

-

". . . AND GULLIVER RETURNS"

\--In Search of Utopia—

BOOK 7

OUR VISIT TO INDUS

Searching for the Road from Poverty

by

Lemuel Gulliver XVI as told to Jacqueline Slow

Copyright 2009 by Lemuel Gulliver XVI

SMASHWORDS EDITION

ISBN 978-0-9823076-0-1

Dear friends—Obviously I wrote this series to be read from Book 1 to the end, but silly me! Readers often begin with what sounds interesting to them. This may leave them unaware of the characters, my friends and I. So let me introduce us. We were boyhood friends, as wild and as close as geese heading south for the winter. But our university educations split us philosophically like a drop of quicksilver hitting the floor. But like those balls of mercury, when brought together, they again become one.As have we.

  Ray became a Catholic priest and moved far to the right of where our teenage liberalism had bound us. Ray calls himself a neo-conservative. We think he is a reactionary.

 Lee slid to the left of our adolescent leanings, and somewhere along the line became an atheist. Lee is a lawyer.

  Concannon, Con for short, retired from his very successful business. I guess his business experience moved him a bit to the right, to conservatism—a conservative just to the right of the middle.

 Then there's me. I think I'm pretty much a middle of the roader—except for my passion to save our planet by reducing our population before global warming, massive poverty and far-reaching famines decimate our humanity. Hope this introduction makes our discussions make a bit more sense.

By the way, as most of you know, we have put our photos before every bit of dialogue. This should make you more familiar with us. So the books read more like plays. Since most of you read the books in PDF or EPUB format it is no problem. But if you read them in RTF or TXT you will probably lose the photos. This will make the transitions of the conversations more difficult to follow. LG

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# Table of Contents

Arriving in Indus

It was not far from Singaling to Indus. Just a five hour flight on Singapore Airlines, still in the Southeast Asian part of the world--but what a universe of difference. From one of the three most advanced countries on the planet to a Third World nation just trying to get its overpopulated head above water. The globalized ocean was drowning this rural, impoverished, overpopulated land. Water is an apt analogy. You need water to live, but too much and you drown. Indus, like its neighbors Bangladesh and India were drowning in humanity. They educate one young mind and ten illiterate babies are born to take his place. For every step forward it was ten steps back.

Indus was welcoming the sweatshop jobs that China and Vietnam had earlier used to catapult them into the global economy. The money they earned helped to finance their fledgling education and health care, so they now had climbed another rung or two up the economic ladder. They now had some exports of food, clothes and toys, and soon they hoped be exporting information and microchips.

As we made our way up the ramp to the incoming visitors' area, leading our luggage like Argentinean dog walkers, I spotted a dark little man holding a yellow sign under his chin. 'Commander and Clan'. I knew we had a fellow with a sense of humor as our driver. His companion laid flower leis over our heads. I'm not sure what they are called here, but I'll go with my Hawaiian vocabulary until I get my linguistic sea legs.

 —"Gentlemen, I am Gopol Ghosh. I welcome you to our country."

 —"Mr. Ghosh, we are deeply honored that you would take time from you presidential duties to meet our clan.Please meet my friends, Father Ray, Con and Lee. You may be getting comments from any angle from these three. Ray we think of as a reactionary, Lee is a far-out liberal and Con is a retired businessman and a rather staunch conservative."

 —"The honor is mine gentlemen, I assure you. I will take you to your hotel now, then we can have dinner in about an hour and you can fire away your questions."

Our drive, mainly on dirt roads, passed the makeshift slum houses--some with driftwood roofs, some with corrugated plastic and some with corrugated metal roofs. The monsoon season would soon visit with the vengeance of Shiva and the solid roofs would offer some protection from the sheets of water that the gods would dump from the sky to cool the 110 to 120 degree furnace that roasted and parched this ancient plain.

There were no sacred cows blocking our way. This country was too poor to support the Brahma bulls that wandered aimlessly in nearby India. So our driver didn't need to cow-tow to the bulls as Indian chauffeurs must do. My earlier impression of Indian drivers was that they tried to avoid the cow but aimed at the pedestrians. Maybe it was their way of reducing the population, or perhaps it was merely spinning the wheel of karma just a bit faster.

President Ghosh, the newly elected leader of this human hell, was genuinely concerned. He pointed out the landmarks more with pity than with pride. His concern was obvious and deep. And we shared his concern. Our lives are so blessed, and these hungry human skeletons scavenge for scraps to allow their malnourished bodies to survive until sunset. The accident of one's geographical birthplace and how the cards are dealt in the parent-poker lottery determine 99.9% of our fates. kismet, karma, luck, predestination—it isn't fair. But then as my grand dad said, 'things are never fair.' Our American bodies are well fed, some of our minds are well read, we hold the spark of a realistic hope for our futures, the feeling that if we have a dream—we can make it a reality. But what hope is there for these illiterate adults, what hope for their children? Do they care as much as we do whether tomorrow dawns. And will the dawn come up like thunder, as Kipling penned of our Asian neighbor, or will it merely slither in like the ever-present cobras bringing fear, despair and maybe an early demise?

I don't think I've ever experienced such an energized epiphany that we are indeed brothers. So many of us hapless, hopeless, rootless--but so often the prisoners of our own decisions. So often jailed by our traditions. So often mired in the confinement of our helplessness. Do I have any hope of helping the helpless? Of feeding the starving? Of aiding the sick? It strikes me again that throwing dollars at the impoverished will give only a temporary respite. It may lengthen the life of an AIDS patient; give a year of schooling to some impoverished boys, and maybe a few girls; buy some mosquito nets to reduce the incidence of malaria; but will it make any difference in the reduction of poverty and illiteracy. Will it open the door to human happiness?

President Ghosh opened our conversation.

 \--"Let me give you some background on Indus. We are intimately connected to India, but we are looked upon as a poor country cousin, a bungling bumpkin that held our parent down for centuries before we were cut loose. We were an anchor holding back the mother ship, India. So left to our own devices we are stumbling along moving from a Fourth World country, if there is such a thing, into the Third World and soon into the Second World."

 —"Sounds like you have world of work to do!"

 —"Well, Ray, maybe not a whole world of work, but at least a hemisphere! But if China can do it and the upper class Indians can do it, there is hope for us. Let's look at India for a minute. Their 800 million poor are like our whole country. Let us look at India for a moment. Seeing their problems can give you a glimpse of ours, but ours are worse.

"India has more arable land that any country but yours, but it can barely feed itself. Small farmers can't afford tractors. They must rely on cattle to pull their plows. If they run out of human and cow manure they must buy expensive fertilizers. In the Punjab, water availability is a major concern for wheat farming. The water tables in some parts of the country are dropping several feet per year, even though we still have heavy monsoons.

"The Green Revolution of a few years ago has turned brown. Mouths are multiplying faster than rice can rise or wheat can grow. But while the poor are famished, the newly middle class multitudes demand an increase in quality and quantity. The fattened wallets demand more variety and their ready cash sidetracks the food train. Only

with adequate rainfall and smaller families can the small farmers feed themselves and maybe have something left over to sell. But with inflation in the double digits, there is less buying power and if they do earn some rupees their consumer options are limited.

"In India family farming has reduced as people have moved to the cities. It has shrunk in size and quantity, and a few years ago mounting debt began to drive some farmers to suicide. Now many find it more profitable to sell their land to developers of industrial buildings. And those who continue to farm often switch to the fruits and vegetables that the more prosperous Indians now demand. But with few refrigerated trucks and freight cars, their more valuable produce may not make it to the market. In India it costs six times more to get food to market than to produce it. The inefficient food transportation system eats up much of the profit of the farmer's toil and he is lucky to get 20 cents of each consumer's dollar. This is much less than most farmers worldwide receive.

"The Green Revolution introduced high-yielding varieties of rice and wheat, expanded the use of irrigation, pesticides and fertilizers, and transformed the northwestern plains into India's breadbasket. Between 1968 and 1998, the production of cereals in India more than doubled. But since the 1980s the government has not helped to improve the irrigation possibilities.

"River-fed irrigation systems were not built in the quantity needed to water the fields growing the high yield wheat and rice. This meant that wells had to be drilled and electric pumps installed. This has led to a 100 foot drop in the water table over the last three decades. The poor water management by the government has resulted in 40% of India's farms having no irrigation facilities.

"Lower rainfall during the recent monsoon seasons cut drinking water supplies and significantly reduced the harvest of food and cotton crops. Since 60% of India's population are farmers, a poor harvest can be devastating to the economy which is already reeling under a 12% annual inflation rate and skyrocketing food and oil prices."

 —"The lack of fresh water is one of my two major concerns for the planet's population. This often goes hand in hand with proper sanitation. These affect more than a third of the world's population.(1)"

 —"It's more than just a lack of water, isn't it?"

 —"There are so many water borne diseases. Some are carried by fecal material to the mouths of the unsuspecting. There are viruses, like those causing hepatitis, and there are bacteria and harmful protozoa. Then there are organic and inorganic substances that may build up in water pipes and find their way to the mouths and other mucus membranes. Legionnaire's disease is an example. Some toxins are inhaled. Some are absorbed by or penetrate the skin.

"Then there are diseases that result from a lack of soap and water, like trachoma, that

has caused six million to go blind. Even pneumonia and diarrhea are increased because of a lack of effective hand washing. Then there are diseases caused by small animals and larvae that live in water. Shistosomiasis, caused by a fresh water snail, affects 160 million people. That's the disease that wiped out Napoleon's army in Egypt. Then insects, like mosquitoes and tsetse flies, that breed in water give us malaria, yellow fever and other scourges. Global warming is increasing these and is moving the territories of these pests northward.

"Another problem occurs when other toxins enter the water supply. Pesticides, lead from pipes, mercury, arsenic from ground water. You remember that Bangladesh had millions of people exposed to ground water arsenic at 100 times the maximum proposed by the World Health Organization. Tens of thousands died. Many more developed skin lesions. And this isn't just limited to Bangladesh. China, India, Mexico and parts of South America have the potential problem.(2) Nearly all of these problems have affected us at one time or another.

We can trace water purification ideas back 6000 years. So filtering or boiling water is not a novel technique.(3) Hippocrates developed a filter to make water healthier to drink. Chlorination has been used for over 150 years, still one-sixth of the world's population are without clean water and over 40% don't have adequate sanitation."

  "Many people in the world have access to only a total of a gallon of water a day. Americans use three gallons just to flush a toilet. Add in drinking and cooking water, showers or baths, watering flowers and lawns, and the water used per person for agricultural and industrial uses and you have a huge discrepancy between the First and Third Worlds in water usage."

 —"You understand, Father Ray. We have water but it is not clean. Cholera is a recurring problem. We don't have sanitation plants but over half of our household waste is recycled. Feces and urine are used as fertilizer for hydroponic farms. Reclaimed water, when we can process it, is used for drinking, cooking and agriculture.

RECOGNIZING THE WORLD'S PROBLEMS

"Years ago when I was at Cambridge my economics professor said that the World Bank reported that poverty was down by half from 1981 to 2001, from 40% making under a dollar a day in 1981 to 21% making a dollar a day in 2001. But the world population had increased from 4.3 billion to 6 billion in that time and the inflation rate for the world had increased by over 100% so the total number earning under a dollar a day in 1981 was the same as in 2001, about 800 million, but their purchasing power had been reduced. When researchers, like the World Bank, tell us that a percentage change has occurred in poverty, we must look at the total numbers. It's that old bugaboo of 'lies, damn lies and statistics'!

"Population growth cancels out economic gains unless the economy leaps forward like it did in China. The gross domestic product in developing countries rose by 30% during those 20 years. But like I said, the inflation rate went up 100%. That's about 1 1/2% per year, actually it is quite a bit less when you think of compounded yearly increases. But when you look at East Asia the gross domestic product had an annual growth rate of 6.4% and the people living in poverty dropped from 58 to 16%. This was the Chinese economic miracle. In this part of the world 400 million people were no longer in extreme poverty, earning less than a dollar a day. But outside of China there was an increase of 300 million in poverty.

"In South Asia a 5.5% average growth rate in the GDP was accompanied by rapid population growth so the number of extremely poor people only dropped from 41 to 31%.

"In Sub-Saharan Africa the per-capita GDP dropped by 13%. With their rapid population growth, 50 million more people entered the area of abject poverty. The new total was 314 million, more than the entire U.S. population—and about 50% of the entire Sub-Saharan population.

"Global income inequality is greater now than it has been in modern times. The richest one percent of the population have as much money as the bottom 60%,and the top 25% have 75% of the money.. So most of the world's people are poor.

"We can glean some of these trends from the predictions of Thomas Malthus in his essays on the principles of population from 1798 to 1826. He predicted that population would increase faster than food and that as population increased laborers would be less in demand so would be paid less. The gap between rich and poor would therefore increase.

"It is clear to those of us in government that excess population is the anchor to any economy that wants to grow. Then there is the conundrum of poor uneducated people. The democratic ideal and the socialistic goal is to equalize opportunities and benefits. This means reducing the income gap between rich and poor. From a pragmatic viewpoint, more poor but eager workers should contribute to a labor intensive economic situation where a country benefits from the richer countries outsourcing to them. But as the economy develops and prospers fewer unskilled workers are needed. They become superfluous as machines and robots do their work and as the development of advanced technologies become the source of globalized riches. But the fact is that every country has more uneducated and unskilled people than they can possibly use, even at the beginning of an economic evolution. This means that a recession in the West is a depression here in the East.

"I have heard it said that the poor will always be with us. What a pity because they will just become poorer and poorer as their lack of education, skill or effort will always keep them on the mat. I hear the voices of the equalitarians bemoaning the plight of the poor, but I don't see too many of their wallets opening to buy Park Avenue apartments or lobster dinners for the billions of slum dwellers. It reminds me that talk is cheap and charity is expensive, but reality rules. So in my country we have to educate our people, young and old. It is our only hope for grabbing a share of the world's riches."

COMPARISON WITH INDIA AND BANGLADESH

 —"Mr Ghosh, you are a neighbor to India on the sub-continent. You share their major religion. But your economic status is far behind India's. How do you see yourself in terms of comparing and contrasting with India?"

 \--"That is a huge question. Do you have about twenty years to hear my answer? You know that today, in 2025, India has become the third largest economy in the world. It is ahead of Russia and Brazil and has just passed Japan. It has been growing at almost 6% a year when most other countries are growing at about 3% annually. The infrastructure of power production, highways and railroads, once provided exclusively by the public sector is increasingly being funded by private money. Private capital has been streaming into India as its potential unfolds. And the democratic government and economic freedom make India a safer bet for the security of private assets, but also for profit. When you compare the autocratic governmental takeovers of foreign owned assets in Russia, Southern Africa and northern South America, India is very safe. We plan to follow India's lead once we can get our non-farm economy growing and our education programs functioning fully.

"Now let me look at a few aspects of our similarities and differences. India's long history, particularly with its caste system, has resulted in a number of high class wealthy people and a far greater number of uneducated and impoverished people. A third of the world's poorest people live in India. The average number of years of education is about 4 for boys and 2 for girls, but has been increasing. Its literacy level is 75% for men and 50% for women. Ours is less than half that. How can we get the best minds into the flow of technology, how can we produce a population that can earn enough to be consumers?

In India their 800 million poor are being swallowed by the skyrocketing inflation rates while the rich Indians buy more companies and run with the rich of the globalized world. But we have no rich, we are merely drowning victims in the sub-continent's ocean of pathetic poor.

"India has been working at increasing its electronic technology so that it became a leader in the world. A problem was that so many Indians with superior educations opted to leave for more comfortable countries with higher paying jobs.While China was used as a source for cheap labor, India's advantages were a nearly universal use of English by the educated classes and its more advanced technical education. Its democracy, while cumbersome, was more efficient than was Mao's state planned socialism.

"The high caste people were capable of high levels of education. With Gandhi's theoretical elimination of the castes, there was more possibility for education for more people. Of course the Sikhs had advocated equality since their early years. And their superior cultural and educational status helped India considerably. But in Indus we are Sikh-poor you might say. We are a long way from the Punjab and we don't have the commerce, the military or the education to attract them. But we are trying to entice more Sikhs to immigrate here.

"As you know India will be the most populated country in five to ten years with 1.4 billion people. And even today, in 2025, it has more workers in the 20 to 24 age range than does China, 116 million in India versus 94 million in China. Until recently it had a superior education for its upper classes, but China now seems to be winning the diploma derby. But India's long history with English as a primary language has made its graduates in medicine, information technology and mathematics more valuable in our globalized world. There is no question that having a commanding presence on the internet has worked to its advantage. Few countries have been able to match its 5 to 12% annual economic growth.

"Well-trained Indians have worked as service specialists in a global IT network for decades and are rated at least as effective as the American and European hardware and software developers. The per capita income has increased more than ten times in the last ten years, but the number is deceptive because most Indians are rural and still live in poverty, at a dollar or two a day. But the top end of the monetary mountain has its share of billionaires and highly paid professionals. It would be higher if more highly educated Indians would stay home, but living in England and the U.S. usually brings a much higher standard of living. Of course the strong family ties keep many in their home country. As humans we must often make the choice between economic security and emotional security, between the accumulation of riches and the comfort of family.

"Being a rural country, with 95% of our people working their farms and rice paddies, our farmers' income levels are in the $1 to $4 a day area. We recognize that education is the key to our escape from poverty and to a share of the global wealth. While India's gross national product is growing ours is stagnant.

"Much of India's income is generated by other countries outsourcing to them. Because so many speak English they are used by airlines and hotels for worldwide reservations services. Because of their electronic skills, many foreign companies use Indian companies to solve the ever-occurring gremlins that invade our computers or software. Indian lawyers, who are schooled in English and American common law, are used to do a large amount of English and American legal work. They generally charge less than 10% of the fees in the West. With the advanced medical knowledge of the Indian medical community they do a great deal of research in medicine and in the pharmaceutical fields. They also manufacture a large amount of the world's pharmaceuticals. Indian doctors efficiently read x-rays and CT scans from the West that are sent by email, Even surgical operations for Westerners are done 50 to 80% cheaper than in the West. And they are done in five star hospitals. We can't do any of this. When our youth are university educated they generally leave. But in India, because of the low cost of living and the strong family traditions, many young people stay—even though they could earn much more elsewhere.

"India's progress is not universal. There is great progress for its educated citizens and almost no progress in the nearly million villages where about eight hundred million people reside. With 100,000 millionaires, one Indian in 10,000 is a millionaire, compared to one in 40 in your country. We have only five in Indus. So we have a long way to go. Right now we are just trying to establish a manufacturing base and an education infrastructure. We are working hard to get the low level manufacturing outsourced jobs that China and Vietnam once got. Globalization is giving us a chance to get a piece of the economic pie.

"Right now it is just a crumb or two from a stale crust, but eventually we expect to be able to nibble at the apples and berries in the pie filling. We have just signed a contract with Scottish shrimp companies to hand peel their shrimp at fifty cents an hour. It is cheaper for them to fly the shrimp here, let us peel them by hand, then fly them back, than it is to have the shrimp machine peeled in Scotland by $11 an hour workers. 120 Scottish workers lost their jobs, but over 2000 of our people now have jobs that pay well for our economy.

"Outsourcing labor to us gives us employment. Asking for the same pay rates or amenities as would be given in the developed country would boomerang the jobs back to the developed countries. For us 'sweatshop' labor is a giant step up, the first step to economic achievement. Your 'do-gooders' in the West aren't doing us any favors when you pressure your companies to equalize our situation with yours. Our comforts will come. Without the outsourcing we would have few jobs. We poor people see the jobs as opportunities, not as slavery. A hundred years ago England and the U.S. were where we are today. Seventy years ago it was Japan, sixty years ago Korea, forty years ago China, thirty years ago Vietnam and Thailand—now it is our turn.

