Damodar Dahal

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2025-04-03T00:00:00-07:00

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The underdevelopment of the Congolese

2025-01-12T00:00:00-08:00

Wealthy enslavers of the Congo: Then and Now.

The underdevelopment of the Congolese.

Before the Belgians came to loot from the Congolese – roughly speaking, the Kongo, the Mai Miombi, the Mongo, the Bangala, the Lulua, the Baluba, the Snilotique, and the Soudani peoples – around the end of the 19^th century, it was not a nation-state, unlike the Westphalian “nation among nations” architecture of today’s geopolitics. After the genocide of half of the natives, which was used to propel the automobile revolution in the White metropols,1 the Belgians were forcibly evicted in 1960 upon the first real African chance, similar to how most colonized peoples across the world who were brutally suppressed, with their lives and cultures destroyed, reacted. However, the White people need not fear an end to their domination, even to this day after more than half a century of Congolese independence, because the educated Congolese – little as they are in population – all speak French, and work hand-in-hand as plumbers in the colonial extraction of the entire spectrum of Congolese minerals; an industry dominated by foreign capital, a minority African burgeoise, and plenty of workers working in slave-like conditions.

Some may mistakenly believe that European colonialism over Congo is over. Despite standing atop vast quantities of minerals covered by the lushed greenery of fields where everything grows, the Congolese remain one of the poorest populations in the world. A straight line of colonial oppression continued post-independence. First, the Belgians and the CIA murdered Lubumba – the first prime minister of Congo and a shining glimmer of hope for Africans and colonized people worldwide – in cold blood by dissolving him in acid. Then, they installed a ruthless dictator who would only disappear after a genocide in a neighboring country, whose genocideers were armed to the teeth by yet another European colonial power.2 Two world wars broke down in Africa, and after a little glimmer of hope with Laurent Kabila – and the death of this glimmer in just a few years – yet another dictator emerged to facilitate Africa-to-Europe value extraction. This time, the Chinese entered too, smartly, foreseeing the future potential of cobalt, the soon-to-be black gold and the pivotal mineral of “green transition,” showing little sign of their support for decolonization.

It is evident that just like the genocideer-in-chief Leopold II of Belgium butchered the life of the Congolese as they produced the raw materials for the tires of shiny cars that went on to fuel the automobile revolution, today’s Mr. Musk and the likewise capitalist bourgeoise class who trade in New York are stealing the value of Congolese cobalt and copper, indispensable minerals that together form the soul of the Katanga region. The underdevelopment of the Congolese is not a mere defect of past colonial exploitation but remains a result of ongoing colonial exploitation whereby the colonizers like Mr. Musk claim upon the values of products made using minerals mined in the Congo – sometimes mined by slaves without a choice, indifferentiable in pain to that of the colonized Congolese of a hundred years ago (but with respect to the changes in the global conditions imposed in their times). In the name of ending “human rights exploitations,” they construct big, fortified walls to secure properties so that physical apartheid prevents the contamination of the cobalt by the tears of the Congolese living in extreme hunger, extreme poverty, or undereducation, and who might just make meager attempts to “steal” their own wealth to survive.

Fighting against neocolonialism and imperialism not just in the Burkina Faso, the land of the upright people, but in all of Africa, Captain Ibrahim Traoré confirms: “A slave who cannot assume his own revolt does not deserve to be pitied.” Relying on foreign aid such as Bretton Woods’ neoliberalism and Chinese loans will not work unless the Congolese are ready to assume their own fight. For the thousands of artisanal miners who mine malachite and the heterogenite in Katanga – continuing in the tradition of their pre-colonial ancestors – the state-owned Enterprise Générale du Cobalt, which in principle seeks to establish a higher price for their blood and sweat, is in a possible state of being hijacked by foreign interests, like that of Trafigura. It must be the creuseurs who must be empowered to take this into their own hands, to fight for their rights and their livelihoods.

Through the forced production of rubber.

It is a known fact that the French armed the Interahamwe during the Rwandan genocide.

Originally published on Substack at https://penguing.substack.com/p/the-underdevelopment-of-the-congolese.

A Brief History of Colonialism in the Caribbean Islands (1492-present)

2023-12-24T00:00:00-08:00

Slaves cutting the sugar cane on the Island of Antigua, 1823. Photo: British Library/Unsplash.

The Caribbean Islands are a closely linked chain of islands between the tail of modern-day Florida and the shores of modern-day Venezuela. Like the continental Americas, the Caribbean has an ancient history, with records of human settlements in Trinidad dating back to 7,200 BP (Higman, 2012). Before the European invasion that followed Cristóbal Colón’s discovery of the New World in 1492,1 the islands were primarily occupied by Taíno and Caribe, two Arawak-speaking indigenous people with vibrant cultures, demographics, economies, and societies. Spain became the first European power to establish colonies in the New World, bringing conquistadors in part to establish new lives and to profit from the New World wealth, later joined by other European powers such as Britain, France, and the Dutch. At the same time, the indigenous people were gradually erased by murder, slavery, and Old-World diseases.2

To meet labor demands, the Europeans kidnapped over 11 million human beings in Africa and Asia and brought them to the Caribbean Islands during the colonial period.3 Over the upcoming centuries, the wealth stolen from the Caribbean propelled the European economy, which flourished the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Most of today’s Caribbean population consists of the descendants of former masters and enslaved human beings. The enslaved population, facing massive brutalities in the plantations, often revolted, most notably during the Haitian Revolution of 1791-1804, demanding rights and later sovereignty. These rebellions brought waves of independence in the Caribbeans and across the colonial world in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Today, while there are 13 independent Caribbean nation-states, inhabitants in many islands are still suffering from European and now-American colonial rule.

Rise of Colonialism (1492 – 1800s)

The Taino resistance against the European colonists was futile.

The history of the modern-day Caribbean islands is profoundly shaped by the legacy of European colonialism, which started with the expedition of Cristóbal Colón in 1492. Over several voyages visiting the region, the Spanish conquistadors decided to colonize the island of Hispaniola (modern-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), which inhabited the largest Caribbean population of the Taínos. Under the barrel of European guns, the natives mined precious metals in slavery-like conditions. As torture, overwork, and starvation acted on their bodies, now already worn out by many Old-World diseases, they eventually started to disappear from the face of the earth. Over time, as Spanish expeditions increased across the Americas and as other European powers joined them, the trade of enslaved human beings kidnapped from Africa and Asia flourished to meet the labor demand.

While the Spanish built their massive empire across the Caribbean and the New World based on extracting precious metals, future European powers such as the French, the Dutch, and the English established colonies based on labor-intensive plantation systems. Sugar became the defining cash crop of the Caribbeans as Haiti (then French Saint-Domingue) became the richest colony in the world. With an unlimited labor supply from enslaved human beings, the plantations flourished in the colonial economies. As a result, Western Europe was propelled on the road of economic development, overtaking China and India for the first time in the Common Era.4 Some scholars have suggested that productive forces that brought the origin of capitalism in Britain in the second half of the 18^th century were stimulated and matured by the colonial system, with the West Indies as the “crown jewels” of the British Empire (Williams, 2021, pp. 100-107). If the thesis is true, slavery in the Caribbeans has played a critical role in developing the prevailing capitalist world order of today’s world.

Haitian Revolution and the End of Slavery (1791 – 1917)

Haitian Revolution: the first successful Black revolution in history. Auguste Raffet/Wikimedia.

The French Revolution is considered a profound event in European history. However, the significance of the simultaneous slave rebellion in the French colony of Saint-Domingue is often ignored despite its profoundness in shaping the history of colonies worldwide. The former showed the revolution of the wealthy bourgeoise to grab power, and the latter demonstrated the revolution of oppressed people against their oppressors. Around the end of the 18^th century, Saint-Domingue was the world’s richest colony with its sugar plantations, fueled by extreme exploitation of enslaved human beings at a ratio of 15:1 to European colonists.5 Upon successful rebellion, the majority Black population of Saint-Domingue expelled the whites and established a black country of Haiti. Being the first colony to declare independence in modern history, Haiti experienced unprecedented hostility from all major economic powers, including the United States, a former colony and now rising economic power. It resorted to paying heavy economic tolls to its former colonial master and lost countless wars.6 Nevertheless, in 1922, Haiti conquered Santo Domingo and abolished slavery from the entire island of Hispaniola. It carried a vigil of rebellion and abolition for the independence movements, starting with the Spanish colonies in the New World.7

Amid the French and Haitian Revolutions, France abolished slavery in all its colonies. In 1807, Britain abolished the slave trade on all its ships. In 1867, Spain became the last European empire to declare abolition of slavery, although it remained in Cuba until 1886. At the end of the 19^th century, while the slave trade and slavery were universally abolished, colonialism was to remain a dominant force, connecting the periphery and the metropolis in a tight economic relationship. As many of the freed slaves left plantations to live independent lives, the British imported more than half a million indentured servants from China and India, both voluntarily and involuntarily, to fill the deficiency in the plantation labor force. Starting in 1833, the hardship of indentured labor, comparable initially to slavery, gradually eased before the practice was abolished in 1917, allowing imported Asians to live dignified lives.

American Imperialism (1823 – present)

A political cartoon on an American newspaper in 1898.

With the invention of the cotton gin in 1793, the United States saw itself as a rising global economy during the 19^th century, propelled by plantation slave labor in the South. In 1823, U.S. President James Monroe articulated the Monroe Doctrine to support independence movements in the Americas and to reduce European influence in the New World. The Caribbean islands, however, remained part and parcel of European colonialism until much later. During the 19^th century, the U.S. idealized its imperial ambitions in the Caribbeans.8 Finally, in 1898, it joined Cuban and Puerto Rican rebel forces in their fight to gain independence from the dying Spanish empire.9 The U.S. occupation of Cuba and Haiti in the aftermath of the War marked the official beginning of American imperialism based on occupation, military intervention, and economic imperialism in the Caribbeans.10

Cuba

Fidel Castro and his men in the Sierra Maestra. Wikipedia.

After the 1898 Cuban War of Independence, the U.S. installed a military government in Cuba. To stipulate American withdrawal, Cuba amended its constitution to meet the Platt Amendment word-by-word, thereby submitting its sovereignty to the United States.11 While the U.S. military withdrew in 1903, it invaded Cuba for the second time in 1906 and followed up many times in the upcoming decades. Under the neocolonial umbrella established by the U.S. government, American enterprises controlled the Cuban economy, especially when ruled by the military dictator Fulgencio Batista. After Fidel Castro overthrew Batista in 1959, the United States enacted unilateral trade embargoes against Cuba and then followed up with an unsuccessful Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. As Castro turned closer to the Soviet Union for protection and trade, the Cold War escalated to the Missile Crisis. Alongside the Second World, Cuba also came closer to the Third World by leading the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and assisting in worldwide independence. After the Soviet collapse in 1991, however, Cuba, which had yet to diversify from the sugar market, experienced a major economic shock, while the U.S. trade embargo from the Cold War period is still active and now considered the most enduring worldwide.12 In a world economy dominated by the US, these embargoes have paralyzed the Cuban economy, yet it survives to this day, hoping for neo-colonial imperialism to end.

