may 14 - tristan!

on the 13th i caught a train to vienna, then an overnight to strasbourg, then to marseilles, then to nice, where i met tristan at the airport. i was thrilled to see him, having looked forward to this chapter of the travels for a long time.

we didn't mess around in nice, in my mind just another patong (trendy, packed with tourists, utterly unaffordable) - yech. we hurried on to hendaye, a port town in the southwest corner of france, right on the border with spain. basque country. hendaye is the beginning of the GR-10, an 866km trail that stretches from one end of the pyranees to the other, winding back and forth across the french-spanish border. we arrived in town late, and ended up sleeping in some woods that were probably part of someone's yard (we had to climb a barbed wire fence to get in).

after that first night camping was a lot easier. we headed up into the hills, hiking east for four days before turning back toward hendaye. each day we tried to pass through one village, to fill up our water bottles and buy bread and other groceries. this was tricky sometimes because we were definitely in siesta country, and just about everything closed at about 12:30, opening again a couple hours later, if at all. so some nights we had awkward meals.

we passed through the villages of biriatou, ibardin, and sare, making it almost to ainhoa on our last day, and making a detour on the way back to go to la rhun. being on the border, some of these towns had both french and spanish names (hendaye = hendaya, sare = sara, la rhun = larrun). and some street names had basque translations included. hearing basque was wild, it sounds like nothing else i've ever heard.

we really didn't walk all that far. the steepness of the terrain, the weight of our packs, and various aches and pains kept us down to an average of maybe 5 hours of hiking per day. we stretched a lot, did yoga and chi gong, took naps, took breaks to read in condusive spots, and short side-trips without our packs. each night i made a campfire, even when all the wood was soaked, so that we could roast our fresh vegetables and saugages. and we talked. especially in those first couple days, i was extremely stimulated by tristan's presence- not surprising given my last couple weeks of lone austerity. i felt like a whole new person, just bubbling with social energy.

but yes, although we could see the real dramatic snowcapped pyranees in the distance, we barely scratched the surface of their rhelm. distance covered was not the goal, although if i ever return i believe that it will be.

the basque countryside is a strange society. there is very little industry besides tourism, and the lack of jobs leaves the region almost devoid of young people, who must just all be living in cities. almost all the tourists we saw were middle-aged and older french people. almost everyone on the mountain trails were older couples, locals on day-hikes. we saw a few people with big packs like us, but i think that they were all french too. the droves of internationals supposedly come in august, which probably both increases services for backpackers - food and lodging - and also increases local vigilance - chasing campers off of private land.

the people that do live in the area we hiked through seemed to be pretty well-off. people on pensions or government money or something. all the houses were picture-perfect whitewashed with tile roofs and big yards and gardens. certainly weren't any slums, or the rural trailerpark strip-towns characteristic of the states' rural regions.

the return hike was nice because we knew all the best camping spots and necessary timing between towns. we could take our time and relax, as on the way out we'd wasted so much time wandering around lost. the GR-10 is well marked in most places, but not everywhere.

we got back to hendaye on friday. tristan caught a train back to nice on saturday. he'll be at his tama do training in the hills near there for the next two weeks, and i will spend this chunk of timing wwoofing (Willing Workers On Organic Farms - the french website is http://www.wwoof.fr/). i spent the weekend walking around hendaye, reading and worrying about connecting with my wwoof hosts. i camped in the hills just outside of town, in a lovely thick patch of trees covered in ivy. it's been raining pretty much constantly, but i managed to catch a couple hours of sun on sunday afternoon, spreading out all my gear and finally getting dry.

sunday night i caught a train to dax, then a bus to mont de marsan, where i was picked up by steve. steve and karina are a british couple, around 40 years old, who have been living here for the last 10 years with their three kids - jack, 12; finley, 10; and ella, 4. they live in a massive old house, called chateau lassalle, which is just outside of a little village called aignan. they don't know how old the house is exactly, but its been here since the 1400s at least. there are also two barns, a guesthouse, yards and fields, gardens, and a pond on the property.