"Globalization has caused loses a large number of low paying jobs in the West, but it gives us, in the impoverished world, ten to twenty times as many jobs--jobs that are well paid for us. Of course the billionaire capitalists reap most of the profit. But we are better off. And eventually we will be the capitalists.

"It was obvious that the overpopulation and poverty of India and Indus are tugging us backward at the same time that Indian business and science are leaping into the future. 60% of all Indians are below the age of 35, and 60% of our people are under 28. This means that without strong population control the population will explode even more.

"A small dent in India's population is occurring as 16,000 people a day contract HIV. This helps to blunt the 75,000 daily births but it is only a small finger in the dike holding back the human inundation that is inevitable. Yes commander."

 —"My father always enjoyed the Indians more than any other group. They were so friendly and accommodating. I remember him telling me about the work ethic he found in Indians at home and abroad. Indians in business have always had a strong work ethic. In Singapore, the UK, Africa, and the U.S., Indians are prepared to work seven day weeks and long hours."

 —"My people work very hard in our fields. But it has been my experience that poor people will work very hard when given the chance. I remember being in California some years ago and seeing the Mexican bra ceros working in the fields. Nobody works harder. Your countrymen also have the reputation of working hard."

 —"But there's a big difference between pushing a plow seven days a week and managing a restaurant seven days a week, or setting up a business. Some jobs are pure drudgery, others are interesting, even enjoyable. But speaking of unenjoyable work, I understand that in India there are a number of people, even children, doing slave labor. Is that also true here?"

 —"If it exists I'm not aware of it. But India has more opportunities for cottage industries than we have. Rug making, hand made textiles, and a number of other jobs are available for low income workers. Then it is not uncommon for the better off people to hire household servants—a bearer or butler, a cook, a dobie or washing person, and maybe a chauffeur."

 —"My friend knew of a case in Calcutta where an 8 year old girl worked all day until nearly midnight cleaning and doing other jobs. She got a floor to sleep on, some food and $2.25 a month."

 —"Child slavery exists even when there are laws against it. Parents are eager to get their children into employment because it is one less mouth to feed at home and it is hoped that the child will have a better life. But selling young girls or boys into the sex trade is particularly brutal. Calcutta, Mumbai, and every major city and minor town provides a home for the sex traders.

"Cruelty to children is a universal in every land and every social class. Religious, and non-religious, rich and poor, educated and ignorant—all succumb too often to mistreating their children. Poor or non-existent health care, child marriages, lack of effective education, backbreaking work, all fall on the powerless—our future citizens who will soon manage our world.

"Babies born in hospitals, in our country as in the developing world, are up to 20 times more likely to contract an infection than those in industrialized countries. Poor hygiene in maternity wards is usually to blame. Most of the infections contracted don't respond to antibiotics. Deaths of new-borns account for over one-third of all child mortality across the world. Infections during pregnancy, and after birth, kill over a million and a half babies every year, mainly in southern Africa and in this part of the world.You would not believe the atrocious conditions in most of our ramshackled hospitals, for children and adults.

"The effects of social deprivation in India and Pakistan make it difficult for either country to compete fully in the global economy. India, likes to compare itself to China as an important emerging market, but China's great economic advances have been built on a solid work force that is better educated and healthier than India's. Their reduced population has allowed them to divert money that would have gone to primary education for the 400 million children who were not born because of their one-child policy. That money could then be used to improve the education of those children who were born.

It allowed them to increase money for higher education, for health care, and for strengthening the country's infrastructure. India had its educated middle class, but it was

only about 25% of the population. Nearly half of the population was becoming literate, but the babies came faster than books could be printed. On the other hand, China was educating nearly all of its children. It was opening top level universities. And their economic success funded all this. But countries on our sub-continent lagged. Feudal uneducated populations can deliver only so much to the international economy."

 —"What do we do in our private economies when our checkbooks don't balance? We either take a second job to earn more, or we cut expenses. Our middle class people have reduced their fertility rate. Why? They want more money to live the kind of lives they want and they want more education for the children that they do have. Usually both spouses work so income goes up."

 —"Con, you remember Tim Russert, one of America's top newsmen? His dad worked two jobs for many years so that Tim and his sisters could get university educations. And Con, didn't your dad teach day school and night school then work weekends lifeguarding at the beach and build his own house so that you and your sister could have better lives and get your college educations."

 —"I remember that, Lee? Ya, he worked his tail off. What an inspiration. But back to you Mr. Ghosh."

 —"OK. So our problems are worse than India's. I just wanted to give you the picture of where we are in this part of the world, with India and China starting to work their way upwards, with Pakistan surviving on foreign aid and some industry, and with us as the Hindu Bangladesh.

"In India with over a billion people, only a quarter of them have enough money to be consumers. This is to about the same number of consumers as there are in the U.S., but the Indian disposable income is not yet as great. With that many people you are bound to have a large number of highly intelligent people. Many of these have studied hard and have been admitted to some of the finest technological schools in the world. I was in Bangalore not too long ago. It is a bustling city with huge numbers of graduate engineers and high tech people. It is an example of what India has done. And while many of these electronic experts leave India for the West, many stay as the major computer and telecommunications companies have set up shop in India to make use of this monolith of brain power."

 \--"I was there many years ago. Balmy Bangalore, reminded me of Hawaii without the surf. Of course it is impossible to find surf in the hills many miles from the ocean. It is certainly a place I could live! I was there helping to train the strength training coaches for their Olympic sports. With a 50 meter pool, an eighteen hole golf course and outstanding sports facilities, I didn't want to leave."

 —"Commander, it sounds like you may know it better than I do! But on with our story. The primary concern for India in the 1990s was to invest in electrical power. Without this major factor of infrastructure not much could happen. But India's major economic advances recently have been because of a superior engineering education for those who qualified. This along with the long tradition of English as a major language brought India leadership in many sales areas and support areas. So their education is now emphasizing engineering and salesmanship.

"But with the current economic success many think that the great traditions of our sub-continent need to be continued, so philosophy, religion and the arts are given a strong emphasis in our educational system. I fully concur. We do not live by circuit boards alone! We found that more students were studying Sanskrit in doctoral programs in the USA than in India. We have to be human, not merely robotic producers of wealth. We have to ask 'why' as they have done in America. Memorizing is essential as a starting point but it can place severe restrictions on free thinking. If we are to free our thinking and give our imaginations free rein we must learn these skills in school. Memorization does not beget freedom of thought. You can't keep your horse stabled all the time then just let it out to run the Kentucky Derby or the Grand National.

"To be prepared to meet the challenges of today's world we must not only narrow our focus to know the intricacies of our universe to the smallest detail, but we must be able to see as much of the whole as possible. We need the sciences to inform us and enlarge our understanding of things great and small, but science is not the only achievement of the human mind. As Nietzsche pointed out, we have achieved in many truly human areas like philosophy, religion, literature, music, the visual arts of painting, sculpture and architecture and, of course, war. I want to leave the cruelty of war in the past while we live in a future comforted by the humanities. But that is a dream for the future. Just now our job is to survive in our globalized technological dog-eat-dog world."

  "Your capitol city reminds me much more of old Calcutta than modern Mumbai. Do you have the same problems in trying to clean it up? I remember in the old days every morning watching the trucks pick up the hundreds or thousands of bodies that had died on the streets the night before."

 —"I guess in your travels that you didn't hear that Kolkata is the new name for Calcutta. You are correct in saying that it was once one of the hellholes of the earth. The "black hole of Calcutta" was its most hideous memory and the animal sacrifices to the goddess Kali reminded us of the Thuggi who in earlier days had captured humans to be sacrificed to her. As you know our word "thug" comes from those religious marauders of yesteryear."

 —"My father told me about one pitiful beggar that he used to encounter near the Hugli River. Without air conditioning all the autos kept their windows down. The leprous arm of Ashok would be thrust into every stopped vehicle, expecting some rupees to be dropped into the rusty pail that hung from his fingerless wrist. He was the most pitiful and needy of the paupers who worked the busy intersections.

"In earlier days after being met by their Indian hosts and after being appropriately garlanded with the fragrant blossoms that visitors prized, they would make their way down the potholed roadway, past the garbage dump with its crown of vultures and into the dankest city in the world where the wares of Bengal were openly sold. Tiger claws. Cobra skin belts, Indian silks, spices, saris and all sorts of aphrodisiacs and exotic trinkets."

 —"Some of that still exists, but as India has entered the 21st century it has pulled Kolkata into the 20th. In fact parts of Kolkata are entering the 1970s. Their new airport, and the four lane road that passes where the old city dump had been, makes you realize that you were not in hell."

 —"But that 105 degree temperature made me wonder! I know that Kolkata is working its way out of what James Thomson called 'the city of dreadful nights'.

 —"Yes, he wrote 'The City is of Night; perchance of Death, But certainly of Night.'Then Kipling used the phrase in writing about another former Indian city, Lahore.

."But no longer do you see the trucks picking up the 3000 bodies that had died on the streets the night before. The tin roofed wooden shacks that lined the main roads are disappearing. The city now produces more electrical power than it needs—some of it coming from burning the nearly 5 million pounds of garbage it produces daily. Private business now helps to build the city and the inhabitants work to keep it clean. The sacred cattle, the bane of transportation, are being rounded up and fenced in.

"Jyoti Basu, the Communist executive of the city told the inhabitants, that 'The society cannot survive without discipline.' While I am not a Communist I believe in this concept strongly. I might, however, express it a bit differently. I would say that 'a society

cannot progress without discipline.' Toynbee's observation that societies die from within should be taken to heart by you Americans, and many of your Western partners. If you expect to survive, you must keep the masses of citizens progressing—in education and in their work ethics. Our problem in Indus is not only to survive, but to progress. Your problem in the West is to survive through progress.

"But back to my ramblings, so while Kolkata is cleaning up its act, India's capitol city, New Delhi, is drowning under the dual oceans of humanity and air pollution. 500,000 people a year immigrate to the city and breathe the excrements of the oil fueled products of modern technology. It is said that ten thousand people a year die from the fumes.

"Indian children are often sold to people to work away from home. 50,000 children working in New Delhi, usually as slave labor. In Indus we have some such workers, but not nearly as many as in India. We don't have the industry that could accommodate such labor.

ECONOMY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS

"We have a gigantic problem with solving the real problems of the world and of our society pragmatically, then we are forced to disrupt the myths and religious traditions that have given stability to our society for centuries. We need the stability of our myths or we will degenerate into an anarchic society as you Americans often have. As long ago as 1831 when De Tocqueville came to your country, he saw it somewhat as an anarchy even then.

"As you know, caste has been our karma for millennia. Despite the efforts of Mahatma Gandhi to legally eliminate it, it exists in our society. It is stronger here than in our mother country. Caste is very strong in the rural areas where it is often the only thing that some people have to show their superiority. It is a remnant of the cultural cloak that has clouded our tradition. It is sanctified by our religion and it is the proof of karma. At election time we often hear the slogan 'cast your vote but vote your caste.' I want very much to follow Gandhi's banner, but you know how it is with mythology and tradition.

"Look at your American insistence on the right to bear arms, in spite of all the killings your citizens endure. And that tradition is only a few hundred years old. But traditions can be changed. Just look at your Constitutional requirement for a separation of church and state, then look as how many political candidates have to continually call on God to bless everybody. And look at the laws being passed to foster religion with your tax money. In fifty years you have developed a national religious tradition that I'm sure has Jefferson turning over in his grave.

"India is ahead of us in the economic realm as well as in health care and in reducing their fertility rate. Their social successes will result in a graying population, just as in the more developed countries. It is projected that in thirty years less than 20% of their population will be under 15. The county's median age will have increased from 21 ten years ago to 38 in thirty more years. And by 2050 15% of the population will be over 65.

"The world is growing gray fast. In 2050 there will be 2 billion people over 60 in the world. There will be more people over the age of 60 than under 15. The elderly population is expanding at a rate of two percent a year; nowhere is the trend more pronounced than in the developed countries, where increasing life expectancy and decreasing fertility rates will elevate the median age from 40 to 50 in the next several decades.

"So age discrimination, which has been the worst type of discrimination, must cease. We must use the older people in our economic systems. Retirement, if we are to have it, needs to be adjusted. If the Japanese life expectancy is 82 maybe they should not retire until 80, instead of 60, as they do today. But in Swaziland, with a life expectancy of 32, if they were able to retire it might be at age 31 and 9 months.

"And with more and more people settling in cities, and growing old there, municipalities around the planet are facing unprecedented challenges in providing accessible transportation, affordable health care and appropriate housing for their older citizens."

NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF AN EXPANDING ECONOMY

 —"There is more than aging that we have to deal with. Expanding economies usually bring expanding desires. Bigger houses, more and bigger cars, more food, more energy. India is producing $2500 cars, so more people can afford them. And they don't run on air. Gasoline and electricity production create more pollution.I hear that 600 drivers' licenses are issued every day in Beijing. And every new member of a society's middle class is propelled by greed to get a bigger piece of the 'good life' pie."

 \--"True Con. We see your riches and most of us want to pursue them. Getting a better karma usually takes a back seat to getting a better car. Having a television and a flushable toilet is enough Nirvana for most people. Salvation can wait until the salary is excessive!

POLITICS OF THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES

"We Third World countries are seldom taken seriously by you big guys. Maybe it's because we have everything from fledgling democracies and absolute monarchies to warring militias or one party rule—there are a bunch of hungry mouths crying for food while a number of power-mad men are filling their purses. Are we all equal, with equal needs and desires, or is it the survival of the fittest, or the cruelest?

"Look at the warring factions in Darfur and Congo. Look at us, honestly trying to make our citizens' lives better. Look at Swaziland. I visited there two years ago. It ranks 106 of 172 countries economically, but its king is worth $200 million. His 13 wives live in luxury. $30 million a year of the national budget is used for the king and his whims. One of the highest HIV rates in the world has halved their life expectancy to 30 years. A third of the children have lost a parent. But as the king has said, he is the king and the poor have always been with us."

 —"But some say he isn't as bad as his father who had at least 70 wives and threw out the British Constitution he inherited. So his son, King Mswati III, lives a pretty good life, but then that is what he deserves, after all, as he said, he was given to the people by God. His god-like mercy was shown when he signed a new constitution that guaranteed individual liberties while continuing an absolute monarchy. That is sort of like giving the people a gigantic chocolate cake, but not allowing them to eat it.

"The people agree that the government is bad but the king is good. Corruption cripples the treasury, draining about $75 million a year. A judge was appointed to try to stop the graft, but if a suspect says that the king told him to do something, you can't ask the king because he is immune to inquiries. So it is with absolute monarchy!"

 \--"I understand why so many are unconcerned with Swaziland. But countries like Indus are really trying. I understand your reticence to give some countries money when much of it will find its way to a numbered Swiss bank account. Why should you try to combat malaria when HIV attacks those who survive the mosquitoes. Why befriend insurgent 'A' when insurgent 'B' may win the guerrilla war. Why support the Christian side when the Muslim fighters may have the more ethical position. Why not just keep the money near home where you know it will be used effectively. Advanced countries are getting tired of sending aid that doesn't reach the needy. They are right to be skeptical. But here we are—needy, honest, truly democratic, peaceful, eager to work—and only a few philanthropists to help.

"It is the old idea that it is better to teach person to fish rather than giving him a fish. A few years ago your government gave $800 million in food to Ethiopia and $350 million for AIDS treatment and only $7 million for economic development. It was easier for farmers to stop plowing and eat at the free food trough. In fact more than seven million Ethiopians relied on the free food. Then a major program gave them jobs and soon they were earning their keep. But then the famine and rising food prices put most of them back on the dole. Famines keep happening—Biafra in the 60s, Bangladesh in the 70s, Ethiopia in the 80s.And now there are even more hungry people, but less aid is being given for food. With 4% of the world's population, East Africa gets 20% of the food aid, and Africa as a whole, with 7% of the world's population gets over a third of the total food aid. We have been lucky because of our soil and monsoons, we have been able to get by with very little food aid, but I see our needs increasing and I don't see any food bearing ships the horizon.

POLITICS OF POPULATION IN A DEMOCRACY

"If I may, I would like to say a few things off the record. I will approach our situation as a statesman might. But I am a politician. If what I am telling you in private got to the electorate, I would undoubtedly be removed from office. That happened to Indira Gandhi in 1977 after she advocated limiting Indian families to two children, then she started voluntary, then forced sterilizations, as many as seven million a year. It was first meant to sterilize men who already had two children, but it escalated beyond reason to many single men. The backlash sent Indira from office for a term and set back any idea of family planning as a necessary program. It took some time before she was able to overcome that political faux pas. We politicians learned our lessons—do what is necessary to win and carry out the programs that the people want. Pushing for what they need, like a reduced population, can be political suicide. So instead of curing the root cause of our poverty by reducing the number of babies born, we must try to work with the existing social reality and try to move the economy in a positive direction using our massive hard working population we can work more cheaply than the other developing countries. China has become much more realistic over the issue of population control. India rejected it 50 years ago but the realities have begun to settle in. Sixty years ago the average Indian woman gave birth to six children. By ten years ago it was halved to three children per woman. But sixty years ago the average lifespan was 45, today it is 65.

"The age old problems of demography versus democracy, starvation versus survival, poverty versus plenty—are forcing even the most uninformed citizens to see the light.

"As a functioning democracy the government of India has grabbed the reins. Slowly, since the 1994 United Nations conference in Cairo, India, with other countries, has worked to improve and expand the contraceptive choices. It is no longer just sterilization. Condoms, pills, IUDs and other methods are becoming available. Fertility education and family planning are now available.

"But the tether of tradition is not as easily cut in a democracy as it is with a totalitarian edict or the fearful force that a dictator can muster to carry out his laws. The artistic dreams of the pharaohs, the governmental plans of the Caesars, the economic emergence of modern China are each the result of effective planning and strong centralized power.

"Some Indian states have mandated a maximum of two children for some politicians and some states are extending the mandate to civil servants. Among the plans that have been proposed are: denying education for a third child, and pay raises for civil servants who opt for sterilization after one or two children. Politicians are being asked to set examples by limiting their offspring to two.

"While some argue against the proposals, few argue against the objective. Some detractors point to the developed countries where fertility rates have dropped because of higher education, more work opportunities for women, more equality for women, and improved health care. Allowing more democracy from the village to the national government has increased affirmative action for women and for lower caste men and women. But barring the parents of three or more children from the republican process of town councils and the parliament creates a question for the democratization of the governing process.

"When people sued to be allowed to have more children and still be on the governing councils, the Supreme Court of India ruled that reducing population was a matter of national urgency and did not impinge on the citizens' fundamental rights and individual liberties. The court said that 'Complacency in controlling population in the name of democracy is too heavy a price to pay.' So the country with 18% of the world's population and two and a half percent of its land, and with a population long recognized as being excessive and expanding out of control, now has judges who realize that the massive population was hindering economic progress.

"The legally effected two child norm for India's politicians may increase the number of abortions of female fetuses, since sons are so prized. But some Indians still prefer having more children even if it means losing their leadership jobs. But they grumble that, 'If I can lead, I should be on the town council no matter how many children I have.'"

  "That's the classic self-centered versus society-centered dichotomy. Let me do whatever I want while I tell society what is best for it. Mr. Ghosh, we spent many hours looking at this problem with Dr. Wang in Kino. This 'primacy of self versus the greater good of one's society' is a universal dilemma."

 —"True Lee. We feel that we must start with education. As Hindus we are sending family planning technicians to every village once a month. They educate the men and women. They counsel the teenagers. They give out free contraceptives and make appointments for medical sterilizations and abortions. Their education objectives include information on avoiding sexually transmitted diseases, care of newborns, nutrition and the world problem with overpopulation. Along with this they try to change the sociological mores that give the parents and in-laws a strong say in how many children a couple should have. Our television programming continually shows the joys and advantages of the one or two child family.