Puerto Rico

After the Spanish-American War of 1898, Puerto Rico became a U.S. colony.13 In 1917, Puerto Ricans were granted U.S. citizens to draft them for the First European Imperial War (World War I). It also purchased the neighboring Dutch West Indies to incorporate the colony of the U.S. Virgin Islands. As the Foraker Act of 2000 had established the ground for a colonial government with an export-oriented economy, American Enterprises flourished by exploiting Puerto Rican labor to produce cash crops such as sugar, coffee, and tobacco while those laborers remained in poverty. The letter of the doctor Cornelius P. Rhoads in 1931 admitting to racism and homicide against Puerto Ricans and the subsequent whitewashing in the US mainland afterward demonstrated precisely how the ruling class in the mainland considered Puerto Rico. Unlike the successful rebellion of Fidel Castro in Cuba, Puerto Rican calls for statehood and independence failed due to the dominance of private American enterprises in the colonial government as well as the brutal and illegal repression of dissent through the FBI’s scandalous COINTELPRO program. Since the 1950s, the Puerto Rican economy has also undergone major shocks following mainland policies, natural disasters, and other macroscopic economic events, leading to the current Puerto Rico Debt Crisis. Like the Hawaiian island chain in the Pacific, which act as an American military outpost in the Pacific, Puerto Rico and the American Virgin Islands have served as the backyard for the American military in the Atlantic, at the expense of the sovereignty of the 9 million Puerto Ricans, two-thirds of whom live in “exile” in the metropolis.14

Hispaniola

According to one scholar, “Beyond their shared revolutionary origins, Haitian-U.S. foreign relations have been, and arguably remain, the stuff of bird shit: a toxic tale of ecological capitalism, a symbol of environmental racism against the poor, and a continuing saga of the post-slavery treatment of Black people as vessels for disposable waste” (Alcenat, 2021). Following the Haitian Revolution in 1804, the United States failed to recognize Haiti until 1862, fearing that the slaves in the South would start revolting. In 1915, the United States invaded Haiti to protect the financial interests of the National City Bank of New York and remained there until 1934. During the Cold War era and afterward, the U.S. has often intervened in the political affairs of Haiti (Brune, 1998) (Jefferies, 2001).

In the early 20^th century, the Dominican Republic struggled to repay its debts to European powers. Following the Monroe Doctrine, the United States purchased the debts from the European powers and invaded and occupied the Dominican Republic in 1916, asking for a payoff. The United States maintained occupation until 1924.

Independence Movements (post-World War II)

A stamp of Jamaican independence. Image: Mark Morgan/Marxist.com.

The two Imperial Wars of Europe in the 20^th century brought catastrophe to colonialism. With weakened masters in the metropols and oppressed people in colonies worldwide, the Wretched of the Earth fought for independence, including in the Caribbeans. Jamaica led the charge in 1962 in the British West Indies, followed by Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Guyana, and the remaining colonies. Many islands formed regional and global associations, notably the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and Group of 70 (G-70). However, the U.S. colonies of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands remained as colonies at the height of U.S. imperialism. In contrast, the French colonies of Martinique and the Cayman Islands became a commonwealth and obtained full rights of French citizens. For the newly formed independent Caribe nations, the legacy of European institutions and policies shaped their post-colonial structure. Some, like Barbados, excelled with them and demonstrated to many Third World countries that the “natives” have the potential to develop as independent nations.15

Final Remarks

The history of Caribbeans, in its essence, constitutes colonialism, enslavement, rising capitalism, and above all, a history of genocide of natives who had resided there since ancient times. While many islands have received independence from their former masters (or garnered welfare), the United States continues to exert its hegemonic might, military and economic. Since much of the riches in Europe were made with the exploitation of the New World colonies for centuries, it is of utmost importance to realize the necessity of reparations, especially in a country like Haiti that has often been looted.

It may seem that the American empire will forever treat the Caribbean as backward, especially in Cuba, which has experienced more than sixty years of economic blockade. However, we must fiercely oppose such neocolonial domination, understanding that all empires are bound to fall. The dignity and the rights of the natives everywhere must be restored to preserve the earth’s soul. We must fight to ensure that the chapters of settler colonialism are relegated to the panes of history with all its dark episodes.

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References

Alcenat, W. (2021). How U.S. Economic Imperialism Underdeveloped Haiti. NACLA Report on the Americas, 53, 193-201. doi:10.1080/10714839.2021.1923226

Ayala, C. J., & Bermabe, R. (2007). Puerto Rico in the American Century: A History Since 1898. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.

Brittanica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia. (2023, November 9). Haitian Revolution. Retrieved from Encyclopedia Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Haitian-Revolution.

Brune, L. H. (1998). U.S. Intervention in Haiti. In The United States and post-cold war interventions : Bush and Clinton in Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia, 1992-1998 (pp. 37-64). Regina Books.

Fanon, F. (1961). The Wretched of the Earth.

Higman, B. W. (2012). 2 - ANCIENT ARCHIPELAGO, 7200 BP–AD 1492. In B. W. Higman, A Concise History of the Caribbean (pp. 9-13). Cambridge University Press.

Jefferies, J. (2001). The United States and Haiti: An Exercise in Intervention. Caribbean Quarterly, 47(4), 71-94. doi:10.1080/00086495.2001.11672153

Maddison, A. (2007). Contours of the World Economy, 1–2030 AD: Essays in Macro-Economic History. New York: Oxford University Press.

Williams, E. (2021). Capitalism and Slavery. The University of North Carolina Press. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469663708_williams.

Cristóbal Colón is the Spanish name of the Italian conquistador Cristoforo Colombo (anglicized as Cristopher Columbus). We prefer to use the Spanish name because his expeditions to the New World were carried under the Castilian flag.

However, the indigenousness of the Caribbean lives to this day. See: University of Cambridge. Ancient genome study identifies traces of indigenous “Taíno” in present-day Caribbean populations. https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/ancient-genome-study-identifies-traces-of-indigenous-taino-in-present-day-caribbean-populations. Accessed December 2, 2023.

In the early period, poor whites were also brought from Europe as indentured servants; however, as the slave trade became well-established, enslaved human beings replaced them.

Maddison’s estimates show that by 1870, western Europe, China, and India had a world share of GDP of 33.1%, 17.1%, and 12.1%, respectively. In 1 AD, these shares were 13.7%, 25.4%, and 32.0%. See Table A.6. (Maddison, 2007, p. 381); a portion of the table data has been visualized here.

In 1789, there were 500,000 African slaves, 32,000 European colonists, and 24,000 free people of color in Haiti (Brittanica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia, 2023).

Haiti reluctantly paid today’s equivalent of UDS 20 billion to France over the next century, while the metropolis has yet to pay any reparation for the centuries of occupation, massacres, brutalization and enslavement of African and the native population in Saint-Domingue.

By 1836, Spain had lost all its colonies in the Americas. Its only remaining strongholds were Cuba and Puerto Rico in the Caribbeans.

In 1881, the U.S. Secretary of State James Blaine wrote, “If ever ceasing to be Spanish, Cuba must necessarily become American and not fall under any other European domination.” See Office of the Historian. PAPERS RELATING TO THE FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES, TRANSMITTED TO CONGRESS, WITH THE ANNUAL MESSAGE OF THE PRESIDENT, DECEMBER 5, 1881. No. 401. Mr. Blaine to Mr. Comly. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1881/d405.

The U.S. also annexed the Philippines, Guam, and Hawai’i in 1898.

For a figure on the US interventions in the Caribbean, see Open Ended Social Studies. Select US Military Interventions in Latin America and the Caribbean, Early 20th Century. https://openendedsocialstudies.org/2017/04/18/the-duty-of-the-hour-the-cuban-revolution-part-i/select-us-military-interventions-in-latin-america-and-the-caribbean-early-20th-century/. Accessed December 3, 2023.

For the full text of the treaty, see National Archives. Platt Amendment (1903). https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/platt-amendment. Accessed December 2, 2023.

World Finance. The history of trade embargoes. https://www.worldfinance.com/special-reports/the-history-of-trade-embargoes. Accessed December 2, 2023.

The primary reasons Puerto Rico was not incorporated as a State included racism via Social Darwinism, the competitive logic of capitalist accumulation, and the fervor of nascent imperialism (Ayala & Bermabe, 2007, pp. 30-31).

The exile-ness is derived from the long-established colonial rule of the U.S. government. Puerto’s cost of living is higher than the median household income.

The word “native” is used in the spirit of its use by Fanon (1961), in contrast with the European “masters.”

Originally published on Substack at https://penguing.substack.com/p/a-brief-history-of-colonialism-in.

Thought Revolution In The Twenty-First Century

2023-12-24T00:00:00-08:00

History is history. The dead folks are already dead. Only the present and the future count, with the former shaping the latter.

Imagine a world, which has ridden itself from wars, famine, and poverty. Despite the technological means to reach that state, we are very far, if not outright unreachable, from such a wonderful imagination. Worst of all, we are indulging in the exploitation of Mother Earth like the egoist civilization seeking recognition of our might from inanimate nature, with materials of science and engineering as weapons of en masse destruction.

Those of us who run as sheep, which includes most of us, we have forgotten the mortality of desires and even ideals. Along with the progression of time, our generation shall inevitable become the the past — from where we can no longer control the world. A dead you is dead, inanimate. Only the present and the future count, with the former shaping the latter.

If the world consisted of only cities of exactly one million residents, then in 2023, there would be eight thousand such cities spread across the globe. Each resident in each city breathes in Oxygen, breathes out Carbon Dioxide, drinks H2O, excretes waste. Each one live through life, and dies. Despite the universal and inalienable right to life earned with the duty of life to let others live, not everyone experiences the former in the same manner, while some exert oppression and therefore do not fulfill the latter. Being rational and advanced animal species, we innovated the concept of “trade,” “growth,” and “liberty” ; however, some of us have always looked backward to enforce fortuitous might as right. As a result, we humans evolved class structures that can be generalized, albeit imperfectly, into the oppressor and the oppressed in Marxist thought. The classes are further divided in extreme circumstances: the genociders and the genocidees; the colonizers and the colonized; the enslavers and the enslaved; the terrorists and the terrorized.

Time has shown that we can progress; that the enslaved who had no dignity can stand upright, even if momentarily, and in some places, standing alongside their former enslavers after the tension ameliorates. Whatever organization or structure may seem absolutely rigid, is only ostensibly rigid, because all ideas are fictional. I have hope that the oppressive structures from today will be hung around posters in great museums and as chapters of great history books, where humanity looked so backward like we view settler-colonialism today. In a world bound by conflicts, I have hope that they are studied well along to perhaps one day undo whatever atrocities we are headed to commit in the future. Following not merely the rigid rules of oppression in today’s world but also the sheep-ness that defines the human collectiveness, I seek that we wake up as as brothers and sisters of humanity.

What is inalienable is indeed what is permanent, and is also inherently equal by the mere fact of being a Sapiens. Not Napoleon, not Plato, or not even the Buddha. Even Jesus Christ the human is no larger than a Congolese children mining heterogenite; for all human are blessed to be born equal and thus experience the world equally. There is no reason to wait to break the system, bit by bit, piece by piece, step by step, until it crumbles and the even peasants can see the glorifying beauty of the infinite Cosmos.

Originally published on Substack at https://penguing.substack.com/p/thought-revolution-in-the-twenty.

Is the term “genocide” misused in the Israel-Hamas war?