i think it was all in disrepair when they bought it, and they've been fixing it up slowly ever since. steve is a handyman extraordinaire. i know that he's done lots of landscaping, put new tile floors into the entire house, built a traditional slate roof, and built a very nice garden. who knows what else, a place this massive and old and complicated must absorb thousands of hours of labor.

steve has a law degree, used to teach literature, and has always run an antique trade. karina is a journalist who runs and writes for a magazine. she researches wealthy philanthropists and their organizations and publishes their financial dealings, and the resulting transparency helps keep them honest and helps charities and other groups seeking funds. they both appear to be tireless champions of parenting, carefully and creatively chosen careers, and domestic projects.

most importantly they are extremey generous. they feel that 30 hours of work a week is a fair exchange for room and board, which is perfectly acceptable to me. with my first shower and laundry in several weeks, and a comfy bed in an old (dry!) camper, i am very happy. it still feels like vacation, even though i just spent the last two days shovelling muddy clay in the rain, which is just as fun as it sounds. the food and wine and company and environment are excellent, and i feel right at home.

a returned bike

after i wrote last i headed back into bukk nemzeti park for two more nights of camping, spending my days riding up and down those hills. i ended up coming across, besides those wild boar (i am told that there are lots), big black and yellow poisonous geckos, one deer critter with big curved horns, and millions of birds. there are almost one thousand species of birds in bukk alone, and day and night i was immersed in unfamiliar songs and chatter. most were little but there were a few hawks and today i saw a stork.

on thursday i met up with a couchsurfer in miskolc, hungary's third largest city. viktor is writing his dissertation on the environmental and political history of the sajo river, which flows through the region and was affected by the heavy industry of the state-socialist era. he also writes articles of political analysis for european newspapers. i aspire to take on similar roles in the near future, and found our meeting to be inspirational. it was great getting to know him.

viktor is a bicyclist and knows the roads in his region, so on friday he led me most of the way up to aggteleki park, through a labyrinth of tiny villages that i could not have found by myself. it was an exhausting day, but just as it was getting too dark i made it to my destination, the town of segliget.

i stayed in segliget (pop. approx 1,000) for two nights with another couchsurfer, a british guy named simon. he runs a guest house in addition to his job editing for a cycling magazine, which he can do from his home. foreigners are rare in rural hungary, but he's made it his home for the last few years, and speaks magyar well by now. with him translating i was better able to experience the local culture, hanging out at the fast food place and bar, playing pool and drinking beer and a crazy slovakian liquor called bekarofka, which tastes like cinnamon and herbs.

saturday i had a lovely lazy day, laying around napping and reading, preparing myself for this last bit. sunday and monday were a long slog, 150 and 105 km respectively, just a sprint back to budapest. it got pretty tedious, the endless hills and windy roads i took to avoid the big highways. i was tired, and losing motivation, sick of being dirty and sore and wet and homeless and worried about flat tires (i got four total - with the weight of my pack strapped to the back it didn't take much of a bump). despite all that, my camp last night made me feel sad to end my trip. i slept in a meadow between two little villages, surrounded by rolling forested hills and the endless birds. once the moon set the stars were brilliant. i am going to miss this.

so, now i am back in budapest at philip's apartment. that old white peugot got me through 650 km of magyar countryside. i was so sad to return it today- i'll be lucky if i can find its equal back in the states. now i am headed to nice, france, to meet my dear friend tristan who arrives in two days. i have a train ticket to vienna austria for tomorrow. from there, my fate is in the hands of the european train network.

topheavy in bukk

first- before i flew back to the states i played in the hungarian ultimate frisbee national championships. it was one of the most thrilling days of my life, i still get the giggles thinking about it. i played for a team called halodigaze, who i had practiced with the week before.

