The People Speak

Greetings,

By now the people's domino revolution in Tunisia and Egypt and Yemen, and Jordan and Syria to a lesser extent, is flooding the air with images and words of Egyptians demanding their basic freedoms. A concept taken for granted in so many places where human rights and free elections follow a democratic path.

Democracy is a messy business. Or, as Gandhi said, "Democracy is a good idea."

Pundits crow about the rise and fall of an authoritarian PUPPET. How the U.S. has been giving him $1.5 Billion a year for 30 years to maintain their political edge. Buying off a dictator is expensive. Game Over.

Hosni the obscure relic is an old stubborn man. Desperate people do desperate things. They stall for time promising sham elections. They cut off the internet. They hope the army will save them. Wishful thinking Mr. Puppet. The people know better.

Straw men and their wives pack in a hurry. 19 private jets filled with Egyptian businessmen and their families left last week for Abu Dabble. Money talks and gets the hello out.  

His selected (VPP) Vicious Person Puppet, Sullyman, is well known for his manipulative diplomatic skills. What is less well know but becoming clear is how he was a CIA front man in the extraordinary rendition program where terror suspects and innocent civilians were flown to Egypt and other friendly countries and tortured. 

The revolutionary weather channel calls for millions of Egyptian citizens to gather and express their desire to say goodbye to Mr. Puppet every single day. Tick, tock.

As one man in Tahir Square said, "I would rather suffer from hunger than die of fear."

Metta.

Mr.Tuk Tuk

A metallic Cambodian loudspeaker spoke, Now here this, The tuk-tuk is leaving in five minutes, Departing for points unknown, A massive short celestial event known as YOUR LIFE will depart in five minutes. 

You are advised to assemble all the necessary documents, certified seals of approval, water, invisible guide books, sunscreen, funny money and so on...you will visit the Mind-At-Large on your short, fast, easy tour.

Bring your life with you, And a glossy greasy Laughing Planet guidebook with heavily creased pages. If you attempt to read while moving at the speed of light or 186,000 miles per second you will discover a new sense of perspective.

You may be surprised or traumatized depending on your perception to realize your experience at Angkor is not about seeing the temples. You will DO Angkor. Get the t-shirt. Check it off your list. Less is more.

Please conclude all private and group discussions, disagreements or arguments with your fellow travelers to ascertain your destination. Talking time is finished. 

The tuk-tuk driver has his helmet and vest. His vest has a green four-digit number. If he tries to bring you into Angkor without the vest he faces massive surprises. For starters he will lose his job and have to return to his small distant isolated village where he will plant rice and provoke white cows with socialist Marxist production tools to pull the plow through mud.

The biggest dream for many young Cambodian men is to become a tuk-tuk driver. If he loses his tuk-tuk job his family will starve to death. This is a common problem here. Death by starvation. If you survive you win. 

If he dies you will be held in escrow. (Old French; a scrap, a roll of parchment)

A tuk-tuk river driver has an easy job. An easy life. He drives you to a temple and crashes out. You feed him. He takes you back where you started. He makes $15-20 for the day. 

The average Cambodian’s daily wage is $2.03.

Not a single woman in Siem Reap is a tuk-tuk driver. There are 3-4 women tuk-tuk drivers in Phnom Penh. They are as rare as clean drinking water, sanitation, hospitals and schools. Women work in massage parlors, restaurants and guest houses. They are the guest and you are the house. 

Your house has many symbolic rooms: the basement is where your unconscious lives breaths-laughs and dances where it reveals inner vision. Clean all your rooms. Take out the garbage. Explore your diverse rooms. 

Don’t sweat the small stuff, it’s all small stuff. You are the housekeeper of perception, sensation, form, symbols and nothing.

A woman doesn't work as a tuk-tuk driver because: 

-it's too dangerous

-it's inappropriate

-it's foolish

-they lack the education, intelligence, drive, initiative

-they haven't broken free of deeply ingrained social and cultural stereotypes: a woman's place is in the home, producing offspring, taking care of kids and the elderly, washing, cleaning, and cooking

-their family will kill them with love and affection

Thirty years ago a Cambodian woman was lucky to finish 9th grade. She married and stayed at home. She produced children in assembly line operations with the highest quality control standards known to modern medicine and umbilical chords.

