This is meant for people who think about what they are doing and what the consequences are.

Individual actions aggregate into larger social and economic manifestations.

Most people, unfortunately, are only concerned with themselves and the immediate short term effects of their actions on themselves. However, there is always an intelligent sector of society which is capable of more long range thinking.

The bottom line:

• You should not use Internet Explorer 7 because if do you will be contributing to an economic monopoly which is designed to maximize profits for a particular corporation, and because of this narrow focus has the effect of stifling innovation.
• You should not use Internet Explorer 7 because if you do you will be contributing to locking yourself into vendor dependence with a vendor who has shown that when the economic incentive is removed, they will not address security or usability issues.
• You should not use Internet Explorer 7 because it is a strategic tool that is used to foster dependence and eliminate “competition” (from Microsoft’s perspective, which equals “choice” from your perspective).

Here is some history for you:

Netscape Navigator, based on NCSA Mosiac, was the first “commercial” web browser. When I first got on the Internet in 1994 it was in pre v 1.0 beta, and it was being given away freely. At that time there was no TCP/IP stack in Windows and it was necessary to use a third party one such as Trumpet Winsock.

In 1995, as Netscape Navigator gained traction widely as the standard in web browsers, Bill Gates got the epiphany that the Internet was the future, and refocused Microsoft on catching up. Internet Explorer 1.0, released in 1995, was built on licensed Mosiac technology.

Internet Explorer was then developed through six version iterations up to 2001. If you read the official Microsoft IE history page you get the idea that here was a great web browser that was being built and developed to serve the public (the customers). The reality is that the web browser was being built and developed to eliminate Netscape Navigator. Once Microsoft achieved that aim, through first giving their browser away, then bundling it, then building it into the operating system, along with licensing agreements with PC vendors that have been judged anti-competitive in US and European courts, Microsoft stopped developing Internet Explorer.

Five years. No new version.

Until Firefox came along and gave people choice, gave them new innovations in web browsing. Prior to the rise of Firefox there were other options, such as Opera or Mozilla (which is what Netscape Navigator became when they open sourced the code, and what Firefox is based on). However, since none of these represented a threat to Microsoft’s market share, they did nothing.

Once Firefox started grabbing 10% of the market share, however, Microsoft sat up and dusted off IE.

Their idea is to give you some shiny things and get you to take the red pill and go back to sleep. Once they kill Firefox, it will be business as usual. Microsoft is focused on maximizing profit. That means not doing unnecessary work to increase value to you when they don’t have to.

Using Internet Explorer 7 means helping to kill off the competition, and returning to a position of dependence and servitude on a corporation that exists to take your money and give you as little as possible in return. It’s called “maximizing shareholder value”.

You can read more in Wikipedia’s entry on the History of Internet Explorer

H.H. Jayadvaita Swami, who has been writing some on point articles of late, recently wrote (’Shabby Behaviour‘) about an article of his that was reprinted on the web without his permission.

In today’s world of point-and-click publishing it’s pretty a standard occurrence, and practically impossible to control.

It is attributed to him and unmodified, however it doesn’t contain a link to his website, the source of the article text. This is more a question of etiquette. Both Vaisnava Blog Feeds and ISKCON News reprint entire articles, and include a link to the source. It’s both a service to the reading public, who may wish to check out more of a given author’s material, and a nod in the direction of the author, helping them to expose their ideas to a wider audience.

The legal concept of copyright is a modern development which has been designed to protect the commercial interests of publishers, rather than the rights of authors or the public. Only corporations have the resources to legally prosecute copyright infringers. However, modern information technology, especially peer-to-peer networking, is changing that balance of power.

In the Vedic system there is no legal copyright. It is a case of satyam eva jayate - “may the best idea win”, regulated by the principle that was enunciated by Srila Prabhupada in the immortal phrasing: “Purity is the Force”.

Freely copying earlier literary works, quoting from them and commenting on them, brahmanas, the Vedic thought leaders, create a rich intellectual culture.

Imagine a world in which Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu had been forbidden to copy the Brahma Samhita because of “copyright concerns”, where Baladeva Vidyabhusana was forbidden to write a commentary on Vedanta-sutra, or where a hostile agency gains control of the copyright of Srila Prabhupada’s books and halts printing.

It’s a flawed concept.

Here are some interesting articles for the more intellectually inclined amongst the readership:

No Copyright on Krishna - Swami B.A. Paramadvaiti

H.H. Paramadvaiti Swami is a controversial figure in Gaudiya Vaisnava circles, and is a very forceful personality who some might say sometimes overstates his case (and some would say that that is an understatement). This one I read a number of years ago as an interesting intellectual piece. That was until a couple of years later when I suddenly found myself in charge of the BBT in the zone where His Holiness Paramadvaiti Swami is active in preaching and publishing. I had the opportunity to personally discuss his views with him, and to see the practical reality in an area where the BBT was unable to print and supply books, but was simultaneously trying to forbid unauthorized printing.

We simply started an authorized BBT operation printing and importing and they started buying. We also worked together on some imports from Spain. As Sun Tzu would say, if you have to go into battle, you’ve already lost.

Justifying our control of the copyright there I asserted it as necessary to control the content of the books, so that they were not modified, and also the quality. We needed to legally challenge their printing in the absence of our ability to supply in order to retain a legal right to defend the copyright against people in the future who might modify the books. I wasn’t totally comfortable with that line, but it’s the one I preached. After all - while we are justifying it in the name of preserving purity, under that system, now and in the future, who will watch the watchers?

I think that superior quality will win out naturally, and producing higher quality competitively priced products is the real solution to the quality issue, and satyam eva jayate is the real solution to the modification issue. While copyright theoretically protects the integrity of the material by forbidding unauthorized modifications, it unilaterally gives the copyright controller the power to make modifications, which is obviously open to potential abuse.

