Dan Pallotta

4.17.2004

Saturday, April 17, 2004

The world's problems are at its core, yet our political leaders only have plans for its surface. Our troubles are fundamental, yet our problem-solving looks for answers in the margins. The solution in Iraq is not a question of whether or not to send another 20,000 troops. The solution to the global AIDS epidemic is not going to be found at the next AIDS conference. Our solutions exist in fundamental questions of whether our approach to life will be one that embraces fear or one that embraces possibility and optimism; whether our approach is one that embraces greed and attachment, or compassion and love. We wonder why we are not excited by our political candidates. We are not excited because they are not addressing the real issues that confront us. They are addressing issues that we pretend are the real issues because we are afraid to face up to the real real issues.

If we look at the fundamental problems we will come up with fundamental answers. If we realize that the fundamental problem is that 5% of the world lives in luxury while 95% of the world lives in poverty, we will begin to create massive programs to end world hunger and end the global AIDS epidemic and provide state-of-the art schools and medical care for every child on the face of the earth. This will solve the problem of terrorism in a way that no Homeland Security Department could ever dream it could be solved. This will solve the problem of the need to spend $400 billion on defense every year in a way no new fighter plane could ever hope to solve it.

If we realize that the fundamental problem is one of psychic fear and an absence of love, we would begin massive programs to put our political leaders and diplomats into group psychotherapy sessions and human encounter groups and meditation workshops based in principles of wisdom instead of fear, where everyone could see that their dreams are common, that their interests are shared, that their political pressures at home are the same, and that they fundamentally care for one another. This would solve the problem of world violence in a way that no army could ever dream.

George Bush and John Kerry are trying to cure a cancer with an aspirin. And we are swallowing it. They don't know any better. This is the only way they have ever tried to solve problems. We don't know any better either. But we can change that. We have to begin to call for answers at the deepest possible level, and stop giving weight to the idea that, in the long run, it makes any God-damned difference whether we send another 10,000 or another 20,000 troops to Iraq, or whether the new tax cuts remain permanent or not. I can guarantee you that it does not.

4.15.2004

Friday, April 16, 2004

A protease inhibitor regimen goes now for about $10,000 a year per person in the United States. Last year 3 million people around the world died of AIDS, even though we have protease inhibitors. The vast, vast majority of those people never came close to being able to afford them. Ten thousand dollars multiplied by three million people equals thirty billion dollars. That's if you paid top dollar for protease inhibitors. In some countries, like India, negotiations with pharmaceutical companies, or generic production of the drugs with pharmaceutical company consent have brought the price of the annual regimen down to $350 per person. If you multiply 3 million people by $350 you get a total of $1.05 billion. Let's say you have to spend ten times that much to build the clinics and hire the doctors to get those drugs to the people and check up on them. That's an extra $10 billion.

So for a total of $11 billion we could have stopped all AIDS deaths around the world last year. We could have saved three million human lives.

We have now spent over $150 billion in Iraq to lose thousands of human lives.

The universe could not speak any more loudly to us nor give us any more compelling data to convince us that our approach to life is asinine and in the precise opposite direction of what would work. This is not a close call. We pray to God for answers. God has given us the answers. We act as if all of the death and suffering in the world is some great mystery. God couldn't be doing anything more to make it less mysterious. God is screaming the answers at us. The signs are everywhere. The evidence is dripping in the blood of the war dead.

We have spent ten times more money killing a few thousand people than it would have cost us to save several million. In fact, if we took the $150 billion that has gone into Iraq and spread it over the next ten years, we could have stopped the AIDS death toll for ten years. We could have saved thirty million human lives. Was there ever any threat that Saddam Hussein could have killed thirty million people?

The only thing that is mysterious is why God has not yet given up entirely on the human race.

In this election year, we should not be inquiring about who has the better economic plan. We should not be asking who can put $1,500 bucks more in our pocket with their tax plan. We should only be asking which candidate is ready to stop the mass murder - by neglect and utter abandonment - of millions of poor people around the world. That is all that should matter to us. We sit on these enormous resources while these poor bastards die the most horrible deaths under the most depraved circumstances. We build new fighter planes and attack helicopters that costs tens of millions of dollars per copy while little children cough up their own blood and die grueling deaths from pneumosystis pneumonia and karposi's sarcoma from AIDS. We count the stock market to the penny but round off human death by the millions.

That any nation can so neglect its responsibility and duty in the world is frightening beyond all analogy.

Thursday, April 15, 2004

There was this poem against war that John Denver recited on one of his albums back in the seventies. I always loved it:

"Once upon a time, in the land of Hush-A-Bye, around about the wondrous days of yore, they came across a kind of box, bound up with chains and locked with locks and labeled 'Kindly do not touch; it's war.'

