shame sings

My name is Li Bow Down.

I am in charge of the Tibetan Monastery Re-Education Through Reform with Severe Consequences pogrom program. My masters called me out of retirement.

I was playing mahjong, screwing concubines and enjoying Fujian tea with friends at the Shanghai-FreeLand resort. Authority ordered me to get my old ass back to Lhasa and take care of THE problem. Back to the future.

They gave me a fire extinguisher to douse flaming monks. Ah, the ignobility. Fire is the essence of life.

Here’s an uncensored image of what we do to people in the program.

Li put an image on a table.

See this woman, he commanded. She is denouncing her family, friends and most important, herself in public. We are big on shame. We are the masters and they are the puppets.

“Shame on you!” yelled 1.7 billion puppet people.

“Shame! Shame! Shame!”

This is one of our more popular and effective methods of creating a harmonious society. It works wonders, because if memory serves me correctly and it does, mind you, serve me well, we’ve been coercing people for 5,000 years. Pick your favorite dynasty.

We used to put them in wooden stocks with their crimes painted on paper necklaces and parade them through town. They confessed. We call it self-criticism (samzen) re-education and reform. Big buzzwords. They were denounced in public. Talk about blatant social disapproval.

Now we just shoot them down like dogs in the street.

Maybe you think I am joking, making this up. Well, I didn't make it to the top of the Commie scrap heap by bowing down to big nosed foreigners telling me how to maintain control in Tibet and keep the monks and serfs in line.

As you know because I say so the peaceful compassionate monks in Tibet provoked the armed, young, naive, scared People's Reactionary Liberation soldiers on March 10th in Year Zero.

The rest is history, well, not real history because we rewrite that when it suits our propaganda purposes.

It’s easy and convenient.

Life is cheap here. More tea?

History is the symptom. Humans are the disease. Mark my words.

Checkmate

Fingering her Tibetan ivory prayer beads, death heads shook, rattled, and rolled.

The mother’s fingers caressed life’s thorns. Nothing happened completely by random chance, by accidental predetermined random fate in her life. Life for her in America or Amnesia if you will was free will versus determination confronting ambition, privacy, isolation, and community in a corrupt, violent cynical society.

People wanted to control their Fear. They believed in fear.

They worshiped fear and consumption.

They were afraid of being poor and lonely. They were willing victims of their fear, uncertainty and doubt. They switched on their amygdala — a small almond shaped brain structure — validated to be involved in fear and emotional response.

Manipulated by the insatiable invisible insolvent propaganda system, by socialization control mechanisms and the subtle power of right wing conservative propaganda persuasion, they either wanted control or approval facing daily choices.

They struggled, suffered, dancing discovering gratitude and forgiveness in their heart-mind. Living and dying. Dying once while you’re alive is necessary. Get’s it out of the way early.

You die twice. When you are born and when you face death. Inscribed on a Zippo lighter in a dusty Saigon museum case.

Were you born laughing or crying?

“Checkmate,” said Death.

Animist cemetary, Ratanakiri, Cambodia

Shanghai Interrogation

The boy soldier was silent. 

“What’s that for,” the female Public Security Bureau official said pointing to the typewriter on the table.  

“It is for writing letters.” 

They have reservations about letters. Letters, they wonder, looking at each other with jaundiced eyes. Black eyes streaked with exploding blood vessels full of fear and suspicion. 

Letters indicate political insurrection, dissent, forced labor, mandatory abortions, propaganda, civil unrest, turmoil, revolutions, tanks in the street, torture, solitary confinement and executions. 

They see party leaders wringing their pale hands, nervously pacing forbidden cities past stone lions, conducting top-secret meetings trying to figure out what to do, how to put a face on all this. How to manage and manipulate disinformation rivers, how to control floods.

The boy soldier and his comrade save face by maintaining blank, stoic expressions.

They suspect I have connections. Maybe I am a plant, a party member sent to check their unit. Assigned to monitor their methods, their questioning tactics, their subtle use of intimidation, their implications to control and influence peoples' lives for the good of the state.

For all they know I am a subversive. A word terrorist.

“Letters. We will keep an eye on this one,” she said to the soldier.

A writer in Shuangliu, Sichuan, China. 

Untouchable

Namaste,

In another dramatic, exciting, heart stopping, palpitating, effervescent, totally complete silence, the entire country of Nepal, (No Electricity Power And Light) decided to have a general strike. Everything is shut down. Locked steel shuttered businesses decorate main street. 

There are 36 castes here. Give or take 100 sub divisions. A caste is a traditional hard core socially cultural belief and practice bestowing style, honor, privilege and status to selected humans born into a specific family. Anthropologist and pathologists consider this invention a specialized branch of the value based Angiosperm.

How do you spell discrimination?

"Muluki Ain (1854) divided Nepalese citizens into two castes "the caste whose water is allowed to remain pure" and "the caste whose water is defiled". Chiefs of the various castes were entrusted with sorting out issues related to their own castes.^[1] The heads of Kamis (blacksmiths) and Sarkis (tanners and cobblers) were called Mijhars. Similarly the head ofDamai (tailors and musicians) was called Nagarchi." Read more.

As Shiva, a female ear hearing specialist explained, "People are striking to abolish the caste system. They want equality."

"Yes, said Vishnu her friend, "They want to be a musical blacksmith cobbling a life. They want to walk empty streets selling hot delicious cinnamon flavored pastries. They want to develop and profit from vast mountainous snow capped high altitude regions of pure air in never-never land. They want to tan their hide or hide their tan. They want to impersonate Elvis after dark.

"They want to be a brick boy in the Kathmandu valley. They want to be a free person in a free country."

Three strikes and you're out.

Metta.

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.