Free Culture - Lawrence Lessig

This is a link to a flash presentation by Lawrence Lessig.

Stanford Professor Lawrence Lessig is one of the minds behind Creative Commons. I use one of their licenses for this website and its content.

In this presentation, which is in a presentation style so distinctive it has become known as the “Lessig Method”, Professor Lessig talks about the legal development of the modern concept of copyright and its implications. As he explains, it exists to protect the commercial interests of publishers by creating a monopoly, rather than to protect the interests of authors, the public, or freedom of thought and expression.

He examines other philosophical and legal models that actually begin to approach the idea of the Vedic tradition where simple principles are enacted at a local level to create a culture, and that complex culture is the moderator.

It’s a complex situation, and I’m not advocating that the BBT and all other institutions should abandon copyright. We exist in a particular environment and compromises and transitional structures need to be put in place and utilized. The ongoing dialogue about the issues, however, which Paramadvaiti Swami’s prophetic paper (published 12 years ago almost to the day) contributes to, is part of the process, and ensures that we will have a dynamically evolving conception and response to the environment as the situation changes.

—————————————–
Note: the license I use for this site, accessible at the bottom of the page, allows you to use, reuse, and modify the material published here, including for commercial purposes - vaisyas, do your thing!

You must redistribute any derived works under the same license - no taking advantage of freedom without contributing to it!

Legally speaking, you must also give props to me as the original author, including putting an inbound link to my website if you directly quote the material.

I agonized over this one. While the other points create the same legal framework as the classical Vedic environment (leaving aside the “no sudras reading the sastras” type injunctions), this one attempts to recreate the cultural etiquette of giving props. I won’t sue you if you don’t do it, because I’m not interested in bringing people to me, but rather of getting ideas out there. I include it not so that people have to do it, but just to indicate that that’s the usual way it works.

Satyam eva jayate!

From a recent news story:

PEOPLE who eat chicken, minced beef, pork chops and lettuce may develop an immunity to the drugs used to treat potentially fatal conditions such as meningitis and pneumonia.

Seven years after a landmark report by the Joint Expert Technical Advisory Committee on Antibiotic Resistance warned of drug immunity being passed through the food chain from animals to humans, an investigation is to be launched to measure the risk to consumers.

Scientists have long warned that the overuse of antibiotics, such as growth promoters in chicken, cattle and pigs, can breed drug-resistant bugs that may impede antibiotic treatments of diseases in humans.

The inquiry, due to be completed next May, will estimate the amount of antibiotic-resistant bacteria existing in food. Chicken, minced beef, pork-shoulder chops and iceberg lettuce heads will be the initial focus of the study, after overseas research identified them as containing common antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Canberra Hospital Infectious Diseases Unit director Peter Collignon welcomed the research, saying people had the right to know what they were eating.

“This is an issue and we need this data,” Professor Collignon said. “It is beyond doubt that whenever you use antibiotics, you get resistance. But the animal industry seems to be denying this is happening.

“In Australia we use 250,000kg of antibiotics in people every year. In animals we use 500,000kg…

(source: news.com.au)

Guys - this is why we don’t use iceberg lettuce at Atma Yoga.

With profit-driven farming, farmers are forced to maximize their profit in order to stay competitive. If they don’t use growth hormones to boost the production of meat they will be driven out of business. Using growth hormones accelerates the metabolism of the animal. The stress of accelerated metabolism combined with the conditions of factory farms make animals more susceptible to disease. In order to counteract this animals are routinely given massive amounts of antibiotics.

People then eat the bodies of these animals and in this way ingest large amounts of antibiotics and potentially antibiotic resistant bacteria.

This is what happens when you have meat eating and a profit driven economy.

The solution to this is a simple principle at a fundamental level - stop eating meat.

Swallowing a spider to catch the fly, and a bird to catch the spider, and then a cat to catch the bird, is not the right way to address these complex issues. Don’t swallow the fly in the first place!

The original reason given by the US Government for going to war in Iraq was two-fold.

On the one hand, to the international community, it was sold as being necessary because of Saddam Hussein’s pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, a pretext that was not taken seriously by any reasonably informed person at the time. Iraq had been systematically bombed and blockaded into a starved and subservient position, its industrial power diminished. It was in no position to launch any kind of attack, even if there were attempts to gain “weapons of mass destruction”, and there was no real evidence to suggest that such a thing was taking place.

To the domestic market it was sold as being connected somehow to Al Qaeda and the attack on the Twin Towers of September 11, 2001. The attack was part revenge, part pre-emptive strike before Iraq could launch its own follow up to September 11 with the weapons of mass destruction. The convenient anthrax mailing scare that followed September 11 allowed the connection between “developing weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq and attacks on the US and its population.

After the invasion the reason was changed post-facto to a human rights based “liberation” of the Iraqi people from an oppressive and abusive dictator, Saddam Hussein.

The real reasons for the invasion have more to do with geo-political balance of power and access to and control of material resources.

The situation today in Baghdad, capital of Iraq, is in many ways worse than it was under Saddam Hussein. While much is made of the violence meted out by Saddam and his cronies, you have to give them one thing - like Hitler, they imposed order on the society. Today that order is gone, replaced by chaotic violence as warring forces struggle to gain the traction they need to overthrow their rivals for control of the instruments and institutions of power.

As the resident of an inner city Baghdad suburb said in a recent CS Monitor article entitled “In the struggle for Iraq, tug of war over one Baghdad neighborhood“:

When the Americans first came to Iraq, I thought we’d be kings. We hated Saddam and now I’m nostalgic for those days. It makes me sick.

