Pamela Stephenson Protects Celeb ‘Shrink Rap’ Interviewees

I recently saw Pamela Stephenson interviewed by Andrew Denton in Enough Rope on ABC television (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). She is the former celebrated actress and comedian, and star of such television shows Not The Nine O’Clock News. She is now a clinical psychologist in Hollywood and a professor of psychology at the California Graduate Institute.

Vile Public Critics

In her recently-made television series Shrink Rap, her famous interview subjects were willing to bare their more vulnerable feelings and lesions, and in a serious way beyond what usually passes for celebrity (so-called) ‘revelations’. Her subjects thus far have been Sharon Osbourne, Stephen Fry, David Blunkett, Sarah Ferguson, and Robin Williams.

 In a note for the show, Stephenson says:

“Shrink Rap is an attempt to allow people not to be under pressure of performing, not to feel that they have to present the ideal self, the one that is always adorable and perfect and funny and together. This allows people to bring forward the true self, to not always tell the official story”.

Holding Barbarians at Bay

But, prior to its release, she found herself editing things out far more than she had earlier thought she would need to. It was not the celebrities themselves who called for this degree of censorship but Stephenson’s own deepening awareness of state-of-the-art maliciousness among media commentators and other unconscienable attackers.

Stephenson had her own experience of having earlier been one of Great Britain’s best-known television celebrities (and is, moreover, the wife of one of the world’s most famous comedians Billy Connelly). Therefore, the need occurred her to go to still greater editorial lengths to protect her famous interview subjects. She was acutely aware of the extreme readiness of unscrupulous critics to make insensitive and distorted use of what her subjects revealed about themselves. In an interview for The Independent, she observed:

“I can control what we have in the programme, and take out things that might be misunderstood, but there’s no guarantee of how it’s going to be received. I will feel terrible on people’s behalf if anyone is publicly punished for saying how they feel.”

Neo-Neanderthal Journalism Needs Extinctifying

There needs of course to be a new regimen of sensitivity and responsibity in the media. This is not to say, necessarily, censorship of either journalists or of content presented by those they write about. (Although it is a sad comment that the very advocates of an open society have, all too often, to self-censorship against philistine triumph). Rather, it is about creating an altogether different climate in which genuine feelings of interview or other subjects can be discussed more openly and commented on sensitively and intelligently, sans attack and cynical exploitation. Rupert Murdoch thinks he can influence an eco friendly ‘greening’ of his newspapers. So then, let him and other prime movers and shakers support those developmental programmes which create greater awareness in journalists (and especially the emerging trainee ones) that might approach that sensitivity and deep ethics being role-modeled by Pamela Stephenson.

The Decline and Fall of the Showman Empire

Sai Baba’s ’showman empire’ is worth many highly unaccountable billions. Frequently, they pour to his Sathya Sai Central Trust from your country and mine. (See Rediff.com reference in my note, Sai Baba Exchequer Worth Billions. Many Countries Donate)

Media Empires Are More Effective

R to L. Media mogul’s mogul Rupert Murdoch, Ted Turner, a slight competitor, (Jane Fonda’s sweet Ex), Zee TV’s Subhash Chandra, Time Warners Dr Richard Parsons

But now, Sai Baba has been increasingly exposed to the world on television by the BBC, DR (Denmark), AZUL (Argentina), CBC (Canada), ABC,  SBS (Australia), and in the press - India Today, Times of London, Telegraph, Guardian, Age, Australian Financial Times, and newspapers in several parts of Europe, Canada, and elsewhere. This does not mean that any of these major institutions did a perfect job, or that there do not abound plenty of compelling stories, some of them tragic indeed.

We are now better able to see the Decline and Fall of the Showman Empire. But the core leaders of the ‘Secret swami’ (as the BBC has named him) are immensely powerful, and won’t go down without a fierce fight. Secret fierceness excercised by a cult connected with powerful and corrupt political figures is immensely devious, and consitutes a fine opportunity for crack investigative journalists.

