Foreword to “$$$$$$s in Their Hearts”, the New Book by Alberto Portugheis
TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 10 Nov 2014
Bishnu Pathak, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service
[TRANSCEND member] Alberto Portugheis, international pianist, teacher and peace campaigner, was born in Argentina in a family of Russian and Romanian descent. He now lives in London, UK.
As concert pianist, Portugheis has visited more than fifty countries across the world, including several troubled countries, where armed conflicts raged or still rage. Many of his ideas on Justice, Freedom, Democracy, Human Rights and Peace developed side by side with his music career.
In 2006, the newly established Conflict Study Center (now the Peace and Conflict Studies Center or PCS Center) sent Portugheis a brief political analysis, entitled a ‘Situation Update’, about the beginning of Nepal’s peace process on May 11th of that year. He quickly sent his response to us, stating that weapons never solve any problem. “Weapons are for killing and for nothing else”, he continually stressed. His argument is that weapon manufacturing and trading make only a few people happy—those it makes rich. I agree with his comment that “weapons could never recognise who is friend or who is enemy”, and also that weapons do not have political or racial colours. Their use is only a step in politicians’ careers, in their quest for power, fame and wealth. As Mao Zed’ng said, “Political power grows out of the barrel of guns”. Their real and sole purpose is to kill people named the enemy”.
In the last eight years, the PCS Center has published one hundred and ten papers, or ‘Situation Updates’, on human security, civil-military relations, conflict transformation, peacebuilding initiatives, DDR-SSR, community policing, Human Rights, federalism and so on, often receiving comments from Alberto Portugheis. The following analyses of freedom are mostly taken from our direct communications with him, from his book The Game of War and a Path to Peace, and from his web-page.
Freedom from Intolerance and from Violence
The vision of Portugheis is ‘tolerance’. Tolerance, brought about by education and global disarmament, he stresses, will bring world peace and freedom to all conflicting countries, ranging from the Gaza strip and the whole Middle East to warring African countries, and anywhere else where conflict is rife. He insists on the equality of all human beings. No matter where people live, no matter of what caste, ethnicity, race, religion or nationality; every man, woman and child has a right to a world free from intolerance, free from violence. As a Buddhist at heart, Portugheis believes tolerance and compassion are the fundamentals of freedom. However, he insists, a militarised world precludes peaceful conflict resolution and transformation techniques. “Weapons are not instruments to create a world of tolerance.”
Officials in power have a vested interest in continuing conflict, be it in their own country or around the world. Portugheis also explores how intolerance divides societies while tolerance integrates them. Education in tolerance and compassion would lead to the abolition of all weapons, of militarism. Portugheis’ achievements include his own initiative to dialogue with all the conflicting actors, thus enhancing his respect for humanity.
Freedom from Want
Portugheis puts emphasis on the fact that weapons do not exist “for Peace”. They will never bring about Peace. Some of his aims are: to ensure basic support for the needy (to stop them being ‘needy’), to restrict weapon manufacturing to cover Police needs, to abolish the Arms Trade, and to disband all armed forces. His sole thrust is to maximise financial assistance to humanitarian intervention by eliminating the cost of a militarised world. For every gun made, every warship launched and every rocket fired, he wishes the same money, time, intelligence and energy was used for the provision of basic needs and basic rights for the hungry, the sick, the homeless and the illiterate. Spending cash on arms and ammunition, warships, air-fighters and so on, is not an issue of money alone; there is also the sweat and blood and taxes ordinary men and women pay, the hope of children, their future and the future of nations.
Portugheis relates that there is no connection with war amongst ordinary people, rich or poor—although often wars are connected with the rich and powerful. Freedom from want, not war, is what connects with the basic needs of needy people.
Freedom from War
Portugheis exposes the real motivations behind many wars which constantly deceive human belief. He explains how individuals, organisations and Governments profit from the Arms Trade. War does not happen for the reasons we are told. Rather, they are cautiously and secretly planned, fomented by countries whose main wealth comes from military manufacturing and trading. The greed for ‘money’ and ‘muscle’ can be found amongst individuals and groups ranging from royal families and politicians to diplomats, from universities to educators, from banks to Human Rights organisations, from journalists to big-media houses, from religious leaders to the military, and from businessmen to public service providers, shadowing the ‘mind’, the ‘justice’, and the ‘truth’ we all seek.