"We also have to develop in people the idea that girls are just as valuable as boys. But just as large families are traditional, so are male progeny prized. Not long ago I talked to a woman with seven children. She told me that her four boys were at school, but I saw that her three daughters were at home. I asked her 'why.' She said that if she sent the daughters to school there would be no one to clean the house and take care of the goats.

"So you can see the anchors holding my people in poverty. It is no wonder that we were ranked 159th on the UN's Human Development Index of 178 countries. India was 128th and Pakistan 139th.But we were ahead of most of the sub-Saharan countries. We are certainly trying! We realize, with the philosopher Schiller that if we are over-cautious

we won't accomplish much. And as my Italian friend often says 'By asking for the impossible we obtain the best possible.'

"Since we seceded from our mother country because it moved too slowly towards economic progress for the poor, I have worked to get our country moving toward the modern world. I know it will take a few generations even if we do everything right. I certainly want to avoid the excesses of sterilizations that India attempted. They only set the movement backward. We must work to reduce population and increase education and do both so that the people support these goals. How would you go about it gentlemen?"

 —"Well, going back to what Wanda Wang said in Kino, people are most interested in themselves in the present and in the foreseeable future. Then Chuck Chan emphasized our nearly universal drive for power and our nearly universal need to be loved."

 —"He also was pretty strong on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. So you must have the needs of food, drink and shelter satisfied."

 —"Lee, I'm surprised that you forgot to put sex in there too! It is right down there with Maslow's food and drink needs, and it is so often intertwined with the power drive. Then you have that necessary esteem need, where for many insecure people the pump of pride is primed by the increased progeny. What else can a married couple brag about if they do not yet have the pride of ownership of a television. Let's face it, you can get your esteem from owning an idiot box, a motor bike or a bevy of rug rats."

 —"You are certainly correct in seeing the psychological stumbling blocks to national progress. I wouldn't be surprised if your reduced fertility rates in the West are tied as much to the esteem related factors like home ownership and travel as they are to the commonly mentioned factors of contraceptive availability and women's working rights.

"As you might imagine, we have discussed the methods of changing people's behavior with Dr. Singh. He has been quite helpful to us. I am certain that you will gain a great deal of insight when you carry on your discussions to him later.

"The lord knows that we in this part of the world have a long history of recognizing the problems, we just have not followed our rhetoric with results. You probably have heard that as far back as 1947 Mohammad Ali Jinnah had urged Pakistan's assembly to 'wholly and solely concentrate on the well-being of the people and especially of the masses and the poor.' A few days later Jawaharlal Nehru, in his noteworthy midnight address to India's constitutional assembly, called for 'the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity.' I don't know if it was poor leadership or if the people were not really ready to make the sacrifices necessary to move out of poverty. They were shooting themselves in the foot with every baby-bullet that enlarged their impoverished families.

"Armament spending dwarfed both education and health-care spending. Both India and Pakistan worked to become self-sufficient in food. They both worked to establish industry. But their mutual distrust and their mutual fears pushed mutual nuclear development and the mutual amassing of armies."

 —"And I guess we could say that their countries suffered the mutual maladies of retarded development, although both had growing economies. And for a long time Pakistan's grew faster than India's. But India did invest in education for some and now has a huge store of very well trained engineers and doctors. The problem, as you said, seems to be that not enough of them stay in India."

 —"You can understand that with India's population, now the largest in the world, and Pakistan's, now the world's sixth largest, there is not enough money to bring everyone to the middle class. In fact, in these countries as in most others, the money flows upward. The rich get much richer, the upper middle class gets a bit richer, but the abundance of cheap labor holds the others down. Even with more education for most, the competition for the available jobs makes it a buyer's market—and the buyers of labor do not have to pay top dollar to get workers, even professionals. Why are Indian lawyers making $10 to $20 an hour when low end California lawyers make ten to twenty times that amount?

"Pakistan's population growth rate is about 3%. India's family planning programs have brought its annual growth rate down to 2% and now they are nearing 1%. So that means they are merely adding ten to twenty million people a year. Then when you add in the longer life spans, it magnifies the problem. Indians whose life expectancy was only 32 when the partition occurred in 1947, now have doubled their expected longevity.

"When India adds 20 million people a year, that's like adding the population of Australia annually. The population doubles about every 30 years. India still receives about 200 million dollars a year in foreign aid for population control and it allots twice that much from its own coffers. Everybody recognizes that it is the major problem, except the poor Indians and some bungling bureaucrats who don't effectively spend the money that is available.

"We can't make the same mistakes that Indira did. Her coercion program set back the population reduction program twenty years or more. Pakistan has the same problem. Benazir Bhutto's call for a two child maximum hit a brick wall when she delivered her third child prior to her return to office in 1993. She obviously only talked the talk, she didn't walk the walk. Indira did, but in her eagerness to make the necessary progress she stepped on too many democratic toes. And you remember that both women were assassinated. I sometimes think that whatever we do as politicians is dangerous to our survival. There is always somebody with a gun who disagrees with us.

"We have looked at some neighboring countries to get ideas in case our citizens vote for reducing our population or licensing parents.

"In New Zealsea they have a voluntary license program. Passing the license test gives you some governmental benefits that are denied those who didn't opt for licensing. If you have a license the government gives tax breaks, free pre-school tuition, and health care. Primary and secondary education are provided for all children, whether or not licensed. If parents have not received a license they are not eligible for any welfare for themselves or their children. Licensed parents are given job preferences, if the qualifications are equal, over single people, with unlicensed parents last. And every child must have two parents.

"The licensing includes: financial stability or a pre-paid insurance to guarantee that there will always be sufficient money for the parents and children if jobs are lost or illness or other unforeseen problems arise. Knowledge of nutrition and child psychology is required. There must be a demonstrated understanding of how to help the child to understand and follow his or her competencies.

"Naturally we have heard that the opponents of licensing in other countries that all people have a right to have children, even a human right. But the Universal Declaration of Human Rights only gives such rights to married people. That is in Article 16. And we understand that the governmental granting of some supposed human rights can be thwarted if it runs counter to the country's national constitutional requirement. Freedom of speech and freedom to practice any type of religious beliefs, can be limited or even eliminated—if the society wants to protect more basic rights of other citizens.

"Certainly safety is an overriding right. Protecting innocent citizens from terrorism may require measures like camera surveillance in a country or the examination of one's luggage at an airport.

"But back to parenting rights. We might surmise that if everyone has the right to children then infertile couples or any individual must be given as many children as they want. That was the case with the unmarried California woman with fourteen children.

"We have followed India in allowing abortions. But we don't allow infanticide. You probably know that in India five million female fetuses are aborted every year. This has resulted in 7% fewer females in their society. We oppose reducing the female population.

"We tried to pass laws for licensing and family limiting as Indira Gandhi tried, but it was not voted in. How can we make it happen?—politics! There is a way. It may be giving money, social security, or guaranteed jobs for sterilized people. . We are looking into several possibilities in case we can convince the people to reduce their family size. So we have no licenses but small families are encouraged."

 —"What do the Upanishads and the Gita have to say about small families, Mr. Ghosh?"

 —"Nothing. Since we believe we will all continue to be reborn until we exhaust our bad karma by eliminating our desires, having babies or not having them is not a major theological problem. So for us economic and psycho-social realities are more important than religious mythology and theological speculation.

"The United Nations has proposed that every country reduce its total population by 1% per year. But can every country doing it not be accused of genocide. The resolution will, probably not be enacted as written. On the other hand, the World Bank has proposed penalties against countries that disobey the order, if it is passed.

"A politician in a democratic country who tries to force parent licensing into the law would be acting as intelligently as a writer or violinist voluntarily having their hands amputated, or a TV anchorman or a La Scala soprano having their vocal cords cut. Democratic politicians have to follow the voters. Democracy is not efficient like a totalitarian system is. No matter how essential a program is, we have to wait for the average voter to recognize it.

"Look at the average voters in your country and their concerns for low taxes, low gas prices, cheaper utilities, free health care, and Monday Night Football. As individuals, and as a country, you keep borrowing to pay for your immediate and future desires. As individuals and as a country you refuse to pay as you go. As individuals you eventually go bankrupt and leave somebody else with your debts. As a nation you just keep borrowing to pay your expenses. Does your country just plan on going bankrupt and renouncing its debts? With your fairy tale expectations and your lack of fiscal responsibility you keep getting the politicians you deserve.

"You were the major cause of the world's recessions and depressions fifteen years ago.

"In terms of reducing the excess of unwanted children in your country what would your voters agree to? It takes some fancy dancing to manipulate the programs. You could cut welfare to unwed mothers. The voters would approve of that. You could fund free abortions. A slight majority might approve of that. You could allow abortions without parental consent. A majority might approve of that too. You could offer free condoms. That might fly. One of the easier approaches would be to offer sex education in your elementary and secondary schools. Most parents would welcome that. It would be more effective than your abstinence programs, but it wouldn't keep all those teenage zippers firmly in the 'up' position.

"We have some similarities and some differences between our two countries as to why sex or children might be desired. We have to recognize that orgasms occur worldwide, so sex is here to stay. Another similarity is that both having sex and having children are adult pastimes. So either one will satisfy one's power drives. In politics, too, we have to continue to satisfy people's egos and make them feel in control.

"Our problems in birth prevention are different from yours. We have no aid for parents of dependent children. So cash is not a reason to have children. Children are still more of an economic advantage for us. They can work in the fields or the home from an early age so they contribute economically. Most parents hope that the economic potential of the children outweighs the actual cost of raising them. But a major factor is that children are the parents' old age insurance.

"As I'm sure you will discuss with Dr. Singh, the politics of manipulating our two populations is quite different. A country has to make early parenting a negative, just as you have with smoking cigarettes. You must somehow make the thinking of your young such that it is a childish action, not an adult action, to have a child. The financial incentive must be removed. Then possibly the state could be more active in taking children away from women who are not in stable adult relationships and giving them to adoptive parents. I assume that you could also tax children who were being brought up by single parents.

"In our country we will have to provide the social insurance to assure that childless adults have state supported retirement homes that are more desirable than living with impoverished children. We have already adopted paid temporary sterilizations

"Your Thomas Jefferson said that 'The art of government consists in the art of being honest' but without an educated electorate we have to use political techniques such as propaganda to nudge our voters. All modern democracies do this. No modern democracy has voters who are all educated in history, political science, economics, the environmental sciences and all the other areas that concern a government. Of course the elected leaders don't have these knowledges either.

"Then the voters should learn to be society-centered, not controlled by their religious or self-centered values. I'm not sure if we will ever see such an electorate. I'm sure we will always be plagued by the self delusional fog that, as Hobbes pointed out, we are all content with our own common sense. But common sense is not very common!

"You Americans are not only having more babies, breaking all previous records, but your 15 to 17 year olds are also increasing the number of babies they have.(4) Of course your national policy, at least as enunciated by your President Bush, has been against contraception and abortion. And your fertility rate of 2.1 is above today's new replenishing rate.

"In 2008 a number of under-16 year old high school girls in Massachusetts had babies. It was said that they had a pregnancy pact to all be impregnated. It seems that it was a power driven group decision. But what was the source of the power they derived? Was it thumbing their noses at their parents or their school? Was it showing that they were adult women capable of conceiving? Were they capable of getting some classmate, or even, as in one case, a homeless man, to sleep with them? They were all confirmed to have had lacks of self esteem. Or was it a retreat from reality—moving from the shackling confines of school 35 hours a week to the freedom of caring for an infant 24 hours a day seven days a week? Whatever it was, it was probably not to spend the next twenty years caring for a child physically, psychologically and economically. While in Indus we have some young mothers, pregnant because of accident or early marriage, I have never heard of anything as stupid and uncaring as that pregnancy pact."

 —"In my travels in China I found that the one child policy allowed parents to send their one child to a university education in Europe, the U.S. or Russia. But Americans are following the Catholic idea which is still officially pushing for more births. Pope Paul VI's encyclical 'Humanae Vitae' against contraception, is still their major banner. They are now citing the dropping European birth rates as reasons to eliminate contraception. But they still don't say why more children are needed in the world. This happens even as Pope Benedict backs efforts to reduce global warming and protect the planet's ecology. And many Americans, not only the Catholics, follow the Pope's ideas with our highest birthrates ever—well over four million a year.

VOLUNTARY POPULATION REDUCTION

 \--"We should obviously prefer that people would voluntarily reduce their parental inclinations. Possibly some can see that children will actually reduce their living standards. Possibly couples who really enjoy each other will realize that children will cut into their time together and will cost them a great deal of money, lowering their living standards.

"Then there is the legalization of homosexuality, and even its idealization. A less desirable alternative is the increase of diseases like AIDS. But if the disease kills after one has procreated his fill, it doesn't help the society. Smoking, too, will help to kill the aged. If a pack a day will shorten a life by seven years while it increases our tax intake, it is a win-win program for society. The most likely voluntary solution likely to work is to pay people to not reproduce.

"I know that Eastern Europe is reducing its population. Even the Catholic countries, like Hungary, are following the trend. Statisticians expect a population drop of 13% in Hungary by 2060, and a drop of 18% in Eastern Europe by that time. And of course the number of people over 65 will double to about a third of the population."

 —"We discussed that earlier. There is no question that since people are living longer, they must work for more years. And since people are marrying later and not having as many children countries may have to look to immigration to solve the work problems."

 —"Wreck, I think the obvious solution is to use a higher level of technology, such as robots."

 —"You forget the problems of immigrating people with different values, different religions, lower educational attainment and less respect for the homeland. It seems that every solution to a problem brings other problems. It is obvious that the fast pace of today's economic and social evolutions leaves almost everyone behind. It's like that old saying 'The hurrier I go, the behinder I get."

 —"Right. China has done the best job economically the last 40 years. But lots of peasants haven't shared in the rising living standard. And of course it takes a strong central government to accomplish such things as fast as they have. But you don't have the education base they had and you are slowed by an uneducated electorate in a primitive democracy."

 —"That's true. I don't know which way to go. I would like to keep marriage around. A friend told me that Hungarian marriages dropped over 60% and that children born out of wedlock now account for a third of all births. I really believe that if children are to be born they should be born into a stable two parent family. Whether or not they are married, the relationship should be solid. I know that in Sweden and France over 50% of babies are born to unmarried people. That seems to be a strong trend in the West. Our society couldn't handle that situation right now. And I don't see it as a problem for some time. We are at the other end of the scale—too many babies and not enough education or technology. We are still trying to get food in our bellies and you in the West are concerned with dieting."

 —"Another problem in parts of the West, like East Europe, is that many young people are emigrating to the more prosperous countries. So when there are babies they are born in their new countries and the home country is saddled with senility."

HOMOSEXUAL PARTNERSHIPS

 \--"True Ray. Now I would like to discuss homosexuality as a means of slowing population growth. Same sex relationships have been a part of Western culture since at least the days of the Greeks and Romans. The Jewish, Christian and Muslim religions may not have reduced the activity, but certainly they pushed it underground. In our Hindu society it has also been frowned on, but as is the way with us humans, it flourishes in its sacrilege, it thrives in its condemnation.

"But as democratic and human rights have legitimized the tendency, through tolerance and marriage rights, the closets are opening and the practice has been spreading.

"As science has researched the sociological, psychological and physiological aspects of the practice thinking people have come to realize that the practice is more common than previously believed and that it has physiological and psychological underpinnings."

 \-- "Various researchers indicate that between 1 and 10% of the population is homosexual. Alfred Kinsey was a pioneer in researching sexual conduct.(5) Kinsey's research in the 1940's showed that by the age of 25 one percent of women and three percent of men were exclusively homosexual. By age 35 the percentages had increased to 3 and 16. This led him to conclude that about 10% of adults are exclusively homosexual. His 1970 surveys indicated similar percentages.

"But at the other extreme, the Battelle study of 3,000 sexually active men (6) indicated that only 1% of men aged 20 to 39 to be exclusively homosexual and only 2%had had a homosexual experience during the last ten years. But I have to admit that a criticism of this study was that it used only female interviewers and they were done face to face--so people may not have been as truthful as they might have been if they were anonymous."

 —"True Commander, but other countries show figures somewhat higher. In France the number of homosexual men was 4.1% (7) and in the UK 3.6% of men reported that they had had at least one male partner. (8)"

 —"On the other side of the sexual aisle various studies indicate that female homosexuality is practiced by only a third to a half the percentage of men.However a 1993 study (9)showed that 22% of men and 17% of women had experienced at least one homosexual experience in their lives.

"Gay rights activists make us contemplate that whatever a person's sexual preference, it should be considered normal. Still homophobia is often a deeply held prejudice.But it seems to depend on the historical time and place whether it is condemned or acclaimed. And I agree that this may be a time for its acclimation. Were it not for the huge increase in sexually transmitted diseases among the males, it could be an effective soldier in the army of possibilities needed to attack the world's overpopulation.

"Still many aspects of society hold a homophobic attitude so gender orientation is still somewhat of a cultural variant in the modern Western world. For other societies, both past and present, such negative attitudes did not exist.

 —"In India homosexuality has been frowned on. In fact it is one of ten countries where the maximum penalty is life imprisonment. But things may be changing since Prince Manvendra Gohil of Rajpipla came out of his gilded closet. It caused some major family problems but they eventually settled down somewhat. We don't have any princes in Indus and homosexuality is definitely still in the shack. Our huts aren't big enough for closets!

"We are working on decriminalizing the practice. As you know eight Muslim countries have the death penalty for male homosexuality. But a number of countries have no punishment for female homosexuality. We have to consider the fact that AIDS commonly awakes in the male homosexual's bed. Does that mean we should outlaw the practice? Should we encourage exclusive male and female homosexuality, in order to reduce population, but outlaw bisexual behavior that may spread the diseases to innocent people? Whatever we do I can't see us having the problems that you do in the U.S. with all the propaganda you do for same sex relationships. With my people they usually know it exists, but the practice isn't glorified. And while many of us can see the advantages to control population growth, it doesn't make as much sense as sterilization and contraception, which are already somewhat familiar to our people.

AIDS

"Since 1986, when the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, first found its way to India, there has been an epidemic. Six people per thousand have AIDS. In our country it is less than half that percentage. This may be because we have less homosexuality, fewer big cities where prostitution can thrive, or because we are too poor to inject drugs.

"As you know, sex and intravenous drug use are the main vectors of HIV transmission. In India between 2 and 3 million male homosexuals have AIDS, between one and two million female prostitutes, about 300,000 male prostitutes and about 200,000 drug users have the disease. That is about one person for every 250 inhabitants. In your country it is about one for every 300 people. In Indus our religious tradition strongly condemns homosexuality and our rural living and poverty reduce prostitution. Still our infection rate is too high. We don't have as many truck drivers and migrants so our prostitute to husband to wife transmission is lower. Unfortunately, as with India, 'safe sex', with the use of condoms, is extremely rare.

"You have probably heard that the World Health Organization has predicted that in five years, by 2030, AIDS deaths will be in the top three causes of death, along with heart disease and cancer. While ten years ago it caused 3 million deaths a year, by 2030 it may be as high as 120 million total deaths from the disease. It saddens me to think that every day 16,000 more Indians are infected with HIV.

"If you have visited old Bombay you probably visited the 'women in cages'. Those poor prostitutes, kidnapped into the sex trades and assaulted with HIV, have suffered the inhuman indignities that only a Beelzebub could fashion. These women have lived with the angels of death. If there is a God, an afterlife, or a release from this world, they deserve whatever rewards death can promise. They have flown with the Valkyries. They have been trampled by the Apocalyptic horsemen. They have crossed the River Styx. I fervently hope that there is a reward for them at the end of their dark tunnel of life.

"The only light is that since the sex workers have organized many can require their customers to wear condoms. I wonder what positive effects that may have on their negative existence.