No Edward Gibbon To Chronicle Sai Baba’s Decline and Fall - Yet

Surprising openings in a long-muzzled Indian media occurred November 2006, when Paul Lewis’s story broke in The Guardian - The Indian living god, the paedophilia claims and the Duke of Edinburgh awards. It raised concerns about the nexus between the Duke of Edinburgh Awards and the UK Sai youth, on their way in large numbers to see Sai Baba.

Awards, owing to, in this sort of issue, a not very experienced or competent UK CEO, Peter Westgarth - see HERE - was slow off the mark. However, after very high level representations from our side, the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme trustees and Prince Philip’s Private Secretary, Brigadier Sir Miles Hunt-Davies KCVO, CBE,

realized that a serious matter was at hand. Questions were also raised by some powerful citizens, including a former Home Minister, Tom Sackville. The Duke of Edinburgh Awards required of Dr G. Venkataraman, at an official Sai Baba website to take down the triumphant - but absurdly mistaken - information that the Duke of Edinburgh Award had been awarded to Sai Baba himself.

G. Venkataraman, formerly a member of India’s highly secret nuclear establishment, is Sai Baba’s deputy world head, who also directs Sai Baba’s international 7 days 24 hours satellite radio service via the WorldSpace international corporation. According to the Wikipedia entry for ‘Sathya Sai Baba’, its Director Dr Michael Nobel is “one of the patrons for the radio network” and “said that the radio network would spread Sathya Sai Baba’s message of global harmony and peace”. (With little sense of time’s passage the Wiki article says, absurdly, that Michael Nobel is the son of Alfred Nobel, who founded The Nobel Foundation and after whom the Nobel Prize is named)

An Imperial Puttaparthi Wishes To Penetrate Every Corner of Globe

Dr Venkataraman states:

“Sometime in September 2001, two distinguished visitors came to Sri Sathya Sai Super Speciality Hospital in Bangalore. They were Dr. Noah Samara, CEO, WorldSpace Corporation, and Dr. Michael Nobel, Chairman, Nobel Family Society, and a Member of the Board of Directors of WorldSpace. Dr. Nobel is the great grand nephew of Dr. Alfred Nobel, the founder of Nobel Prize … Who can deny the play of the “hidden hand”? Dr. Samara and Dr. Nobel were duly blessed with a Divine Interview, in the course of which Dr. Samara offered at the Lotus Feet an entire digital radio channel for broadcasting Swami’s Message of Love and Compassion to the entire world”.

Duke Versus Emperor. Edinburgh Beats  Puttaparthi

On November 4, 2006, The Guardian ran Paul Lewis’s story (see above). In a development that occurred quite without (a story perhaps to be told one day) The Guardian seeking it, in November 2006, The Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) managed to get a few major Indian media to take the feed on the Paul Lewis story. There have been decades of censorship of material adverse to the politically and religiously too-hot-to-handle Sai Baba and his vast and, in India, extraordinarily powerful Sathya Sai Organization. This feed also went to parts of Asia and the Middle East. It has been an absurd situation that NRI’s (Non Resident Indians) have been accessed in the media of many countries with large Indian diaspora to critical information about Sai Baba, when Indians in their own country have been denied.

Investigative Opportunities

The present writer (email:  bpittard(at)optusnet.com) can provide journalists and other investigators with a slew of media and academic contacts who can verify that the Sathya Sai Organization is a prime example of a cult in hiding from the media and others wishing to examine it. This is why the BBC obtained a difficult to gain sanction from its senior managment and Legals to use a hidden camera on the world chairman of Sai Baba’s orgnanization, Dr Michael Goldstein of Covina, California. (See BBC video footage HERE)

Without hazard to life and limb, astute, seasoned, well-briefed journalists should be able to slip unnoticed into Sai Baba ashrams and centers and other meeting places, and those of other cults. One financial journalist was about to investigate the vast money trails but got reassigned. Another, an award winning journalist from an Australian newspaper was, after weeks of intense investigation, about to front page when, at the last moment, his Editor-In-Chief spiked the story. A Can-West journalist had to modify his piece after heads of his newspaper got ensconced for hours with lawyers of a multi-millionaire advertizer with the same newspaper. However, many media have stood up to pressures from the Sathya Sai Organization senior brass.