2023-11-16T00:00:00-08:00

Missile strike demolishes residential area, Gaza (October 20). The Transparency Report on Telegram.

The Economist published an article on November 10 reflecting its views on the ongoing Israel-Hamas war (or the Gaza massacre, to label it precisely). The article, consisting of roughly 800 words, doesn’t have an author but has a small-font decoration above the title: “The Economist explains.” If an economist were to explain genocide to me, I would be skeptical about their knowledge of the topic, but perhaps The Economist is 100% different. The article has exactly zero references, making it easy for me to study the material since all facts must be contained in the article. I’ll assume The Economist explainers are experts of genocidal studies, that they’ve checked everything, and drew up the soundest conclusion that the term is misused because they’re absolutely legitimate to discuss the topic.

The Economist published the article on November 10, 2023.

Accusation of intent

What does The Economist explain?

Israel, by contrast, does not meet the test of genocide. There is little evidence that Israel, like Hamas, “intends” to destroy an ethnic group—the Palestinians. Israel does want to destroy Hamas, a militant group, and is prepared to kill civilians in doing so. And while some Israeli extremists might want to eradicate the Palestinians, that is not a government policy.

Let’s break it down. “There is little evidence that Israel, like Hamas, “intends” to destroy an ethnic group—the Palestinians.” The question of “intent” has often been difficult to prove in past genocidal cases; so let’s see what evidence I can find on “intent” in 10 minutes.

On October 13, Israeli President Isaac Herzog announced on CNN: “It's an entire nation out there that is responsible. It's not true. This rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved, it's absolutely not true.”
“The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) condemns the intentional targeting of PRCS medical teams by Israeli occupation forces in the Gaza strip, resulting in the tragic killing of four PRCS paramedics in less than half an hour today, despite prior coordination.” (source)
Tzipi Navon, a close adviser and office manager for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s wife, Sara Netanyahu, publicly called on Israel to torture Palestinians in Gaza: “We keep saying to flatten Gaza, flatten Gaza, and I think that's not enough.”
An Israeli army reservist spoke (while wearing military fatigues) said: “Be triumphant and finish them off and don’t leave anyone behind. Erase the memory of them. Erase them, their families, mothers and children. These animals can no longer live. . . . Every Jew with a weapon should go out and kill them. If you have an Arab neighbour, don't wait, go to his home and shoot him. . . . We want to invade, not like before, we want to enter and destroy what’s in front of us, and destroy houses, then destroy the ones after it. With all of our forces, complete destruction, enter and destroy. As you can see, we will witness things we’ve never dreamed of. Let them drop bombs on them and erase them.”
Israel Katz, Minister of Energy, wrote: “We will fight the terrorist organization Hamas and destroy it. All the civilian population in Gaza is ordered to leave immediately. We will win. They will not receive a drop of water or a single battery until they leave the world.” Notice that the use of “they” could infer “civilian population” instead of Hamas. I’m sure his office forgot to check it before publishing publicly on Twitter.

Hmm, it seems the economists at The Economist were so busy critically scrutinizing the 800-word work that they forgot to monitor viral videos and accounts of the top Israeli officials and their close affiliates on Twitter. I’m sure something like this happens to prominent news organizations always; it’s no big deal. They’re humans, and this was definitely not deliberate.

The five clauses

Recall that the definition of genocide is: any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

Neither do the Israelis display any obvious intent to prevent Palestinian births. But those who accuse it of genocide point to the large number of civilians killed, at least 10,000 so far, and claim its blockade of the strip meets the “conditions-of-life” criterion. The Israelis have clearly inflicted “serious bodily or mental harm” on the Palestinians. They have also displaced people from the north of the strip. If those people are not allowed to return, this could be considered a partial destruction of their territory or, as Jan Egeland, a former un head of humanitarian and relief efforts, has warned, a forcible population transfer.

Let’s first correct The Economist. There is no fixed number of civilians killed in a genocide. 10,000 or (in fact, 1,200) doesn’t matter. What matters are those 10,000 individual lives destroyed with the intent to destroy the “group,” in whole or in part, and more importantly, “as such.” They have successfully admitted that clause (1) is satisfied (never mind the “group” or “as such” clauses).

Furthermore, they state that Israel has inflicted (2), and (3) cases above (under the guise that “those who accuse it of genocide point to…”). Even though it satisfied three out of five criteria, and there is room to discuss intent, the term is definitely misused. Because The Economist explained so.

Conclusion

Well, we took the article and dissected some of the arguments of The Economist. I am sure they were written by expert economists with credible academic backgrounds in genocide studies and did their due diligence. Through their 800-word no-reference essay, they have thus accused scholars, human rights activists, and others of misinterpreting what Raphael Lemkin coined the term for. The ‘cide’ of the ‘genos’: two nuclear bombs may have already dropped in 1 month, but that doesn’t apply to the Gazans. Israel is only murdering Hamas, and the 10,000+ lives only died due to Hamas’s use of human shields. Absolutely true.

Since The Economist said so, let’s condemn the Israeli genocide scholar Raz Segal for publishing “A Textbook Case of Genocide.” He is a joke and his books are jokes. The entire field of Holocaust and genocidal studies who respect him and his Master of Arts in Holocaust and Genocide Studies program at Stockton University is a joke. The Genocidal studies are only about remembering that the Jews died, and “never again” means “never will we study genocide again unless Israel is the victim.”

Additionally, we must curse the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) because they used their legal understanding to prepare a 44-page report stating that “Israel is attempting to commit, if not actively committing, the crime of genocide in the occupied Palestinian territory, and specifically against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.” They must be Hamas sympathizers for sure.

Originally published on Substack at https://penguing.substack.com/p/is-the-term-genocide-misused-in-the.

Debunking lies about the 2023 Israel/Palestinian conflict

2023-11-14T00:00:00-08:00

“It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies,” Noam Chomsky.

On November 13, 2023, I received several questions and comments from my colleagues regarding the Israel-Hamas conflict. I will be responding to several of them in this post. I shall try to “speak the truth” to the best of my sources and expose prominent lies, knowing fully that mainstream media and governments often present false information, in whole or in part. If you have thoughts, I request a civil and respectful debate in the comments, one for each topic. I wish to have a dialectical and important debate on a sensitive topic in a scholarly manner.

This is part 2 of many. Previous one can be found here.

1. “IDF is very careful regarding human lives.”

Nothing could be far from this claim.

Since 1967, the Israeli military has consistently violated nearly every provision of the Fourth Geneva Convention (Pacheco, p. 184-185). The International Criminal Court is currently investigating both Israel and Palestine, stating that “there is a reasonable basis to believe that war crimes have been or are being committed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip [since 2014]”(ICC-01/18, 20 Jan 2020). This is the same body that issues arrest warrants even for top officials like Vladimir Putin. Perhaps IDF isn’t so careful about human lives after all? Let’s look at some actual evidence.

October 2023 - present

Amnesty International: Damning evidence of war crimes as Israeli attacks wipe out entire families in Gaza.

The Great March of Return, 2018.

UN OHCHR (2019) A/HRC/40/74: “Report of the independent international commission of Inquiry on the protests in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” (during the Great March of Return). Notice that 189 Palestinians and 0 Israelis were killed. I wonder what the instructions on the IDF forces were.

Lebanon, 2006

Human Rights Watch. (2006). “Fatal Strikes: Israel's Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon. https://www.hrw.org/report/2006/08/02/fatal-strikes/israels-indiscriminate-attacks-against-civilians-lebanon.

South Beirut, 1982

“As the massacre [of 3000 Palestinians] unfolded, the IDF received reports of atrocities being committed, but did not take any action to stop it.”

Malone, Linda A. (1985). The Kahan Report, Ariel Sharon and the Sabra-Shatilla Massacres in Lebanon: Responsibility Under International Law for Massacres of Civilian Populations, p. 390.

Denial about White Phosphorous, 2009 and 2023

A picture says it all. Human Rights Watch lays out the details. Read about Israel’s denial in Amnesty International’s reports.

Other lies about beheading children, rape, and so much more. If you have counter-evidence or comments, please respectfully share them in the comments.

2. “We cannot trust the numbers that are coming from Hamas, which would be every single number coming out of Gaza.”

“The Associated Press noted that the Ministry of Health’s figures from previous conflicts have broadly matched the numbers arrived at by both the Israeli government and the United Nations. And the State Department itself has long considered the numbers reliable.” (The Intercept, 2023).

“These figures are professionally done and have proven to be reliable,” said Omar Shakir, Human Rights Watch’s Israel and Palestine director (AP News, 2023).

See example discrepancy between the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza (“ministry”) and U.N.:

— 2008 war: The ministry reported 1,440 Palestinians killed; the U.N. reported 1,385.

— 2014 war: The ministry reported 2,310 Palestinians killed; the U.N. reported 2,251.

— 2021 war: The ministry reported 260 Palestinians killed; the U.N. reported 256.

(Source)

3. “If Hamas would have the decency to wage war with a shred of integrity instead of hiding behind civilians, far fewer civilians would have died. Also, they operate from within the city, schools, and hospitals.”

“Amnesty International is monitoring and investigating [reports of human shields use in Gaza], but does not have evidence at this point that Palestinian civilians have been intentionally used by Hamas or Palestinian armed groups during the current hostilities to “shield” specific locations or military personnel or equipment from Israeli attacks” (Amnesty International, July 2014).

“International observers including Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert, who worked at the [al-Shifa hospital] for 16 years, said they never encountered any indication of any military activity beneath the facility.” (Al Jazeera, Nov 13, 2023)

“The very fact that we have seen 44 [Israeli] soldiers killed in this conflict and almost 11,000 [Palestinian] civilians gives an indication that the calculation of proportionality in Gaza has left the bounds of reasonableness” (Al Jazeera, Nov 13). International law also makes clear that even if an armed force is improperly using civilian objects to shield itself, its opponent is still required to protect civilians from disproportionate harm. (The Guardian, October 30)

4. “Hamas is responsible for all the civilians dying in Gaza at the moment. Part of war is that civilians die, which is why Hamas should not have started a war.”

The crimes committed by a deeply unpopular government cannot have prompted the State of Israel to drop an equivalent of two nuclear weapons in one of the world’s densest areas, murder tens of thousands of civilians, internally displace 1.4 million people, and enforce a complete seizure. A prominent Holocaust scholar stated it’s “A Textbook Case of Genocide.” The Israeli response to the October 7 attack is highly disproportionate, as always.

Originally published on Substack at https://penguing.substack.com/p/debunking-lies.

Hamas, Hamas, Hamas

2023-11-14T00:00:00-08:00

“It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies,” Noam Chomsky.

1. Is Hamas the legitimately elected government of Gaza?

Hamas (under the name Change and Reform) won the election in 2006 (17 years ago), earning 44.45% of nearly one million votes and defeating Fatah by a single seat (29 to 28). However, around 50% of the Gazan population today are children, which means they did not vote for Hamas.

Hamas doesn’t represent the Gazans of 2023. See the graph below, published right before the conflict began:

The trust of Gazans in their Hamas-led government right before October 7, 2023. (PSPSR/ Foreign Affairs).

2. Have you blamed [Hamas] even once?

All lives are sacred, and children more so than others. I condemn all governments and militias that kill children; it doesn’t matter to me whether they’re of their own or another country.