In a previous age a murderous dictator was overthrown and killed by a liberating force, and the consequences were the same - where there was once dictatorial order, chaos ensued.

SB 4.14.37: In those days there were various disturbances in the country that were creating a panic in society. Therefore all the sages began to talk amongst themselves: Since the King is dead and there is no protector in the world, misfortune may befall the people in general on account of rogues and thieves.

SB 4.14.38: When the great sages were carrying on their discussion in this way, they saw a dust storm arising from all directions. This storm was caused by the running of thieves and rogues, who were engaged in plundering the citizens.

SB 4.14.39-40: Upon seeing the dust storm, the saintly persons could understand that there were a great deal of irregularities due to the death of King Vena. Without government, the state was devoid of law and order, and consequently there was a great uprising of murderous thieves and rogues, who were plundering the riches of the people in general.

However, the great difference in this case is that the same liberating force that overthrew King Vena, namely the sages, was able to install a suitable replacement administration which was able to impose order on the kingdom and serve the people competently and compassionately.

Prior to the invasion US Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki voiced his opinion publicly that tens of thousands of troops would be needed to handle the aftermath of the invasion and the transitional period that would be needed to establish a new government. He was publicly refuted by the US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld who stated that this was imagination.

Perhaps if Donald Rumsfeld read more Srimad Bhagavatam he could have seen this coming….

I just wanted to comment on this piece over at stuff.co.nz: Internet Dater found not guilty of sexual assault.

I’ll leave all the complex social analysis to social commentator Krishna-kirti. I don’t agree with everything that he writes, but his social analysis is from the same playbook as mine.

Let me give a brief commentary inspired by the lyrics of some hardcore band, the exact origins of which escape my memory right now:

She uses sex for love, he uses love for sex.

The lady in this situation was looking for a long term partner because she was lonely. The man was looking for a random sexual encounter. Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. Because she is “a professional lady in her 40s” she is expected to look after herself and be accountable for her actions, so the court has found the man not guilty.

The very fabric of the social structure around her has left her completely unprotected. There is no-one to look after her. No-one to be concerned about her loneliness. No-one to shield her natural vulnerability. She has been left to try to deal with that as best she can. In isolation she reaches out to try to make contact with someone, and is brutally taken advantage of.

Living enmeshed in a complex world of frustration and insatiable desire, this man has been driven to perform a despicable act which has brought shame upon him and upon this woman.

This is not an isolated incident, but a massively increasing wave across the world.

Our mission is to create authentic community. To bring people together, with Krishna in the center, to experience authentic community. To answer that primal need within so many people today who are alone in a crowd, isolated, alienated.

Our mission is to provide protection to those who cannot protect themselves, by strengthening the social fabric. To create strong bonds of support and sustenance. To create a vibrant culture that nourishes the body, mind, and spirit.

Our mission is to help protect people from themselves by educating them and giving them a higher taste, allowing them to act as they see fit, while helping them to see clearly.

Our mission is to mold our daily lives in such a way that these aims are realized.

This is not the work of a day, it is not the work of a year, it is not the work even of a lifetime. We should not expect victory, nor should we accept defeat in this life, or the next, or the following. Our mission, as Srila Prabhupada put it to Tamal Krishna Goswami is “to be recorded in the annals of history as having saved the world in its darkest hour.”

That hour is approaching.

Just clearing up my hard drive and I found this short piece I wrote in New Zealand last year, in December, while listening to a song by local NZ funksters Fat Freddy’s Drop.

It has a repeating loop: “Hope for a generation - just beyond my reach, not beyond my sight”. I was inspired by that to write the following:

Hope for a generation – just beyond my reach, not beyond my sight

This generation is increasingly being lost. Young people are ruining their bodies and minds, scarring themselves with experiences that will permanently impact their psyches and their relational situations.

Impersonal and uncontrollable forces of economic development subordinate personality, community and society to render people slaves to a global juggernaut that is simultaneously destroying the external environment, and laying waste to people’s internal environment.

An increased cultural norm of focus on immediate pleasure and the supremacy of the individual’s immediate sense gratification is destroying the family unit and all social stability.

The prime necessity of this hour is that intelligent and compassionate persons must apply themselves to working to reverse this seemingly unstoppable tide.

One person alone will have limited impact. What is needed is a coordinated effort.

Maintenance of our individual situation must be balanced with the need to apply our energy to making forward progress in institutional development. Institutional development and maintenance must be carefully aligned with mission fulfilment. It is a long term work that involves creating sufficient momentum to progressively counteract the current negative trend of human society.

I have not been born at this time to try to enjoy living in this situation, but because it is my duty to participate in this fight. I have my destiny to fulfil in this work.

Let me maintain my internal conscious state such that I can remain aware of this, and keep my sensitivity to the pathway that I must tread.

I pray for guidance for each of my steps, and for determination to execute the order of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu and my spiritual master.

In New Zealand concerned parents are marching across the country to raise awareness of the epidemic of drug use, specifically “P” - NZ’s answer to crack cocaine, which is laying waste to the youth of the country.

Without Krishna Consciousness there is no hope. The nature of this world is of darkness and a tendency toward decay. Both energy and order flow downhill. Systems tend toward disorder and decay.

Without a source of light the very fabric of space in this world is composed of darkness.

Without the organizing intelligence of the living entities the nature of the world is toward chaos.

Only through the energy input of the sun, worshiped as the representation of Narayana, the Supreme Person, and the intelligent organization of the living entities - the spiritual spark in contact with the material elements - is this tendency counteracted.

All the energy that we utilize in the form of electricity or oil etc. comes to us in this world through the medium of the sun. The sun, the source of all energy in the solar system, counteracts the tendency of this world toward energy death. All life in this world, the intelligence that counteracts the tendency toward chaos, similiarly comes from a source. That source is Krishna.