Any temptation to obtain a good laugh from silly beliefs or practices should at all costs be avoided. It is no laughing matter that, for example, young people can get themselves horribly enmeshed in cult life, just as we can lose them via drugs and alcohol. Trustfully, by better awareness among broadcasters’ of their journalists getting too close to their stories, (BBC) John Sweeny-like confrontations will be avoided. See my article, Of Anger. BBC’s John Sweeney and the Scientologists.

The Emperor Without Clothes

At this link, in the article When ‘Divine’ Magnetism Becomes A Dead Weight, I provide but one example of the sort of craziness Sai Baba’s many supposedly educated devotees respond to in the manner of the subjects in the Hans Christian Anderson story The Emperor’s New Clothes. The George W. Bush medical advisor Professor Kanwaljeet ‘Sunny’ Anand, the birth scientist, stands as one of many examples around Sai Baba of those who desert their normal intelligence and range into the empirically absurd. There is a naked discrepancy which they, including Sai Baba’s more intellectual followers, see-but-don’t-see. Robert Priddy comments aptly on Sai Baba’s unscientific statements about magnetism and the nature of the atom HERE

Cult Awareness and Non-Cooperation Will Demolish Sai Baba’s Empire

According to the great British historian, Edward Gibbon (1737-1794):

“The union of the Roman empire was dissolved; its genius was humbled in the dust; and armies of unknown barbarians, issuing from the frozen regions of the North, had established their victorious reign over the fairest provinces of Europe and Africa.” Chapter 33, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

But it will not be armies of barbarians who humble the showman emperor’s empire into dust. Quite apart from his implication in police killings in Sai Baba’s bedroom on June 6, 1993, and credible witnesses in many parts of the world with accounts that, taken together, depict Sai Baba as a large-scale serial sexual molester of boys and young men, it will not be alone the exposure in the wider public domain of his own recorded words and deeds that rocks his empire. Read his discourses - simply that - and the contradictions, the absurdly non-scientific and blundering historical statements (now excised where possible by his editors, but archived by Robert Priddy and Brian Steel, see below) will demolish him. The chances are that you will not be magnetized or God-ed by Sai Baba. He says he will rule the earth, but he cannot even rule the Duke of Edinburgh. Nor, breaking famous and widely publicized promises, can he transform India, which as UN and other studies have shown is in the grip of enormous corruption at virtually every level, and has abysmally failed to institute essential reforms. Nor has he been able to honor many years of promises that he is about to travel to other parts of the world - see, Will World Accept Sai Baba. He says yes. Very Soon

Wide-scale derision, not unmixed with scorn and some helpless laughter and refusal by civic, government, political and religious bodies to cooperate with the Sathya Sai Organization, which attempts to link up with respected mainstream institutions, will topple this ‘God’, and demolish his empire.

Further Resources

Useful are the websites of retired (or refreshed!) academics, Robert Priddy (Norway), HERE, and Brian Steel (Australia) HERE. See also Wikipedia reference under: ‘Robert Priddy’ HERE and his blogsite at: http://Robertpriddy.wordpress.com
There are also the general former devotee website at http://www.exbaba.com, with English, Dutch, Italian sections. Those at http://saiguru.net/ are in English, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Italian, German, Danish, Polish and Norwegian

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A Duke Stops An Emperor. Edinburgh Routs Sai Baba

HRH The Duke of Edinburgh is pictured before and after his harrowing linking with Sathya Sai Baba

It is intriguing to find that a mere Duke can stop an Emperor in his tracks.