the tournament was in a town called markaz, about an hour and a half drive from budapest. it is wine country, and some of the people organizing the event ran a winery (the prizes at the end were therefore all wine-based). it was a cold and rainy day, but at least no wind, which really screws things up. there were seven teams and two fields, and each team played 4 or 5 games to determine the standings.

we lost our first two games, to the two best teams there - the two that ended up playing for first. it was a tough way to start, but after that our team clicked. everything started working perfectly, and i finally relaxed and was able to play my best. we won our other three games, taking third place. again, one of the most thrilling days of my life.

i am trying to find pictures online, and will inform if i do.

so. now that i am back from the states, i am doing just what i planned. i bought a bike in budapest, along with a lock, helmet, pump and tire repair kit, all for about 220 dollars (if i return it all in good shape, i'll get about 170 back- this is far cheaper than renting). i didn't get paniers, but there is a rack on the back that is good for strapping down my bag. unfortunately this makes me quite topheavy, which took a while to get used to. also, it takes at least 10 minutes to get it all strapped on correctly. i have to take it off and wear it when i lock up my bike and leave it behind, so i am loath to stop in civilization, it's all just a pain in the ass.

on friday i rode about 85 km, from budapest to just past the town of gyöngyös. that night i nested in a patch of bushes between a dirt road and a vineyard. wrapped in a cacoon of garbage bags and nearly all my clothes, i was almost warm enough to sleep. almost. not a great night.

(but man, plastic bags. greatest invention ever. i am utterly dependent on them, and keep a big stash on me at all times. so here's to plastic bags, my best friend out here).

on saturday i rode the rest of the way to eger, about 45 km. i stayed in a little hostel that was run by a family. the son, bolasz, spoke some english, but not his parents. bolasz took me down the family's cellar where he had me taste his father's wine. the earth under eger is just full of cellars, running right into each other (our was separated from the neighbor's by an iron gate). the heart of wine country, most of the town's business is wine. there is a little valley outside town called szépasszony-völgy (valley of the nice lady) that is just ringed with cellars buried into the hillsides. from the openings of each people sell their wine, give out tastes for free and glasses for less than a dollar. this was may-day weekend, a big four day holiday for the country. all the tourists there appeared to be magyar.

i slept for 14 hours that night. for good reasons. sunday i took off for bukk national park, riding up and up until i ran out of daylight and had to find a spot to sleep. i was nice and warm with my sleeping bag i bought from bolasz' mother, which is purple and white and covered in flowers ("just like a man!" announces bolasz).

monday i spent hiking, exploring the confusing network of paths winding through the park. i climbed to some hilltops for the views, found a sweet little spring, and generally just soaked up these beautiful forested hills. things were peachy until a massive thunderstorm broke over my head. i took shelter in a little wooden observation tower, across a meadow from some type of corn-dispensing container, for luring critters of some kind. i thought it would be deer, but last night a pack of wild pigs or boar romped around it. grunts and oinks and squeels and bubbling splashing as they churned the whole area up into a muddy sloppy pond. i slept up in the tower.

today i came back down to eger, about 20 km, to resupply. i am subsisting on bread, cheese, jam, peanut butter (trying to make this precious little jar from santa barbara last as long as possible), carrots, bananas and yogurt. the limiting factor is water, as its so heavy to carry. i wish i knew where all the springs were in this region.

interlude

my granpa ron passed away on the 19th of april. i flew to santa barbara california for a week to be with my family.

i wouldn't write about it here - this is such a light-hearted project. in fact, it's hard to start writing about anything again. it doesn't feel right to embark on frivolous travels and write silly stories after something like this.

i just wanted to explain my silence of the last two weeks. more will come soon.

prague spring and

we flew from ulaan bator to prague instead of budapest because the connection in russia would have left us in moscow airport for 23 hours, as opposed to 4 for prague. we chose wisely. obviously with no visas they keep you penned in, with upper-class consumer goods duty free (but not 500% markup-free) shops and restaurants. the real problem was that a half liter of water would have cost us almost $10. and we were thirsty. and there were no drinking fountains. the exchange rate with russian rubles is intolerable steep. good thing those bureaucrats gave us such a headache, otherwise we'd have gone in and i'd have gone broke.