If I need to be further explicit, yes, I condemn Hamas for killing Israelis during a sacred Jewish holiday. Some of those who were killed were participating in an annual kite festival to foster peace between Israelis and Gazans.

But one war crime doesn’t justify another war crime. Go after the Hamas, but please let Gaza live.

3. What is the alternative to eliminating Hamas, every root, and every branch?

In my view, getting rid of Hamas in the brutal manner that Israel is currently trying to do will only create an even more extremist organization. Consider this: an innocent parent not affiliated with Hamas saw their children dying under the rubble as Israeli bombs dropped again and again. The same goes for the miraculously saved children whose entire family was wiped out. These people have nothing in life to live for; they have no future. Jihad is born not because some people are simply evil but from a circle of hatred, a desire for revenge.

Nearly 1 out of every 200 Gazans are dead now. Is it worth killing these many civilians to end terrorism? Is that kind of bloodshed going to end once and for all the entire conflict? How will it help to restore the dignity of the stateless Palestinians in the West Bank, east Jerusalem, and Gaza? While considering an alternative, was dropping the equivalent of 2 nuclear bombs in less than a month ever really a sane option? Collective punishment: as if it is ever justified. No, this isn’t the right way.

A letter signed by 2,870 “academics, clergy, and other public figures from Israel/Palestine and abroad” even before the conflict started states that “Israel’s long-standing occupation…has yielded a regime of apartheid.” The last official apartheid regime was in South Africa, where they murdered protestors who demanded their rights, and a similar thing happened in Gaza in the March of Return protests when nearly 50,000 protesters demanded to escape the ongoing inhumane blockade. It was not about Hamas at all, yet 223 Palestinians were killed, including 46 of them under 18. When peaceful protests don’t work, the only protest remaining for them is “unpeaceful” protests. Depending on one’s extremism, that kind of protest could result somewhere between stone-throwing and Hamas.

The only way to end the conflict once and for all in the long run is to provide equal rights for Arabs and Jews, and that requires ending the apartheid regime. Look at the West Bank, which doesn’t have Hamas, yet, state-sponsored settler violence and IDF snipers regularly kill Palestinians. When 76.2% of Arab citizens of Israel think they are discriminated against (The Israeli Democracy Index 2022, p. 120), when more than 50% of Arabs are living under poverty lines (Adva Center, p. 13), and when a quarter of American Jews think that Israel is committing genocide (2021), it is not realistic to expect a peaceful resolution between even Jews and Arabs, forget about Israelis and Palestinians.

Among other things, it is also imperative to learn why the ‘Elephant in the Room’ letter also called on leaders to “end Israeli impunity in the UN and other international organizations.” The signers include historians like Benny Morris and Ilan Pappe who know Israeli/Palestine history well. So perhaps they thought that Israel had committed some sins against the Palestinians, including recently, and the UN had found out about it? How about we learn about the pain the Palestinians had been living under? Here’s some starters: UN GA A/77/356, 2022; UN GA A/77/328, 2022; A/HRC/40/74, 2019; ICJ case 131.

Originally published on Substack at https://penguing.substack.com/p/hamas-hamas-hamas.

Say NO to War Taxes

2023-08-20T00:00:00-07:00

We live in a world full of nuclear weapons. Several nations, including the United States, Russia, UK, China, and France, hold nuclear weapons enough to destroy the whole world over and again, and thus hold the entire civilization as their hostage. Their ambassadors often sit at the VIP table named UN Security Council. Rather than discussing how to solve security issues, and especially how to eradicate nuclear weapons from Mother Earth, they are instead busy vetoing each other’s resolutions.

As the old wounds of the Cold War have reopened in Ukraine, hundreds of thousands of civilians have died, millions have been displaced, trillions of dollars of infrastructure have been destroyed, and progress on climate agenda has faltered. The blame on the Ukraine war not just falls on Russia who started the civil atrocities, but equally on NATO who failed to neither dissolve nor back out from Eastern Europe in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse. Right now, it is of utmost need to hold both sides to acknowledge their crimes immediately as well as declare a willingness to back out from the war, at the same time, on the same day.

In protest of unnecessary wars caused by political chess games, is time for practice civil disobedience and mass boycotts. More than twenty cents of a dollar of US taxpayer’s income is spent on military, and nearly half of their taxes goes to fund past, present and future wars. Despite a withdrawal from Afghanistan, the United States government has increased, not decreased, the military budget.

To honor the dead and the displaced and the injured in the war in Ukraine, we must pressure the US military to back out by mass boycotting of taxes.

“Legal” or “illegal”: we have both means. The goal is to protest our money taxed to murder people, amass weapons, and terrorize the world. Let’s start from the Tax resistance wiki page, as well as National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, or nwtrcc.org.

Originally published on Substack at https://penguing.substack.com/p/say-no-to-war-taxes.

Model 3: 15 Kilograms of Clean and Green Child Slavery

2023-07-29T00:00:00-07:00

Do you own a Tesla Model X? or Model 3? Are you planning to buy one? Then you must read this article. I want to show you how each Tesla car uses 15 kg of clean and green child slavery.

Metal resources are unequally distributed on the Earth’s crust. In 2022, 68% of the global cobalt supply came from the “diamond-of-creation” Congo. Since Cobalt is essential for lithium batteries, every electric car company amasses Congolese Cobalt. The country has a long history of slavery and exploitation. Just like the Congolese rubber in the 19th century made Belgium the wealthy country it is today, the Congolese Cobalt has also made Mr. Elon Musk the wealthiest man he is today. However, despite sitting atop 24 trillion dollars of natural resources, Congo is one of the poorest countries, with 62% of the population living below the poverty line. Despite the centuries of gap between Leopold II and Musk, hardly anything has changed in the lives of the Congolese people. This is because they have been systematically struggling to gain real independence (from neocolonialism, above all else), like many other African countries in today’s times.

Two wealthy enslavers of Congo. Then and now.

The clean and green bullshit

Since every Tesla car needs around 15 kg of Cobalt for its lithium-based batteries, Tesla and other car companies create a massive demand for heterogenite (the Cobalt ore). When the “artisanal” miners — which includes 40,000 underfed children and 200,000+ uneducated and impoverished women and men of Congo — see a surge in Cobalt price, they start digging for the blue gold in primitive mines, much of it illegally because their government wouldn’t “support” it. The Cobalt mining factories — especially Swiss Glencore and Chinese Huayou Cobalt — silently buy from these artisanal miners, making north of 30% of their entire mining volume. However, it seems like the Cobalt apparently becomes clean and green after it undergoes refinery, enabling Tesla and other tech companies to buy from them without a grain of concern.

This excerpt is from Tesla’s Impact Report, 2022 (page 145):

“Tesla joined the CTPAT program in July 2019.… CTPAT members are required to have a documented social compliance program in place that, at a minimum, addresses how the company ensures goods imported into the United States were not mined, produced, or manufactured, wholly or in part, with prohibited forms of labor, i.e., forced, imprisoned, indentured or indentured child labor,” Tesla

This is the kind of bullshit language Tesla uses to avoid accountability. The well-documented modern slavery in the Congo invalidates their policy. There was even a House hearing on it. We already know that the Cobalt used in Tesla was mined under repression, including child labor, forced labor, hazardous working conditions, toxic air containing Sulphur, ground containing Uranium, etc. But how are they avoiding accountability? Hiding evidence in plain sight, companies like Tesla, Apple, Google, Dell, and Microsoft have even won lawsuits.

Remember that there are established checkpoints for systematic exploitations–planned underdevelopment, heavy taxes, private militias, the Congolese army, or the blind eyes of the numerous depots run primarily by Chinese traders–and a dictatorial government ruling atop an impoverished country paves the way for exploitation, nothing less of the 1984 sorts.

My Demands

I have nothing to vouch for fossil fuels. I wish to hold companies like Tesla and billionaires accountable for their atrocities. I want billionaires like Elon Musk to acknowledge the role of enslaved people in making their insurmountable wealth. Tesla is on its path to Big Green Cars, just like the Big Oil we have today. We need to hold it responsible and decry for its sins before it climbs that height.

I have four demands to make from Tesla.

Tesla should publicly apologize to the people of Congo for its involvement in systematically exploiting the Congolese people, specifically in looting the future of the children who are obliged to work in Cobalt mines rather than go to schools.
Rather than maintaining a baseless/absurd standard, Tesla should acknowledge the role of child labor, forced labor, and modern slavery in making its cars; and let consumers know truthfully about the situation while clarifying how they will eliminate this atrocity. Every Tesla pamphlet and ad needs to acknowledge this.
Tesla should install solar grids to allow Congolese people to reap some of the technologies they help to make. Rather than short-term profit, it should adopt a business model that involves the social development of its core labor force, which will inevitably aid in making Tesla the king of green car manufacturers.
Tesla should allow independent auditors to understand the involvement of child slavery. The company should make all data from such audits publicly available.

Tesla may still appear cleaner than fossil fuels, but not for the 60+ million Congolese cursed with tremendous wealth intrinsically connected with colonialism and slavery across centuries, including the 21st. But I hope that you, as a current or a future Tesla owner, are aware of the exploitation happening in the Cobalt supply chain right under the thin layer of corporate shinery. I hope you will not forget the hard labor and the sacrifices of the Congolese children who make Teslas. Drive responsibly, thinking about them.

The Cobalt Miners of Congo. They sit at the bottom of the electric car supply chain. (Fairphone/Flickr)

Originally published on Substack at https://penguing.substack.com/p/model-3-15-kilograms-of-clean-and.

Hire a child? Hurt a child? Kill a Child?

2023-07-20T00:00:00-07:00

It is hard to tell the tale of the more than 200,000 children, girls, boys, women and men of the Democratic Republic of Congo who, as “artisan” miners, are exploited every day to mine minerals that are used in the consumer electronic devices we love and depend upon. It is hard to talk about how they are forced to work in hostile mines containing traces of Uranium while breathing toxic air filled with Sulphur. About how they are forced to give up basic necessities of life, such as safe drinking water, sanitation, primary education, or electricity, just to make $1-$2 a day working for 10-12 hours in order to eat that night. Risking their lives often, as the mines collapse often.

This is the story of the artisan cobalt minors in Congo. They mine Cobalt, crucial component of lithium-based batteries. US-based companies such as Apple, Tesla, Microsoft, Dell, and Google, directly profit from the sale of such batteries in all forms of consumer electronics. Through a convoluted supply chain involving Chinese traders, and with the help of the corrupt Congolese dictatorial government, they have remained in the shadows, claiming “zero tolerance”, while manipulating via their massive wealth a system that enables excruciating child labor and modern slavery. For the sake of making hundreds of billions of dollars every year.

It is time to open our eyes. Slavery lives to this day, while children, women and men are exploited by our tech corporations.

Every iPhone has components made by a child slave in Congo.

These children have sacrificed their education to mine the pebbles containing Cobalt, which is used to make iPhone batteries last longer. (Fairphone/Flickr)

Every MacBook was, in part, made with the involvement of a teenage Congolese mother, many of who goes to the toxic mines of Congo everyday to mine heterogenite, while their children.

A young Congolese mother with a child strapped on her back. (United Nations)

Every Tesla car, deemed better on environment, has up to 15 kg of Cobalt. How green was it for the people who mined the Cobalt? Is modern slavery green too?