"There are other sexual situations or orientations that have the potential for reducing population. Sexual orientation also plays a part in how society looks at each of us and how we look at ourselves. Our sexual orientation can be any level of desire or activity from being exclusively heterosexual, to being bisexual, to being exclusively homosexual. A person can slide up and down that continuum and may change sexual preferences as age and other variables enter the picture. Young people are much more likely to have had homosexual experiences than they will experience in adulthood.

"You have undoubtedly heard of the eunuchs of India. Eunuchs are estimated to be a half to one percent of the Indian population. These castrated, transgendered or hermaphroditic people are more like tough females than feminine homosexuals. In India a few have risen above their lowly states of prostitution and protection rackets, but they don't reproduce so there is a positive side to their misery. We have very few in Indus."

 —"Maybe you should encourage more of your men to embrace 'eunuch-ness.'"

 —"It's not funny Lee. They are definitely to be pitied. The various sexualities must be studied more, tolerated more, and allowed to contribute fully to their societies, not forced into rat holes to rot as non-persons. In India one eunuch has become the mayor of her city, another has become a writer. We don't know what potentials lie in any person until he or she is educated as fully as possible and employed at the level of their potentials. Look at what has happened as women were freed, as blacks were encouraged, as the physically handicapped were accepted. The power wielding males in every society have slowed our human progress with their negatively prejudicial actions and inactions."

 —"But you have to admit that men have done their bit to limit population by continuing to make wars. What better way satisfy one's power drive and increasing one's prestige. Helen Johnson, Hillary Clinton, or Gro Harlem Bruntland have shown far more humanitarian motives than have Osama bin Laden, George W. Bush, Vladimir Putin, Charles Taylor, Robert Mugabe, and Saddam Hussein."

 —"Well said Commander. We men have generally made a mess of managing human progress. But back to voluntary population reduction.

SMOKING

"In India the young in the upper classes are smoking more. If they continue smoking it should reduce their life spans so it is a way of helping the country to control their population problems since a pack a day generally reduces one's life by seven years. The problem is that most of them have done all of their siring by that time. And since there isn't much of a retirement system or national health care, the federal government doesn't save so much money. Of course they won't drive their cars much after the funeral, so they won't contribute much to global warming—unless they are cremated! So perhaps we should encourage smoking. Our health care is so minimal that lung cancers and heart problems are not treated. We are concentrating on maternal health, newborns and small children.

RELIGION AND POPULATION REDUCTION

"As opposed to many other countries, we do not have a religious proscription against having babies. It is rather our farming tradition and our lack of education and contraception that has kept our families large. In Indus we still don't have the movement to cities, that most developed countries have experienced. Movement to the cities tends to reduce adults' infatuation with infants. Farm-born children can soon contribute economically. City born children remain financial burdens longer and their economic potential is always a question.

"Like India, Indus is a democracy with a nearly universal Hindu population. But being a much smaller country we are working on solving the problems faster than democracies typically do. As a new government we hope we have the foresight to avoid the problems that democracy brings in terms of its slowness in getting things done and its laissez faire capitalism that tends to keep most of the money at the top end of the economic summit. I don't mind people being rich honestly, but when they get it by underhanded methods and gifts from the government, like subsidies and tax breaks, I frown on it.

"You probably remember that old Japanese proverb that 'Vision without action is a daydream and action without vision is a nightmare.' This is always on my mind as I work towards taming the nightmare that my predecessors allowed to grow to Godzilla-like proportions. We must clarify the dream, that impossible dream that my people's despair has severely clouded. In our democracy we must fly the banner of hope, but realize that it is tethered to tradition. For real change to occur we must create the path that will become the yellow brick road as people recognize that they can no longer be cowardly lions."

 -``—"You're saying that they must find the brains that the scarecrow lacked and search for their hearts, as the tin man did, on their way to the Wizard of Oz."

 —"Right Lee. We must find the brains, heart and courage within us. Sometimes I think I have to pretend to be the Wizard, to construct the vision of that distant castle and to fight the battles with the Wicked Witch of the West as she conjures up her spells that protect the status quo.

"In contrast to India, we don't have the economic impetus pushing some of us upward. Our farming culture has not fostered education as the middle and upper classes in India have done. But like India, our culture is very traditional. It is family and religion centered. While India's economic environment ranges from slum dwellers to billionaires, with 70% of the population being rural, we are about 95% rural.

"We can't afford the irrigation systems that are needed to make full agricultural use of our farmland. We can't afford the petro-chemicals to supplement our human and bovine manure. The global warming increases the evaporation of the water we do have. And the monsoon deluges that we once welcomed now vary from typhoons to long dry periods.

"We are like a Hindu Bangladesh. But our religion leaves us more flexible in many areas than does the Islam of our neighboring country. But both of us are hampered in our climbing out of poverty by our traditions for large families.

"Food costs have pushed Indus and Bangladesh to the brink of internal unrest. The government has had to ration rice and other food stuffs. While our minimum wages have doubled to $2 a day, food costs have increased tenfold. Like Bangladesh our inflation has been double digit for many years, but our wages can't keep up. Farmers work hard, but the cost of fertilizer and seeds has increased so much. So even though their genetically modified seeds produce much more per hour worked, they are on a financial treadmill.

"Our garment workers are even worse off. The farmers can at least eat the food they grow, but the garment workers, who are nearly all women, are working for slave wages. Revolts are brewing. Burning down a few buildings will help the people blow off some steam, but it doesn't solve the problem. It is the age old problem, do something stupid, then blame somebody else. Have eight children then blame the government because you can't feed or educate them.

"Both countries have had what we call 'rice revolutions'. We have had to call out our army and police to protect the markets and the government rice shops. All of us poor countries are in similar situations. Haiti has been hit hard. We all want the rich countries to help us, but many of their people are complaining about their own inflationary problems and dropping incomes. Gasoline, food, and other items that were once cheap have made many in your own country feel poor. Naturally your human right to a vacation trumps our babies' human rights to minimal nutrition, and even to life.

"While we haven't been hit as hard as Bangladesh with floods, we have been hard hit by excess temperatures as high as 110 to 120 degrees Fahrenheit. I never saw such temperatures in my youth. We saw 105 quite often and even an occasional 110, but nothing like the heat caused by the global warming. And we didn't even contribute to it. You made it, and we suffer.

"In this country, the crisis is compounded by natural disasters that have destroyed wide swaths of farmland. Many Bangladeshis have migrated from rural areas to their capital as 'climate refugees,' driven out by floods and cyclones that some scientists believe have intensified because of rising global temperatures. Now, in the relative safety of Dhaka, illiterate, often unskilled laborers are being killed by economic calamity as high inflation and surging food prices make their lives more difficult, if not impossible.

"Although poverty had started to slowly recede over the past decade, in that nation of 150 million there are renewed fears that inflation could undo its decades of progress and once again make it the 'basket case' of the world, as your former Secretary of State  Henry Kissinger once called it.

"As Ayesha Khanam, president of the Bangladesh Women's Council, recently said, things were looking up in Bangladesh. Positive changes were actually happening, but if the price hikes keep going on, we will be worse off than before. Global warming and the world's overpopulation, along with the increased appetites of the newly rich, give the Bangladeshis and those of us in Indus the dual plagues of reduced incomes and increased prices.

"The Muslim requirement for almsgiving gives hope to some, but food for few. Along the smog-filled streets of Dhaka, beggars tap on car windows for spare coins and willing workers wait in long lines outside factories for employment in day jobs as toilet cleaners or button makers. Farmers, whose farms have been washed away by devil storms, have flooded the cities. There are no jobs requiring farm skills in the cities. Masses of workers compete for the microcosm of jobs. There are only so many rickshaws to pull and houses to clean. And with competition for jobs holding wages down and the appetites of the rich driving food prices up, survival is as difficult as scaling Everest without ice axes or Sherpas.

"The impoverished government is offering food at reduced prices, but it is not creating jobs and it can't borrow from richer nations who see no market for their products and little possibility of repayment. Soldiers guard the food shops. Will there be another coup attempt? They average two every three years. Their problems are even worse than ours.

"The government has been working at reducing their endemic corruption but its ban on public demonstrations was not enough to hold the hungry public in check. Many garment workers work 12 hour days and still can't buy the basic food needed for their families. Some factories have started selling and subsidizing foods. But when foreign economies sink, garment orders drop, wages lower and employment is reduced.

THE HINDU RELIGION AND POPULATION CONTROL

"Just as all national leaders who are looking for peace and prosperity know, we must reduce population and increase education. In many lands the predominant religions fight this need. Islam, Catholicism and the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints frown on family planning, so they will not follow the grand plan. But some will. Iran has cut its population growth in half by providing condoms, birth control pills and IUDs. As one mullah said 'Our religion calls for an educated people.' In your country and in many Catholic countries, like Italy, births are dropping. I would guess that the realities of potential riches and the availability of contraceptives weigh heavier than many traditions, even religiously inspired traditions.

"In our country we are overwhelmingly Hindu. Our religion has not told us to multiply, but our traditions have sanctified large families.

"The commentators in our religion have not had the divisive effects that have afflicted your Western faiths. Perhaps it is because our belief is so all-encompassing that all divisions and diversions fit into the whole. It seems that your Christian and Islamic faiths have had a strong emphasis on increasing their numbers through fertility and conquest. You see only one way. But our belief that 'all is God' brings with it a tolerance for your less all-encompassing belief systems and for both upholding and abandoning traditions."

 —"I have studied something about your religion, and I know you were tolerant when St. Francis Xavier converted many in the area of Goa. Such tolerance was unheard of in the West at that time. Will you explain a bit more to me so that I can understand your faith more clearly."

  "Certainly, Father Ray. Our goal is to eventually unite with the oneness of nature, the union with the Brahman. Since all of us are a part of the oneness of nature, we should be able to absorb all other beliefs within our own. That is the theory and it has usually been observed. But as in all metaphysical beliefs, the temporal situations may make people react to real or perceived threats. Only a few saints are willing to march to the guillotine or be sautéed at the stake for their beliefs. But many may be willing to react in defense or offense against life threatening realities.

"I must confess that, of late, there have been problems in that regard. During the last twenty years there have been anti-Christian outbursts in east India where churches and Christian homes have been burned. And, of course, there has been anti-Muslim animosity since they conquered us in the early 16th Century. We thought that with the partition of India in 1947, with Muslims moving to Pakistan and Bangladesh and Hindus settling in India it would eliminate the problem. Not everyone moved so the problem remained. I think this made the indigenous Hindus apprehensive, if not aggressive. A number of nasty attacks have been made by Muslims. We have to protect ourselves. Our tolerance can only go so far.

"But back to our beliefs. As in other religions salvation can be gained through charity, knowledge and similar paths, but the most likely path is through renunciation of this obvious temporal world. The holiest people in most religions commonly use this path of renouncing the world to allow them to enter the next realm of reality. We call the various paths to enlightenment 'yogas.' The holiest paths, or yogas, of Hinduism were most clearly spelled out in the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita.

"Most religions use the theistic approach to religion, believing in personal gods and the potential of a happy afterlife. The great mass of Hindus also cannot comprehend the pantheistic reality of the Universal Oneness, so we commonly worship aspects of the Oneness in the deities that the sacred scriptures mention. And rather than a heavenly goal at the end of this life as your Western religions theorize, we assume that we will be reincarnated repeatedly until we reach a life in which the ultimate religious experience can be found, then we will cease to exist as individual souls and will melt into the Universal Oversoul.

"In contrast, your Western religions start with a single deity and a single goal—to unite with Him immediately after death. As with Hinduism, some of your saints reach

their holy states through knowledge or through doing good works. But your holiest often reach the same state that the Upanishads have exalted. We can tell this from their writings. So the religious goal of union with God can be done similarly in most of the world's religions. The difference is in our concept of where we are when we get there. We believe in the union into the Oneness of God, the infinity of nature, as the ultimately perfect end. Your Western religions generally believe that it is being with God that is the ultimate goal. We believe that we will keep being reborn until we achieve the perfect ending. You believe that you have one trip through life to accomplish your goal. If you do not manage it you will spend eternity in hell, or at least away from God. I believe that our religion is far more optimistic. And you can see from the history of wars that our approach has been far more peaceful.

"In India we also have the Sikh religion. It was founded about the time that Columbus thought he was discovering India. Its founder was a Hindu and he kept some of the Hindu beliefs, such as reincarnation, but embraced many non-Hindu concepts. Sikhism condemned the ideas of masculine superiority over women and it condemned the inequality of the caste system. It also embraced the monotheistic idea of the Muslim conquerors of India and discarded the major pantheistic Hindu idea. But the founder of the religion clearly said, I am neither Hindu nor Muslim. Actually during the 5,000 year history of Hinduism there have been monotheistic and polytheistic believers. In fact looking at the earliest scriptures the religion can be seen as monotheistic or polytheistic."

 —"Do you have your own calendar or do you use the Western idea? I mean is it 2025 AD, ad Dominum or after the birth of our Lord, or do you use another date?"

 —"We start with the beginning of this epoch of history, which in your terms would be 3102 BC, before Christus, or BCE, before the common era. So this year is the Hindu year of 5126. Of course we also use your Western calendar."

 —"That clarifies things for me. I always wondered how ancient people knew what year it was before Jesus was born!"

 —"I marvel at your American humor. But I'm sure much of it goes over my head! If you would like, I can continue discussing our religions."

 —"Please do, Mr. Ghosh. I just couldn't resist the opportunity to taunt my buddy Ray!"

  "Well let us look at the Sikhs for a minute. Dr. Singh is a Sikh. The Sikhs may follow the Hindu idea of vegetarianism or they may eat meat. Whether it is their diet or their genes, you have probably noticed that the Sikhs are commonly larger that their Hindu countrymen. They have also achieved in many areas, such as the military, airplane piloting, police work and in many of the professional occupations. It is natural that they would achieve in the martial areas since one of their fundamental principles was to fight to overcome oppression. At the time of the Sikh founding the Muslim Mogul conquerors were intent on converting the Hindu heathens. And they were often successful. This of course led to the conflicts between the more peaceful pantheists and the zealous Muslim theists so the Sikhs often rose to stop the oppression. In 1947 the Muslim-Hindu-Sikh conflicts eventually resulted in the partition of the country into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan and then in 1971 East Pakistan became Bangladesh.

"Then, as in all major religions, there are small groups that cling to more primitive beliefs such as animism, witchcraft and other means of magic. The Koran and its commentators speak of good and bad jinns. The Jews and Christians have their witches. We can point to Deuteronomy 18:10 'There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch.' And Exodus in 22:18 says that 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live' gives us the command that the Inquisition and Salem have used to enforce the Divine authority.

"Recently a family was buried alive in Northeast India for witchcraft. It was one of 500 such instances in the last few years."(10) And in Pakistan five women were buried alive because they had the audacity to want to choose their own husbands. And one Pakistani law maker approved of their burial because it was a centuries old tradition so was not immoral."

 \--"Admittedly religions have had their share of heretics, but I think that secular witches like Socrates and Thomas More suffered similarly for their intelligent views. I believe that the non-thinking majority will reject and often torment what they see as different. And since most people profess some religion it is always preferable to attach a religious rationalization to justify our ignorant actions."

 —"I agree. Those Indian villagers were illiterate and had no education. The rampant disease, often caused by drinking polluted water, and the lack of health care, give the people little hope and no answers to their plight. Their anger must be assuaged so unreasonable rationalizations are the most available and their strongest thought processes."

 —"Religions may move slowly. The Catholic Church officially accepted the theory of evolution only a few years ago."

 —"Heck, Ray remember when we asked Father Berry about evolution when we were in grammar school? He said that as long as we believed that somewhere along the path of evolution God put a soul into man, it was OK."

 —"I remember. It settled our concerns about creation and evolution. I don't think it was really official back then, but in 2008 the Pope said that evolution was compatible with the Bible."

 —"But the Pope wouldn't offer a posthumous apology to Darwin like the Anglicans did."

 —"What good would an apology do for a dead man? And Lee, this idea of evolution being compatible with the Bible goes back at least as far as Pope Pius XII in 1950 and it was reaffirmed 30 years ago by Pope John Paul. Lee I am sure you know that the Catholic Church doesn't always read the Bible literally, like many evangelicals do. We accept what you might call 'theistic evolution' in which God guides the evolutionary process."

 —"The hierarchy of your church seems slower than other educated groups to accept clearly verifiable findings and theories of science. And I know you in the priesthood are a very well educated group. It seems that it takes many years to figure out how you can keep God in the picture. If we are to believe Matthew 18:18 and 19, that if two of his original disciples agree on something on Earth it will be affirmed in heaven, why wouldn't God accept the truth of a proposition if two Christians today agreed to it? Was Jesus only talking about those in his audience 2,000 years ago? If Galileo or Darwin, both of whom were Christians, convinced a friend of the truth of a scientific finding, wouldn't God accept it? After all, God already knew it! Or must He wait until the Pope and one of his advisors agrees to it? But then what if two other Christians believe in the Biblical creation story, must God accept that too? After all, He is the author of the Bible. So can God simultaneously accept contradictions as both being true?"

 —"I know what you're getting at Lucifer, I mean Lee. Just remember that the absence of evidence for something does not mean there is evidence that it doesn't exist. So the absence of evidence is not evidence of the absence."

 —"I thought we left those arguments with Wanda Wang in Kino. Let's learn a bit more about Indus. Mr. Ghosh, I'm really not familiar with your religion. I know you have sacred cows and lots of your men wear turbans, but not much more."

 —"Yes, we do have sacred cows, part of our respect is because of their place in our mythology, but part is because of our respect for their contributions to our lives. They give us milk, we use their hides for shoes and their bones for buttons, and sometimes they pull our plows. I think they do a lot more for us than your revered national symbol, the bald eagle, does for you.

"Regarding the men in turbans, you are probably thinking about the Sikhs. As I mentioned, they are an offshoot of the religion with rather different beliefs. Because some Muslims wear turbans, some people have thought that Sikhs are Muslim. In fact some stupid American shot a Sikh after 9/11 thinking he was a Muslim. It was doubly stupid and prejudicial. The Sikh turban is totally different from any Arab turban, and the chance of anyone living in America being connected with the 9/11 terrorists was certainly less than one in a million. But people acting violently stupid in your country seem to be more than one in a thousand so it should be expected, with pity.

"But let me tell you a bit about our beliefs, because they are so different from yours in the West.

"As you know, our religion is by far the oldest, going back about 5,000 years. The Jews 'only' go back three or four thousand years. And as you know, ours is a pantheistic religion. While this allows some to think of a god or gods they can pray to, in a monotheistic or polytheistic way, this is not the core of our belief. Our belief is that all is god. We are god, just as everything in the universe. We just have to give up our vices and we will realize our god-nature, then when we die we are absorbed into the Oneness of nature—the Brahman, as we call it.

"We are responsible for our own karma, our own state, our own ultimate happiness. You in the West usually assume that your God is responsible for everything. I have heard you Americans protesting your gasoline prices and I have heard the starving Christians and Muslims in Africa asking 'If God will provide, why is He not providing now?' The meditating Hindu seeks truth inside himself, not hope from the outside."

 —"You are right. God provided polio and botulism, science provided immunizations to control God's diseases and nitrates added to our foods to control botulism. God has provided famines and science has provided improved seeds. God has provided so many people that fresh water has been disappearing. Science has developed the means of desalinizing the oceans. But God's invention of wars has not yet been conquered by science or humanistic statesmen."

 \--"We don't expect supernatural help for earthly problems. Our religion is about achieving perfection as individuals. The Bhagavad Gita says that love and self detachment are the way.It says that 'Death is certain for the born, rebirth is certain for the dead. You should not grieve for what is unavoidable,' And in another verse it advises us that 'A serene spirit accepts both pleasure and pain and is unaffected by either.'