after three weeks of grey windy death-dry winter in mongolia and china (i know i shouldn't complain about a winter so short, but) the spring in prague felt just like heaven. i was giddy. there were little buds everywhere, tiny white flowers all over bushes, trees just barely getting their leaves out. the city is small, and it is surrounded on most sides by big hills, each of which are covered in parks. i love that they've kept them as they are, prevented the private development that must want that prime territory. we got on top of eight of them in our four days in the city. there are mossy broken stone staircases winding up through neighborhoods that lead up into the parks, and redundant layers of paths crisscrossing all through them. they were full of people walking their dogs. and the spring smells- again, just giddy.

we heard that prague has quite a nightlife, but i was sleeping from about 10 pm til 7 am each night, so i have no idea. we did visit some local bars and restaurants, which were very nice. eastern european beer is the best. and czech food isn't too bad either - we had some amazing garlic soup. i keep thinking about it. the standard local fare seemed to be pizza, which was unexpected. we did plenty of cooking at our hostel's kitchen.

one day i walked southwest from our hostel, and within a half our was in meadows that bordered on farmland. prague is tiny. we walked all over it in just four days. a perfect city for walking.

last friday we caught a bus for budapest. it took about 9 hours, through southeastern czech republic, the western edge of slovakia, then continuing on southeast in hungary. we passed mostly agriculture and forests, mixed together with little towns. we showed up, figured out the subway, and made it to philip's apartment in District VI, on the pest side of the danube. philip and rachael came back on saturday, after spending a week in the netherlands where philip had to do some work in person.

we've spent the last few days wandering around, getting to know the city. we visited kerepesi cemetery, which i loved for its ancient crumbling overgrown headstones back in the woods, and for its weird russian section. the majority of the graves were for russian soldiers who were killed while helping the nazis off in world war II. but then there is a section for those who died in 1956, suppressing the hungarian uprising. it seemed strange to us that, now that the USSR has fallen, the hungarians don't tear down these monuments to their own suppression by stalinism.

1956 is the most fascinating thing about this city to me. there are bullet-holes everywhere. for about 10 days hungary had a government in which stalinist leaders were replaced with democratically-elected ones, workers' councils were rebuilt and re-empowered, power was decentralized to these councils, and the entire military (eventually) sided with the uprising. this is everything a trotskyist advocates and works for in a stalinist deformed workers' state. unfortunately, all trotskyists and other left-commies had long been purged, so there was a disturbing lack of leadership. also, the red army rolled in and crushed the puny hungarian army, purged the army leadership of sympathizers, executed a bunch of politicians, re-instituted mandatory indoctrination for rank and file soldiers, suppressed the new councils and unions, etc. hence, 10 days.

we wanted to take a walking tour of the history of communism in the city, but it was going to cost about $50 per person. so, eli and i spent a couple days doing research, and gave the tour ourselves. we took philip and rachael up to the castle district in buda where students at the technical university had helped organize, agitate for and instigate the uprising, alongside the working class at every step (one good thing about stalinism that allowed this- the middle class monopoly on higher ed was replaced by a reactionary system of giving the education to working class and peasant kids instead).

then we walked down to Bem Ter in buda, where a crowd of between 10 and 100 thousand people rallied on 23 october 1956, the first big show of force by the people. then we walked across the Margit bridge, following the path of the workers and students as they headed into pest. they split up to head to the parliament building where they joined with others, forming a crowd of 200 thousand; to the world's biggest statue of stalin, which they tore down; to the radio building, which they tried to take over to broadcast their demands; to various military barracks, where they convinced soldiers to join them; and to communist party offices, the homes of politicians, and every other strategic point in the city. the soviet soldiers stationed here sympathized (they were of the same class, and were equally abused under stalinism) and showed very little resistance. USSR leaders could only get their soldiers to fight the hungarians when they brought in fresh ones who were told they were off to fight nazis or capitalist troops at the suez canal.