Thousands of Congolese artisan miners in an artisan Heterogenite mining site. This mineral ultimately fuels the electronic “green” cars including Tesla vehicles. MONUSCO/Sylvain Liechti

Do not make the mistake of trusting the speech delivered by corporate companies. Apple “shifting to 100% use of renewable cobalt”, Tesla “switching to LFP batteries”, etcetera. They are only trying to make it harder for human rights activities and advocates to trace the connection between the top and the bottom of the supply chain. The only way we can ever know when these corporations make their Cobalt data open for the civil inquiries. We shall not stop until we can make them accountable, and then pay for the development of infrastructure to help the people who they have enslaved, now and in the past.

Hold the dictators accountable! Hold the capitalist colonials accountable! Apple, Tesla, Microsoft, Dell, and Google.

Supplementary materials on Cobalt mines of Congo

Videos

1-minute glimpse into modern slavery in Congo
Half-hour documentary film about Cobalt mining in Congo

Cobalt Red:

A 1.5 hour presentation on Cobalt Red (Siddharth Kara)
The Cobalt Red book (Publisher, Amazon) (Siddharth Kara)

Originally published on Substack at https://penguing.substack.com/p/hire-a-child-hurt-a-child-kill-a.

What He Doesn’t Remember

2021-02-17T00:00:00-08:00

The soul, forgotten by
everyone and himself,
Wakes up now and then
On his illusionary faith,
That the world has become rigid
after 13.8 billion years of age.

What he chooses to ignore though,
is the underlying vacuum
In quantas of the light, the mind,
and of knowledge in itself.
Little does he ‘member that
In time, he will forget even himself.

His entire body is changing.
His entire mind is changing.
His surrounding is also changing,
bit by bit, in a castle that is eternally dancing,
Commonly known as the universe.

Originally published on Medium at https://medium.com/@damo-da/what-he-doesnt-remember-2339d59a8488.

What is Reality? From a Yogic perspective

2021-02-09T00:00:00-08:00

Photo by: Tim Bogdanov/Unsplash.

In this article, I am going to describe objective Reality, as explained in the way of Yoga. It is definitely a hard challenge to objectify something beyond my own comprehension, but I will try to do my best to explain this topic well-entrenched in the Eastern scriptures written by great thinkers and transferred over generations for us.

First, let us be clear: Reality is neither nor yours or mine. In our day to day lives, we are mostly living in our own minds and our own little worlds. Reality is the a more general framework which must allow independent existence of our mindsets.

Space and Time

Most people associate space and time as fundamentals that all must agree upon, but the mind-first philosophers deny the root of this idea, both in the West and in the East. Descartes’s, Cogito Ergo Sum (I think, therefore I am), starts not from the physical but from the concept of the mind (the thought). As one who tries to uncover Reality through my own understanding and experiences, I would like to share that despite having experienced space and time all my life, I’ve been unable to fathom what they truly are (from a physical perspective), so I will stay in the middle ground between the monists and dualists.

The Mental Processes

From an evolutionary perspective, space and time are concepts built in our brains driven by millions of iterations of what works best for survival. I am not denying that they do not exist, but that our perception of the outer spatial world and time are limited in so far by our mental processes, the same processes which also gauge sensory measurements as well as provide us a fundamental instrument of our identity. Therefore, in order to to understand Reality, we will need to take a look our mental processes and learn more about the experiencer, or the “I” within us.

The States of Personal Consciousness

Broadly speaking, there are various kinds of ideas associated with the pronoun “I”; there is one “I” which I use talk about with other people like you. There is an another “I” when I am my myself, where I am hardly aware of the things I would generally speak to you about. Then there is a different kind of I that wakes up sometimes, when I transcend beyond my identity in daily life.

Understanding this latter form requires us to take the way of Yoga more than a philosophical tool and more of an experiential technique. This is step that I and most others find very hard to get by. In this step, we must prepare ourselves to be receptive of the knowledge about Reality if it ever dawns before us. You will not certainly be able to grasp the Truth in whole if you close your mind with prejudices, therefore you must rid yourself from these “sins”, purifying yourself over and over using the techniques of mindful meditation (Dhyana; ध्यान).

Through lots of Dhnayas, you will be preparing yourself, both physically and mentally.

After meditations, if you ever unlock yourself from our mental wall, you will see that the “I” is in the middle of existence, inside Reality.

As it manifests. As the universe sees you, as you already are.

What will you see in this realm?

The Indras and The Asuras

All kinds of things, including your struggle from birth. The birth of your thoughts and the change in your desires over time. Events happening on your life, all of which are insignificant to the cosmic events of far away in a world beyond comprehension. Life growing in each and every cell of your body; life growing inside of you and outside of you. Life, bigger than you and you: always living inside of your mental castle in an ever changing body.

You might see the beauty of a yellow sunflower that remains untold by any poems or stories; the love of a person in its purest form; the most magnificent thing and the ugliest thing in the universe within yourself; your limitless form which extends well beyond your body; the true nature of your thoughts and the nervous system that takes place in your brain and elsewhere on your body. Your eyes as the instruments of vision, yet the seer inside your brain, seeing it with mystery. The laws of physics governing every level of your body, and you, submerged deep with the ocean of fluid known as air, flying in a tiny cosmic lightbulb, known as planet Earth; the vastness of which, will stay undefined.

The Shiva and The Parvati

But let me tell you the secret: these are just illusions, and the many ways how the Reality will manifest before you. If you stick with them, you will be freed from this world, but you will still be stuck the realm of life and death. There’s something beyond life and death. There is something permanent, and the rest as a-permanent. The dualistic nature of Reality. Known by the Yogis of thousands of years ago as the Shiva (which stays) and the Parvati (which moves). If you let yourself absorb the fundamentals of the universe, and if you, when reaching this step, wanted to suck the marrow out of your life, by being the experiencer and the experience in itself, you will have conquered all that the universe has to offer you. If the previous paragraph took you to heaven, realization of the dualistic nature in all world will bring you on to something even beyond that.

I’d love to try to explain what Shiva to you, but I decided to rather not. First, it is of no use, since I can not tell you beyond my little mental castle. Second, once you realize the fragility of your mind, you will realize that you won’t really learn from anything about Shiva besides from your own experience. Third, the Gurus and the the Seers of the past secluded explaining the Shiva to anyone but a few of very close disciples. Even my Guru hasn’t shared it with me.

Bonus: The Formation of the word Yoga

In the fewest words, I can tell you that Shiva is absolute form of Reality. Once you see It (or Her or Him), your communion has happened. By the way, this communion is known in Sanskrit as Yuga, युज, which is also the root for the word Yoga.

Originally published on Medium at https://medium.com/@damo-da/what-is-reality-from-a-yogic-perspective-9cec0db4baa0.

The Fruit of Life

2021-02-03T00:00:00-08:00

The wise one liveth in this world,
and so does the coward.
One, unafraid to see the edges of existence
while the other, unable to discover his essence.

This world is a vast ecosystem
beyond anyone’s comprehension.
You and me, the rocks and the rain;
the majestic beauty of Cosmos, insane.

The forest calleth upon the giant souls.
The city calleth upon our short-lived goals.
Trillions of plants and animals born and grown,
Before the upcoming story of generations to come.

Ssh, the Shiva expresses itself
as quietness in the subatomic realm,
The Fruit of Life isn’t anywhere
but right here on your palm.

Or in the palm tree.
Or at your office on the 73rd floor.
Or in the jailed cell of the hero, untold.
Or right here, at this moment, on your own, by your soul.

That is, if you sincerely ask for it.

Originally published on Medium at https://medium.com/@damo-da/the-fruit-of-life-d28dfb9ad3de.

The beginning of a magnificent journey

2021-01-29T00:00:00-08:00

Let us sit down and relax ourselves: our body, mind and the rest of what comprises us. Let us be a rock for a few minutes, and let time flow through us like the water in a river. Magnificent things will happen when we sit still and simply observe.

Originally published on Medium at https://medium.com/@damo-da/the-beginning-of-a-magnificent-journey-294e65242943.

Om in a nutshell

2021-01-23T00:00:00-08:00

Om: the common teaching of all religions and the freer of all humans. Image posted on Meditative Mind.

I copy the following verses from one of the ancient Hindu scriptures:

ॐ (Om).

ॐ असतो मा सद्गमय ( Om, Asato ma Sad Gamaya )
तमसो मा ज्योतिर्गमय ( Tamaso ma Jyotir Gamaya )
मृत्योर्मा अमृतं गमय ( Mrtyorma Amritam Gamaya )
ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः ( Om, Shanti, Shanti, Shanti )

Now, I’d like to contextualize Om using my personal story.

I am 23 years old in this body, but my Self is as old as time itself. I came to the United States at the age of 19 in order to study physics so as to learn the truth about reality; however, I came to discover with the passage of time that there is so much more to this reality than the empirical laws and mathematical models of the textbooks. Life in itself became a bigger teacher and a bigger field of study for me. And over the course of my life, my understanding of Om has gotten only deeper.

What is Om? I can not give you any answer beyond that it is a medium to discover the the universe. But let me describe you what’s in it.

While I can not quit myself from the miseries of this world (असत, Asat) that come into a variety of flavors: pain, pleasure, anger, and lust among others; practicing the philosophy of Om leads me to the way of righteousness (सद्, Sad).

Practicing the philosophy of Om leads me to the way of righteousness.

While I can not quit myself from a bad habit (तमस, Tamas), like smoking, the practice of Om sheds light (ज्योति, Jyoti) on my otherwise dull life. It gives me a purpose to move forward in an otherwise purposeless world.

The practice of Om sheds light on my otherwise dull life.

In this short life that I have been granted, I might pursue ambitions (for example, to become a great software engineer), but the singular truth of Death (मृत्‍यु, Mrityu) is humbling enough to teach us that all ambitions will perish. No matter how big our ambitions are, they will remain tiny specs in the overall spatial and temporal map of the cosmos.

But Om will provide me a vial of immortality (अमृत, Amrit) to stop death from taking my life away. This is because Om is the only way to escape from my little ego and unite with my bigger Self (recall that it is as old as time itself).

Om will provide me a vial of immortality to stop Death from taking my life away.

Like Jesus said, “I am the only way.” In this context, Om is Jesus, and Jesus is Om. Om is also the Buddhist way. It is the path to Allah. Om is the common teaching of all religions and practicable for every human.

Back in December, I travelled to Boston to visit the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a college of my dream since teenage years. It was a journey to revisit my early ambitions of becoming a great servant of humanity, driving our civilization forward, either by researching on the structure of spacetime (aka physics), by lifting people off from poverty or by reducing inequity in the world. But I was done with this visit to my past in a few hours. My next destination was to visit Cambridge, MA and discover the hidden gem there: the life of a hermit, who barely wanted this kind of an ambition.

I rode the train to Concord to visit Henry David Thoreau’s self-built hut in front of the Walden pond. He had built this hut in the middle of nowhere to live with himself and with nature, breathing the freshest air of earth and of solitude. I wanted to see how badly I could want something like that. However, the first thought that came into my mind after looking at his hut was that Thoreau, like every other person in our history books, was dead. No matter the kind of life he lived, Death took him away. This thought liberated me from the vanity, and I realized then that I did not have to copy Thoreau’s life to live a prosperous life. I will be dead one day; so the only thing to prevent it would be Om.