A decree was issued round about, and all with a flourish and a shout and a gaily-colored mascot tripping lightly on before. Don't fiddle with this deadly box, or break the chains, or pick the locks. And please don't ever play about with war.

The children understood. Children happen to be good and they were just as good around the time of yore. They didn't try to pick the locks or break into that deadly box. They never tried to play about with war. Mommies didn't either; sisters, aunts, grannies neither. They were quiet, and sweet, and pretty in those wondrous days of yore. Well, very much the same as now, not the ones to blame somehow for opening up that deadly box of war.

But someone did. Someone battered in the lid and spilled the insides out across the floor. A kind of bouncy, bumpy ball made up of guns and flags and all the tears, and horror, and death that comes with war. It bounced right out and went bashing all about, bumping into everything in store. And what was sad and most unfair was that it didn't really seem to care much who it bumped, or why, or what, or for.

It bumped the children mainly. And I'll tell you this quite plainly, it bumps them every day and more, and more, and leaves them dead, and burned, and dying, thousands of them sick and crying. Cause when it bumps, it's really very sore.

Now there's a way to stop the ball. It isn't difficult at all. All it takes is wisdom, and I'm absolutely sure that we can get it back into the box, and bind the chains, and lock the locks. But no one seems to want to save the children anymore.

Well, that's the way it all appears, cause it's been bouncing round for years and years. In spite of all the wisdom 'wiz since those wondrous days of yore and the time they came across the box, bound up with chains and locked with locks, and labeled 'Kindly do not touch; it's war.' "

4.13.2004

Wednesday, April 14, 2004

A friend sent this quote to me today. It captures something so many of us feel so perfectly:

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, from those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children." Dwight D. Eisenhower

When I think of the beautiful world we could build with all of the resources we pour into weaponry. It is beyond our wildest imaginations - what that kind of money could do - what that kind of human capital could do. My God, if we took 20% of that - just 20% - and put it into ending AIDS and world hunger, do any of us really think we would ever have to worry about terrorists again? It is so simple. It stares us in the face - take $90 billion of the $450 billion defense budget and use it to end AIDS and hunger around the world. We have the drugs and the food to be able to do that. We know how. We don't need to wait for some miracle of science. We could do this - tomorrow - if we wanted. And we'd still have $360 billion left to spend on defense if we're so stuck on that. Why will no candidate for leadership in this country fly this flag? Why? Why ? Why?

4.12.2004

Tuesday, April 13, 2004

I wonder if you're worried about something right now. Maybe money, maybe the kids, maybe a relationship at work. In his book, "The Power of Now," Eckhart Tolle talks about how we try to cope, right now, in our minds, with various scenarios of disaster that will occur in the future. He says that you cannot cope with the future because you can't cope with something that doesn't really exist. This thought that you cannot cope with the future because it doesn't exist has given me great comfort at times, and it has helped tremendously in my effort to bring myself back to the present moment, right now, in which I am OK.

What a great gift it would be to ourselves if we would give ourselves permission, for just a few minutes, right now, to let go of all our worries and all our anxieties and all our dreads and all our horror movies about the future, which we keep playing over and over again in our minds. Lest you thought you were the only one who does that, or the only one who sees a catastrophic future for yourself sometimes, I will tell you that there is at least one other person out there who shares your disorder and your dis-ease.

He just wrote this.

4.11.2004

Monday, April 12, 2004

Well, Easter's over, so I guess that means we can go back to killing people again. I have used this quote once or twice before, but it is so good that there is only benefit in repeating it. It's by G.K. Chesterton - "It is not that Christianity has been tried and found wanting. It is that it has been found difficult and has been left untried."

I cannot get over the irony of the idolization of Jesus mixed with the complete rejection of his teachings. It is not as if we even come close. He says "Love one another as I have loved you" and we kill one another. He says "The meek shall inherit the earth" and we embrace pride. In fact, we even combine the killing with the pride - "The few, the proud, the Marines." He says "Suffer the little children" and we instead let the little children suffer. He says "When I was in prison you visited me," and we put people in prison and abandon them. He says "Let he who is without sin throw the first stone," and we throw bombs.

No, we couldn't be farther away from the teachings of Jesus. Now if we realized this and were honest about it, that would be one thing. But the fact that we don our Easter bonnets and go sing songs of praise to him is a matter for a whole other level of concern.

Here is another quotation - this one from Webster - "A mental disorder characterized by symptoms, such as delusions or hallucinations, that indicate impaired contact with reality."

It is the definition of psychosis.