well i could go on and on (and on and on) about this, but the important thing is this: the students and workers explicitly stated that they did not want a capitalist counterrevolution. they understood how much worse that would be than stalinism. they fought for exactly what i would have fought for in their situation: a more free, democratic version of what they already had. this is exactly what modern trotskyists fight for, and it's inspirational to see how far these folks got in '56, despite the forces stacked against them.

on the 50th anniversary, just a year and a half ago, this city erupted. riot cops had to bust skulls left and right to get everyone to lie back down again. the heritage of '56 is alive and kicking. i've certainly never been in a place so rich with progressive revolutionary history, and, just under the surface, contemporary energy...

today eli and i went to the national museum, which had decent exhibits on the last 900 years or so. its funny to see their history of the mongolian invasion, after seeing it from the other side in mongolia's national museum in UB. they glossed over the communist period, so we really didn't learn much. there was crap propaganda, trying to talk up the economic development during their capitalist periods while ignoring the development under stalin (which dwarfs the economic progress of any other period). they also didn't give much attention to '56, treating it like a anti-communist insurrection (which is ironically the same thing the USSR insisted that it was- an attempted counterrevolution. this is significant, that these two types of ruling classes would propagandize against '56 in the same way. both clearly feel threatened by it.)

we also visited the radio station today, where the first major battle of '56 was fought, and where the first budapest resident was killed (by the hated AVH - hungarian secret police - who were holding the station. they all got killed by the way).

just a few other little things:

standard fare here is turkish food. been eating gyros and falafel every day.

also, i've attended the practices of three different budapest ultimate frisbee teams in the last 4 days. this is my first real foray into strategy, set plays, reading the field and knowing how to move properly. i am exhausted and sore, both physically and mentally.

also, eli tricked me into eating a piece of cheese with ketchup on it. i thought it was sriracha hot sauce. it wasn't. it was gross. to get him back i emptied the sri from his bottle and replaced it with ketchup. bizarrely, he hasn't even noticed. i almost died watching him eat a sandwich covered in it last night. he is all hell of dense. damn revenge is sweet. this is even funnier because i'm writing about it, but he won't read this for a long time, if ever. don't tell him or anything, i want to see the expression on his face when he figures it out.

Free Tibet (from a return to feudalism!)

The liberal argument for the freeing Tibet from Chinese governance is based largely on the principals of self-determination and freedom of religion.

Freedom of religion is fine, accept when it is tied up with the materialist world of class structures and mass exploitation in feudalist and capitalist societies. In this case class war must be waged against religious elites until they relinquish their hold on the means of production. After this is accomplished, there is nothing wrong with congregations democratically choosing to donate money to their local church, priests, monks, etc, allowing the less harmful aspects of religion to continue on as they were.

Self-determination takes precedence in many cases, but not always. In Iraq and Afghanistan, we fully back the local resistance against US imperialism, even given the quantitative differences (it's all capitalism) between the dictatorial Hussein regime and the theocratic US puppet regime, between the theocratic Taliban and the current warlord puppets. The blows dealt by these local resistances to the international ruling class and the power of the current hegemony are always desirable. More importantly, the type of social change that needs to happen in these places can only come from working class power (either domestic or international) and cannot possibly come from some imperialist power clearly just bent on oil profits and military bases on new frontiers. Imperialist success only strengthens the power of core capitalists, so class war demands that we fight them on all fronts.

However, the right of self-determination is overridden in certain situations, even according to liberal logic. Liberals argue for "humanitarian" intervention (by imperialist powers) in situations of genocide, such as Rwanda, Sudan, and Serbia, thinking (incorrectly) that core-type ("first world") democratic political systems will replace abusive, dictatorial domestic governments.