"Another passage tells us that 'Thinking about sense-objects will attach you to sense objects. Grow attached and you become addicted, but if you thwart your addiction it becomes anger; be angry and you confuse your mind, confuse your mind and you forget the lesson of experience, forget experience and you lose discrimination. Lose discrimination, and you miss life's only purpose.

"So detaching oneself from the things of this world is the best way to become selfless, then after death that person, not being part of this world, unites with the Oversoul and ceases to exist.

"I find it sad that there are few mystics or yogis in Indus. Most people give lip service to the gods, while dreaming of tasty morsels passing their lips. If all were yogis, there would be no sex and so, no children—and no population problem.

"Globalization has pushed people together. Religions often try to keep them apart.

We need to look at the scriptures to emphasize the Golden Rule rather than emphasize the parts that divide us into sects. The extremists who embrace the Golden Rule are the saints and the Nobel Peace Prize winners. The extremists on the other side are the inquisitors, the Ku Klux Klansmen, the Palestinian and Israeli terrorists, and the Al Qaeda terrorists.

"There are good people in every religion and evil people in every religion. Often they are the self-centered, power driven people who have been brought up in a religion but who have no attachment to the Golden Rule. Just look at the Catholic Italian mafia, the Jewish Defense League, and the Tamil Tigers. So many in religion are concerned only with their self-centered salvation, not ethics and the golden rule

"I know that in many countries there is the barrier to limiting population because God has told the people to 'be fruitful and multiply' but in our religion the ideal has always been to detach yourself from this apparent world and recognize your true nature. We therefore do not have strong scriptural mandates for procreation. Our scriptural mandates advise us to withdraw from family and world and unite with the Ultimate.

"But as in every society, few pursue the paths of enlightenment and holiness and most find their lives captivated by sex and its accoutrements—family, food and farms. If everyone followed the paths of renunciation and solitary holiness there would be no world population problem. In fact no population! We would all be gone in a generation! And we politicians would have no one to tax!

"But people being who we are, few are ready to renounce the comfort of our families and the enticements that the future dangles in front of us-- motorbikes, clean water, toilets, television, and even computers. Can the joy of atman surpass the pleasure of possessions?"

 —"What is the joy of atman?"

 —"I am sorry Con, I got carried away. Atman is the true recognition of the Ultimate in a person. It is the highest religious experience possible. When we realize our true nature we have experienced what we call 'moksha.'."

 —"We have a bit of a paradox in the Christian religions, especially with Catholicism, because so many of the saints were without families. Their goal, as yours, was to detach themselves from this world so that they could unite with God. And you know that our Roman Catholic priesthood is celibate, as are our nuns and brothers. So the 'be fruitful and multiply' command is often ignored by our saints."

 —"It seems to me that the holiest people in most religions have been single and detached. Islam and Judaism seem to be the exceptions. Although the Sufis of Islam would qualify. No ideas of asceticism come to my mind for Judaism."

"In all religions, the object is to recognize one's true self-–and for most people that means uniting with God. Truth is understanding the way to reach God.

"As you know we have the same types of myths and gods that are the commonalities of all god-based religions. While the Brahman is the totality of the pantheistic universe, aspects of that totality are seen as gods. Brahma is the creating aspect of Brahman. One of the favored creation myths is that Brahman decided to have humans as part of himself, so he willed the waters to form. He then took a seed and set it upon the waters. That seed became a golden egg. Inside the egg was Brahma. When his meditative powers became strong the egg was forced to break. He then used half of the egg as the Earth and the other half as the sky. This is only one of the creation myths, but you see that even here the power of meditation was essential. So the method of meditation is both the creative and the essential power.

"We have our trinity, too. Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva are primary aspects of Brahman. It is said that there are over 300 million aspects of the Brahman. So we have plenty of possible aspects of worship. You in the West have your saints, prophets and other venerable people, both living and dead. Obviously people need guideposts to show them the way to enlightenment and salvation.

"The major difference is that from the beginning we have had the ideal behavior of meditation and selflessness as a way of realizing our true selves and escaping the wheel of renewed births, the reincarnation caused by not realizing and not fulfilling our potentials for selflessness. Until we do, our karma is to return to life on earth and work towards perfection. It is both puzzling and reassuring that many of the holiest people in every religion achieve their sanctity from selflessness and meditation, as we have always believed.

"But the huge majority of our people are just like yours, praying, offering sacrifices and living their lives according to the beliefs of their mothers. They need their prophets and jinns, their miracles and their myths to make sense of their world. They need their heavens and hells to provide the carrots and sticks as they ply their ethical highways to salvation

"Those who lack discrimination may quote the letter of the scripture, but they are really denying its inner truth. I see so many Christians and Muslims citing verses from their scriptures, thinking that each verse carries with it the total truth, but the major truth of most religions is the Golden Rule.

"I remember being in your country for a period during your war in Iraq. There was a small sect that gained publicity well beyond the value of its message. They demonstrated at the funerals of your war dead. They called the fallen soldiers homosexuals. Then they somehow confused homosexuality with adultery. But I could never figure out how it tied to the war. The ferocity of the few was beyond my comprehension."

 —"You would have enjoyed being with us in Singaling with Dr. Chan. He gave us a pretty good idea of what motivates people. It seems clear to me that the sect you are describing generates a power drive, fueled by what they think God has emphasized. Most ministers, if it suits their fancies, can get some followers to do about anything as long as God somehow advocates it. And the flock of followers will feel fulfilled because the Good Shepherd is herding them. And who will not escape his inferiority when following the Infinite?"

 —"I took some courses in psychology and some in religion at Cambridge so I think I understand your point. One verse does not a Scripture make!

"Certainly a strong case can be made against homosexuality in most religions, even if it exists in most, or all, societies. But a pretty strong case can also be made for the Golden Rule in every religion. But lust, from the loins of lesbians or libertines, gays or gallants is still lust—and it takes away one's thoughts of salvation. There is a verse in the Gita that says:

By lust the Atman is hidden

He is wise who acts without lust or scheming

Action rightly renounced brings freedom

"The Atman is that essence of the Universal within us. The total god of the universe we call the Brahman. Our task is to recognize that we are one with the Brahman. But the world and its pleasures and pains can cloud our realization of our god nature—our Atman.

'The holiest people in many religions are without attachments—without spouses or children, without the lust for sex or the love of riches--but with the concern for others and of a burning desire to unite with their Godliness. It may be the Hindu experiencing Atman or the Christian either having the same experience or a different type of mystical feeling--a reaching out and experiencing God, as did Theresa of Avila.

"Our ultimate objective is to realize our true nature and unite with the Oversoul, the Brahman. There are several paths to accomplish this goal. We generally call these 'yogas'. The term 'yoga' means 'path' or 'way' or 'yoke' or 'unite'. It is a Sanskrit word. There are several yogas, but they are all said to lead us to asceticism and meditation and eventually to moksha, the union of the individual soul with the infinite oversoul.

"As with every religion we have our scriptures to show us the way. And as with every religion the scriptures can point to conflicting paths or to conflicting emphases to salvation. Our religion, like the other major faiths, has evolved as great teachers have given us better ways, or different methods, to realize our ageless quest.

"Our scriptures begin with the Vedas composed about 5,000 years ago, then the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita. They were probably both written 2500 to 2700 years ago. They illustrate the evolution in our theology and how we can best attain a union with the Oversoul, the pantheistic god that you identify in the West, or the Brahman, as we say on the Indian subcontinent.

YOGAS

"In Indian philosophy, Yoga is the name of one of the six approaches to realizing one's ultimate nature and thereby uniting with the Brahman on one's physical death.

"These paths to salvation, or to the Divine, are seldom exclusive. By that I mean when you take a whole belief system, like Catholicism or Buddhism, you will find a number of different emphases within the belief. So one Catholic may emphasize worshiping the Virgin Mary, another may concentrate on John's Revelation, and another on Paul's epistles. All three would recognize the importance of the others' reflections, and see them as part of the whole. So it is with the different yogas one might follow. There may be overlaps in the practices of the different believers. Let me start with tantra.

"Tantra is about rituals. I call it a yoga. Most would not call tantra a yoga because it is more primitive and popular and does not emphasize the pantheistic reality as much as the yogas of the last few millennia have. As in all religions, rituals, prayer, myths and sacrifices play an important part in tantric devotion. The masses can relate better to separate deities just as they can relate to separate people. Of course, as it has evolved through the centuries the theory has brought many of its practitioners to the more pantheistic reality, so today many are seeking liberation from this life in this more traditional Hindu way

"Now let me briefly mention the six yogas that most devotees recognize. Karma yoga is practiced by those who believe there are positive or negative results from everything we do. Therefore, all actions done yesterday will affect our lives tomorrow, and for the future. Everything that is experienced now is related to our past actions. All that we do is our responsibility.

"So the person following Karmic yoga must have good intentions and act, always, on those intentions. They must be selfless, acting only for the good of others. While it is the individual who is seeking a more god-like life, others may follow. And as the Gita says:

Without peace, where is happiness.

Duty well done fulfills happiness

The world is imprisoned by its own activity

Whatever a great man does ordinary people will imitate.

"One's karma is a combination of his or her actions, feelings and desires. If your thoughts and actions are dominated by things of this world, like gold and orgasms, your karma will condemn you to repeated reincarnations until those desires are extinguished.

Karma yoga, in emphasizing serving others, can be an effective means of moving towards moksha.

"While Karma Yoga emphasizes doing for others, Bhaki Yoga focuses on the heart and the feelings of love, like tolerance. Here the practitioner is able to see everyone and everything as elements of the Universal. And, of course, if you see all clearly, you will act according to your vision.

"A third yoga is Juana Yoga, the yoga of knowledge. This is both a psychological and a philosophical approach to understanding our real selves. Our apparent self is of the material world and does not recognize its universal nature. Through understanding correct knowledge one can understand the true Universal. Then through effective meditation one can experience and unite with that reality. So this yoga moves from theory to practice, from understanding to experience, from the perception and experience of the temporal to the union with the universal and infinite. You may have heard of Shankara, he was the greatest of the philosophers or theologians of Juana. He taught us to use the intellect to open the door to realizing moksha.

"A fourth yoga is Kriya Yoga. It uses a number of techniques, such as mantras and meditative techniques, to calm the body and mind. The self awareness that was our natural state can be again realized.

"Hatha yoga is a fifth approach to enlightenment. While control of the mind is always the end path to uniting with the Brahman, The 15th Century yoga, called Hatha, begins with the control of the body through various postures and breathing techniques. Once the body is totally controlled the mind may be more easily controlled. Hatha recognizes the opposites of our perceptions, like dark and light, masculine and feminine, good and evil. In fact the name 'hatha' is a combination of the words for sun and moon, 'ha' and 'tha'.

"You have probably heard of some yogis who can drop their heart rate and blood pressure—and even stop their hearts and breathing. This is an example of the degree of body control we can reach. But control of the mind and the attainment of moksha is even more difficult—and satisfying.

"A sixth yoga is Raja or royal Yoga. It is often an alternate or advanced step from mere body control. Here the mind can stay focused on the ultimate reality.

"So you see that the objective of our religion is to recognize our oneness with the universe. Until we do we will have to keep coming back to this earthly life—polluting the environment, causing global warming and generally being planetary pests. So Hinduism is not a barrier to reducing population. But democratic ideals may prevent us from mandating immediate population reduction. Consequently to be true to our beliefs in our democratic constitution we have to make as many of our population proposals as voluntary as possible."

RELIGIOUS TERRORISM

 —"With the Muslim and Christian push for converts, have you experienced problems with missionaries or with terrorism?"

 —"No. In Indus we are a Hindu country with very, very few people of other religions. I'm not personally aware of any non-Hindus. Because of the tolerance of our religion we don't have problems. We have however discouraged missionaries of other religions. We sometimes refuse visas. In reality, since most of our people speak only Hindi, and there aren't many Christians or Muslims who speak it, we have not been in the 'top ten' of convert-able countries.

"It is in your Western countries where you all believe that you have THE true religion that problems occur. And it is not just being a Jew, a Christian or a Muslim that gives you such certainty, but every sect is more true than the other sects in the same religion. Both the Sunnis and the Shia claim the real truth. The orthodox Jew upholds the true religion, the Reformed Jews are really misguided. The Catholics have the true Christian religion, but the Protestants claim that they are following the true path of Jesus. Of course the Pentecostals, Evangelicals, Mormons and a number of other groups are certain that it is only they who follow God's wishes.

"If I weren't a Hindu I'm not sure which of your Western religions I might follow. I would be afraid of a god who has provided floods, famines, wars, and terrorism. On the other hand look at all the oil He put under Muslim controlled countries. Is the real God a Muslim?

"But seriously, realistically, any different ideas coming into our country, whether they be religious, economic or political, would upset our homogeneous applecart. Eventually, because of our education program, we will have economic inequalities, then political differences will grow. So now we are working on both equality and equality of opportunity. Equality for women and homosexuals is socially essential. For the male homosexuals we want to be open about their need for disease prevention. The money we spend on this is more than made up by the economic advantages of their lack of progeny.

"If we are ever required to fight terrorism, the best way is through education—a humanistic education that includes an in-depth study of religions, their histories and their theologies. So much of education is merely indoctrination. Indoctrination into Christianity, Catholicism, Lutheranism, Islam, atheism., and 'yes' even to the assumption that democracy is the best or most efficient form of government. We must recognize that women can contribute as much, or more, to society than can men. We must learn the advantages and disadvantages of the various political and economic systems.

CRITICIZING OTHERS BELIEFS

 —"I don't see a lot of people criticizing human rights, except sometimes when they are violated. It's amusing that some ideas can be criticized while others can't.

For example nobody has the right to criticize another person's religion. But do we have the right to criticize them if they believe that the world is flat or if they don't believe in democracy, evolution, or global warming."

 —"Why can't we criticize religions. They are belief systems built on the most nebulous of foundations. They are unprovable by our best techniques of thinking, whether empirical or philosophical. They are founded on myths, hopes and some dubious personal experiences that some people may have had.

"And look at the lack of logic in many people's ideas on parent licensing. In your country people whose opinions are against parent licensing usually say that they don't want big government or Big Brother running their lives. But those of us who have studied logic know that this kind of scare tactic falls under several types of logical fallacies. You must argue the question at hand—not try to scare people with some sort of boogeyman.

"And certainly Big Brother was welcomed in 2008 when your government infused $700 billion into your economy to try to save major banks and insurance companies. It had deregulated key financial industries, then when the banking and stock market millionaires had become billionaires and had walked away with the profits from your small home and stock investors, Big Brother just decided to let the taxpayers bail out the big institutions. But what's another trillion dollars in your eleven trillion national debt? That debt only amounts to about $33,000 debt for every man, woman and child in your country. At the same time, debt free Norway had been investing its surplus internationally; It had amassed a surplus of $175,000 for every one of its citizens."

 —"Amen! Then along with 'fear' you have 'blame' as a political technique.. When Sarah Palin was running for vice president on the Republican ticket, she was being investigated for malfeasance in office. The Republican hierarchy protested that it was all political and so was 'tainted' because it was instigated by the Democrats. The truth was that a bi-partisan committee of eight Republicans and four Democrats had unanimously voted to conduct the investigation. The essential question should always be—is it true. And that's what any investigation should uncover--are the charges true or false.

"On the same day in Zimbabwe in speeches by the two power-sharing leaders, Morgan Tsvangirai spoke of the future and what must be done. Robert Mugabe's speech was about blaming others, the United Kingdom and the U.S., for the plight of his country during his years of rule. Politicians know that deflecting blame may keep people's minds off settling for the truth.

"But back to your Big Brother scare. Big government has produced both good outcomes and bad outcomes. The road and highway system has something to recommend it. Universal education is certainly a big plus from the big governments. Regulation of banks and stock markets may have some problems, but it beats the alternatives. On the other hand big government has led us into useless wars and has often been irresponsible in its financial dealings with powerful interests to the detriment of its citizenry."

 —"Another example is the lack of comprehensive thinking by religious rulers, politicians and business leaders. Population loss is a Godsend to the world. But a disaster for politicians and businesses, and is essential to increasing the membership in the true religions of Christianity and Islam."

STERILIZATION PAID

 \--"Lee, let me get back to some of the things we are doing to reduce our population. Our dual need of reduced population and more education have been made possible by our benefactor Mrs. Doors, Mrs. Blanche Doors, the philanthropist I have mentioned. You might be interested in how we have proceeded.

"I wish Mrs. Doors was here. She's a wonderful woman."

  "How did she adopt you, and why has she taken the approach that she has?"  —"She told me that she has traveled the world for 70 years. She has seen the world's population double since she started traveling in 1970 as a twenty year old and she has seen more people condemned to poverty and despair. She analyzed the approaches she could take to help to solve the problems. She could try to minimize the effects as most philanthropists do. She could spend her money on trying to find cures for AIDS, malaria, cholera, or spend money on making the arid lands arable. People applaud this type of philanthropy. She decided to try to attack the cause. And the obvious cause was too many babies, especially in the impoverished countries."

 —"What has the international reaction been?"

 —"The conservative Christians have been against it. There has been some very negative publicity in Des Moines, Omaha and Dallas. But progress is always has its attendant problems and solving those problems is the price of progress. We have an essential and a difficult goal and we must move to accomplish it with baby steps or giant steps, whichever our citizens will allow. You remember what the Greek orator Demosthenes said, 'Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises.'

"Mrs. Doors' involvement has been a lucky giant step for us. She chose us, as a Hindu country, because there wouldn't be the static that there would have been if she had gone into a black country, a Muslim country or a Christian country. She didn't want to fight the charges of genocide, or enter into Scriptural skirmishes with religious zealots."

 —"Her involvement with you in population reduction is the reason that we are here. I know you don't have parent licensing, but I understand that you are doing some things to try to reduce your population and make things better for your people."

 —"To use practical politics we must start with where the people are psychologically. And as you know people are basically selfish and they are concerned more with today than with tomorrow. In her later years, after bucking the populace, Indira Gandhi wisely said, 'I suppose that leadership at one time meant muscle but today it means getting along with people.' I have learned a great deal from her—both what to do and what not to do."

 —"Let me guess. Based on what we talked about with Dr. Chan in Singaling, using Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you would start with survival needs like food, drink and shelter. I would guess that money would go a long way toward handling those things, so your rich philanthropist probably has the key."

 —"You are correct that the needs of the present must be met and they are our highest priority. But we also offer hope. People learn they can get better jobs in our government and in the jobs that are outsourced here if they are doing their bit to reduce our population and to educate themselves. Mrs. Doors has used her own companies and her connections with others to get low level manufacturing jobs. As our education increases we will be able to bring in still better jobs.

"She has bought a solar powered television set that can also be powered at night by pedaling a stationary bike that powers a dynamo that generates electricity. Every village has one. She also bought a solar powered computer for every village. Computer time is divided among families.

"In addition to the philanthropy of Mrs. Doors and her friends, we get some foreign aid. It all goes to the programs I have just mentioned, compensation for sterilization and education. The U.S. will not help us with our population reduction, but they do contribute to our education programs.

"We cannot make progress unless we are alive and have enough energy to create a spark to be better, to live better. We can't do that if we are not educated. With Mrs. Doors we are both her laboratory rats and her pet project, which is to eliminate poverty and save the planet.

"She is also concerned with our excess population as a huge barrier to breaking the cycles of poverty and illiteracy. We told her about the experiences India and Pakistan have had with trying to reduce population. You may know that in the 1960s Indians were paid $5 to be sterilized, that was about 2 months' wages at the time.

"Realistic statesmen around the world recognize the imperative to limit children, but

realistic democratic politicians around the world recognize that damming the tradition of unlimited births will break the dam and flood them out of office. Taking away a traditional right of the electorate is suicidal even if it is the better decision for the society and the world. I know that in the West the fertility rate is dropping rapidly even though many of your welfare states reward the parents with monthly child support, child care opportunities, and lengthy maternity leaves. We cannot do any of these things, even if we thought they were good ideas, still our population continues to rise.