Science fiction scenarios tell us of what will happen after a nuclear war, huge volcanic eruption, or meteor strike that causes a dust cloud sufficient to cut us off from the sun - total devastation. Similarly, when we are cut off from Krishna, we experience the same thing. Without a spiritual focus to human society, civilization will simply crumble into chaos - total devastation.

(via news.com.au)

THE skeleton of an elderly man has been found in a unit in Sydney’s inner-west more than six months after his death.
Police were called to the George Street unit in Redfern about 7.45pm (AEDT) yesterday after receiving information from people concerned for the man’s safety.

“Upon arrival they found the body of a deceased person in the unit,” a police spokeswoman said.

A post-mortem examination was being carried out to determine the cause of death and police were preparing a report for the coroner.

The gruesome discovery comes only a week after the body of an elderly man was found in the Northcott housing commission in Surry Hills.

The man had been dead on his bed for six months, sparking criticism about the lack of support networks for elderly people in New South Wales.

Here is a criticism about the lack of support networks for elderly people:

An increase of unwanted population certainly causes hellish life both for the family and for those who destroy the family tradition. The ancestors of such corrupt families fall down, because the performances for offering them food and water are entirely stopped.

- Bhagavad-gita 1.41

The full consequential effects of the replacement of the family as the basic building block of society with the individual “prosumer” (producer / consumer) are now being felt.

In other news, Australian Prime Minister John Howards says “older Australians need to stay in the workforce, but employees might have to compromise on hours of work and pay. “People between 55 and 65 - far too many of these people leave the workforce far too early.

“When I exhort firms to retain more older workers I also exhort the older workers to accept … perhaps a changed role within the organisation.”

Mr Howard said mature workers might find themselves reporting to much younger bosses or having to accept a rearrangement of remuneration structures.

Welcome to the future - just like the past, only completely different.

Check out my earlier commentary on the issue of support of the elderly.

From an article quoted by Candidasa the other day:

Prior to the last decades, it was thought that the periods between glaciations and warmer times in North America, Europe, and North Asia were gradual.
…
(however) It turns out that the ice age versus temperate weather patterns weren’t part of a smooth and linear process, like a dimmer slider for an overhead light bulb. They are part of a delicately balanced teeter-totter, which can exist in one state or the other, but transits through the middle stage almost overnight. They more resemble a light switch, which is off as you gradually and slowly lift it, until it hits a mid-point threshold or “breakover point” where suddenly the state is flipped from off to on and the light comes on.

And now this, just in via Time magazine:

Climate observers announced a huge surprise yesterday at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual conference, in St. Louis: the glaciers of Greenland, which carry ice from the interior out to the sea, have gone on a tear. They’re flowing, on average, about twice as fast as they were a decade ago — and even back then, says glacier expert Julian Dowdeswell, of the University of Cambridge, “I was telling my students that they were among the fastest-flowing glaciers on Earth.”

Whether it is due to human industry, accelerated by human industry, or a recurring historical natural process unrelated to human industry, the point is moot. Practically speaking: It’s here.

Here are a couple of funny videos about global warming, for your viewing pleasure:

One about George Bush by comedian Will Ferrell, and a lively song and dance routine about Exxon called “Toast the Earth”.

The focus of these types of exposition have been to say that politicians and industry have been ignoring and covering up their possible contribution to the situation by ignoring the situation itself.

The Exxon one wants to pin some blame on Exxon for it. I think that the time for that angle is behind us. It’s much more dangerous than we originally thought. From what the scientists are saying, it looks like it’s a naturally occurring phenomenon that repeats cyclicly. Right now, whether industry contributes to it or not is really irrelevant. The fact of the matter is that it is upon us.

I don’t want to sound like a doomsday prophet, but I’m with Kim Stanley Robinson on this one - we really do need to start packaging up human civilization to survive the long winter. It’s not about technology, because that will not survive. The industrial base of human society is about to cumble. It’s about knowledge and culture. As he put it: “All the knowledge of human society should be preserved in books that will last through the winter night”.

The Vedic knowledge is the body of knowledge of human civilisation that has survived these winter nights before. Transmitted by word of mouth across generations, it tells the history of the universe over millions of generations, recounting significant events to highlight the mission and purpose of this universe, and the human form of life.

Archaeological evidence is erased by the shifting sands and winds of time, but the Vedic knowledge, handed from one to another - parampara, travels over millennia to reach us now - perfectly preserved in essence if not in detail.

Sam Kekovich has reprised his role as the voice of Australianism for an Australia Day address this year. I wondered why the Keka became such a big source of Google hits for my blog over the past month, and that’s why.

Keka - you bloody legend mate! Makes me proud to be an Australian.

You can view a video of Sam’s speech online (.mpg).

It’s not quite as good as last year’s one. It’s like a Rage Against the Machine album in that sense. When the first RATM album came out, it was fascinating - it wasn’t like anything we’d ever heard before. When the second one came out, it just sounded like the first one.

Check out my commentary on Keka’s effort from last year.

Mothers in Australia are increasingly leaving their children in childcare in order to engage in paid employment, a study by the Australian Institute of Family Studies, reported on news.com.au, has found.

Institute general manager of research Ruth Weston said there had been a significant shift over the past decade, with the most common arrangement for married women now to undertake part-time work while their husbands work full time.
…
It is more common for women with children under five to be working than a decade ago, with 52 per cent now undertaking work, compared with 46 per cent in 1996.

There has been a substantial increase in the number of married mothers with children under five who were working up to 14 hours a week and wanted to work more - up from 15 per cent a decade ago to 40 per cent now.
…
Overall, three quarters of mothers with children under 13 wanted to work. The Institute said more children are being put in formal childcare as a result. The mean age for children to start regularly being looked after by someone other than a parent is five months.