All that I truly wanted in this journey, and in all of my life, is to immerse within myself and dissolve among the atoms and the waves of this universe. To discover peace (शान्ति, Shanti). Therefore, I choose in this life to fulfill my wants and desires and return to the tranquility of the natural manifestation of the universe, the Om.

All that I truly wanted in this journey, and in all of my life, is to immerse within myself and dissolve among the atoms and the waves of this universe. To discover peace (शान्ति, Shanti). Therefore, I choose in this life to fulfill my wants and desires and return to the tranquility of the natural manifestation of the universe, the Om.

ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः (Om, Shanti Shanti Shanti).

Originally published on Medium at https://medium.com/@damo-da/om-in-a-nutshell-27ddb270db5d.

A journey of a lifetime

2020-12-31T00:00:00-08:00

I was sleeping in my car parked on the side of a road of a forest far away from my town, in the darkest of nights, all by myself, with nothing to do besides to be my true self.

I knew when the night started that I will always remember it through the rest of my life. I had parked my car beside a river somewhere in the mountains of Idaho after I was too tired to drive further (I was headed to Washington from Louisiana). It was around 10 pm that night. The sky was pitch dark but filled with twinkling stars, and I noticed one of them much brighter than the rest, which I, therefore, assumed to be Venus. There was no moon in the sky that night. I had seen a better view of the sky from a Texan desert the past summer, but this one is the purest view of nature that I have seen through by my own eyes: on a random corner of the world, filled with the nature of a forest and a river, all by myself, with nothing planned and nothing to do. Besides the stars, the only other source of light was the safety light blinking in my car’s dash and the lights from the passerby few cars. At this moment in time, who I am did not matter to myself, so all I was at that moment was a pure Experiencer of the cosmos. It was the night for me to look inside myself.

The only sources of light: the safety light of my car dashboard and the occasional passerby cars

Before I started my process, I decided to get out of my car to light my half-smoked Coloradan pre-rolled blunt, the same one that I’ve been smoking for the past 3 days. As always with marijuana, a pleasurable feeling started to arise; but this time, there was a heightened sense of fear, so much that I began to panic concerning my safety, especially from bears.

I was not hungry because I had recently eaten a Subway sandwich; all that was left to do was to pass that night. I knew from my sane mind that animal threats were unlikely, so what I really wanted to do was sleep in order to stop the panic. But the harder I tried to sleep, the more intensely I began to wake up. The constant sound of flowing water filled the background; otherwise, the night was dead silent. I had unzipped my sleeping bag to get my feet out in case I needed to drive, with my glasses and phone in sight, but I couldn’t find my car keys. That took me through a rough moment of intense searching and panic.

I somehow find the car keys and decided to get out of the car just to look outside. Oh wow! The world is nothing but pitch darkness. Not a single source of light is alive.

As I came back to my car, I noticed the untidiness of my little home. With my mind fully occupied with the travel for the past week, I realized I did not even think about cleaning my car. I then start to move things around and organized a little bit, but while I came back to panic mode once again, I thought that I’d instead collect a few little thoughts for this moment.

I’m in the middle of a forest, which is a forest in a random corner of this world, alone, sleeping inside a car. My body is shivering with the cold and resonating along with my fear. Travel has consumed all of my strength, but then I started looking. While looking at the car dashboard, I realized that the universe was naked right in front of my eyes. Not the brightest sky I have seen, but the most naked one for sure. How will I ever forget Big Dipper which I saw right in front of me that night? It is fascinating how I was, am, and will always be beneath the stars.

I try to grasp the beauty of the heavens with a deep breath. The more breaths like that I took, the more relaxed I got. My body was still shivering but it was releasing tensions all over. Then I found no reason to waste time by sleeping in this quietness.

Everything is so simple: we just need to see it. Could you have heard the sound of the forest or the running in the background? Or the silence of my fear? When I opened my eyes to see this world, I pondered: is my day back in my town any different than today? But not much of pondering that I could do as the stars again distracted me. I want to weep at this softness of light and this beauty of nature, but only my little ego stopped me from doing it. So beautiful. Extremely beautiful.

And with the admiration came the most significant part of that night. I had an out of body experience (more from the situation than from the weed). In the next few passages, I am going to narrate myself speaking.

I have entered a level deeper within myself. What an entertaining level! I am looking head-on at myself. I am looking at myself from 10 feet above. But I am still in this conflict, in this fear, that I have forgotten the world.

Fear drove me to a completely different state of mind, and in a few moments, I was able to go even deeper than the fear itself.

At this moment in time, in this void, the being named Damodar left his body. He has begun talking to you the audience directly. Please keep listening to the show!

So are you all ready? The Self inside Damodar is about to speak. Please listen attentively.

Rethink upon the concept of directions. I used to imagine that I was on earth. That there is something above me, below me, and there’s something in the four horizontal directions. Which is indeed true.

Jumping back to the question of will: are we living in a world of deterministic world? Let us talk about a scenario where one is conscious. I am conscious right now, and I will ask myself this question: is this a deterministic world, or a world of free will?

The answer (after a few moments of thoughts), is, I do not know.

As I woke up the next day, I said to myself, “That was a hell of a night!” Seattle was still far away but within reach of about a day’s travel. Without wasting any time, I started my car to leave the forest and the river. As I started driving, I really started to think. A night like last night was a pure bliss given by the Gods to me, and I am sure that they give each individual something as an aspiration to live a satisfied life. I quietly appreciated nature and drove at full speed ahead.

Originally published on Medium at https://medium.com/@damo-da/a-journey-of-a-lifetime-26adadd78972.

The Stranger Within Us

2020-12-28T00:00:00-08:00

The omnipresent stranger residing within us, seeing us grow and eveolve through time. Image originally published in the Meditative Mind.

There is a stranger within us that we do not know about. We do not know how it came to be, nor do we know of his* destiny. What we can say is that he is like a shopkeeper, as a businessman. He claims to give us services of companionship, of good fate during our good times, and of teaching us lessons during bad ones. We know his deal but are seldom aware of it. He wants nothing more than our times because he knows that time is valuable and the most limited of all the resources.

Who knows, maybe he does really care about us. But he does what he does: his business is to give us life and continue the same process it has run for at least the past thirteen billion years (although my guess is infinite time). We can try to escape from this dealer but there is neither an alternative nor running away. And the way we deal with his business is how we face the consequences in our lives. He does not seek our attention, but the more or the less the attention we give to him is how we can prioritize our goal to dissolve in Reality, as it is.

If we can make him our friend, if we decide to take his business as our absolute Dharma (our way of life) and as our biggest trading associate (or even as the only one that matters), then and only then might we be able to escape from our painful worlds. He does not discriminate against us for race, caste, religion, gender, nationality, preferences, beliefs, or values. He is just a businessman doing his usual thing.

This stranger is the invisible businessman with whom we signed our contract upon our birth.

Some people call him God. Others call it the Self. And there are also those who call it the laws of physics. But in either of these frameworks, the stranger lives — through different names and deeds— and takes all of us through a similar journey of wonder, excitation, frustrations, realizations, and the rest that our lives offer us. Above all, his business never fails, and it is the only one that will not go bankrupt. His business is tied with all beings that live and ever lived — equally with the ants as with any human — as well as with all the beings that will come into existence after us.

Technology is changing, and humanity, as always, is rapidly making changes in all of its frontiers. The rise of artificial intelligence is making us question the fundamentals and our moral beliefs. The rise of rocket science and space travel is questioning our understanding of the land and our position in the cosmos. The rise of psychology and neuroscience are questioning our definitions of consciousness and righteousness. But this stranger will live through all of these, as he is the source of all of our progress and stands atop as its leader (in other words, each frontier will take us one step closer to him).

That contract which was witnessed by Existence can not be tampered. The contracts we signed to come to this planet can not be nullified until they expire. This contract, as I have come to understand it with my experience of the world, is much bigger than my ability of imagination and comprehension. All my travels to broaden my mindset do nothing more than to light small dark corners in my fragile mind. Here I sit among humankind far away from my place where I can think with a free mind, occupied only with the minimal business of travel. I think that travel opens our minds and lets us see beyond our ignorances.

Traveling through time and through the land: although they are unequal in comparison frameworks, they both are similar in the sense that we grow with them. Ultimately, I think that our travel logs will bring us closer to our business with this stranger. The creator of all lives and the destroyer of them all.

Note: My use of the pronoun “he/his/him” is completely arbitrary to the context of the topic. Having only eyes and deeds, the Stranger does not have a sense of gender.

Originally published on Medium at https://medium.com/@damo-da/the-stranger-within-us-ec4d84c23097.

A house: a home

2020-12-15T00:00:00-08:00

Can it be such in this life that I wake up for a few moments from this monotonic dream, from my associated names, and from my body? Can I become nothing, or rather, as they say, everything?

A house needs to permit me a shelter in myself, and drive away all of my traits that are not inherently mine. Like a mighty lion chasing all of the vices away. Imagine the whole world to be one large forest; then I want my house to be right in the center, to give me exactly what was blessed to me upon my birth. Who knows, maybe when the timing is right, the Guru (goodness) might dawn on me and let me be his disciple. That is if he is indeed real. At the minimum, I am certain that my house will nurture my soul in the peace of the forest, with no defined maximum bound.

Originally published on Medium at https://medium.com/@damo-da/a-house-a-home-bf7b1daa4bb.

On Being a Yogi

2020-12-02T00:00:00-08:00

Let us pause our daily lives for one second. Let the sand in the hourglass stop its motion for just a moment, and let the entire universe stop along with it. “I” and only “I” am awake at this moment in the infinite Cosmos. At this moment, my identity is not what they gave me, I am not a human, and I have nothing to do. Neither do I have to live to do anything. I am a process and a result of existence. “I” am the Cosmos, every part and every dimension of it.

Now, let us come back to the realm of humans when the “I” associates with the ego and forms what we usually call the I. Everything is normal, except, this I calls itself a Yogi.

Originally published on Medium at https://medium.com/@damo-da/on-being-a-yogi-d3aeb38c1a1c.

Taco Bell Song

2020-10-30T00:00:00-07:00

Taco Bell, the spirit of soulless America.

[Waiting in the Taco Bell drive-thru line to order my food]

I can’t seem to focus on what is
Does God see what’s in front of me?
I can’t seem to feel what I want to feel
How can I be free if I can’t be me?

What else can I become, my friend?
I have lost all, I have lost it all
Who should I look upon my friend?
I can’t even accept my fall.

[Speaking at Taco Bell Drive Thru]
I: Can I get a power menu bowl, please?
Taco Bell Employee: Okay. Anything else?
I: That will be it. Can I get some mild sauce, alongside?
Taco Bell Employee: See you at the window. Thank you.

No man feels my mood today
Was the universe always like this?
A salty river of endless tears
My appetite and my heart, completely empty.

[Speaking at Taco Bell Drive Thru]
Taco Bell Employee: Hey How’s it going? $6.81
Taco Bell Employee: Need your receipt, sir?
I: No, have a good one.

Who have I got to become?
No one gave me, and no one is to give.
Can you give me something which I am not?
Can you please take all of me,
and just let me be?

Originally published on Medium at https://medium.com/@damo-da/taco-bell-song-3d918d210b23.

