THE HAIRSHIRT PONTIFF

In the late thirteenth century a corrosive power struggle between two of the oldest and the most influential families of Rome resulted in paroxysms for the papal office. The Orsini and Colonna families had been literally taking the Throne of Saint Peter in turns, when in 1294 the cardinals were deadlocked in electing the next pope, support in the conclave evenly divided between candidates from each family - and, more widely, loyalties to the Guelphs and Ghibellines - with neither side able to secure the necessary two-thirds majority.

The conclave had dragged on for more than two years, even being relocated to Perugia to escape the oppressive summer heat and an outbreak of plague in Rome. When still no candidate could be agreed upon, and with the citizenry demanding a decision - the practice had begun of bricking in the cardinals until they elected the next pope - a wild-card entry gained unanimous agreement from the exhausted cardinals. But in electing the illiterate cave-dwelling mystic Pietro di Morrone as their head, they had chosen the mediaeval equivalent of a hippie cult leader to be CEO of General Motors. Indeed, any modern cult leader would be better equipped to run a major corporation than Morrone was for the papacy.

He was born into a peasant family in 1215, and became a Benedictine monk, but left the monastery for the mountain solitude of the Abruzzi, east of Rome. He lived a hermit’s life of extreme privation in the mould of John the Baptist, as befitted a mystic anchorite of the era, clad in a hair-shirt and weighed down with iron chains, praying all day into the night, subsisting on little more than water and crusts of dry bread. Given his diet, or lack thereof, it is not surprising he began experiencing visions, which ultimately brought fame from far afield to the cave-dwelling holy man. He founded his own order devoted to the Holy Ghost, which became known as the Celestines, and to escape the ever increasing traffic of pilgrims, retreated to a cave at the hermitage of San Onofrio, on another remote peak.

But even thence his fame spread, attracting the eye of the French king of Naples, Charles II of Anjou, who made the difficult journey to meet him in 1293, and devised a plan which was to have serious consequences for the Church for many decades to come. Charles encouraged the holy hermit to write a letter to the cardinals criticising them for their drawn-out deliberations, and their snap response, which the king might well have anticipated from such exhausted and frazzled men, was to elect Pietro himself.

The vote taken, the pope-elect had to be advised of his elevation to the pontificate, which meant dispatching Vatican envoys on a journey of some 200 kilometres to the remote and rugged mountains where the elderly hermit resided. Clad in their Vatican finery, the envoys were joined en route on this curious expedition by a throng of monks and other faithful, ultimately scrabbling up the rocks to the hermit’s lofty refuge, ‘...a cave over a thousand feet up on the desolate mountain. It was set upon a narrow plateau, with a sheer drop upon one side, and there the party was forced to crowd. News of the approaching cortege had filled Peter (Pietro) not so much with dismay as outright terror. He had intended to fly yet again to one of his remoter refuges, but his disciples, with a keener awareness of the fruits involved, had dissuaded him. When (met) he was peering out through the bars of his cell, his eyelids swollen and darkened by tears, his face emaciated. He barely seemed to understand what was being said to him; then he threw himself upon the ground, prayed, arose, and with infinite reluctance, accepted.’1

By the time Pietro and his entourage descended the mountain, the joyful word of a new pope at last had spread far and wide, and a cheering multitude estimated in the hundreds of thousands poured in to greet the startled pontiff-elect. The next surprise for all concerned was that the new pontiff did not wish to go to Rome to be crowned, but accepted an invitation from King Charles to go south to Naples, where the unhappy cardinals eventually agreed to join him, and he established his papacy as Celestine V.

From the outset things were difficult. The new pope chose to live humbly in a custom built replica of his mountain cell, and could not speak Latin, the language of the papal court, but instead vernacular Italian, the roughness of which assaulted the delicate ears of the papal courtiers. He also appeared to have little idea of his role and his power to rule by decree, and from the outset dispensed positions and money virtually to anyone who bothered to ask, and they were inevitably very many in number.


This became most serious and have the longest-lasting and most deleterious effects, when at the request of his French patron Charles, Pietro ordained eight new French cardinals, drastically shifting the balance of power in the cardinalate to the northwest. 