While we disagree with liberals on the legitimacy or desirability of imperialist intervention (violation of self-determination) for "humanitarian" purposes, we see communist intervention (same violation) in non-communist territory as an essential aspect of international revolutionary activity. The international working class should do everything it can, in any of its organizational forms, to support domestic working classes. For example, the Soviet regime in Afghanistan was by far the most progressive in Afghanistan's sordid history (especially for women). The imperialist intervention on behalf of the "right of domestic self-determination" resulted in weakening the Soviet Union, a civil war and rule of theocratic warlords in Afghanistan, and the material basis for the current power of "al-Qaeda" terrorist organizations. So in this case, Afghanistan's right of self-determination is overridden by the need for internationalist working-class revolution.

Before China invaded Tibet, the region had a feudalist society. Almost all the land was owned by a small ruling class of secular landlords and elite monks (with the Dalai Lama at the top) who used a police-army to maintain their position of power. Everyone else was a serf, barely a step away from slaves, who were bonded to the land (imprisoned, beaten, mutilated or killed if they tried to escape). They could only keep enough of the food they produced to survive, and sometimes not even that. Peasants were taxed for nearly everything they did, keeping them in a constant state of poverty.

There were thousands of beggars. There were slaves - whose children were the same - who were kept as domestic laborers. Peasants had neither schools nor medical services. Female peasants were taken by both secular and Buddhist elites and forced into sexual slavery. Life expectancy in the 1950's was 35.5 year (in 2001 up to 67) and infant mortality was 430 per 1000 births (now down to 6.61). Elite monks maintained an underclass of lower monks, who ran the monasteries and served the elites. Young boys were forcefully taken from their peasant families to join this part of the underclass. Torture was standard practice, used by elites against insubordinate or runaway peasants. The ruling class used all the coercive powers of state terrorism to maintain the class structure.

That class structure still exists today in capitalist regions. During our travels in Thailand and Laos we saw hundreds of wats (temples), which were ornately designed, covered in gold leaf and full of statues and offerings. They were the largest buildings in small towns, and were clearly the end result of the systematic appropriation of the vast majority of the wealth of the people. We saw monks everywhere, a class of people who do not work - fail to contribute materially at all to society - but still eat and live comfortably in their compounds. Even on the subway in Bangkok we saw a sign that told passengers to give up their seats to monks.

The Buddhist idea of karma and multiple lives is used to justify all of this - if you are suffering in this life, it's because you did something to deserve it in a former life. And by suffering in this life, in the next you will be born into a more privileged position.

The Chinese Maoists invaded in 1951 but they didn't make serious changes right away. Horrified by the threat of communism, the Tibetan ruling class tried to instigate an insurrection against the Chinese, from 1956-57. This revolt was coordinated and funded by the CIA, which provided military training, support camps in Nepal, and regular airlifts. The revolt was extremely unpopular and the elites trying to push it were crushed by both the Chinese and their own peasants.

After the failed revolt the Chinese abolished slavery, the system of unpaid serfdom, and the oppressive taxes. They built secular schools and power grids and running water systems. By 1961 the Chinese had expropriated much of the land, giving it to peasants and forming communes to control production. Improvements were made across the board, in livestock, irrigation and agriculture.

Since then the Tibetan peasantry, alongside the rest of the toiling masses of China, has been the victim of the array of problems of Stalinism. Forced collectivization, mistakes in planned economy leading to starvation, the 1966-67 Cultural Revolution suppressing religious freedom and the recent colonization by Han Chinese. In the 1970's and 80's China admitted many mistakes and passed reforms to try to correct them, but there is clearly a great deal of political repression and lack of economic power in the worker and peasant classes.