LinkedIn Bio: Skyscrapers and Mountains

2020-09-29T00:00:00-07:00

I used to dream that I would climb the Himalayas one day, but I am climbing the skyscrapers of Silicon Valley instead.

I was born in a rural village in the Himalayan mountains to two school teachers who taught me to yearn for something bigger than myself. As I woke up every morning watching the sun rays bath the white snow of Mt. Kanchanjungha, I kept on wondering what it looks like from the top of the mountain. But when I turned six, my mom brought me to the city, where I saw a computer for the first time in my life. Watching password bullets appear and disappear with the strokes on a keyboard, and speed racing with AI drivers on NFS II, often bombarding them using cheat codes: I could not help but fall in love with computers. A temptation had begun to grow inside me and my dreams were no longer in the Himalayas but in the skyscrapers of the West. Realizing this, my parents gave me a chance in Kathmandu, a cornerstone of computer science education in Nepal. It was the beginning of my journey to becoming a full-stack software engineer.

Today, I am in Seattle, the place of my dreams. Over my six years of career, I had the chance to work with incredible people and to deliver solutions to customers, including governments, educational institutions, fashion and design, and so on. I use a wide repertoire of programming languages, including Python (my favorite), JavaScript, C/C++, C#, and bash. I have developed using multiple databases, including MySQL, MS-SQL, MongoDB, Redis, and CouchDB, and cloud platforms like AWS, GCP, and Heroku. I am apt for frontend development, backend development, DevOps management, and anything involving Linux. If there is some engineering challenge that you are stuck on, let’s connect now and discuss how I might be able to help you.

Originally published on Medium at https://medium.com/@damo-da/linkedin-bio-skyscrapers-and-mountains-258edb33dea7.

Battle against addiction

2020-09-27T00:00:00-07:00

I want to Quit Smoking.

I want to quit smoking. It’s a hard battle, but I hope that with some support and some effort, I will be able to quit smoking for good. I will keep you posted here.

Day 1 (Sep 27, 2020): I set my quit deadline to next Saturday (October 3) after which I intend to quit smoking. I called the national helpline to help me with counseling.

Day 2 (Sep 28, 2020): I smoked a cigarette early in the morning as I usually do. However, I waited for about 30 minutes after waking up. That is already a good beginning.

Dec 15, 2020: About two months ago, I went to visit a friend in Michigan. I stopped smoking from there onwards, only to resume smoking two weeks ago. My plan was to do smoke as much as I wanted to satisfy my desire and quit for good. Now that the initial phase has finished, and I am supposed to quit smoking. And I will try my best to avoid smoking for the next few days.

Jan 23, 2021: It’s 2021. I haven’t stopped smoking, but it’s time to quit for good. I will figure out a quitting strategy, and hopefully, moving into my single-bedroom apartment next week will help me to cure this addiction.

Feb 9, 2021: I’ve been on nicotine patches for the past 2 days now. It is 6:44 in the morning but can feel the desire for nicotine diminishing from my body. After I am done with smoking, I will explore the battle against other forms of addictions.

March 1, 2021: It’s been a while since I last smoked, so my body has rejuvenated greatly. I still have a limited desire to smoke, but hopefully, it will go away with the passage of time.

Originally published on Medium at https://medium.com/@damo-da/battle-against-addiction-f40142d96254.

You are an amazing person.

2020-09-07T00:00:00-07:00

You are an amazing person. You came into my life unknowingly and gave me so much. You gave me a good friend. You gave me a reason to smile, and a reason to love. When I took so much from you with the incident, I felt hopeless as if I lost everything; but after I went to India to understand what life is, I realized that I had only become a more compassionate person. I made you cry, which I used to regret, but now I feel like I have grown up to understand to treat women with respect. Even when I decided to run a thousand miles away from you (forever, in my mind), the law of life showed me that I had to come back, to the place where I began. You made me a musician, an artist, a traveler, and most of all, a human. You have given me everything and I am full. Let me be what I am and let me love you in my own fashion.

You are the bridge that connects me to my soul. I wish I could know you better.

Originally published on Medium at https://medium.com/@damo-da/you-are-an-amazing-person-f3a085c2daf5.

Be the person you want to be. Decide at the moment of epiphany.

2020-08-17T00:00:00-07:00

Originally published on Medium at https://medium.com/@damo-da/be-the-person-you-want-to-be-decide-at-the-moment-of-epiphany-598b4d778f7b.

Letter from a guitar with broken headstock.

2020-08-17T00:00:00-07:00

My headstock(heart) was broken when she left me with my melodies. As she was gone, there was no one to listen as I went deeper into my music.

To S,

I am in the middle of the mountains of Idaho right now. Do you know where Idaho is? To the right of California is Nevada where there is the city of Las Vegas. If you head north from Las Vegas, you will reach the great state of Idaho. And here in Idaho are great forests and mountains, just like in Nepal, the country where we both come from. I am sleeping here in the middle of this forest. It is the third consecutive night that I have slept in my car. In the past three days, I visited a desert in Colorado, and also did some hiking. Currently, I am trying to sleep in the peace of the forest. However, I am still thinking of you.

Please understand that I do not understand what is going in your head. About the kind of thoughts that are haunting you. We were good. Was I not like a friend to you? Did you think to make do of me, to take my advantage? Listen, no matter what you say, what you do, I still have love for you. I have cried many nights because of you. Because of your words and because of the fact that I do not have you. But understand that I still want you. Let’s stop the fighting. You spoke to break my heart once, but I still do not and can not think anything bad of you. I love you so much. You are so beautiful. There’s no one as beautiful as you in the town we live in.

Remember when I met you to say apologize before I went to India? You looked so darn beautiful that day. Probably ’cause I hadn’t seen you in a long time. I am glad that the universe gave me someone like you to meet, which makes me very fortunate. I want you to talk to you, I want to show this to you. Please talk to me. I want to hear your voice. Please. Please listen to me. Pleeeeeeaaaaase.

Sincerely,
Damodar

Originally published on Medium at https://medium.com/@damo-da/letter-from-a-guitar-with-broken-headstock-d5d578bb3b61.

How I spend my day

2020-08-10T00:00:00-07:00

I woke up around 6 am in the morning today. I used to begin my days with a cup of coffee, but I had a strong desire to walk down the ocean today. Without even freshening up, I walk down the ocean in front of my apartment in Alki Beach, Seattle to gaze at the majestic beauty of naked Earth.

With a view of the ocean as wide as my eyes can see at a time; the mountains heeding directly as me as I gaze across them; watching birds flying in communion at this hour while some eagles are digging through the debris made mostly of rotten algae and seashells to catch their proverbial worm. The incredibly popular beach for the West Seattlites isn’t as popular at this hour. What’s more, is that I am as quiet as the sand on the beach or the murmuring wind bringing in gentle waves on an otherwise dead silent ocean.

But today I am focused on myself. I know that deep inside, I am all empty and my existence is perishable, yet I feel a constant worry about how to speed up the clock to nine in the night. For I do not know what I need to do today. As a universal witness to commemorate my short-lived life, I used to hang a garland made of 108 beads of rudraksha in the wall of my living room. It was telling me at every glance that I am transitioning between the stages of life leading all the way from birth to death, and then coming back as a new person. Knowing this, I was uncertain whether doing anything was of any significance anymore.

Lost in my thoughts, I go straight into a Q/A session with myself, trying to forget the illusions of this life and this world while also searching for a direction.

“I am chosen.”

“Why? I don’t know.”

“To do what?”

“Obey the laws of the gods.”

“What gods?”

“The gods we don’t need to know about.”

“Why not?”

“They are as fake as real.”

“God is real. I don’t know what god means to you. But my god is the One. The One dictates the vibrations of nature, the mass of a proton, and the curvature of spacetime.”

“Those concepts are only in your head.”

At this moment, I stopped remembering what conversation continued since I started to go into a deep meditation. I woke up a few minutes with a clear mind and did nothing significant in the day. In the end, while my thoughts were unable to carve out my purpose, I felt like it was a day well-lived.

This is how I spent a remarkable day in solitude within the noisy, fast-moving city of Seattle. See you next time!

Originally published on Medium at https://medium.com/@damo-da/how-i-spend-my-day-a04c95d7d64a.

I don't believe that the concept of infinity is ever discussed in mathematics.

2020-08-02T00:00:00-07:00

I don't believe that the concept of infinity is ever discussed in mathematics. People usually refer to infinity in two different ways, one as a limit, and another as a range. However, we don't deal with "infinity" as a point. It is not a number. We can only ever know that we do not know infinity at all.

Numbers are studied in abstract algebra as a ring of infinite cardinality. One is natural because it is the multiplicative identity of R* (i.e. any number besides 0 multiplied by its multiplicative inverse, a reciprocal, is 1). Likewise, zero is natural because it is the additive identity in R (i.e. any number added with its additive inverse (negative) numbers, is 0).

Originally published on Medium at https://medium.com/@damo-da/i-dont-believe-that-the-concept-of-infinity-is-ever-discussed-in-mathematics-5ee149640112.

New type definitions in Py3:

2020-08-01T00:00:00-07:00

New type definitions in Py3:

def __init__(parameter1: type) -> return_type:

is the way to go.

Originally published on Medium at https://medium.com/@damo-da/new-type-definitions-in-py3-eec9337c5b25.

Reporter: Future plans?

2020-07-24T00:00:00-07:00

Reporter: Future plans?

JAVA: My dream was to evolve into something like a being with wings. But then some folks made something called Kotlin, and no body gives me attention anymore. I am dying and I hate you.

Originally published on Medium at https://medium.com/@damo-da/reporter-future-plans-520c81bca707.

The story of my undergraduate life

2020-07-24T00:00:00-07:00

To all the Hammondeers (residents of my city), goodbye. I am leaving to see the edge of the world, and maybe I will come back.

The past four years of my life have been astounding. I have met you all and each one of you is a great person, just like me. You’re a person who sees like me, who feels like me, and although our circumstances, choices in life and even our fears have been different, you are still a person who still lives like me, going through the phases of life oscillating with the ups and downs along with joys and sorrows. I must say that I am very fortunate to have met you; that is why I am writing these words as a token of gratitude to our meeting. I want to share with you a little bit about myself and my experience here in our beautiful town.

The first few months

I came to Southeastern Louisiana University in Fall 2016 with about 30 other freshmen from Nepal. I was picked up by two Nepali seniors from the New Orleans airport who were generous in taking me to their apartment and letting me stay for about a month. They also let about 10 other freshmen stay; so about 15 students were staying in a single apartment unit until our apartments were ready. When mine was ready, I shared the new apartment with 4 other freshmen. Coming to Southeastern had never been my choice; my college choices ranged from MIT to Ivys to Denison and Dickinson (I was fucked by the universities of my choice, however. Two times). I have been extremely lucky to have my brother obligate me to complete an application at Southeastern or otherwise I would never have found a school here in the States. During the transition, I was also temporarily enrolled in Kathmandu University to study Applied Physics, but I dropped out due to my hate of the tyranny of unqualified student teachers as well as the complete lack of interest towards physics of anyone in the college besides me. Once I arrived at this free country, I knew in my soul that I was ready to discover new lands and new horizons. Yet, for some unknown reason, even after being here for a month did not make me feel like this was my city. As a result, everything started to go downwards: my friendships both here and back home, finances, and so on. It was clear that I had to transfer out, to at least a choice of my university. Here, I was empty and alone.