"I know that soon you will meet with Dr. Singh, our pride in the political science field. He is, of course, one of the foremost experts in the world on practical politics—the science of the possible. We have listened to him and used many of his ideas for manipulating our people to move intellectually from the traditional rural belief system, with large families, to a more globally astute technologically-aware small family system. I am certain that you will find his ideas interesting and challenging.

"We have enacted laws to coincide with our education needs. Children under 12 are required to watch our educational television from 8 AM to noon. They are released from work during these hours. From age 12 to 15 they are released from work from 12 to 3. Those 16 to 18 are released from work from 3 to 6 PM. Adults who want education can watch from 6 to 10 PM. Children up to age 10 can work in the fields or shops 10 hours a week, 15 year olds 20 hours. Adults can work 40 or more. Those in school who pass the academic tests every three months are paid bonuses depending on how well they have done on the national tests.

"We have been successful in getting donations of free books from the U.S. and the UK. With books, it can help our people to learn English, math, history and science. This gives them a better base for using the Internet more effectively.

FOREIGN AID FOR STERILIZATION

"As you know, we have no licensing but we do encourage smaller families. We pay people with no children six months salary to be sterilized. If they have one child we pay 4 months of their salary if they will be sterilized. With two children it is two months salary.

"We have a sister country, Somobar, in East Africa, they have the identical policies we have in Indus—paid sterilization and free contraceptives. They have been able to get some philanthropists and one European government to help to finance their planned population reduction. Because the missionaries in their country have been mainly liberal Lutherans from Scandinavia they haven't had the bishops and the muftis criticizing their population reduction plans. In both countries the government and businesses give preference to employees with the fewest children.

"Let me go back to our voluntary sterilization program. Those who choose the surgical sterilization, which is reversible, are paid $200, which is about three months of our average salary. The other options are male and female contraceptives.These are provided free monthly. We don't give a stipend for those who choose the chemical approach to sterility. For those who want the surgical sterilization reversed, we charge $100 plus whatever our inflation rates would add to it. For those who have become educated, the $100 fee is a small part of their yearly salary.

"If people want government financial support to live, we require that they be sterilized. If they can't financially support their families they must realize that the government can't support them or any additions to their families. Since the sterilizations are reversible if the family can eventually support itself and pays back to the government what has been paid to them, it can be reversed and more children can be born if they so choose.

"Most of the costs of the sterilizations and the incentives are paid by foreign philanthropists who have given millions for sterilization—their contributions go to monthly pay, retirement pay, and often a guaranteed job. More money is allotted if the family has no children. But no money is available if there are three or more children. We will soon start building retirement homes for those sterilized before having children. Lesser homes for those with one child, but none for those with two or more children. They will have to rely on their children for their old age care—just as our ancient traditions required.

"Factories have also been set up for those sterilized so that they can make a guaranteed living today. The first preference for employment is for those with no children. Then those with one child get the next opportunity. And of those, the ones with children getting the higher marks in school get the next level of preference. And if the children are trouble makers, the parents go to the end of the list. So for those who have chosen to be parents we reward those with children who are most likely to be effective productive citizens and punish those who did not produce and rear such children.

"As our national finances improve we will develop health care. The primary beneficiaries will again be the childless, then those with one child, and so forth.

"It is obvious that for our citizens and for our country, education especially higher education, is necessary for advancement. We need doctors, teachers, engineers and a number of other academics to pull us into the 21st Century. Many who follow the academic path in higher education have opted for sterilization. Once they are settled in their high level jobs they often opt to have their sterilizations reversed. We encourage it.

PREGNANCY

"While we discourage pregnancies, when they happen we want to take care of the mother and the potential child. Pregnant women must take niacin and niacin fortified foods, like breads and pastas, to reduce the chance of spinal bifida. They are given vitamins and minerals to give their potential children's bodies and brains the best chance for maximal development. Women are counseled on nutritional needs, like protein, and how they can insure that they consume enough protein. If they can eat eggs or fish, that is good, but if not we teach them how to combine lower level proteins to get better protein quality, like combining rice and beans or peanuts and wheat.

"For years the number of women in the world dying in childbirth has been in excess of a half million. We are working hard to reduce our maternal death rate. But without many doctors we have to rely on the education and the better training of midwives.

"We have some foreign aid that pays for some to have amniocentesis. We require it for pregnancies where the mother is over 35. If a problem is discovered, abortion is suggested. We cannot afford to take care of children with chromosomal or genetic problems. In your country the government picks up the tab for children who will likely be economically useless to the society. We realize that occasionally someone develops a disease that may not have been predicted. Steven Hawking's Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis may or may not have been genetically linked. But, while some genetically abnormal children are very pleasant people, they take much more from the economy than they contribute. Developed countries may be able to absorb them, but we can't.

"The lack of adequate vaccination programs has subjected thousands of children to diseases they shouldn't have. We have enlisted the Doctors Without Borders to supply the shots that all children should have. All our children have not been vaccinated, but more are now protected from some diseases.

PARENT EDUCATION

"Here, as in most countries, the parents own the children. In some countries the state says it owns the future citizens, but only takes them if they are severely abused. And it gives back the children to the parents as soon as the parents are released from jail. The idea of society telling us who we can own is repugnant.

"On the village television we teach parenting classes on Sundays at 6 PM. We tell them the costs of a child born in the rural area and compare that with city born children. We teach about nutrition, physical fitness, avoiding diseases, about motivating and disciplining children, about the advantages of education for both boys and girls, about what it means to love, and a number of other necessary knowledges. We are taking baby steps to move us closer to a perfect world. I don't know if that means that down the road we should consider licensing."

 —"But that perfect world "ain't gonna happen" -- at least, not any time soon. And I have a strong suspicion that if parenthood were licensed by the government, wealth would have a far greater influence on one's ability to be licensed than would one's aptitude for parenting. Too many wrong people would be licensed, and we'd be in even more trouble than we are now!"

 —"Unfortunately, Con, unwanted babies are still born. Of course you have them in your country too. As I recall, when your vice presidential nominee's daughter turned up pregnant her mother said that 'we knew it would make her grow up faster. . . and face the responsibilities of adulthood.' It reminded me of your media personality Paris Hilton, after spending some days in jail, saying she thought she needed a baby to make her grow up. We would never rationalize a pregnancy on the ground that it should make the mother a more mature person!

"When unwanted children are born we can't tolerate infanticide so we have copied an Italian approach of dealing with unwanted infants. At designated hospitals people can leave their babies in a heated crib near the emergency room. The weight of the baby in the crib sounds an alarm for the medical workers to rescue it, treat it for disease if necessary, then prepare it for adoption by our citizens or by people in your world..

EDUCATION

"More education, if it is a truly humanities-based education, will make people more tolerant of others. For the uneducated there is only one world view—theirs. With effective education people can see the various basic assumptions that people use and realize that certainty in the areas of philosophy and religion is not possible."

 —"You don't seem to agree with Mao Zedong's idea that 'To read too many books is harmful.'"

 —"There's not a lot that I can agree on with Mao. I still believe in democracy, not Communistic fascism. Although I do respect what the Communists have done in China. It is just that I believe that the people will follow if you give them the facts. I guess I believe in a top to bottom to top approach. The leaders think through a problem and suggest a solution then the people say 'yes' or 'no' and the leaders do it. Mao's way eliminated the essential middleman.  
"But it is I true that reading more books, especially books with different viewpoints, will entice people to question the status quo and develop new ideas. Of course new ideas are not necessarily better ideas. Mao certainly preferred that people read only Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Mao. If people read Rousseau, the Gita, the Bible, and Jefferson they would be more likely to criticize socialistic totalitarianism."

 \--"Schooling and increased literacy seem to help to reduce births. According to the U.S. Agency for International Development, even a few years of education reduces birthrates because it improves the girls' understanding of birth control information. Greater illiteracy partly accounts for Pakistan's faster population growth. In the half a century since the partition, India has increased literacy from 14 percent to 52 percent, nearly 40 percent of Indian women can read and write. Pakistan's literacy rate is 36 percent overall and 23 percent for women. One villager told me that 'The boys will earn money and feed us. It makes sense to educate them, but the girls won't get paying jobs. They will just marry and move to another house. I won't profit from educating her, so why should I?'"

 \--"That is one of the problems we face. But we are working on equalizing our educational opportunity. We require all children to attend school until they are 12 then we test all students for basic intelligence, their IQ, and for their comprehension of their studies. The combination of intelligence, comprehension and hard work is scored. Those who do well are given family allowances to make up for the money they would have made working in the fields. But all people can continue their educations, they just don't get family financial allowances to do it.

"I mentioned that Mrs. Doors put a solar powered television in every village. During the day there are lessons in simple English and math. It is done through cartoons and native speaking hosts. All children under 12 must watch the educational programming. If a parent does not allow the children to be schooled, the parent loses the subsidized food. The subsidy is more than the child could earn in the fields.

"We have traveling teachers, with two years of teacher training. They go from village to village. They generally spend a day every two weeks in a village. Our highest priority is to get permanent teachers for each village to teach elementary thru secondary school.

"We have accepted many young volunteers, such as those in the Peace Corps. Many countries now require their youth to spend a year training for military service, but they usually let those who desire to opt out of the military to spend a year in community service in their home country or in developing countries. We get some of these. Then we have Johann Olav Koss's 'Right to Play' organization that brings in volunteers to teach our youth about sport. We have some Venezuelan musicians who are bringing their talents to help our young people appreciate music and to learn to play instruments.

"If Mao hadn't used the phrase 'The Great Leap Forward' we would have adopted it. But we had to develop our own slogan so we chose 'Growing Optimism' or 'GO' for short. We are now in the fourth year of our first eight year program. The 12 year olds of four years ago are over half way through secondary school on an accelerated program. In four more years they will have their two year college associate degree and will become teachers and IT technicians. The top 20% will then go to universities in India and the U.S.

"I forgot to mention that to go into the secondary school you must sign a contract to work in Indus for 10 years. To go to the university you must sign for a total of twenty years. Since much of the education program is financed by Mrs. Doors she is trying to prevent a brain drain. It is so common that when promising academic talent goes to developed countries from Third World countries they never return. The accepting countries give them scholarships and may educate them through the doctoral level, but the students stay in the more modern country. It is the rule rather than the exception. So if our people want more education and better jobs, and we provide the education, we want them to help us. They can be teachers, physicians, nurses, professors, business people, government planners—there are so many ways they can help our country. Many are offered good jobs here with one of Mrs. Doors' companies.

"Mrs. Doors and others have funded a university that attracts top professors. The university is by a beautiful beach. Palm trees all around. Gourmet chefs prepare the meals for the faculty club where professors can dine at no charge. And their families can eat there too. There is an Olympic size swimming pool, tennis courts, a full golf course, and a full gymnasium. These amenities have attracted world renowned professors to spend their sabbatical years with us. Many stay."

 —"What subjects are offered?"

 —"Our major concerns now are to develop a better health care system, a better education program, and a business and information technology school. In our health care program we have a nursing school and the first two years of a medical school. A dental school will be built in two years. Then we have a school of public health which emphasizes preventing the diseases that have plagued our country, particularly malaria and cholera, but it is also concerned with other communicable diseases. We are just starting programs in the areas of the degenerative and chronic diseases like cardio-vascular diseases and cancer.

"We want to give all babies an even start. But after that start we can't do much. We provide health education on our village television sets, and for those who can read we have brochures on avoiding diseases, understanding nutrition, the value of fitness, how to relax, making the houses healthier by using mosquito nets and not breathing the smoke from the cooking fires.

"We have a strong physical education program that is part of our primary and secondary school curriculum. Health education and health promotion are found at every level of education. Disease prevention, nutrition, physical fitness, ecology, family planning, marriage concerns, parenting and ecology. We teach many subjects using health as a background. For example we can teach percentages in math by looking at the frequency of various diseases, how to distribute food and water fairly, comparing populations of different countries and whether they are increasing or decreasing. We can look at chemistry and physiology through nutrition. We can study anatomy and physiology while studying fitness and nutrition. We look at psychology and sociology in studying marriage and parenthood. History and geography can be studied when looking at ecology, food production, and population movements. We can study philosophy and ethics while studying religion. We also teach our Hindu religion and its practical applications.

"Every night we air current events so our people will realize more about the world. And every night we teach basic science and relate it to our farming and to our family health.

"At the post high school level our business school has branches in business management, information technology, accounting and entrepreneurship. Our only master's degree program at this time is our MBA. We have master's degree programs being planned in most of our curriculum areas. Doctoral studies are about seven years away.

"So you see we have a realistic plan. But it couldn't happen without Western businesses outsourcing to our eager but low skilled workers. Mrs. Doors' philanthropy and her 'hands on' help was the most important. Then the volunteers from other countries have helped us in so many ways—education, sports, developing better housing, helping us to build low cost water conservation and purification projects, helping our farmers with more modern techniques and supplying high yield genetically moderated seeds, the list goes on and on. I pray that soon we can return the favor to those less fortunate than we are.

"I know that your major concerns are reducing population and licensing parents. Every intelligent leader knows that these are good ideas. The parent licensing is too hot a topic for most countries to deal with. But the population reduction is absolutely essential. The wastes, whether they are aerosols or solid, and whether they are dumped into the air, into landfills, into rivers or into the oceans—are causing diseases and deaths and are dooming a livable earthly ecology.

"Human history has been scourged by water borne diseases as the people living up-river excrete into their rivers and the people downstream drink the water, get sick, then excrete back into the same river. In town after town and city after city, polio, cholera and other water carried diseases multiply their victims as the liquid elixir moves from its source to its mouth and progressively poisons the people who hoped to be rejuvenated by it. With population proliferation out of control, few countries can treat the water to make it safe, then treat the sewage to make it clean. And this doesn't even acknowledge the scarcity of the water that is killing people by parching the pastures and famishing the farms.

"An educated electorate is essential to an effective democracy. In your country many of your founding fathers were highly educated people. Most of the citizens had little education. You were actually run by an oligarchy of rich businessmen and farmers.

Now you have extensive schooling, but your common people are not well educated. Maybe it is because you don't attract great teachers into your elementary and secondary schools. You don't pay enough. Why would a physicist or chemist turn down $100,000 to $150,000 and sign a teacher's contract for $25,000. Maybe it is because you are having to spend so much time and effort in teaching your legal and illegal immigrants English. I don't know. But I do know that based on international standards U.S. elementary and secondary education are way down the list. Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Finland and most of Europe are far ahead. How can you claim to have the world's leading democracy when your electorate is generally ignorant?

"You have some of the top universities in the world and you have shady unethical businesses calling themselves universities with no real academic credentials. I think that your ideas of freedom often get in the way of real progress and an effective democracy.

"You have loud authoritative voices claiming the truth of ancient religious myths of an ancient illiterate people over the findings of modern empirical science. But your people cannot admit to the possible falsehood of their myths. I would guess that Aristotle, as brilliant as he was, would have recanted his theory of gravity when confronted with Galileo's facts. You remember that Aristotle thought that a heavy object would fall faster than a lighter object` It certainly makes sense. It was just wrong. Galileo wanted to test the theory, so he dropped two objects off the leaning tower of Pisa. The two objects fell at the same speed.

"I dare say that Thomas Jefferson or George Washington would be ardent physical scientists today and that their philosophies and politics would follow their intelligent leanings.

"The educated world has laughed at your political races for years. Intelligent discussions of the issues, that are the method of the educated democracies, seem nearly absent in your politics. George W. Bush used fear rather than facts when running against John Kerry. John McCain did it when running against Barack Obama. When women or men vote for their own sex merely because of sameness, or when blacks or whites vote only for their skin color, you deserve what you get. Leadership abilities are not found in the X or Y chromosome or in a skin color gene like the 'melanocortin 1 receptor'. Neither indicates an ability to think logically or any knowledge of the issues. Issues and answers should be the crux, until they are, your people will have to bear the cross of incompetency in government. When propagandists can manipulate your electorate instead of letting reason be a consideration, your country will continue downhill and your attempt at developing an effective republic based on the consent of the governed will have finally failed.

"But I know you will be discussing such issues with Dr. Singh soon.

"We expect to have our population better educated than yours within 25 years. By that time I assume that most of our people will have given up the myth of Brahma in an egg creating the Earth, and it will have gone the way of Tyrannosaurus rex.

ENGLISH—SIMPLISH

"Like it or not, there is an international language—English. In China they are beginning to teach English by age five. They are also teaching a national language—Mandarin. So people who would normally speak Cantonese now must learn a national and an international language, while their local language will probably die out.

"Did you know that twenty years ago there were 6500 languages in the world. We are now down to 4000 and the number is dropping rapidly. Some of the remaining languages are spoken by only a few people. If we are going to communicate in a globalized world, we must speak a common language and it seems that English has elbowed its way to the front of the language line.

"Did you know that there are a million words in English and a half million in Chinese. Spanish has 275,000. It is no wonder that they are the three major languages of the world. French, once the world's language of diplomacy, has only a hundred thousand words and Arabic only 45,000. So you can see how English has much more potential to express ideas. It is the educated world's language. So learning English is the essential ticket for the train to tomorrow—a globalized tomorrow.

"So it is obvious that a major area of our political motivation is a developing a realistic hope for a better life is the learning of English. We developed a five year plan to make English our official spoken language. We did this on the village televisions and by gradually changing the words on all packaged goods.

"As I said, our children up to age 12 watch educational television from 8 AM to noon.. They learn simplified English, or Simplish, as we call it. They learn some traditional English. They learn math and some basic physical science and some world geography and history. After age 12 they can be released from their jobs at noon to attend secondary school. There they learn more Simplish and English, math, physics, and more on the history and geography of our part of the world.

"For adults, who can watch educational television from 6 to 10 PM, they are generally illiterate so they learn Simplish and some basic science that can help them in their work."

 —"What about this Simplish?"

 —"Lee, it is merely simplified English. We started with some of the ideas that Muchinju developed when they had people coming to their country who spoke many languages. We took their ideas and simplified them even more. The idea is that English is the major language of the world. It has the largest vocabulary. It is the language of international business and the major language of the Internet. A problem is that because it has developed from so many sources there is ridiculous spelling, along with innumerable homonyms and homophones and some senseless grammar. We thought that speaking English was most important, so we have simplified the spelling. Then we simplified the grammar and got rid of as many homophones as we could.

"When Samuel Johnson wrote his preface to his English dictionary he wrote that 'the pen must at length comply with the tongue.' We believe that to be true. We therefore believe that Simplish is the written language of the future. We must recognize that there is no one way to organize English, your experts often disagree. English is still a growing and changing language.

"After learning Simplish our university students can take traditional English as an elective language, just as they can take French, Mandarin, Spanish, Arabic or Hindi. Several countries have copied our approach to Simplish. Now it is being used by some on the Internet. I understand that last year 3% of the new posts were in Simplish."

 —"Will you explain it more? Is it like Esperanto?"

 —"It is not like Esperanto. That was an artificial language. It was a good idea, but English is the major language today and we want our people to speak it. In secondary school we teach reading of traditional English. We give them some additional guidelines such as 'ph' having an 'f' sound or 'e' at the end of a word often making the preceding vowel long. For those in the university, we teach English writing. But Simplish has become so popular that I would guess that in fifty years Simplish might be the world's written language. But remember, it is all English, it is just that the spelling has been simplified. We want our people to be able to speak English, to be understood and to understand.

"During the long history of the language and its development in different parts of the world, from the UK to the U.S, from Australia to India, from Africa to the Caribbean, new words and new grammar have emerged. When a ghetto youth says 'I be going' or 'we be going', it actually makes more sense than saying 'I am going' and 'we are going.' Instead of 'I am, you are, he is' and 'we, you or they are,' we can simplify it, as many languages do, to 'I are, you are, he are, we are, you are, they are.'