To their considerable cost, the “secret swami” - as the BBC (see HERE for video footage) has called India’s and the world’s would-be Emperor Sai Baba, the core leaders of the Sathya Sai Organization know too well the stark factuality of the following.  Rank-and-file members cannot be expected to be told the facts. (The details below, including sharing some direct sources, I shall confirm for well-reputed, bona fide investigators, such as media and academics or their supervised thesis students):

1. Officials of The Duke of Edinburgh Awards and Buckingham Palace were upset by the boasting of those such as Dr G. Venkataraman and Shitu Chudasama about the Award connections. (Dr. G. Venkataraman is Sai Baba’s deputy world head, who also directs Sai Baba’s international 7 days 24 hours propaganda satellite radio service via the WorldSpace International corporation. See HERE. Shitu Chudasama is the UK Sai Baba national youth coordinator.
2. Superiors to Peter Westgarth, the Director of the Duke of Edinburgh Awards, were of the view that he lacked, in this issue, both judgement and experience
3. When matters were finally taken in hand, both Awards and Palace dropped connection with the Sathya Sai Organization
4.  The official, Puttaparthi website - that is to say, a Sai Baba website senior to all other Sai Organization websites - was asked by the Royal authorities to take down the embarrassing and untrue material. The request was promptly complied with
5. Advice was received from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, with a view to both avoiding any blowbacks in Anglo-Indian relations and further embarrassment to the Royal Family. The advice was:  drop them but not publicly.

6. Legal advice was also canvassed

Click on Link to see related story by Paul Lewis in The Guardian - The Indian living god, the paedophilia claims and the Duke of Edinburgh awards

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Wealthy Americans Prepare Mansions For “God’s” Visit

The English poet Alexander Pope had an exquisite appreciation of situations like desperate devotees clinging to forlorn hope in the face of Sai Baba’s many broken promises to visit places, like Rome, Southern California, the UK, Malaysia, etc,:

Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always To be Blest

Below is an email from a foremost Sai Baba critic, the late Glen Meloy (11 Jan 2004), to a researcher at BBC 2’s This World television documentary team and me. She, I.A.,  was working on the documentary that became The Secret Swami (which can be viewed HERE. See also my article:
The Genesis of the BBC’s ‘The Secret Swami’ (Sai Baba). See also, In Memoriam – Glen Meloy (”Standing up for truth and goodness”). The .pdf version, with color motifs, is HERE.

Glen Meloy’s reference to Sai Baba’s promises - and even arrangements - to travel to Southern California hark way back to the early 1970’s. Yet as recently as February 16, 2007, in a so-called ‘divine discourse’, Sai Baba said, “I intend to undertake a world tour, shortly.” In yesterday’s blog (See reference at end), I raised the questions, But will he? How can he? For the very thought is drastically absurd!

Glen Meloy’s email note:

The whole Southern California contingent was on “red alert” many times over the alleged visit by SSB to the USA. All of this stemmed from a well publicized promise he had made to Elsie Cowan and the Southern California devotees that he would come and stay at her home and be available for the Tustin Book Center volunteers and selected members from the Southern California Centers. Dr. Sandweiss remodeled his house as did many others. They even created special bathrooms designed just for SSB. Elsie was still hoping for a visit after she donated the land and building for the existing Tustin Book Center on 1sr street in Tustin, California. It had a special bath that was reserved only for SSB.

When the first rumor was thought to be realized in 1974-1975, Elsie asked me to contact the Annenbergs in Rancho Mirage , California to see if we could reserve their estate for a private meeting place that would accommodate at least 150 specially selected devotees. Annenberg was the founder of TV GUIDE and had a huge private guarded castle like estate in the desert and entertained Prince Charles, Ronald Reagan and the like.

Indulah Shaw, Dr. Bhagavatham, and Dr. Gokak visited the USA as advance people for the trip, but it never came about.