Because the Dalai Lama has been forced from power, he has had to grant concessions and pander to many groups in his efforts to gain support for a counterrevolution in Tibet. He called himself half Buddhist, half Marxist in an effort to co-opt the socialist-leaning sections of the Tibetan masses. He lobbies liberals all over the world with appeals to human rights and religious freedom (China's Stalinism has given him plenty of fodder). He claims that the Chinese occupation has killed about 1.2 million Tibetans, but there is no evidence for this. His assertion that monasteries have been reduced in both numbers and population is also baseless. He admitted that there problems with the old system, and has proposed reforms, hoping to convince those who know Tibet's true history. However, he still keeps the same old circle of Tibetan feudalists around him as advisers and political allies, and these peoples' interests will certainly have a predictable impact. The Dalai Lama has cleverly and effectively used lies, omissions and distortions to manipulate liberals - as well as conservative class warriors fighting communism - into his campaign to free Tibet from Chinese control.

The international ruling class solidarity with the Dalai Lama is transparent. The exiled Tibetan ruling class received $1.7 million a year throughout the 1960's, and now the US Congress currently gives them $2 million a year for "democracy activities". The Dalai Lama also receives money from capitalists like George Soros.

As Trotskyists we advocate political revolutions in Stalinist deformed workers states like China - rebuilding workers councils and using their power to replace bureaucrats with democratically elected leaders. This necessitates a large, strong, educated, organized urban working class, which can only be created by the development of economic infrastructure - factories and service industries. Chinese central leadership, as corrupt and abusive as it is, has moved Tibet in this direction. The old Tibetan ruling class, with the Dalai Lama at its head, would pull Tibet back two huge steps - from deformed communism, past capitalism, to feudalism. It would be a long and tortuous road from there back to a stage where a working class is growing and empowering itself. Therefore, we support the Chinese occupation of Tibet, and its suppression of the feudalist movement, which is merely cloaked in the garb of Buddhism.

If Tibet's independence movement was like that of Hungary in 1956, where a domestic political revolution moved the nation from Stalinism toward a more libertarian, free, democratic socialism, we would fully back a Free Tibet campaign. However, because the Free Tibet campaign is led by feudalists, it is far more similar to Afghanistan in the 1980's. "Freeing" Tibet would really just free the old ruling class to retake it, which would let loose hell on the toiling masses.

This is a materialist argument, as as such cannot address spiritual concerns. A spiritualist could argue that all horrors of feudalism are acceptable because it allows a small group of monks to pursue enlightenment, an endeavor which cannot have a material value assigned to it. There is no logical rebuttal to this, except that in socialism, all people would have equal access to such spiritual quests. Spirituality would not be based on a ruling class's ability to exploit and enslave the vast majority of the population.

If you have any doubts or questions or would like to learn more we strongly encourage you to read these articles - one independent, one from a bourgeois university, and one Trotskyist.

http://www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html

http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/24045

http://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/911/tibet.html

books read in asia

reading western books while traveling can be a very dramatic experience. sometimes i really do get lost in them, and when i look up and realize where i am its almost like nausea or vertigo or panic. like waking up from a powerful dream. also, the associations i form between these books and the places where i read them are fantastic. the memories are all intertwined.

here are the books that i read in the last two months:

ward churchill - marxism and native americans
jose saramago - all the names
immanual wallerstein - alternatives: the US confronts the world
edward abbey - hayduke lives!
joseph heller - catch 22
tom wolfe - radical chic & mau mauing the flack catchers
j. m. coetzee - disgrace
kurt vonnegut - galapagos
harry cleaver - autonomous marxism
kurt vonnegut - breakfast of champions
edgar allen poe - the murders in the rue morgue and other short stories
graham greene - the quiet american
maurice brinton - the bolsheviks and workers control
jonathan safron foer - everything is illuminated

most of it is political, even several of the novels. i learned a great deal from these. also, lots of it is dark. that darkness has had quite an effect on my experiences. imagine reading poe (variations on the deaths of women) while fasting in the jungle of southern thailand. or coetzee (did not like- just rape and dog murder) with a fever in patong (hell). or all this critique and rebuilding of marxism while hanging out in nations whose governments have been guided by the very worst, corrupted interpretations of marx and his successors. (4 of 5 countries visited so far have such histories, counting czech republic, where we just arrived).