This greedy trend victimises the common people, providing weapons for conflicting parties in the name of people’s power, people’s liberation, people’s sovereignty, and people’s progression, peace, development and democracy. Weapons leave devastating impacts not only on the generation that experience war, but on future generations. Portugheis demonstrates how only a world free from war can achieve the betterment of human lives and a free universal society. As it is, the voice of huge numbers of common people demanding jobs and food is never heard by politicians and all those in power, for whom profit, power and privileges come first.
War makes money and peace does not. War ruins the economy of a country, but makes the authorities concerned richer. Recalling a past conversation, Portugheis wrote, “My military friends laugh at people like me who work for a Peace Culture. Alberto, they say, Peace is not where the money is. Peace is not business.” He reveals how experts in ‘mind control’ help politicians organise chaos, violence and war through ‘epidemics of fear’ among populations.
Portugheis explains how war and its instruments, ‘weapons’, separate the people of a country from power holders, all in the name of religion, nationalism, patriotism, ethnicity. The ‘controllers’ of the world do everything possible to separate humanity. He says, “This is the only way to control people. They keep people fighting, needing to buy weapons, in the knowledge that violence generates more violence.”
On September 26th 2007, Portugheis sent an email commenting on Madhes Violence. About the Identity Clash in Nepal, he said, “What you need is not what Richard Bennett of UNMIN says: “better public security. What you need is not to humiliate people and you need better education. More public security will increase the existing conflict.” Portugheis connects the activities of the CIA in Nepal with the purpose of seceding Tibet from China. Indeed, the USA and its allies have a vested interest in Nepal, “encircle to China” for its secession and “watch to India” not encounter to West. According to him, Europe and America do not want Nepal to live in peace, in a society where peace, justice, and human rights prevail. Respect for humans, priority for education, prosperity of a nation, progress in all aspects of lives protects Nepal from humiliation, but it is against the USA’s interest. Portugheis desires to see my country free from foreign humiliation as well as the enhancing of our lives, both as individuals and as a country.
Campaigns against nuclear arms are useless, Portugheis stresses, as the sophisticated conventional weaponry of today is just as lethal. The Nobel 2008 message from Portugheis reads, “I write to explain why we have wars; why, despite the fact that nobody likes armed conflict, people of all nations tend to think war is inevitable. I would like people to understand that, with the brainwashing we receive, there will never be peace.”
Portugheis argues for a total change of organisational and individual perception, stressing that even most of the human rights organisations (such as Amnesty International, Human Rights groups, anti-war campaigners, including political leaders) do not speak of a weapon-free world. His motto of Enlightenment is to launch a campaign to educate and to promote a world free of militarism, thus free of war.
Freedom to Live in Dignity
Portugheis articulates that every human being has a right to a dignified life, which is ensured (but not upheld) by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and several other human rights instruments. Commenting on my paper on Human Rights and the Nepal Police in June 2008, he pronounced that state authorities violate each and every one of the thirty articles of the UDHR, which were created, invented, and conceived with one idea in mind: to free human dignity from abuse. He passionately urges following the UDHR’s principles of freedom and rights, saying the core of the UDHR is freedom from discrimination, slavery, torture, arbitrary arrest and detention, and the right to life, liberty, security, public hearing, asylum, peaceful assembly, and association. He is against the suppression of rights and freedoms in the name of morality, public order and the general welfare of a democratic society.
“The intention of the UDHR”, he says, “is good, but in practice, it is used for the creation of wars, mainly in the developing countries.” Portugheis wrote to me: Bishnu, the same applies to the Charter of the United Nations, signed in San Francisco on June 26th 1945 and its Statute of the International Court of Justice.” He further mentions, in Chapter 9 of his arlier book, The Game of War and a Path to Peace, that “… all these laws, rules and recommendations are meant to maintain an un-even, unfair world, where poverty and hunger will never be eradicated, so that the rich and powerful can remain in control.”