Please note that many, if not most, of these children are not being left in the care of an extended family, but in paid childcare.

Children are today viewed as a hindrance to economic development and self-actualization through consumption and sense gratification, and therefore fertility rates are declining in Western countries such as Australia, with many experiencing negative population growth by birth.

In cases where family units do have children, the children are increasingly abandoned to childcare services to allow the parents to do something “more meaningful and rewarding”, such as paid employment. In some cases financial pressures demand that both parents work, or solo mothers need to work to maintain themselves.

At the same time, I personally support my wife and one child on my income, and I know of work colleagues who support two children and their wife, so it is possible.

When children are abandoned at an early age to child care in this manner they grow up with a feeling of being unwanted which affects their psychology and their socialization. Parents who sacrifice their children to childcare in order to work should be prepared to be sacrificed by their children when they grow older. Many advertisements for superannuation play to this, encouraging people to save for their retirement “rather than being a burden on their kids”. In this way they are actually encouraged to abandon their children in order to work.

This is one example of the way in which the family unit is being displaced as the building block of human society and replaced with the individual consumer - alienated, isolated, and vulnerable to exploitation.

An increase of unwanted population certainly causes hellish life both for the family and for those who destroy the family tradition. The ancestors of such corrupt families fall down, because the performances for offering them food and water are entirely stopped. By the evil deeds of those who destroy the family tradition and thus give rise to unwanted children, all kinds of community projects and family welfare activities are devastated.

Bhagavad-gita 1.41 - 1.42

An Australian MP has called for Australians to stop “aborting themselves out of existence” in the debate over the introduction of the controversial abortion pill RU-486.

Australian Liberal MP Danna Vale said “we are aborting ourselves almost out of existence by 100,000 abortions every year, and that’s on a guesstimate. You multiply that by 50 years, that’s five million potential Australians we won’t have here.” (news.com.au - link expires in one week)

Australia, as is the case with many Western countries, currently has negative population growth by birth. In order to have positive population growth you need an average of 2.1 children per couple. 2 children is maintenance, and 1 child per couple is not even replacement.

This is an interesting situation in and of itself. The country has negative population growth as people have children later and opt to have less children, and widely use contraceptives and now more and easier forms of abortion to do this. As Mrs Vale put it: “”It does have a ramification on our nationhood. You just can’t get away from that. It has moral, social and political ramifications.”"

Mrs Vale’s comments have garnered a lot of publicity because she made them in relation to a prediction by a Muslim imam that Australia would be a Muslim nation within 50 years. This emotionally-charged connection has muddied the waters a little in discussion of her valid and interesting observations. I think that the fact of the negative population growth is in itself enough.

Australia’s population is growing, and that growth is driven by immigration. Mrs Vale commented that she didn’t believe it when she heard the imam’s prediction, but reviewing the birth rate statistics and projections of Australia’s changing ethnic composition she now thought it a possibility.

Australian Federation of Islamic Councils president Dr Amir Ali, said Mrs Vale had made “the most racist comment I have ever seen”.

Of course, it’s not a racist comment, it’s simply an observation. As Mrs Vale reported, the imam said in 50 years that Australia will be a Muslim nation. Given the current population decline amongst the original Australian population and the growth of the immigrant Muslim population, it’s entirely possible. Australians (as in the white descendants of multi-generational Australian families) are aborting themselves out of existence. That’s not a racist comment, that’s a simple observation of fact.

I find it interesting because I read an article over at Krishna-kirti’s blog that discussed the Western depopulation phenomenon a week or two ago.

We’re not about protecting a particular racial group or promoting one ethnicity over another. It’s simply prudent to be aware of what is going on. It’s also interesting to watch modern Western civilization, with its intense promotion of self-actualization through consumption and sense gratification with a disposable partner and one or no kids, destroy itself.

Heh - whatever Aussies spend on alcohol, here are the latest stats on gambling, via news.com.au (link will expire in one week):

SPENDING on gambling is growing fast, with Australians forking out a whopping $51.8 billion on gambling over the last thee months of 2005, figures released today show.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics today released its estimates on the component of gambling within the overall retail sector of the economy.

Retail growth over the 12 months to December fell to its lowest level since the recession of the early 1990s – but it is a different story for the gambling sector.

The bureau said between December 2003 and the December 2005 quarter, total retail turnover had increased 7.7 per cent to $51.8 billion.

But over that same period, gambling net proceeds grew 22.1 per cent to almost $2 billion. Turnover through hotels and licensed clubs was up 12.1 per cent to more than $4.8 billion.

Gambling now accounts for 40 per cent of total turnover in the nation’s pubs and licensed clubs.

It’s a bit funny to call gambling “retail”, but whatever - the facts are pretty black-and-white: $52 billion in three months. Booyakasha! No need to imagine how much money could be saved by giving up gambling….

The other night at the Loft over dinner one guest was talking about the amount of money spent by Australians each week on alcohol. Given that there are 20.5 million people in Australia, how much do you think is spent each week on alcohol? Let’s say that half of them drink - that’s 10 million. Let’s say they spend $40 each on alcohol each week (a lot? too little?) - that would be AU$400 million.

Well, according to this guest, Australians spend $840 million per week on alcohol. Various anecdotal stories followed this over the dinner table over the next few days (it became a topic of conversation), including one story of two people who drank $3000 of alcohol between them in one week. Apparently a single cocktail drink at a nightclub on a night out in a major Australian city can set you back $15-$20.

I haven’t been able to find a solid reference for the $840 million figure, but I did find this interesting discussion paper on the average alcohol consumption per year, which contains the factoid that 85% of Australian adults drink alcohol (or as they put it - 15% don’t). I also found this piece from the Gastroenterological Society of Australia on alcohol consumption, which states that Australians spend an average of $400 each on alcohol per year (which would be $153 million per week).