For the time being however, the faithful rejoiced at the elevation of a bone-fide hair-shirt holy man, dancing for joy in a much anticipated mediaeval-style “Summer of Love”. ‘The election of a simple good man, who was taken from his cave to mount the most splendid throne in Europe, had first astonished and then delighted Christians. It seemed as though they were witnessing the working out of those recent prophecies which foretold a new dispensation, when the meek would rule the mighty...’2

It was not to be, all unravelling with frightening speed. ‘In a little over a month, Celestine reduced the bureaucracy to chaos with his casual gifts and retractions creating an inextricable tangle... Celestine was in an impossible position. On one side were the men to whom he had given a new order and hope, exhorting him to begin the reign of love. On another were the tough and cynical papal bureaucrats who were either employing him for their own ends or were attempting to force his whole way of life into an alien mould.’3 

The cardinals knew something had to be done, but what? Depose him, with such passionate popular support, not to mention that of his landlord and patron, the powerful Neapolitan king? Impossible. Then one of their number, Cardinal Benedetto Caetani, realising Pietro was as uncomfortable with the papacy as it was with him, came up with an unprecedented plan, apparently without the knowledge of the other cardinals, and presented it to the hermit pope.

On 13 December 1294, only four months after his coronation, a trembling Pietro resigned his office before the stunned assembly of cardinals, and then, divesting himself of his papal robes before their startled eyes and re-donning his hair-shirt, walked out. All eyes then turned to the man who had composed the resignation, Benedetto Caetani, and despite deep rumblings over the legality and circumstances of what had occurred by his hand, nine days later the cardinals reconvened and this time took just one day to elect Caetani himself, who took the name Boniface VIII.

Fearing opposition could coalesce around the abdicated pope and question his legitimacy, the new pontiff took the hermit into his company on the journey back north, but the old man was not for Rome and absconded, rejoining his followers in the mountains, to much rejoicing. When Boniface ordered him arrested Pietro slipped through his fingers again, becoming a shadowy itinerant in the Italian countryside until he was captured attempting to gain passage across the Adriatic to Greece. He spent three years in prison, badly treated, until Boniface had him murdered in his cell. So ended the life of a simple man who yearned for solitude but was dragged into the machinery of Rome against his will, crushed and spat out. The sole consolation for his followers was his canonisation in 1313, less than two decades after his death.

1. Chamberlin, R., The Bad Popes, Sutton Publishing, Phoenix Mill, 2003, p81
2. ibid, p81

3. ibid, p84

From my book, Tales of the Popes: From Eden to El Dorado.

http://www.newholland.com.au/product.php?isbn=9781741106664

A COAL TRAIN CALLED JOHN

Struggling for breath with a cold

In the night I hear the coal trains

Shuttling down the line to town,

The jazz of each passing one so

Lonely and dolorous I call it John;

I lie listening to the silence 

As it settles in the garden

You can’t hear silence they say,

But I listen to it anyway

In its perfection of absence.

Then from the line

The sound chills down

The valleys and gullies,

Another coal train humping

A blue note in its wake,

Its trucks abrim with brine,

Beating time on the rim

For a coming day so very near

Yet imaginary still as all

The else we fail to hear.

* You can listen to me reading "A Coal Train Called John", as well as "My Country", by clicking on the link below. 


http://larrybuttrose.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/my-writer-day-with-varuna.html

SOUND ECONOMICS

                     5 or so mins after the dawn of time

                     nature invented the solar panel

                     we call it "the leaf"

                     now a tad belatedly

                     clever clever we

                     are slowly catching up

                    though truth be said we do 

                    prefer smoking our coal and oil

                    and dunking our uranium

                    for all the obvious

                    heath reasons

                    and the sound economics

THE RAKE'S PROGRESS

Some time ago, back in the mists of the unrecorded recent, the heavy guns of ABC Publicity began their long distance “softening up”. As the hour grew nearer, a fearsome array of batteries joined in, nightly salvo after salvo, pulverising the senses of viewers as they sat helpless in their easy chairs. 

Then mortar barrages joined from the sides of buses, and we were sniped at from taxi backs and billboards as we sat ever marooned in traffic. So, by the time it actually sneak-previewed on the ABC’s website, we could have been forgiven for thinking that Rake was as overexposed as Richard Roxburgh’s left buttock.

Given the saturation high explosive propaganda and the Hillsongy zeal invested in it by our national broadcaster, it is perhaps astonishing to report that Rake is actually good. In fact, so good is it, it is probably the best Australian drama series in a very long time, being that most unusual local beast, television for grown-ups.

Roxburgh’s Sydney barrister Cleaver Greene is a coke-snorting, best mate’s wife-rooting, boozer and gambler, a beaten-up, oft-beaten ne’er-do-well whose muse is a former favourite whore, and whose psychologist ex-wife is more like his therapist.

Every thread of his life is troubled and vexed - his house of cards could collapse in the mildest northerly. He is ever under threat of being de-barred for his idiosyncratic approach to his work, the women in his life are a snip from nipping off his testicles as he sleeps, and the mob are carefully measuring his feet for cement shoes.

In other words, he is true to life. Especially as the series is set in Sydney, Sinny, Sin City, the underbelly long before Underbelly. 