Poor Elsie was feeling distraught one evening and invited Walt Neubaurer and myself up to her room at her condo in Tustin, California and she pounded on the wall 3 times and said that was the way she could get Baba’s attention. She was quite a character……multi-millionaires who, with her husband Walter had previously been a close devotee of Kirpal Singh. As soon as they heard about SSB, they hopped on a plane and were met with open arms. After several million dollars in donations, including the new Youth Hostel building in Puttaparthi, The Cowans were given a personal letter from SSB granting them the exclusive right to publish, distribute and re-print ALL of the various Sai Baba Books outside of India. Walter Cowan was an extremly wealthy man who had made his fortune by buying up properties that contained oil and natural gas. A prominent section of Tustin, California is named Cowan Heights in honor of their influence. They had a huge home that was later given to Elsie’s daughter and her grandchildren.

Elsie was quite perky and brazen with SSB and thought nothing of coming up to him at the temple in front of all the Indians and grabbing his hand. This shocked all the locals, but Elsie was the “Grand Dame” with the money and got away with it. She hated Indulal Shah (called him the little weasel) and also never cared for Goldstein.

For an organization that was thought to be so loving, it amazed me that there was so much bickering and jealousy going on in an organization whose leader allegedly lived at the world’s Supreme “Abode of Peace.”
I met personally with Dr. Gardhia several times, both in Canada and the USA. At the time, I was impressed with his little silver box that allegedly manifested Vibhuti whenever it became empty. To fill it, he used to tap it against his forehead 3 times and chant a mantra, after which he would open the lid to display copious amounts of overflowing ash.

There are devotees all over the world waiting for that crazy plane to lift off……..What a joke! How hypnotized we were.

Closely Related Blog:

Has ‘World Saviour’ Missed His Plane?

Quote: “In his February 16, 2007 so-called ‘divine discourse’, Sai Baba said, “I intend to undertake a world tour, shortly.” But will he? How can he?

The guru, perhaps the most wealthy and politically powerful in India’s long history, claims that he will save the world in his own lifetime. He will, he says, preside over the greatest changes ever to occur in history - the Moslems being the last to accept that he is God”.

June 24th, 2007 by Barry Pittard

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Dalai Lama: Forgiveness does not mean forgetfulness

At the Brisbane Entertainment Centre, Australia, July 14, 2007, the 14th Dalai Lama spoke to a capacity, 15000 audience. Several large screens throughout the auditorium meant that people were able to see him close up.

This well reinforced a remark that someone had made - that he was “radically informal”. It was true - he had a profound naturalness, straightforwardness and simplicity. There were also  large crowds outside watching on a large television screen outside the Brisbane Entertainment Center.

Forgiveness does not entail forgetfulness

First, I shall single out one of the points he made, because it can throw light on the motivations of many former devotees of Sathya Sai Baba around the world. Most are not motivated by hatred against Sai Baba or leaders of his Sathya Sai Organization but believe it important to state their case as best they can, if in very difficult circumstances.

This point of the Dalai Lama’s - about forgiveness - is made, like all of his points, in many wisdom traditions, yet it seems to forever need to be raised and clarified, simple a point although it is.

Anyone who knows those individuals around the world who have dissented from Sai Baba - many of them having been deeply committed to his work for decades until they resigned or simply walked out - knows that most of those individuals speak out decidedly not because of hatred and revenge. It is a simplistic notion that speaking out about crimes and other wrong-doings has to to equate to hatred and revenge. Even if, since none of us is perfect, we err, it is important for us all to look for some better resolution of the issues. Some of the insights gained in the ‘Truth Commission’ processes may afford a guide for groups who are ready to reform themselves and seek compassionate solutions. See e.g., http://www.truthcommission.org