Either way, imagine how much money could be saved by giving up drinking alcohol…

I dropped into a Christian bookshop yesterday down near the Octagon in Dunedin and browsed some material, before leaving with a copy of a magazine “Leadership” about church leadership.

It’s an interesting resource, and it will be good to see a similar thing for ISKCON.

There was also an interesting book there called “Preaching Re-imagined” that I scanned while in the shop, and finally I had them put aside a copy of the Interlinear Bible, which has the original text in Hebrew and Greek, word for word translation, and (I’m not sure which) English translation. That is for my brother Levi, who I will be seeing next week in Auckland after the retreat in Taupo.

I’m blogging about the LCA conference on my livejournal blog, and the rss feed has been added to the LCA 2006 Planet.

I checked out the web presence of Leadership, and found an article by Brian McLaren, a Christian pastor who is part of the “emergent movement”. He is speaking about a response to homosexuality in the contemporary cultural context, and I found a lot of his feeling and thinking resonating with me, and he articulates things well.

He says:

I hesitate in answering “the homosexual question” not because I’m a cowardly flip-flopper who wants to tickle ears, but because I am a pastor, and pastors have learned from Jesus that there is more to answering a question than being right or even honest: we must also be . . . pastoral. That means understanding the question beneath the question, the need or fear or hope or assumption that motivates the question.

We pastors want to frame our answer around that need; we want to fit in with the Holy Spirit’s work in that person’s life at that particular moment. To put it biblically, we want to be sure our answers are “seasoned with salt” and appropriate to “the need of the moment” (Col. 4; Eph. 4).
….
We see whatever we say get sucked into a vortex of politicized culture-wars rhetoric–and we’re pastors, evangelists, church-planters, and disciple-makers, not political culture warriors. Those who bring us honest questions are people we are trying to care for in Christ’s name, not cultural enemies we’re trying to vanquish.
….
That alienates us from both the liberals and conservatives who seem to know exactly what we should think. Even if we are convinced that all homosexual behavior is always sinful, we still want to treat gay and lesbian people with more dignity, gentleness, and respect than our colleagues do.

For me, as someone who thinks about how to present Krishna Consciousness in the current cultural context, and as a person who wants to care for other people, these are questions that I consider, and the approach of Brian McLaren resonates with me the most. It says what I want to say about how I feel on this issue.

I’ve written about this before, that devotees are neither liberal nor conservative, they are spiritually progressive - that means that they are interested in progressing spiritually, and helping others to progress spiritually.

Here is another article, entitled Family Matters, I believe written by His Grace Matsyavatara Prabhu, a member of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, that I also consider demonstrates a sensitive, spiritually progressive perspective.

I read this today on Slashdot:

James Lovelock, the planetary scientist famous for his Gaia Theory, writes in today’s Independent of his belief that it is already too late to divert an environmental catastrophe which will see much of human civilisation destroyed. Fearing it too late to be green, he instead suggests communities plan for survival in a Mad Max type world with limited resources ruled by violent warlords. “We have to keep in mind the awesome pace of change and realise how little time is left to act, and then each community and nation must find the best use of the resources they have to sustain civilisation for as long as they can.” He suggests we should be writing a practical guidebook printed on long lasting paper containing “the basic accumulated scientific knowledge of humanity.”

I went to the video store last week to try to rent Mad Max: Beyond the Thunderdome, while I was thinking about the issues that I wrote about in my recent post on Global Warming. Unfortunately the movie is so old school that they don’t have it on DVD, only VHS.

Let me recall something that Srila Prabhupada said to Tamal Krishna Goswami, over 30 years ago: “The mission of this Krishna Consciousness movement is to be recorded in the annals of history as having saved the world in its darkest hour.”

On the one hand you can read news stories of impending environmental disaster and crisis conferences convened by national governments. On the other hand you can read about ever-growing markets and profits for industry and further development of superfluous consumer items, all touted as the “progress” of civilization. The pace of economic development proceeds unabated, even accelerating. First world nations such as the US are insatiable consumers and promiscuous producers, devouring energy and converted raw resources as processed goods at a phenomenal rate. Developing nations such as Iran demand access to the same levels of energy consumption that developed nations have.

It seems that no-one can see the contradiction, no-one can draw the link. No-one can give it up.

By averting the catastrophic apocalypse that humanity is calling upon itself, by rebuilding a sane human civilization on the basis of sustainable values, the Krishna Consciousness movement has a grave responsibility. This movement is responsible for the preservation and propagation of the Vedic knowledge that gives human beings the principles by which society can be organized for peaceful, sustainable, and spiritually progressive existence.

Jesus talked about the man who built his house on sand, and the man who built his house on rock, and how when the rain came, the house built on sand collapsed completely. As a civilisation, the global civilisation that was glorified recently by one commentator for having given Iraq free access to global markets, we are building our house on sand.

Individually, what are you building your house on?

What eternal, fundamental values undergird your personal lifestyle? How much of your identity is tied up in this culture that is rushing brashly and irresponsibly toward a precipice?

I know that most people are simply swept along with the prevailing currents and tides of society - but there are some among you who can see this, but feel powerless to do anything about it. You feel frustration in that you can see clearly where this is heading, but seem impotent to stop it. Know that this Krishna Consciousness movement exists, and that it is dedicated to stopping this madness on an individual and social level, and effecting a return to sanity.

Our strategy has two prongs: the formation of urban spiritual communities which provide a network of support and shelter from the hostile socio-economic forces that currently prey upon the increasingly vulnerable, alienated, and isolated inhabitants of modern cities, and the establishment of self-sufficient farming communities working on bio-dynamic principles of sustainability.