"So we can simplify the tenses of the verbs. We can make all verbs regular instead of having a number of irregular verbs. Just look at the irregular verb 'read'. It is pronounced reed, which is its homophone. Then its past tense is spelled the same as its present tense, 'read', but is pronounced differently, 'red'. But then the past tense, being pronounced as 'red' is a homophone to the color red.

"Let me start with the vowels. We use the English vowels of: a, e, i, o and u. These each have the short vowel sound like: another, elephant, hit, hot and hut. If we want the long sound we just underline the vowel, so: a, e, i, o and u are pronounced like: lake, leek, like, low and lute. Earlier in the development of Simplish we doubled the vowel to give it a long sound, so those same words would have been written: laak, leek, liik, loo, and luut. But those of us who use the language have agreed that the underlining is simpler. Of course there are some other common vowel sounds. The 'a' in 'cat' and the 'u' in 'should' or the same sound in some words with a double 'o' like 'book; or 'look' are symbolized with a dot over them to signify that the vowel is neither long nor short but has a slightly different sound, so we write cǻt and shůd.

"Now the consonants. The consonants stay pretty much the same, but 'c' is dropped, as it is in the Scandinavian languages, because it either has a 'k' sound as in 'curtain' or an 's' sound as in 'certain.' In fact it can have both sounds in succession like in 'eccentric.' We also drop the 'q' or 'qu' because it is pronounced as a 'k' or a 'kw'.

We give 'g' different sounds. The 'g' is always hard, like 'gun'. The 'J' is the softer sound, like 'George.' We drop 'ph' as an 'f' sound as most languages do. In most countries when you enter a phone booth it is not marked 'telephone' but rather 'telefone' or more commonly 'telefon.' But we also use the 'f' sound in place of 'gh' where it is called for, like 'enough' or 'laugh'. We do keep the 'ng' as in 'smiling' but an ideal language would use a single symbol, possibly the 'ŋ' from the international phonetic alphabet.

"There is an international phonetic alphabet that gives symbols for the large number of vowel sounds that appear in the world's languages. But since we are attempting to simplify English, we use only a few, since not all sounds are used in English.

"We did need symbols for the consonant combinations of sh, th, ch, and tch.

For 'ch' we used the international phonetic symbol ç and for the 'sh' sound, the international symbol 'ʃ.' The symbol for 'th' is 'θ', the Greek letter theta. We definitely want to avoid the problems that some languages have giving different letters or combinations of letters the same sound. For example in Norwegian kj, s, sh, sk and tj can all have the sh sound. That's too confusing. People in the West pronounce the capitol city as it appears, with two long 'o's –Oslo. But the people who live there pronounce it Oshlo.

"Other letter combinations will also be written phonetically, so 'tion' is replaced by 'ʃun' which sounds like 'shun'."We decided to keep the English letters as the hard 'v' and the double 'u' or 'w' as the soft sound, rather than the northern European pronunciation which reverses them, calling them a 'double v' for w, and using the single 'v' as the soft sound, making 'very' sound like 'wary' and 'would' sound like 'vud'. So we would spell 'watch' as 'uaç' and war as 'uor'. We would spell 'very' as 'vare'.

"So much for the sounds. Now some simplified grammar. For the past tense we just as 'ed'. So for the irregular verb 'read' we write as red the past tense is then 'reded'. It would sound like 'I reeded a book last week.' The future tense uses only 'will', so 'shall' is dropped. Many people haven't used 'shall' for years. The perfect tenses are also simplified using only 'have' in the present perfect, 'haved' in the past perfect, and 'will have' in the future perfect. We would write them hǻv, hǻved and wil hǻv.

"I'll write two sentences. Can you read them?

"I ar goeng to ʃop tumaro. I wil bi sum met and sum is krem. Θen we wil se a muve. We would read it as 'I are going to shop tomorrow. I will buy some meat and some ice cream. Then we will see a movie.'  
"One of the big problems was with your homo words."

 —"You mean like homosexuals and gay and lesbian?"

 —"Does every question come to sex for you, Lee? No I mean the homonyms, homophones and homographs."

 You lost me there. Guess I forgot my dumbbell English. What are they?"

 —"Homonyms are words with the same spelling and pronunciation but different meanings such as a river bank and a bank that holds money. Homophones are words with the same pronunciation but different spelling and meanings. Red and read, the past tense of read, or knight and night. Homographs are words with the same spelling but have different pronunciations and meanings, like read, which is both the present and the past tense of the verb 'to read,' or lead, the metal, and lead, like to lead a parade. The homophones are by far the most common.

"Homophones needed to be changed, so 'to, too and two' are now 'to', 'also' and the number 2. Several homophones include words for numbers, such as one and won; to, too and two; for, four and fore; and ate and eight. By using only the Arabic number rather than the written number we eliminate some homophones. So we would use 1, 2, 4 and 8. Then by eliminating the past tense of some irregular verbs we eliminate some more homophones.. So 'ate' becomes 'eted','led' and 'read' become 'leded' and 'reded.' The metal 'lead' now is written 'led' and the color 'red' stays the same.-

"We also eliminate unused letters. Sometimes this shortens the word, like shortening 'though' to 'θo', 'through' to 'θru', or 'enough' to 'enuf.'

"So our simple spelling makes it much easier to talk to people around the world. If language is for communication it is better that we all speak English. Some want to keep their small non-international languages. Like little Norway, with four and a half million people, thathas two major languages 'nynorske' or new Norwegian, and Bokmal, the language of Oslo and the major cities. Plus they have a number of dialects. And the Sami or 'laplanders' have their own language in the north of Norway. The Scandinavian languages of Norway, Sweden and Denmark are similar, yet often the Swedes don't understand the Danes. There are different vowels and different intonations.

Ojibwe is an ancient Native American language spoken in the Great Lakes area. Ten thousand now speak it and 80% of them are over 60. A few languages are spoken only by a dozen or fewer people. It's quaint to study these tongues, but if we are interested in communication, it has to be English.

"A problem is that English is not as exact as it might be. In Sami, the language of the people of northern Scandinavia, there are 50 words for reindeer and 100 words for ice and snow—far more exact than English. Still we use the English lexicon here in Indus. English does have the most words, even though it has only a few for 'ice' and 'snow' But now let us talk more on our education goals.

WOMEN'S RIGHTS

"One major objective of our education is to utilize the talents of women. The human tradition that all men are superior to all women has been disproved over and over again during these last two centuries. Probably the last falsehood to be laid to rest dealt with

a female inferiority in math and science. It is obvious that any country that wants to succeed today must make maximum use of its female population. Their caretaking talents have long been recognized in education and health care. But we need them at the highest levels of government and science.

"We have publicized that fact to our people but male babies are still desired more than females, as is the case in most of the world. As in India, couples often opt for abortion of females or even infanticide, or if they can afford it, in vitro fertilization.

"We have to break down the old ideas that boys inherit their fathers' wealth but girls only require dowries from their fathers when they marry. So girls are financial drains while boys keep the wealth in the family. Dowries have never been required by law and we are trying to eliminate the practice. We keep working on equality of the sexes, equality of opportunity and equality of parental responsibilities.

"Newly independent women in India buck their parents' plans for them to marry. They go to college and work far away from their parents homes. They have become independent. We expect that our women will soon follow suit. This will have a double economic advantage—fewer children and greater productivity for our economy.

"Women need to be used for what they can contribute to the overall society—they are not birth giving machines who make coffee. Patriarchal societies hurt themselves by not letting the cream rise to the top. Women, lower caste people, immigrants, and every other human object of irrational prejudices need equal opportunities.

"We are working to eliminate the practices that have kept India and Pakistan in the dark ages. In both countries, the devaluation of females has taken more deadly forms at times: killings of Indian brides whose families deliver an insufficient dowry, fatal stonings of suspected adulterers in Pakistan, deliberate underfeeding of both Indian and Pakistani infant girls. As a result, India and Pakistan are among the few countries in the world populated by more males than females. For every 100 females, there are 108 males in India and 111 in Pakistan.

"I am sure you know that women are held in low esteem by many Muslims. The Koran gives them about half the value of men in inheriting from their families. And I'm sure you remember the case of the beautiful Iranian woman whose face was turned into a pumpkin-like pulp as she was blinded by acid thrown by a man whose attentions she had spurned. That was about fifteen years ago. When she went to court to have the man receive the same treatment, the court agreed. But since women have only half the value of men, he was to have only one eye blinded with acid.

"But in the Koran, at Sura 5:045 it is written punishment should be 'Life for life, eye for eye, nose or nose, ear for ear, tooth for tooth, and wounds equal for equal." But if any one remits the retaliation by way of charity, it is an act of atonement for himself. And if any fail to judge by what God hath revealed, they are no better than wrong-doers.' The woman said it was not revenge, she just wanted to prevent the same thing from happening to other women. So her charity should be rewarded by Allah. But the judges would be 'wrong-doers', according to the Koran, so would be no better than the criminal. I haven't noticed, when reading the Koran, that a female thief would have only half of her hand removed while a male thief would have his whole hand lopped off.

"The truth is that women are devalued in every country. Their God-ordained job is to satisfy men's sexual desires, produce children and keep the house clean. I have to say that you in the West are making great strides in reducing female inequality. But even in the Scandinavian countries, who are the leaders, a 50/50 equality has not yet evolved. You can imagine the hurdles I am facing trying to reverse the flow that began in the headwaters of human history. I am trying to swim upstream against the tides of tradition—and it is meeting with resistance from the huge majority of men and a large minority of women. But it must be done if we are to climb the economic and democratic ladders to peace and prosperity.

THE POLITICS OF DEVELOPING A THIRD WORLD COUNTRY

 —"I applaud your efforts at democratization. How effective is your democratic process? Do the people actually vote? How are they informed about the issues? How effective do you judge your attempt at democracy?"

 —"We may not be as efficient as you are, despite your obvious inefficiencies. But we are working on some new ideas to make our selection of representatives more effective. We are experimenting with a plan where people can choose their level of citizenship. Every adult gets one vote. Elementary school graduates get a second vote. High school graduates get two more and college graduates get four more votes. But a person can get more votes if he or she passes tests on logic, political science, history, or current events. So a college graduate will have 8 votes. But an elementary school graduate who has passed advanced tests in several subjects might have 15."

 —"It sounds like George Orwell's 'Animal Farm'. Remember it said that 'all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.'"

 —"Good point Lee. We know that in democracies some people have more influence than others. If a movie star says she is voting for Joe, several of her fans may decide to vote for Joe also. Editors or owners of newspapers often list their preferences for certain candidates. Who knows how many people follow their recommendations. So while you say 'one man, one vote', not every voter has made up his mind independently.

. "We want people to be able to give considered opinions when voting. We hope this approach will emphasize the importance of education and of being informed. We also hope that we will have more effective decisions from our voters."

 —"It sounds something like a democratic adaption of Plato's Republic with his philosopher kings. But rather than a benevolent oligarchy making fair and effective laws, you are hoping for an intelligent democracy."

 —"Intelligent democracy? That's a non sequitor!"

 —"You cynic! Don't you believe in anything anymore?"

 —"Well Ray, you've heard it said that democracy is a terrible form of government, it's just better than all the others. It sometimes keeps the voters content, knowing that they alone are responsible for voting in the scoundrels. But look at the efficiency of your autocratic church, Ray. The Pope decides something today and tomorrow a billion Catholics internalize his pronouncement."

 —"If it were only that simple. The Pope has many advisors"

LAW ENFORCEMENT

 —"Do you have any crime here? And if so how are your guilty people handled?

  "Well Con. we have laws, a limited police force, a court system and jails and a major prison. Most of the lawbreakers are reported by the village councils. A major crime here is failure to support your children. Not letting your children obtain their televised education is another. Naturally, stealing, dishonesty or violence are crimes. The judges for most crimes are some council members from a nearby village. Sometimes it is a teacher or other professional person. We have a professional judiciary only at the federal level.

"The punishment for a minor crime is usually extra work in the home village. Digging wells, irrigation trenches, sewage trenches and so forth. For really bad criminals, like murderers or traitors, we send them to an island where they have to take care of themselves. But we aren't as stupid as the English in sending their criminals to an island paradise like Australia. The only real cruelty of the English was that they didn't send them with surfboards. They had to make their own. At our federal prison we have a few armed guards. But the prisoners must plant their own food crops and do their own cooking.

 —"How do you raise taxes?"

TAX SYSTEM

 —"In a country like ours we can not have a graduated income tax because most of a family's income is consumed at the dinner table. We therefore have to have to have a fairly substantial sales tax or a value added tax. We tax businesses on their exports, but we don't need to tax them on what is consumed domestically because we already have our sales tax.

"We are so far away from even thinking about a graduated income tax or capital gains taxes that it isn't even discussed. But when we see India taxing foreign companies at over 40%, we decided to offer foreign companies tax rates of less than half that rate. But India has so many more consumers than we do and those consumers have more money. So they have an advantage in attracting businesses.

"We are looking into hosting shipping companies like Panama does. But we have to push now for exporting our surplus food. And enticing outsourced labor intensive work to come to us. We are very tardy in doing this, but my predecessors were rather conservative and protected the status quo, that kept us in the tenth century. India brings the past and present together like no other country does. We are copying some of their better ideas. Entrepreneurship, once frowned on, is now being accepted. We have interested some Indian banks to begin microcredit programs like Yanus started in Bangladesh. Like India we have a 2% education tax added to all of our taxes.

OUTSOURCED WORK

'To become an economically viable country we have to be able to offer the West, and even China, cheaper labor. We cannot offer technology yet. We can't offer much in farm exports. Our major hope has to be in attracting labor intensive jobs.

"We are eager to work for bread. Our people can work 12 hour days, 7 days a week for pennies an hour. The alternative is starvation. We welcome the outsourcing of labor-intensive work from the West.

"What I have promised the electorate is that I will work tirelessly to bring in jobs so that my people can work tirelessly. I have had to combat some human rights advocates from the West who think our people will be underpaid and working in slave-labor conditions. They haven't had to step over the emaciated corpses of our people on their way to work. They don't see that today we are where Calcutta was 70 years ago with thousands dying on the streets every day. A significant part of our budget goes to picking up the thousands of bodies that are condemned by their karma with every sunrise. This is not something you Westerners have to deal with. Your concerns are with health care and pensions, ours are with merely surviving until tomorrow.

IMMIGRATION

"Let me mention immigration for a moment. Not many people would want to come here. Maybe some Africans if they could pay for their transportation. We have more food than does Darfur. But Europe is more accessible and has some welfare benefits. We would accept some immigrants, with or without children if they can help us more than hurt us. Professors, doctors, teachers, nurses and so forth are usually welcomed. But we can't offer professional people anything.

"We are, however, not interested in strongly religious people from your Western monotheistic religions. You people always want to convert us heathens because we don't have your truth. Tell me that some of the millions of immigrant Muslims in Europe haven't been concerns for their host countries. Social problems arise in disproportionate amounts to their numbers. Look at the Christian versus Christian violence you had in Northern Ireland, the Jew versus Muslim violence in Palestine for a century, the Muslim versus Muslim violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, then look at the civil strife in France with so many poor Muslims and others rioting. In Europe a third of all immigrants are Muslims. They make up 1 1/2% in Norway, 5% in the Netherlands and 8% of Frenchmen.(11) Turbans, yarmulkes, crosses, saris, pants suits, mini-skirts, head scarves, bikinis and all sorts of other clothing and jewelry draw boundary lines showing that 'I am different from you.' Yellow skins are suspicious of white skins, and white skins are wary of black skins. Every difference is likely to divide. We don't need this. So we keep out al Queda, and the Catholic, Mormon, Muslim, Lutheran and Evangelical missionaries.

"We saw that in Europe you started cutting back on immigration ten or fifteen years ago. But you had already opened the barn door. We plan to keep it shut to people who are more likely to create problems for us."

  "What about health care? With your minimal national budget is there any money for health concerns?"

HEALTH

"What health care we can afford is concentrated on the control of communicable disease. Few of our people live long enough to die of heart disease or cancer. Malaria has always been a problem but tuberculosis has become our scourge. Since our people have so many relatives in India there is a good deal of visiting back and forth. In India tuberculosis is the most common HIV-related infection. For both countries caring for patients with both diseases is a major public health challenge. India has about 1.8 million new cases of tuberculosis annually, that is about 20% of the world's new cases. It is a worldwide problem with Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Russia and Brazil all having high rates. Even in your own country TB is increasing as it is brought in by immigrants from Latin America and Asia.

"We are doing what we can to stop the spread, but in India 40% of the people have latent TB and a third of a million die from the disease annually. We expect that eventually half of all those with HIV will also contract TB. It is much worse in Africa where the TB is worse than it was 25 years ago because of the HIV rate.

"We have had to prioritize our treatments because we just do not have enough money to treat everybody. We take the children first, then those who have been infected with HIV without being at fault, like people who got it from contaminated blood transfusions and innocent wives infected by wayward husbands. Our people all know the risks of sex outside marriage—of homosexual sex and prostitution. So those who knowingly flirted with danger must share the blame. Flirtations always carry the risk of both positive and negative consequences. And since my earlier college days as a 'flirt' the negatives have not only multiplied, they have become deadly.

"We have to emphasize prevention. We have plans on the books for water and sewage treatment but we can only take baby steps right now. We do have a country wide education program to emphasize the importance of boiling water before drinking it. Then we look at the more effective methods of composting. Our people have been doing it for hundreds of years, but there are some better ways."

 \--" I think you have your priorities straight. But better health will just increase your population problems. People will live longer."

 —"But your Bill Gates said that as you improve the health in a society, population growth goes down. He said 'You know, I thought before I learned about it, I thought it was paradoxical.'I guess that's why he is spending so much on health care for Third World countries."

 —"But not in Utah, where religion trumps population growth. They are very healthy in Utah and their health seems to increase their fecundity. So there seem to be a lot of factors that can increase or decrease population growth.

HUMAN RIGHTS

"Your people are denied so many of the human rights that our politicians talk about. And I believe in the idea of human rights. But they are so often misunderstood or misapplied.

"At the Beijing Olympics the American President, George W. Bush, criticized China for its human rights violations, such as torturing and not allowing the total freedom of religion. He probably also meant to criticize their laws, their arresting of dissidents and their long prison sentences for violating laws that might disturb the status quo. All these might be in violation of Articles 6, 7, 8 and 9 of the UN's Declaration of Human Rights. (12) Of course the same could be said of America's prisoners at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

"The President had approved of: torturing prisoners, in opposition to Article 5 of the Universal Declaration; to spying on his citizens, thereby invading their privacy, supposedly protected by Article 12; and reducing the rights of those who didn't believe as he did, whether religious or not, such as with abortion and contraception, in opposition to Articles 18 and 19.So actually he criticized the Chinese for violations of the same articles he was violating—while he violated even more!

"The Chinese economic miracle has certainly increased human rights in some areas.

There are many more jobs, so Article 23 `is being observed. The standard of living has definitely been increased, so Article 25 is being addressed. Education is exceptional, so Article 26 is being met. But China may believe that it is necessary to reduce other human rights, as the UN Declaration in Article 29, section 2 may allow.

"About that time Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao assured us that even more economic reforms would be coming. Then political reforms would come, particularly in their election system. Then another part of the plan was to improve the laws, the court system, and government of the laws. He also promised more transparency in government and more freedom of the press.(13) So the Chinese said they were going to make more human rights changes. But with their socialistic aims being primary, raising the economic level of their 800 million farmers and their scores of millions who were still living in poverty, were more pressing.. Unquestionably the economy of the country must be primary.

"It was curious that on the same day that the premier was promising the expansion of rights and needs beyond their economic success, the American Congress was debating a $700 billion bailout bill to save the American economy. Like former President Bill Clinton once said 'It's the economy, stupid!' Freedom of the press doesn't mean much when there is no food on the table and the bank is foreclosing on your home.