A society in which serious allegations are not brought out will remain a terribly crippled one. It will be one of secrecy, and lack compassion. It will not address the difficulties that so sorely need to be raised. China is far from alone in this, and we each need to address our own country’s failures to be a genuinely just society. However, China, as many cults do, has a long record of severe suppression, secrecy and violation of human rights. It has strongly protested to the Australian government, attempting to get it to stop the Dalai Lama’s visit. It would like us to forget him, and forget its atrocities, including enforced colonization and genocide. It can no more say sorry for these and make amends - to name but one of many Chinese government human outrages, for its violent mass killings in Tienanmen Square in 1989 (see Wikipedia reference HERE) than my own country’s government of John Howard can say sorry to our own wonderful, but tragically decimated indigenous people. Howard and the federal Opposition Leader, a former diplomat, Kevin Rudd, who speaks fluent mandarin Chinese, have both vacilated severely about whether they would meet the Dalai Lama. Most suddenly and curiously, neither appeared to know what their diary was doing but in fact, according to various media reports, they were both locked in consulting their realpolitik options - namely the trade issue, since China is Australia’s biggest trading partner. (I have dealt with this issue, from the perspective of our own interfaces with a number of governments in relation to Sai Baba HERE.  Many governments prefer narrow pragmatism over humanitarian conscience). 

What the Dalai Lama has succeeded in doing, and what a few others like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Mary Robinson and so on have so powerfully sought to do is to rise above hatred and vengeful, violent retaliation. (It may be good if we all start making a list and add still many more role model names, such as the Myhero project has sought to do at this page HERE). They have struggled on the great scale just as the rest of us have to struggle on the smaller scale. Not one of these leaders failed to speak out against the evils that had been perpetrated - such as those of war, empire, colonialism - and the disgraceful and terrible means used to realize them. Remembering evils can be graceful, especially when we have community support, and personal methods of self-discipline and induction of genuine calmness - such that we do not visit them on others as doctrine.

Forgiveness: Not losing compassion for the other person

Answering a question from the audience, the Dalai Lama distinguished between forgiveness and forgetfulness. He said that forgiveness is logically not possible with the absence of forgetting. To forgive, you need to remember what it is that you are forgiving. Forgiveness means not losing compassion for the other person. Sooner or later that individual, if they have have committed an offence, has to face the consequencies. Forgiveness does not mean taking no action. The important thing is that you do not let hatred overtake you.

‘Secular Ethics’

The Dalai Lama said he had nothing to offer but common sense. His own religion was his own private matter. His thoughts expressed publically may be termed ’secular ethics’. He had not much to offer, except commonsense.

He was now nearly 72 and since 16 years of age has had lots of difficulties, like the loss of his country. As he tours the world there is always sad news. But it is important to find a way, although recognizing the sadness for what it is, not to detain oneself with it but instead to establish a calm mind. To some, this attitude seems like being careless. But it is not, because a conflicted mind will bring still more troubles. Take problems seriously by all means, of course, but on the objective intellectual level rather than on the emotionally conflictful level. One needs to  look at things objectively, and handle things more realistically, being neither over joyful nor over sad.

Happiness is the very purpose of life

Feelings of compassion and kindness need to be implemented through action. People need to feel a part of society, and self-confident.  We are social ‘animals’. Survival depends on a sense of community. Positive emotions are very good for us, and negative emotions very bad and destructive. The more compassion the better is society’s functioning. This recognition does not belong peculiarly to any religion.

Religious answers often divide

Compassion is very commonly shared by people everywhere since we received it from our time in the mother’s womb and from her as we developed as we developed from our earliest stages as human beings. If morality and ethics were based on adhering to this or that religion, serious questions arise. For example - what religion? Many answers to this are very divisive of humankind. What? Six hundred million human beings should all follow a just one religion and no other. It is not possible. The secular teaching of values is the commonsense solution.

Force has been the typical answer

Compassion cannot be a weapon. If you try to eliminate people’s viewpoints by force the hatred will pass down the generations. Today, one Bin Laden, in ten years 10 Bin Ladens. The Dalai Lama told this in a letter of condolence to President George W. Bush on the day after 9/11. He got a strong laugh from the audience when he said that he has met George Bush and is scheduled to meet him again soon, and finds him individually a very nice man but that “his philosophy and mine are - different”.

Destroying another person is destroying yourself

External disarmament is important but the real need is for internal disarmanant. We need to make these notions familiar to children in school, so that they can confidently say to their parents - this trouble needs to be solved through dialog, not through conflict. Consider the other person as a part of yourself. Destroying another person is destroying yourself.