The entire program is guided by the timeless principles established by Krishna, explained by sages throughout history, and recorded in the oral tradition of the Vedas.

Join now, and help save the world!

In his seminal preface to the translation of Srimad Bhagavatam, Srila A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada writes:

Human society, at the present moment, is not in the darkness of oblivion. It has made rapid progress in the field of material comforts, education and economic development throughout the entire world. But there is a pinprick somewhere in the social body at large, and therefore there are large-scale quarrels, even over less important issues. There is need of a clue as to how humanity can become one in peace, friendship and prosperity with a common cause. Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam will fill this need, for it is a cultural presentation for the respiritualization of the entire human society.

There are a number of different indices that indicate the growing problems faced by human society, and in fact the whole planet.

One of the most glaring and incontrovertible is the phenomenon of global warming. It’s becoming increasing hard to ignore the situation. The calls of “it’s a natural cycle”, and “it’s nothing to do with human activity”, always pretty far-fetched, are losing the little bit of credibility that they had, even with the most gullible of people. The question of “if” has now become one of “when” and “how“.

While the arguments about how to deal with climate change roll on, scientists in the difficult business of working out just how it will affect our future are sounding increasingly urgent warnings. (from news.com.au)

I’m on a training course downtown in Brisbane, Australia right now. At lunchtime I walked through King George Square, in the city center with Param, my wife, and Prahlad, our son. Param pointed out to me what was previously the fountain. It is now a sludge consisting of water logged bark. A sign advises that Brisbane is experiencing the worst drought in 100 years, and the fountain has been converted into a “Watersense” garden to preserve water supplies. As the sign goes on to explain, Brisbane is currently under Level 2 water restrictions. The Council website warns: ” As the dam levels drop, stronger restrictions will be put in place.”

The three dams that supply Brisbane’s water are at less than 35% of capacity. This has been the hottest year on record in Australian history.

The greenhouse effect, where heat is trapped in the Earth’s atmosphere by high levels of carbon dioxide, is caused by industrialization, especially the combustion of fuels for energy. Ironically, as the temperature rises in Australia, more people buy air conditioners. The waiting list for a major domestic goods retailer (Harvey Norman) for someone to perform the installation of their air conditioners is six months. Increased use of air conditioning causes greater consumption, and hence production, of electricity. Electricity in Australia is produced through burning coal. Burning coal produces more greenhouse gases, resulting in higher temperatures. Welcome to hell.

As I mentioned previously, a new concern in New Zealand are environmental refugees - people fleeing to New Zealand because their own environments have become uninhabitable. As things get worse in more places, demand will increase. The social structure and urban infrastructure of New Zealand cities, especially Auckland, is already under strain. A massive influx of displaced peoples will only make this worse. And New Zealand has its own environmental problems to deal with. According to a recent report, New Zealanders receive 40% more UV radiation than North Americans living at similar latitudes. This is due to ozone layer depletion, caused by the release of industrial gases. The situation is even worse here in Queensland, Australia.

Srila Prabhupada once remarked wryly:

We are not against technological advancement, even though it is suicidal.

If you look at the economic and sociological forces which are drivers for these problems, global warming / the greenhouse effect, and ozone depletion, the situation does indeed seem bleak. Analyzing them to expose the root cause reveals deep rooted practices and a prevalent lifestyle that people are simply not willing to give up, especially on the large scale that is needed in order to avert the impending disaster.

As Albert Einstein so perceptively observed:

No problem can be solved by the same level of consciousness that created it.

The world is crying out for leadership in this area.

I would like to reiterate a quote of Srila Prabhupada related in Tamal Krishna Goswami’s autobiography Servant of the Servant:

The mission of this Krishna Consciousness movement is to be recorded in the progress of history as having saved the world.

The Krishna Consciousness movement, the movement for a revolution in consciousness, a return to sanity, to an individual lifestyle and a social organization that remove the impulses in the individual that in their aggregation are causing our now globalized human civilization to slide closer and closer to an irredeemable disaster, is the only hope. It addresses the root cause of the problem: the fundamental misconception of the self as matter, the loss of consciousness of our intrinsic identity and our relationship with the universe, the loss of consciousness of our purpose in this universe, and indeed the purpose of the universe itself.

Life is not simply about living and trying to squeeze as much enjoyment out of life, out of other people, out of this body, out of objects, out of the environment, as possible. Life has a purpose - you were born with a purpose, and ultimately it is a spiritual purpose. It is related to that part of us that is alive, the persistent identity that experiences the different bodies from birth to childhood and on to adulthood. Without fulfilling our spiritual needs, without knowing our spiritual nature, our spiritual identity and relationship to the complete whole, we will never be able to be satisfied.

As the sage Canakya Pandit says:

There is not enough gold, grains, or women in this world to satisfy the desires of one man

When we have a civilization of such people, organized and with industrial capacity and advanced technology, the result is a disaster. Widespread war over resources, uncontrollable resource exploitation, and unbridled resource consumption with attendant pollution.

When we understand our identity and our purpose, and act on that platform, we are able to be satisfied, and the raging desire for “progress” and “growth” that is thinly disguised serial exploitation of people and products in a disposable society subsides.

Read our books: Bhagavad-gita, Srimad Bhagavatam. Talk to some of our people. Examine Krishna Consciousness for yourself with a critical and inquiring mind. We are looking for good men and women, who are willing to head up this crucial mission. Now is the hour of need. Who will step out of the crowd and give their life for the most worthy cause, and who will simply remain in pointless participation in the madness of so-called material progress, in pursuit of pleasure which always remains out of reach, until the body and the environment have been destroyed through that pursuit?

Krishna wants you, and the world needs you.