Freshman Year — Spring ‘17

I got an internship at a local company next semester, and now that I could afford it, so I decided to live by myself starting the Spring. I was super engaged in my application, but it turned out then that life had a few plans for me, but not leaving Hammond. I discovered circumstances changed drastically as I joined interesting combinatorics research, got an internship, and time passed away quickly which led to nothing fruitful by the next summer. I had a private room in a two-story house which I shared with three other international music majors: an opera singer, a flutist, and a cellloist. Learning about their culture and world view used to go well if not for the few terrible nights when more musicians would join them for all-day rehearsal sessions followed by all-night parties. Despite their friendliness, I was unable to share my pain or build trust with them. I felt even more alone and would weep many nights, thinking about my friends, my girlfriend, and my parents and my relatives back home. I remembered how I decided to leave everything in Nepal to start a new life. I had always been terrible with social interactions, but now that I stopped having social interactions, I started to fall in the pit of darkness. My decision to come to the States had left me isolated in this dark room with myself to ample time to color my thoughts dark. However, isolation and depression, despite how their terrible impact, did leave a positive note: I could easily focus on my classes. I decided to push myself through the limit, taking 26 credit hours, which consisted of one English Honors class, two departmental examinations for statistics (MATH 380) and Calculus III (MATH 312), a 3-credit research with a math professor on Langford pairings. Oh and while this was going on, I was able to land a part-time internship at a yet another software company during the annual Tech Connect event.

Freshman Year — Summer ‘17

The Spring semester went by very quickly, and so did the following summer. I was working full-time at my internship while being enrolled in general college classes. I must say that I had a much luxurious summer compared with the other Nepali freshmen, most of who worked incredible hours during those three months while being paid much lower than what they deserved. I have been most fortunate to have a head start with coding. However, I do not know if the feeling of isolation was limited to just myself or also my peers, as the only person I talked to like this was myself with a glass of Jack Daniels. I was dehydrated without life, yet I waited and waited for the happy days to come. The thought of transferring out had already settled due to my involvement in the research (since I was about to publish a paper), but I had not realized that by the passage of this summer, my life was about to reveal hidden depths.

Sophomore and Junior years

A year had gone by, quickly, and my freshman days were over. For the Fall, I moved to a new apartment due to severe bedbug infestation in order to start living with a Nepalese roommate the next Fall. We shared the same culture, story friend circle, and background, yet I was treating him more like a business partner than a friend or a roommate. Life was going as usual, may be a bit better due to improved relationships with coworkers. I had also discovered a few friends due to our mutual attraction of my intelligence and my love for teacher-disciple relationships. This semester, many more Nepali freshman had filled the increased quota for international students. I thought I might be able to make new friends. Maybe find a girlfriend on this side of the world as well (I had tried online dating too, but I was unable to kick with my poor English language and dark sense of humor. I also had little interest with people who did not share my culture). I had started to aggressively pursue new channels of social interactions with these people, like attending Thanksgiving dinner at a local Church. And I was able to strengthen connections. It was around this time that I thought my depression would go off. I was hanging out with others, enjoying beers and showing off my terrible skills with confidence. I even started teaching coding classes to make sure that these newfound friends would take it seriously and learn something before summer, and make their life much easier. It feels great to admit that I was happy back then. It was also the time that I fell deeply in love with one of them.

This girl was very special. She was the queen of the bees. She was the Pink Floyd of the bands, and she was of the George R.R. Martin kind. She was also a spoiled brat, maybe the misfit in her high school class. She claimed to be carefree and bold. She claimed to know them stars and the Gods of heavens, but when I tried to test her she deflected to other things. She continued to become reckless and talk about the SpaceX Dragon like she was in control of the mission, and man, I had never seen a woman like her! No, I had never met a person like her. No one I knew had her passion, with that drive to know them stars. We had spat some jargon at the aforementioned Thanksgiving dinner but not much of a meaningful talk had happened. This and a few other hangout sessions were to begin a new chemistry cycle in me, and within a week, I were to drown in love with this woman and her passions, particularly with the stars. I had been in love with the heavens for as long as I can remember but I had completely lost the passion. Now I rediscovered what it meant to live, and I could not live a new day without following them stars.

Telescoping

I had almost maxed out my credit cards yet I borrowed a telescope through Amazon (since it provides free returns). Many nights, I started to look down on the eyepiece of the telescope to look at our moon and neighboring planets. Within these heavens, I discovered a new dimension of life. Saturn to me was astoundingly charming; it was very clear through the eyepiece that this little ping pong ball was floating in the sky, with a ring attached to it like none other. It was eventually my telescoping hobby which led me to understand that the universe was vast and I was nowhere in our Creator’s mind when he devised a plan for existence. I started to ponder at the very nature of space and time and consciousness and the universe. Who am I? It was a year after me falling in love, and as soon as the feeling of love started sink, a new life was emerging inside me. It started with an existential crisis, but as I combined it with a trip to Nepal, marijuana, and meditation, my telescoping hobby turned out to shape how I want to live my life.

Vipassana meditation

Vipassana is a 10-day guided-meditation course following the principles of Gautama Buddha. During the course period, you surrender your electronic devices, your speech and as much of yourself as possible to silence (they follow a strict no-communication rule). They also offer nutrient-rich vegetarian meals. People go to Vipassana for many reasons, but I go to Vipassana because 1) it is a place where I can forget everything of my current life in order to look at myself as a part of the universe, and 2) it is also a place where I get ample time to think and remember what I had forgotten about myself. I have attended three Vipassana 10-day sessions so far, and it has become a kind of vacation place for me. It is also the place where I had looked at the palm of my hand and questioned for the first time why I had exactly five fingers. It was the place where I saw atoms moving to create my thoughts. It was the place where I saw myself in a tree in front of me inasmuch as myself. It was also the place where I realized that “I” comes back in another’s body after this one perishes. The truth about the world is, that there is only one. All are the atoms moving and we are simply products of the atoms. Our thoughts are the results of atomic interactions and our fight between determinism and free will is merely an intellectual play. That is because the atoms do what they always do, guaranteed. I had my mind exploding with great ideas.

Questions

It was here in Hammond that I discovered the vast nature of our universe. It was the beginning of the completion of my transformation. Many of you might have already known but I started meditating a few years ago before I came to the States, by learning it at the Art of Living foundation through the light of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. When I took the first meditation course, I was 15; and that’s when I realized that this software developer at Google, which was my career plan, was just too little of a plan for my majestic life. When I went to Vipassana my second time last Summer, I finally realized the mystery of reincarnation. That I was born before this life, and that I will be born afterwards, was a big of a realization for me. (Understanding reincarnation starts with realizing who “you” truly are: are you your body, your mind, or you soul? What is soul?) Likewise, through meditation, I came to realize what God actually means. No, I do not mean the four handed statue in temples, but the ones that the ancient rishis imagines when they decided upon symbolisms established using these statues. God is everywhere. What is bigger than me, is Him. I also got a glimpse of time and space as they are (Mahakaal and Mahashiva), and I was even able to converse with the “I” within me as a second person.

Senior year

Senior year was paradise and also the inferno.

While my transformation was going on, I was starting to get worried about job security. After leaving my internship, I had started to work for the department of English as a software consultant. I had applied to a few companies, but for some reason, each and every one of them were rejecting me. I did not understand what was going wrong with my application. I wanted to add a project on my resume (thinking maybe that would be impressive). So I brainstormed ideas on what I could build. One of the simplest was a campus app for my university.

I started making the campus app during May of 2019. After I returned back from my second Vipassana back then, I had a lot of energy to utilize, and therefore, I was able to launch the project, recruit and manage almost 15 people, and schedule a demo in front of senior executives of my university. I was able to push through there as well, and I was able to build momentum in my university. I then ran a fundraiser through my Nepalese friends and alumni to start a company, and I am glad to have raised over two grand in less than a week. They have been extremely supportive of my idea. However, my incentive to contribute started to come down as the executives in our university decided not to provide financial support for any of our times on the app.

A few books from my library

I usually kickstart my Vipassana experience by reading a few great books, such as Socrates’ Apology which took me just two hours to finish the entire essay. It was the defense of the famous philosopher Socrates before his death sentence. I will also never forget the detailed insights of Yuval Noah Harrari in his book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (Harrari himself is a Vipassana meditator for the past 15+ years). But the most fundamental book I have read, and also the most intellectually challenging, is Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus-Logico Philosophicus. It was the book that showed me the inherent flaws and limitations of logic, about how experience is more true than understanding. A few other books that I have discovered are Walden (written by Henry Thoreau after living 28 months in a jungle all by himself), How to Win Friends and Influence People (a book also recommended by Warren Buffett), Patanjali Yoga Sutra (an advanced book on the discipline of Yoga by Swami Vivekananda), Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, and so on

Originally published on Medium at https://medium.com/@damo-da/the-story-of-my-undergraduate-life-11b2bf03fe59.

Where the fuck has been my motivation?

2020-05-30T00:00:00-07:00

Me searching for any pieces of motivation.

I wanted to write a book, but my motivation has remained hidden somewhere never to surface. After I graduated from college, I left Baton Rouge to travel to a new city, but I guess I left my motivation at BR: I have no other reason why I have freaking zero incentive to move forward. When the SpaceCops come to our planet for investigating alien invasions, send them over to me. Perhaps there are some dark matter micro-aliens in my brain harnessing their fuel from my motivation. Otherwise, I would have already discovered something or someone to fuck with.

In this new city that I live, I have no friends, no apartment, no money, and above all, no fucking clue about what to do. My days are filled with chess games where other people fuck me most of the time. I recently gave an interview for a job for which I thought I was qualified. They gave me a nice blowjob before a heartfelt fuck. They even asked me to reapply after six months, as if they enjoyed the first session and waiting for a few more. I bet they did because I gave them some of my motivation as well. I spent everything single penny I had by traveling through the rotten country of fucking India before the racist Central USA, and now my finances are saying to myself: “Ah, did you have a nice vacation? Allow me to fuck you now”. My dad texts me and my mom texts me asking for updates and I tell them to wait for a few days, basically a shitty way of saying “I have no fucking clue.” My last girlfriend ditched me: I fell in love with her but she fell in love with another. I guess she was fucked, literally and metaphorically, and so was I, although only metaphorically. I tried to discover myself through meditation believing that it to be the only thing that wouldn’t fuck me, and then I realized that even it depended on my willpower, which fuck does not exist. I am a pile full of shit. I guess all logic leads me to wait until the Space Cops arrive. I’m ready to leave the Inferno.

Who the fuck cares about me. I am depressed. I don’t fucking know anything. I don’t know who I am. I am basically dying and dead at the same time. More dead and less dying.

So I tell to motivation, my friend: fuck you. I don’t fucking care about you. I’ll do what I do till I can not do what I do. And when that point of time comes up, I want to ask you to make certain that either you will fucking kill me; or otherwise, I will fucking kill myself. Of course, I might stand on my fucking feet but what good will it do if I still hate everything about this world. Food for thought. Now to you, reader, get back to your pile of fucking shit and fix your fucking life before it is fucking too late.

Originally published on Medium at https://medium.com/@damo-da/where-the-fuck-has-been-my-motivation-2a877e7dbaf.