A questioner asked the Dalai Lama what have been the his greatest joy and and greatest sadness. He replied that there have been so many such moments that it is hard to pick but that two of those that stand out that taken together were very important revelations to him came close together. When he was sixteen he was overjoyed to have obtained his Ph.D. Even as this happened, the Chinese occupation of Tibet was proving very difficult for his people. There was terrible fear of the Chinese soldiers. Over half a million people died, many of starvation, many killed. In March 1958, many Tibetans, including himself, escaped. The experience felt very “Up. Down” but it enforced a sense of reality.

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Dalai Lama visits Steve Irwin’s Australia Zoo

Dalai Lama visits Irwin’s Australia Zoo
Brisbane June 13, 2007

Extract from: theage.com.au (Click for full article)

 Cuddly: the Dalai Lama with, from left, Terry, Bob and Bindi Irwin and a koala. Photo: AP

About 5000 people have gathered at the late Steve Irwin’s Australia Zoo on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast to hear the Dalai Lama talk about kindness to animals and the environment.

Monks at the 71-year-old exiled Tibetan spiritual leader’s Dharamsala monastery are friends with the Irwin family.

Terri Irwin and daughter Bindi today joined with the Dalai Lama at the talk, being held in the zoo’s ‘Crocoseum’.

The Dalai Lama will also use the visit to launch Kindness Week, a community project initiated by Queensland-based palliative care service Karuna Hospice Services.

This afternoon about 15,000 people are expected to fill the Brisbane Entertainment Centre to hear the Dalai Lama speak on the issues of compassion and kindness.

The Chinese government has expressed “strong dissatisfaction” with the Australian government for holding meetings with the Dalai Lama during his 11-day tour of Australia.
…………………………………

Blognote:

Last night, Wednesday June 14, 2007, this blogger got unexpectedly taken to see the Dalai Lama at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre. This venue holds 15,000 and almost all seats were taken, with a crowd outside which one newspaper estimated at about 3000, watching on a large screen. Next blog, extract will be from my notes of this enrichening experience, with some references to how this leader of such great naturalness, simplicity and courage has - against incredible adversity - for so long walked his talk. And, indeed this theme’s relatedness to the wider concerns of http://barrypittard.wordpress.com. That the Dalai Lama would have visited Steve Irwin’s Australia Zoo, in Beerwah, north of Brisbane, will have a special resonance, not only Australians, who as a nation have terribly lamented his loss, but for millions around the world who loved and revered the beautiful and exemplary life of the late environmentalist Steve Irwin, so tragically struck down by a stingray September 4, 2006, and his remarkable family.

The office of the Dalai Lama’s website is: http://www.dalailama.com

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Sai Baba, Kubla Khan, Citizen Kane, Bill Gates et alia

For more lavish pics of Sai Baba’s Imperial splendour, see below. (Are we seeing the rise or decline of the Showman Empire?)

In the director-writer-actor Orson Welles’s great movie classic Citizen Kane, one can, it is true, note certain differences between the U.S. newspaper proprietor William Randolf Hearst

and Welles’s and Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s creation Charles Foster Kane. For decades, the differences have been fought over - fiercely. Nonetheless, both were fabulously wealthy, gigantically egocentric - and corrupt. They splurged incredibly on their domiciles

(Microsoft founder, Bill Gates’s little shack - dubbed by some wag as: Xanadu 2.0.  No zoo there as yet, but who knows? - with the true coming-of-age of Robotics something cyber-’animal’ might be managed)

In naming the fictive Kane’s dream home on sprawling acres, Xanadu, Welles-Mankiewicz thought - perhaps inevitably - of the fabulous city of the 13th Century Mongolian emperor, Kubla Khan (see portrait above) and of the English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s fittingly eccentric and exotic poem known to millions, whose first line runs:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
   Down to a sunless sea

TodayR