“Teach the science of Krishna Consciousness to everyone. On my order, become qualified as a teacher of real knowledge and save this land. ” - Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu

Here is something that came out on the Linux Australia list yesterday:

> It’s also interesting to note that the “fresh blood” that are now
> > running LOA have completely forgotten about all the efforts of those
> > that came before them.

It may appear that way, but I don’t think it’s a totally fair characterisation. I personally know full well that I stepped into an organisation of enthusiastic people who have achieved amazing things and built up a legacy of success that is hard to live up to.

You do have a point though that often we see the results of the efforts of people that have gone before without being aware of the specific individuals involved. People who have put in their time and effort for the collective benefit of our community deserve our recognition and thanks.

I’ve preached in areas where there was no pre-existing facility, and in areas where there was a lot of facility. All that facility was built on the effort of devotees. I went out to New Govardhan the other day, our farm in New South Wales. That farm was bought and built by the efforts of so many devotees, and the temple building there was constructed by devotees.

A lot of times history is not recorded except in the memory of those who were there. I don’t know all the names of the devotees who built the Chosica temple in Lima, Peru, or the temple at New Govardhana, in Murwillambah, Australia, but I do appreciate it.

According to this article, credit card applications are up 90,000 or 11% over this period last year in Australia. Uncontrolled credit is increasingly becoming a problem for people, especially those of the so-called Generation Y, born from 1980s onwards.

According to one article I read (I can’t remember where), pre-Generation X’ers, born up to the late 60s, are fiscally conservative, and save before they buy. They get the money, then buy something. Generation X’ers, born during the 70’s, are more open to getting things on credit, but still reasonably fiscally responsible. Generation Y, however, those born from the 80’s to the mid 90’s, are credit animals.

I remember when I was a university student, 14 or so years ago. The bank gave me a credit card as a first year university student with no questions asked. The idea is of course to establish a credit relationship with a potential high-incoming earning person. It was an initial $500 risk for the bank, so pretty cheap, and the potential reward is to get someone using a credit card whose limit was eventually extended up to $5000 before I cancelled it.

A few months ago, passing through Sydney airport, I was offered an American Express card with a $5000 limit - with no need to provide any financial records or proof of income. Obviously air travellers generally have some income, so it’s the best place to do this.

This is going to become increasingly a problem. Up to this point we have been dealing routinely with people whose bodies, minds, and emotions are traumatized due to illicit sexual relations (including abuse), exposure to pornography, video games from an early age, drug use from an early age, junk food diets, and a myriad of other inputs which conspire to destroy determination and stability in responsible material and spiritual life. Add to this now the complication of a financial trainwreck and the challenge becomes even greater to help people “make a safe landing” and integrate themselves into a sane community.

Add budgeting, credit consolidation, and debt reduction to the palette of skills required by an urban missionary…

Before I left for South America Josh Wrigley (Josh 2) gave me his mrdanga that he had imported from the US to NZ.

In edition 1 of Harinam Sankirtan Yajna we discussed fixing up Balaram mrdangas. Josh discovered that many older models have floating threads and you can’t tighten the screws anymore. He drilled the body out, inserted a new sleeve with a thread, used Araldite to hold it in place, and voila!

The only thing was that US engineering is imperial, whereas NZ is metric, so he replaced all of them at once so that you don’t have to carry two tuning keys.

He also discovered that worn out threads can be given a new lease on life using Locktite ™, a compound that acts as a loose bonding glue to hold the screws in place.

I sold Josh’s mrdanga to Urjjesvari, and used the laxmi to buy another one in LA as we passed through. That was early 2000.

Balaram mrdangas are made next to the BBT office in Watseka Avenue by a devotee named Ratna-bhusana das. He molds the bumpers, assembles the bodies which are cast in two pieces by an outside firm, mixes the black stuff for the heads, which were supplied by Remo in 2000 (not sure what the story is now), and, if memory serves, makes the small heads by hand.

When we flew to South America we discovered that you can’t get Locktite there (duh! obvious once you’ve been there). After a number of months we discovered that there is a teflon-based tape that is used for waterproofing screws and is widely available even there. You wind it around the screw and it expands into the gap when the screw is tightened. This has the same effect as the Locktite.

When we flew from LA to Guayaquil we put the mrdangas in their covers, with the heads off. That was a mistake. We were worried about the effect of altitude on them. When we travelled over the Andes in South America we would loosen the heads off, but not remove them. When we removed them to fly down there the bodies were damaged. We had to repair them using locally available materials so that the jagged edges did not rip the heads when we put them back on. We used a compound from a shop that repairs windscreens. It’s the waterproofing rubber that goes around the glass.

That information went into edition 2 of Harinam Sankirtan Yajna, which was lost when my laptop was stolen on a bus in Lima.

This would have been in edition 3: use Armor All on the mrdanga bumpers to maintain them. This stuff will add years to the life of your bumpers. Over time the rubber ages and begins to lose its form and elasticity. It becomes brittle and starts cracking and begins to sag. Vraja washed his bumpers with a detergent a couple of years ago and they have been sticky ever since, so be careful when cleaning them.

My mrdanga is still in really good condition, after almost six years. Since it has an owner who is personally responsible for it, it gets better treatment than mrdangas that everyone uses and no-one cares for. It’s just a matter of looking after it. Keep it in a cover, use it properly, maintain it well, and don’t ever, ever put it on the ground.

For three years I lived in South America in one room which was also the BBT office and storeroom. One and a half of those years there were two of us in the room, the other one and a half three of us.

Now I live in Australia in a five bedroom, two story house. The three of us live in one room, along with our office.

The conclusion: you cannot change your karma by changing your physical location. Don’t relocate geographically in an attempt to “better your situation” economically. Relocate on the basis of where you are called to serve.