. What possibilities of change do we have.
The essential:
In this point he reads and places special emphasis on each paragraph of the Letter sent to David a few days before:
Yes, approximately 10 days ago there were some nice dinners in Manantiales, and at one of them we touched on this theme, which it seems to me important to consider.
Is profound and essential change possible in the human being? Yes, I believe it is, but I distinguish between that undeniable but slow change that began in the first humanoids, and the possibility of change that isn’t thanks to a simple evolutionary mechanic, nor to "natural" accidents, but to a direction, an intention of the human consciousness regarding itself.
The point is that the peripheral changes are making a lot of people think that these are the changes we must aspire to. We have to go beyond Science and Justice to understand this change. In fact, as we have emphasized on several occasions, whoever works for the advance of Science and Justice makes the greatest effort to facilitate the overcoming of pain and suffering, facilitating the conditions for change. But it is clear that even Justice and Science are being twisted in a hurried parabola in which the search for change is being oriented objectively, ignoring what is most important about essential change. This forgetting of self, this ignorance of the overcoming of mental mechanics, leads us to question the possibilities of change...
And here we arrive at the point of this disquieting but healthful evening, in which we were able to say: Essential change is not possible without moving clearly in that direction. And the epoch is closing the horizon of that mental direction.
Whoever has followed our trajectory for several years has observed that our work has been oriented toward “simultaneous change” and in Humanism this took on great strength. However, the effort toward changing our mental conditions has been sometimes weak and sometimes intermittent.
I put the argument in a way that is somewhat harsh: Everything that has been done up to this moment has great meaning, but it will not be enough until the people (even the nicest and kindest) decide to Convert their lives, realizing the need for a profound mental change. It is of this that our work speaks in its last phase; it is of this that the Message speaks.
I believe that in the current situation in which Humanity finds itself (and of course this includes us too), if we do not work to overcome all censure and self-censure, throwing ourselves into the meanings and works of the Message, essential change will not be possible. The direction must be toward the Profound of the consciousness to connect with the meanings that have been slowly pressing forward the evolution of the human being. Now it is urgent and we no longer have a way to make this impulse known.
When we spoke at that dinner of the difficulties that the human mind is facing, disheartenment blew like an icy wind among those present. We were left with the sensation that this way, submerged in our humanity, we are not penetrating into the Profound and if that doesn’t happen, Change is not possible. That was the saddest part of that talk, to which people replied with a certain stoicism: "... “What you say is not very hopeful!”
However, going beyond the anecdote, I believe that we have some inner connection that can be communicated, and this is possible because in each of us is the unfathomable source of the Profound, of whose waters we must drink.
My dear David, I believe that many grasped the gravity of the current moment and your letter is a reflection of what happened and has not yet stopped.
I send you the most affectionate hug,
Silo

Clarification about the big scare:
This has nothing to do with announcing a catastrophe. It’s something else. It’s important to mention it so that people don’t believe that the change will come about mechanically. There is something that must be done intentionally, after registering this big scare internally.
The human being is endowed for change
The backpack:
The human being is endowed with what he needs. He has his backpack. His consciousness has everything.
The equipment is in everyone, we all have a backpack that contains the same equipment. We need to learn to use what is in the backpack. Why are you carrying this backpack? You haven’t even seen what's inside it, that’s why you haven’t used it. And you can say: but there are chocolates in there, and I’m not hungry! It’s fine that at this moment you aren’t hungry, but you will be hungry at some point. Better to remember that we all have the same “equipment,” the consciousness is equipped.
We have various interesting mechanisms, one of them being the guide.
The Guide
This is an issue with several layers, you can see it in different ways. The guide may also be a strong personality, these act as references in the face of a collective need, hopefully they will go in a good direction, if not we have a violent fundamentalist or something like that. It doesn’t matter if it has an image or not, but it should have a register, that gives one the sensation that it really exists. The important thing is that it fulfill the inner function, it has to do with the epoch even if it is a cenesthetic representation of something that dwells within you.
The Asking
This is another very interesting mechanism. In some cases you don’t even know whom you are asking, but you ask without even knowing where the requests are going. The asking is a very old mechanism. It has been used since the very beginnings of the human process when the people made use of it. Internally it has meaning and a certain direction, therefore it must be treated delicately. It is a mechanism that is part of the backpack. The interesting thing is that once the asking has been made, it keeps on acting in co-presence. “Hopefully…”, “Oh Allah, please…”, "Oh God, please…”. There is something very interesting that happens when you do an asking, you recognize when someone is sincerely asking something for you, for example: “I ask for things to go well for you."
The Ceremonies:
In the ceremonies many mechanisms are in motion that are within reach of the people. The ceremonies and the asking are in society and have been there since ancient times, they are mechanisms that the people understand. A mechanism is set in motion because we know its function. They are mental zones that are a little out of time, time doesn’t happen there. That is why we are touching on those structures, but they have to be genuine; if it doesn’t work, or doesn’t ring true, better not to force it.