"As a parting shot, I just left China two months ago, having had my internet censored and assuming my hotel room was bugged, I accepted that it was similar to the situation in Moscow when I first visited there. The differences were that the Chinese were obviously prosperous while the Soviets were poor and there was much more fear in the streets in Moscow and Leningrad than in Guangzhou and Beijing. So the question is how many, and which 'rights' are primary?

 —"What about dissidents. A dissident is defined as someone who doesn't agree with the government. We must assume that those in both U.S. and Chinese prisons are dissents. They may disagree with laws against murder or bank robbing, or with the right to assemble or to have freedom of the press."

 \--"Dissidents in China are jailed, and possibly tortured. Dissidents in the U.S. can carry guns (14), and under the guise of religion, can use illegal drugs (15) But in China people are not given constitutional rights that interfere with the direction that the state is going. Article 51 of their Constitution states 'The exercise by citizens of the People's Republic of China of their freedoms and rights may not infringe upon the interests of the state, of society and of the collective, or upon the lawful freedoms and rights of other citizens.' And Article 54 states 'It is the duty of citizens of the People's Republic of China to safeguard the security, honor and interests of the motherland; they must not commit acts detrimental to the security, honor and interests of the motherland.'

(16) Their constitution may not agree with our constitution, but it is their constitution!

"China, with a population of 1.3 billion people has a prison population of over a million. The U.S., with a population of 300 million, has a population of 2.5 million. So in China about 1 in 1,300 is in prison. In the U.S. it is one in 120. So who has more dissidents?"

 \--"How many universal human rights were violated last year in the U.S. when more than 29,000 people were killed by guns, about 12,000 being homicides, and another 100,000 were injured. Gun possession in the U.S. is a national right, not a human right under the UN Declaration. But the gunshot victims obviously had their human rights violated under Article 3 of the Universal Declaration.

"Don't you believe that we should think a bit more about human rights before we assume that all of our whims are human rights? We have to agree that human rights, as outlined by the United Nations in its Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, are impossible for most countries to offer."

 —"Every right for one person has a corresponding duty from another. And often we can't identify the person who has that duty, or possibly that person or the government doesn't exist or doesn't have the ability to provide the right. For example, Article 23 gives everyone the right to work, but what if there are no jobs, or if an employer has a job available but doesn't want to hire you? Article 21 gives you the right to participate in your government. But what if the corrupt strongmen running your country will not let you participate? Is there someone to guarantee your 'right'?

"Look at what the Universal Declaration says each of us is entitled to. We are said to have the right to be safe, to have the right to life (17), to not be a victim of torture or human trafficking (18), to have the right to seek asylum and to have protection of the laws in the courts. Mothers and children are entitled to special care and assistance.

"We have the many rights of liberty. We must not be enslaved or subject to arbitrary arrest. If arrested we are innocent until proven guilty. We must not be victims of ex post facto criminal laws, but ex post facto civil laws are acceptable. So a business or an individual can be subject to new laws not in existence when they performed a previously legal action. (19)

"We have the right to privacy, freedom of movement in our own country and freedom to return to it if we travel, and we shouldn't have attacks that compromise our honor. We should be free to marry, have a child, and divorce. The family should be protected. We should have the right to own property, to believe and practice a religion. And of course we have the rights of freedom of speech and assembly and the right to a democratic government and to public service from that government.(20)

 \--"In your Western societies people may have the right to believe in a special way, but they do not always have the right to dress or behave in a way that separates them from others in their society or to resist assimilation? Is it practicing their religion when the women wear head scarves or the full burqa when such practices are not required in their scriptures?

"You remember that France denied citizenship to a veiled Muslim woman for not being sufficiently assimilated to the values that France finds essential. The woman was married to a French national and had three children born in France. We would do the same thing. If professing Islam is her major goal in life perhaps she should move to an Islamic country like Morocco or Bangladesh.

"Another tradition in some Muslim countries gave the right to fathers to 'honor kill' their daughters for several reasons, such as having sex before marriage or attempting to choose their own husband. Article 16 gives the daughters the right to choose their husbands. Honor killings certainly violate Articles 3 and 5. On the other hand Article 18 gives people the right to practice their beliefs or their religion in public or in private. And Article 19 gives people the freedom of opinion and expression. Does this give the fathers the right to express their opinion with knives or guns? Is honor killing a protected practice just because there is some societal tradition in one part of their religious world?

"For the safety of a society do women, or men for that matter, have the right to cover their faces from the surveillance cameras? In the UK they are not so sure. What good are cameras when people hide behind masks?

"Then we have the right to work, to equal pay for equal work, the right to leisure and paid vacations, and the right to a standard of living including adequate food, shelter, medical services, social services—even in the event of unemployment or old age.(21)

"And of course we have the right to education, free at the lower levels and available to all at the higher levels—and that education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality. In addition we have the right to enjoy the culture and the scientific achievements of society.(22)

"With all these rights we might assume that we would have some duties as recipients of these rights. We have the duty to be educated because of the compulsory schooling. We have a duty to the community so that it can serve the individuals. We have a duty to obey the laws and the morality of a democratic society. And I guess we must have a duty to the United Nations who enunciated us these rights.

"These sound good. But Wreck, aren't these what you would like in that utopia you are searching for?"

 —"Ya, but it looks like the only countries approaching it are the Nordic countries. The Americans don't want it all. Their taxes would increase too much. So we have one human right saying that we have the right to democratic elections and another human right to the guaranteed rights to education, an adequate job, paid leisure time, and a substantial standard of living.

"Obviously taxes must be high enough to provide for all of these rights. If the Nordic countries are any indication, the total tax load should be somewhere around 50% and food and services should be taxed at rates up to 25%."

 —"Wreck, what about Article 16 that gives people the right to marry and to start a family?"

 —"Well that doesn't give unmarried people the right to have children. It only gives the right to people of 'full age', so presumably those over 16 or 18, whatever 'full age' means in the society, are allowed marriage and children. And it only gives the right to start a family. So maybe it means that married people are entitled to one child. It might not even give that right if you assume that the married couple itself is a family, even without any children. And it certainly wouldn't give the right to people with multiple marriages starting families with each new marriage."

 —"But Section 3 of that article states that the family is entitled to protection from the society and the state."

 —"But it doesn't define the family as only a husband and wife, or whether it includes one or more children. And of course in many countries the state is the ultimate parent of the child. It can take the child away from the parents and place it in foster homes or an orphanage."

 —"I might add that the UN doesn't tell us who has the duties to provide all of these rights. If I have the right to a job, who has the duty to give it to me? If a person owns a company and has a job available must it be given to me because I am unemployed? Must the government be the employer of last resort? Or is it the UN's duty? Does this require a communist government? If so taxes will have to be raised, but what if the electorate wants low taxes? May these rights be in conflict?

"There is certainly a lot of confusion about these United Nation's Declaration of Rights!. In fact they seldom exist except on the UN's notepad. But they do give people the right to point fingers and feel superior to those they see as denying some rights.

"In George W. Bush's reign there was a classic misjudgment in his proposed regulation to allow health care workers to practice their religious beliefs at work. He was probably countering the Declaration's Article 18. Did it violate the human rights of the patients, which are covered by Article 18, and who are additionally covered by the right of privacy (23)., equal protection of the laws (24), the right of the people to make laws (25), and their right to liberty. (26)

"If such a regulation were enforced would it allow public defenders to refuse to represent clients they believe are guilty?--or teachers to refuse to teach a curriculum they found objectionable, or judges or police to refuse to enforce laws they disagreed with?

Rights certainly vary with our points of view.(27)

"Did the Bush proposal threaten access to the pill? In the decisions of America's courts, that sometimes limit the practice of religion but not one's beliefs, was Bush in violation of these court rulings? Are health care workers who allow their beliefs to influence their practices, to the detriment of other people's health, in violation of U.S. court decisions? Must evangelical Christian pharmacists fill prescriptions for birth control pills? Must Christian hospitals offer abortions to women who have been impregnated by rape and don't want to continue the pregnancy? The U.S. Supreme Court has been clear in allowing for freedom of religious belief, even allowing federal money to support Christian Science health facilities.

"Some states have enacted laws to protect parents from prosecution for murder, manslaughter or child abuse when their children are injured or who have died because of a lack of scientific medical treatment. On the other hand many high courts, such as our U.S. Supreme Court and state supreme courts usually protect the child from the religious practices of their parents. (28) The Court ruled that 'The family itself is not beyond regulation in the public interest, as against a claim of religious liberty. And neither the rights of religion nor the rights of parenthood are beyond limitation...The right to practice religion freely does not include the right to expose the community or the child to communicable disease or the latter to ill-health or death...' Parents may be free to become martyrs themselves. But it does not follow they are free, in identical circumstances, to make martyrs of their children before the children can make that choice for themselves.

"In the 1972 case Wisconsin versus Yoder (29), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled: 'The power of the parent, even when linked to a free exercise claim, may be subjected to limitation under Prince (30) if it appears that parental decision will jeopardize the health or safety of the child.

"In 1990, the U.S. Supreme Court made it absolutely clear, in Oregon Department of Human Resources versus Smith (31), that First Amendment guarantees of religious freedom do not constitutionally require states to grant religious exemptions to child neglect and manslaughter laws or to peyote use. When there are religious exemptions to medical care for children, in most states they are exemptions to child neglect statutes. Some say that such exemptions extend to manslaughter laws. But the First Amendment to our Constitution does not grant parents the right to let their children suffer and die because of their refusal, on religious grounds, to obtain essential medical care. The Court ruled that to allow religious exemption to a wide variety of criminal laws would make it impossible for our society to function, and it 'would open the prospect of constitutionally required religious exemptions from civic obligations of almost every conceivable kind -- ranging from...the payment of taxes, to health and safety regulations, such as manslaughter and child neglect laws, compulsory vaccination laws, drug laws and traffic laws...'

"The Supreme Court has been consistent in holding that a child's right to medical care supersedes the religious practices of the parents, even if the states had enacted laws that would exempt the parents' religious practices from prosecution. (32)

"Article 21, Section 3 allows people to make their laws. And Americans have made laws to allow contraception and abortion, and often have required insurance companies to pay for these.

"The most controversial section of the Bush proposal defined abortion as 'any of the various procedures -- including the prescription, dispensing and administration of any drug or the performance of any procedure or any other action -- that results in the termination of life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation. 'This changed the official government definition that life starts at implantation, and it ignored the other possibilities of life starting at different times.

"But the UN gives rights only after a person is born. Many talk about human rights beginning at conception. If this is true the fertility clinics that destroy unwanted fertilized embryos are guilty of murder. And when fertilized ova don't implant, is God guilty of murder when they exit the uterus?

"Putting the shoe on the other foot, in the future should the government require licenses for health professionals and hospitals requiring that they follow all avenues of care that the laws allow? Should the government be allowed to redefine medical or scientific terms to fit a religious or philosophical view? Should opinions or hopes replace accepted scientific definitions or proven theories? Where should the mere opinions of the powerful be allowed to replace the time tested finding of the various scientific disciplines?"

"When we spoke with Wanda Wang in Kino we discussed at length what morals or values really are. Deciding what they should be is quite different. The Catholic Pope Benedict or the evangelistic George W. Bush have quite a different moral view of overpopulation and its control than does the Episcopal Bishop Tutu or the Dalai Lama. Whose religious views does God approve?

 —"As I remember from my philosophy classes on ethics, one's duty is a major reason for following a particular ethical path. In the West it seems to be based on some equalitarian thinking possibly based on Judeo-Christian morals, but often couched in the terms of the Enlightenment relative to an equality of rights. On the sub-continent we are more likely to set it in pantheistic terms, with our infinite natures as primary, but of course we have been influenced by our former overlords, the English, and their faith in those same Enlightenment ideas and the principles of democracy.

"So our duties can be to God, in a theistic sense, to ourselves and to others. When we talk about human rights we are really talking about our duties to others, and what we can expect from others. Jefferson's call for 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' was a wonderful democratic dream that guided lawmakers in many republican governments to pass laws preventing murder and manslaughter, freedom of speech and assembly, and as for pursing happiness, the right to own property—and maybe reduced capital gains taxes!

But without a god hypothesis to possibly provide an equality of humans, these rights are built in quicksand."

 —"Exactly. And if God really cares, where was She when Mao and Pol Pot, Genghis and Caesar, and Stalin and Hitler were busy abusing these rights. The God of the Hebrews was quick to punish those who strayed ethically. Does He no longer care?"

 \---"Perhaps the ideal of God has been replaced by the ideal of democracy, so 'one man one vote' is the new Absolute. Would Plato accept it as an ideal? Would the Pope bend to a vote of his followers? Would the Chinese Communist leaders step aside and assume that the majority of voters could continue the economic miracle? Would the rulers of Singapore trust the street sweepers and shop keepers to keep their prosperous country on course? To what degree are the people's rights enhanced if their society advances? Can people demand everything in today's world?

"Certainly if I have a right, somebody or everybody has to give me that right. If we were allowed to choose our societies, rather than being born into them, we might develop a true social contract. Then a duty-based ethic might be required, one like Kant's categorical imperative--that we should treat everyone as an end in himself, not merely as a means to our own end."

 —"But God didn't treat people as ends in themselves. Look at the Flood or Jonah or Sodom. If God doesn't—why should we? Look at the deaths of children by parental beating, or even in traffic accidents.

"Another problem. Article 1 states that 'All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.' It is certainly open for debate whether all humans have the ability to reason--and their consciences obviously vary. Suicide bombers have consciences that allow for the killing of innocent adults and children. We can assume that the consciences of their victims would disagree with the bombers' actions, as do most other people's consciences. Because of the rise in terrorism Article 3 may reduce your own rights to privacy to protect the majority of the population.

"Another question. If Article 3 gives us the right to be safe, is it more important than our right to privacy granted by Article 12?Do surveillance cameras, luggage searches and phone taps protect us or foster Big Brother's power and reduce our governmental rights?

 \--"Those human rights are so utopian. But they are not realistic for us. We just have to work on being safe, treating each other equally and having food on the table. Everybody knows we don't have the potential to live like the Danes. So we must just do what we can.

THE POLITICS OF GETTING THINGS DONE

"It is not enough to have the vision of where we should go with our society. Motivating the people to move in that direction is the more difficult job of a politician. "Mao Zedong once said 'I have witnessed the tremendous energy of the masses. On this foundation it is possible to accomplish any task whatsoever.' I wish I could see such energy for change in our country. It seems that as long as there are some scraps on the table and a flimsy roof over their heads my people are content to await their deaths and a better life in their next incarnation. So the realities of the potential for a better temporal life must fall on those of us who are the temporal leaders. We know they will appreciate it if we can make it happen.

"Our greatest modern thinker, the Nobel Laureate in literature Rabindranath Tagore, inspired me with his wise observation that 'Experience shows that success is due less to ability than to zeal. You cannot cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the

water. And Nehru advised me to 'Act with courage and dignity; stick to the ideals that give meaning to life.' I cannot ignore their wisdom!

"It reminds me of what your Warren Buffet said 'People will always try to stop you from doing the right thing if it is unconventional.'

"We have to try to move them with the democratic process and with relevant facts toward a better economy. But facts have no weight when they run counter to a mythology that is deeply ingrained and forcefully proclaimed. Your American problems in this regard are worse than mine! Your evangelical right is no different than the Taliban and al Queda. And their myths center around the same God. Is He really intent on destroying His believers by annihilation or hate? Our myths are more passive brakes on our progress. If we are content to wait for innumerable reincarnations for our happiness, we may not be as ready to live for today and tomorrow.

"Then we have our system of democracy. As you know, democracy is a process, not a destination. It should be the vehicle on the highway of social and economic progress powered by well educated citizens who have studied the issues and the proposals. The pitfalls are obvious. Poorly educated citizens who won't take time away from their favorite TV programming or video games seem to be your American problems.

"If we are going to have meaningful movement toward a society with economic and educational equal opportunity we have to do it with the right carrots. Promising lower taxes won't move our citizens like it does yours. Promising the chance for putting more and better food on the table is more likely to motivate our voters than your well fed people.

"We all know that there are a number of intellectual and emotional ways to move people—and the emotional techniques are far more effective. Look at your politics in America. Fear and hope usually transcend the intellectual solving of problems.

"McCain and Bush avoided the issues, focusing instead on patriotism, winning the war and appealing to a vague value of change, along with tax cuts. They seemed to want to return to a nation that never really existed—a world of Pentecostals, full employment, and Norman Rockwell—a world without terrorism, X-rated films and lying politicians.

"In Afghanistan allied soldiers gave food and books to the villagers. The Taliban quickly moved in to take them away. Accepting more gifts, the villagers knew, would result in the Taliban removing their life blood. Fear is an effective motivator.

"Then in 2008 when the Hadron Collider was about to be activated, giving us solid clues to the instant of the origin of the universe. Two men, without a bit of scientific credibility, sued to stop the collider from releasing the protons that could show us the environment that was present a millionth of a millionth of a second after the Big Bang. They thought it would create a black hole that would swallow the Earth.

"So, as has long been said, 'the masses of people will always remain impervious to reason.' We must therefore start with the more basic physiological and psychological needs for our lever to move our population here in Indus. Dr. Singh will give you the broader picture of the science of politics. You will then get some idea of how we may progress in bringing the modern world to our struggling nation.

"I had asked Dr. Singh to join us, and here he comes now. Commander, I am certain that he will give you some ideas on putting the ethical and psychological motivations together effectively to nudge people in the direction you would like in terms of reducing population growth."
NOTES

1. Bartram J, Lewis K, Lenton R, Wright A. Focusing on improved water and sanitation for health. Lancet 2005; 365:810-812.

2. Summary: human development report 2006. Beyond scarcity: power, poverty and the global water crisis. New York: United Nations Development Programme, 2006.

3. Barry, M., and Hughes J "Talking Dirty — The Politics of Clean Water and Sanitation" NEJM359:784-787

4. Alesci, Cristina. Teenage Mothers Rose in 2006, Reversing a 15-Year U.S. Decline. Bloomberg, July 11, 2008

5. Kinsey, Alfred, et al. Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders, 1948; ________Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders, 1953; Reinisch, J.M. The Kinsey Institute New Report on Sex: What You Must Know to Be Sexually Intimate. New York: St. Martins Press. 1990

6. Billy, J.O. G. et al. The sexual behavior of men in the United States. Family Planning Perspectives, 25, 52-60.

7. Spira, A. et al. "AIDS and sexual behavior in France." Nature 360, 407-413

8. Johnson, A.M. et al. "Lifestyles and HIV risk." Nature 360, 420-426

9. Janus, S.S.and Janus ,C.L. The Janus Report on Sexual Behavior. New York: Wiley. 1993

10. Reuters, June 10, 2008

11. Aftenposten, Nov 9, 2005

12. <http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html>

13. Wen Jiabao,Chinese Premieron the Fareed Zakaria interview program on CNN Sept 29, 2008

14. District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. ___ (2008)

15. Gonzales v. O Centro 546 U.S. 418 (2006)

16. <http://english.people.com.cn/constitution/constitution.html>

17. Declaration of Human Rights, Article 3

18. Articles 4 and 5

19. Articles 7 thru 11

20. Articles 12 thru 20

21. Articles 21 thru 25

22. Articles 26. 27

23. Declaration of Human Rights, Article 12

24. Article 7

25. Article 21 [3]

26. Article 3

27. Book 4 of". . .And Gulliver Returns" . (http://andgulliverreturns.info)

28.Prince v. Massachusetts(1944)

29. Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972)

30. Prince v. Massachusetts, (1944)

31. Oregon Employment Division v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 ()

32. Oklahoma v. Funkhauser (1989), Pennsylvania v. Barnhart (1988)

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