It will take another generation before women become tuk-tuk drivers. Tisk, tisk, tuk, tuk.

Your mother was appointed to have you.

Bye Bye Mr. Murbarak

Greetings,

The Egyptian people have spoken with one voice. People power. 

They speak and demonstrate and march and suffer and sacrifice and create a unified community demanding their basic human rights, an end to BIG BROTHER police state dictatorship, corruption and endless cycle of poverty. They finally had enough. 

The Egyptian dictator and their cronies pocketed all the money. Playing their game they manipulated countries to increase military money. They pretended to be open and democratic. They created a police state where FEAR ruled. They put 60 million Egyptians in jails. They tortured innocent citizens.  

Now they will run away dragging their pitiful lives and join the Tunisian dictator in Saudiville, a remote luxurious villa filled with slaves, swimming pools, palm trees and a short future in the long now. 

Metta.

China blue

Greetings,

Ah, what a beautful winter in China! I don't make much money as a university teacher you understand, so I use it carefully and wisely. Family is big deal here and to avoid relationship clashes of dynastic proportions, I shelled out roughly $200, or a third of my salary, for a round trip train ticket home.

After paying my totalitarian university an exorbitant rental fee for my drab, empty apartment plus electricity and water, I barely had enough left over for soggy onions, fresh spinach, tofu, rice and fruit.

Home is where, they say, the heart is. Well let me give you a little advice about that. I left my heart in San Francisco, ha. Singing, living and playing the blues, which is life's way of talking, I dutifully lugged my broken suitcase home to hearth and kin.

So much guilt, inherent DNA shame and Duty. I am overwhelmed by the heavy burden of my family's expectations.

After fulfilling all my academic responsibilities meaning pass all the students or face the dire consequences given to me by the University Authorities who, will for the sake of Social Stability and Harmonious Educational Reform Committees, remain faceless, nameless and totally obscure, I escaped from my prison.

It took twenty-two long, boring, tedious endless hours sitting in hard seat with three transfers before I reached my province near North Korea. Coltrane train stations were packed out with millions of homeless migrants, laborers and naked freezing prostitutes looking for a John and some of my favorite things like humans without a wing, hope, prayer or a lay text raincoat. The ancient Oracle predicted this reality.

Mothers and fathers formed concentric protective circles around their children to prevent thieves from stealing them. Stolen kids are a HUGE underground economy here as you may or may know. People will gladly pay large sums for a boy because they have a higher value in our free vibrant economy.

Human life is cheap here. Stealing, Selling, Trading and Buying children is how things work.

Speaking of work, I've gotta run because I must help mother with the cleaning, shopping and endless chores. If I don't perform my filial duties she may threaten to sell me. I'll be returning to my other life as a teacher after I report back for Duty and will file another report using a proxy to evade the Great Wall firewall gremlins and spies.

Metta.

 

Chalk it up to experience in a Chinese classtomb.

Tarek Bouazizi

Greetings,

Tarek Bouazizi, 26, finally had enough of the endless cycle of bribery, threats, and corruption. He sold vegetables on the streets in the small town of Sidi Bouzid in Tunisia where the unemployment rate was 30%.

He loved poetry. He supported his mother, uncles, and five brothers and sisters at home.

He set himself on fire. He died. Tunisians grabbed their chance at freedom. The dictator of 23 years ran away. Middle Eastern and North African despots and autocratic dictators went into denial mode.

Oh no, we're next, they cried. Yemen, Libya, and Egypt gave the police and military more money to protect their intractable insatiable greed to maintain power and control. They decreased the price of food to temporarily appease hungry people.  

Protect us in our castles and mansions. Protect us from educated individuals demanding human rights, equality and an end to the charade, to our reign of economic terror. Protect us from desperate citizens setting themselves on fire. Protect us from the aftermath.

You have to sacrifice the peel to enjoy the fruit.

Metta.

Read more, NYT.