Our thing – what it is…
The traditional in religions doesn’t go toward the profound, it’s an “as if.”
What we do keeps opening up as a way of being in the world, it’s like a mental structure. The structure of the wretched, unfortunate consciousness is no more – now it’s the structure of the inspired consciousness that seeks to open its way in the world of the worn-out, the gray, behind the signal lights that keep changing from red to green, and from green to red, day after day; behind the loss of meaning. The inspired consciousness is very much linked to meaning. What we are experiencing right now is not what will take us to other worlds. From “I have my feet on the ground,” the inspired consciousness isn't possible, there's no commotion. When one is in inspired consciousness, one is moved, is stirred.
Today we want to escape from the non-meaning, from the nothingness. We are in another historic and psychological instance. We are not going the way of explaining things, this doesn’t work with explanations. Not because the explanatory reflex is not important, but because in this realm it is not necessary. In fact there are areas in which the explanatory reflex is important, but in the realm in which one registers non-meaning and one wants to advance towards meaning, that is not the way. What we do doesn’t go through the explanatory route, don’t do it that way, it won’t work.
At the present moment there is no method. It’s not like in other epochs when a method gave direction to whoever believed in it, independently of whether you were in agreement or not with that vision. Dialectical materialism, with its thesis, antithesis and synthesis, at least gave direction to those who believed in it. And what does a method have to do with a revolution? It gives direction.
Today on the contrary, the logic is the logic of destructuration, of incoherence. With that people are experiencing and registering that progressive disintegration. That is how its reveries and aspirations, such as that of unity, can be understood. The search for integration among the peoples comes from there, it is a translation of that need for internal integration, for feeling internal cohesion, internal unity, in the face of their growing register of psychological disintegration.
The people don’t organize what is happening to them, they have a salad in their head. The current logic is the logic of slogans. Everything is reduced to slogans that are repeated in books, on TV, etc. but you can’t deal with everything with slogans. The social climate is full of slogans. The ideologies were full of slogans, but today those things are no longer said; they are no longer said for considerations of convenience and social coexistence.
Ours is a different logic, it's a logic that takes into account not only what is seen but also what is not seen, the co-presences. It’s a way of doing things that will influence the direction of what is going to be happening. The way of organizing determines the way of being in the world.
The inner religion doesn’t need any of those things, it generates a great void as Hegel said: “God expresses himself as a void.” It’s almost the way it's proposed in Buddhism, although Buddhism arose as an interesting proposal and then everything ended up as a religion.
The religions have made a show of reaching the interiority of the human being, but have not achieved it.
The gods are very far away, the route of the gods is not the way, it's very complicated to arrive at the gods. The gods don’t listen to us. The human being has had moments in which he has been able to find his own answers and his own solutions.
He ends up in a drama through the suffering that oppression produces. Through the pain that the conditions of life bring about. Through injustice, through what some do to others, through everything done by those who provoke suffering. Those who do things to overcome the conditions of suffering in human beings do their part, create conditions. They aren’t going to resolve things for the people, but they are creating conditions. Good for those who work for that.
Epilogue
It's 10 at night. All this time we have been moving from one place in Mendoza to another with our wonderful host: his office, the café, the city, San Martin Park, his house in Chacras de Coria, and back to his office. We end the visit with the re-sending of the letter to David that he kindly sends us over the Internet. On the road after saying goodbye, we reflect: the virtual message has already gone… where will it be now?... In some place where it can’t be seen, but it exists…
The next day we take the bus from Mendoza to Punta de Vacas Park. We decide to stay there a few hours, before continuing on to Santiago and then Quito. As we ride along we try to reconstruct part of that inspiring conversation. While we are conversing, I feel someone looking at us with her eyes lit up, listening to us very attentively. In a moment of silence, the girl in the seat across from us comments:
- I’ve been listening to your conversation… I’m very interested in what you're saying about the non-meaning and the profound...
We begin talking and in a few minutes we already feel "the contagion." She tells us she is on a search. She is going to Uspallata to Emilio’s community. She’s from Buenos Aires, she's about to finish her last year in Political Science, and she tells us of her anxiety: “there is no meaning.”
We invite her to come with us for a few hours to Punta de Vacas Park. She agrees and stays with us the whole time. She listens attentively to the story of the hermitage. Then we invite her to the hall to do the Ceremony of the Service. She puts herself in the appropriate attitude. Then she does the asking and finally we give each other a heartfelt hug.
We finish by eating something at the Plaza of the Stelas… and finally we get ready to say goodbye. We ask her one final question: What did you like most about this experience?... and she answers: the ceremony! Then we exchange information and addresses and she reminds us: For sure we’ll see each other in 2010!