Portugheis shows that when the UN first established a goal of ‘putting the peoples first’ it could not be implemented, for it aligns itself behind the politics of the West, the powerful West, namely Europe and the USA. Beside these actors, Nepal cannot solve her problems internally as there is the deep interest of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and many other financial institutions making sure that conflicts in Nepal continue, neglecting people’s desire for dignified citizenship, for a dignified life.
When Portugheis was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2008, his message was, and still is, to eliminate the production of weapons and everything military, to help the peace cause by uniting humanity and optimally utilising the earth’s resources. He says, “I am aware of the world we have created for our children and I cry at the horror, despair at the way our world is constantly at war, abusing the children we should nurture.” We need a different way of thinking, a radical change of education, where the accepted ‘given’ is Peace.
When I first became aware of Portugheis, it seemed to me that here was a pessimist guided by a revolutionary mind-set. When I tried to understand him more closely, however, I found him to be quite different. Portugheis is a man seeking Justice where there is Injustice; he is a man advocating peace and harmony to replace conflict; he is a man campaigning against the weapons market amidst warmongers; he is a man campaigning for equity/equality inside an unequal distribution of resources and opportunities; and he is a man looking for freedom as a freedom fighter inside the military-mindset ‘quest for power’. The search for freedom involves challenging current structural, institutional and individual procedures and policies.
I give thanks to Portugheis for his tireless and dedicated efforts towards peace and freedom, and his campaign to promote the notion that all human beings are equal, despite divisions of rich and poor, powerful and general populace, men and women, educated and illiterate. I firmly believe in what Alberto Portugheis says.
To acquire the book please follow this link:
http://www.lulu.com/shop/alberto-portugheis/s-in-their-hearts/paperback/product-21879513.html
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Bishnu Pathak was born and lives in Kathmandu, Nepal. He has been in correspondence with Alberto Portugheis from the beginnings of the Peace and Conflict Studies Center (PCS Center). Professor Pathak created this organisation and is now its Director. He is a Board Member and Professor of Human Security Studies at TRANSCEND Peace University, Germany, and Vice President at the Global Harmony Association, Russia.
Professor Pathak is involved as a senior peace, security and human rights expert on International Evaluation of Support to the Peace Process in Nepal. His book Politics of People’s War and Human Rights in Nepal is widely circulated. He has more than 110 research papers including Nepal’s 2008 Constituent Assembly Elections: Converting Bullets to Ballots. His pioneer work on “Peace-Conflict Lifecycle” was first published in the book Experiments with Peace, Norway.
Dr. Pathak can be reached at email:pathakbishnu@gmail.com; www.pcsc.org.np or https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=99183428&trk=nav_responsive_tab_profile_pic
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 10 Nov 2014.
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Dear Bishnu,
I join you in the pursuit of Peace and Freedom in the world. But I’m sure you would agree that humanity will never achieve Peace or Freedom without Justice, especially Economic Justice and Social Justice as defined on our website and list of quotes
by leaders and scholars over the ages. As you pointed out as examples of blatant injustices in global economic institutions within the global economic system, such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, and their counterparts key institutions in all nations, we will not achieve Justice under the paradigms of either monopoly capitalism or any form of socialism. Power is the key and power follows property and equality of personal access to the rational means for every citizen to become a capital owner as a fundamental right as stated in Article 17(1) of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights has been ignored by every country in the world. Take a look at our proposed Capital Homestead Act for a comprehensive set of monetary, tax, inheritance reforms that we are promoting for the United States that could be adopted throughout the world to establish a global market-based version of economic democracy at every level of global governance.
On our website is a list of essential downloadable writings on the Just Third Way. Also check the VIDEO button on the home page for a list of videos that will also reinforce the new paradigm.
What’s still missing our Justice-minded new leaders who are open-minded to a new paradigm, such as the Just Third Way. If you consider yourself such a leader, please send this out to others on your contact list.
In Justice for all,
Norm