It also rings true because in company with writer/director Peter Duncan, and Roxburgh, the series was co-created by colourful Sydney legal identity (and now newspaper columnist) Charles Waterstreet. So, we can be sure, the references to the decadence of life in Sydney and its eastern environs, are all finely authenticated. 

(This also suggests a possible deciphering of the strange character name of Cleaver Greene, surely the oddest since Porter Moresby. The English actor Sydney Greenstreet played a gallery of rogues in Hollywood, most notably Kaspar Gutman in The Maltese Falcon, and Signor Ferari in Casablanca. In naming his own cosy denizen of the demimonde, has Waterstreet swapped his own “street” for “Greene” - the clue being the “Sydney” in Greenstreet’s name? As for the “Cleaver”, well, that tends to be Mr Greene’s legal (and life) modus operandi, though it has also been suggested it was the first name of a leading civic official of Albury, where Messrs Waterstreet and Roxburgh both grew up.

Possibly like Mr Waterstreet, despite all the other mad things going on in his life, Mr Greene is good at his job. He is devastating in court, seducing, entrancing and daring juries by turn, and rapier-steely in his cross-examinations of witnesses, and Roxburgh makes full creative use of every clever quip, impassioned speech and candid insight his writer(s) give him. In fact, so good is Greene at his job, that in a recent episode he gained an acquittal for a feral artist (played by a suitably gravel-basso David Field) who had rendered a street boy into a customised San Sebastian.

There’s the rub with Cleaver Greene. He was upset when he realised he’d managed that acquittal, because despite all the coke and booze and demimonde-modish jiggery-pokery, and the hardboiled Hammett-Chandler facade that Roxburgh affects with his raspy, fag-end expirations, Greene is a moral man. He believes in good over evil and all that, provided he can bet on the nags, snort powder from little bags, and get his end in with at least one new woman per ep. Not that he always quite gets the latter, but then he is supposed to be in love with his reformed whore-muse, “Missy”, isn’t he. And, to that degree, it would appear he ascribes to that ultimate moral value, love.

As such, Greene's Rake is less than Hogarthian, though the tapestry of Sydney characters we pass by in this tinselled lower ring of Hades, including Hugo Weaving’s cannibal Friedmanite economist, Noah Taylor’s police informant lowlife, and Sam Neil and Heather Mitchell’s doggy menage a trois, is nothing if not that. 

Rather than from Hogarth’s brush, Greene would seem to spring more from the pen of Voltaire, Hogarth's cross-Channel contemporary, in Candide’s journey through trial and pain towards a life that is truthful and sustainable, rather than viewed through a philosophical lens, which in Greene’s case would be the bottom of a bottle.

Despite being possibly a tad underturbo as the shagger, a mite thoughtful for a punting mob associate, and subcutaneously snaggy for a knuckleman, Roxburgh remains convincing as Greene, not in spite of his character’s manifest flaws, but because of them: Greene feels composed of nothing but them. And while “Missy” muses out loud upon the “dirty little thing” that all “decent” people keep locked away as their secret, be these fantasies, affairs, brothel hops, or a preference for S&M, bondage, or Other, Cleaver Greene is presumably up for any and all of them, and anything else on life’s menu too. Well, anything rich and sticky.

NOTHING IS REALLY SMALL, by Victor Hugo

Nothing is really small. Algebra applies to the clouds. The radiance of the star benefits the rose. No thinker would dare to say that the perfume of the hawthorn is useless to the constellations. Who can calculate the path of a molecule? How do we know that creations of worlds are not determined by the fall of grains of sand?

In this inexhaustible whole, from sun to grub, there is no scorn; all need each other. Light carries the terrestrial vision into azure depths, night casts the stellar essence to the sleeping plants. 

Every bird which flies has the thread of the infinite in its claw. Germination includes the hatching of a meteor and the tap of a swallow’s bill breaking the egg, and it all leads forth to the birth of the earthworm, and the advent of Socrates.

Who understands the flux of the infinitely great and the infinitely small, the echoing of causes in the abysses of being, and the avalanches of creation? The small is great, the great is small, all is in equilibrium in necessity. Fearful vision for the mind.

Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which has the grander view? Choose. A bit of mould is a pleiad of flowers, a nebula is an anthill of stars.

In the vast cosmical changes, the universal life comes and goes in untold quantities, rolling all in the invisible mystery, losing no dream from no single sleep, sowing a gnat here, crumbling a star there, oscillating and winding, making a force of light, and an element of thought, dissolving all, reducing everything to the soul-atom, save that geometrical point, the Me.

Entangling all, from the highest to the lowest, in a dizzying mechanism, hanging the flight of an insect upon the movement of the earth. A machine made of mind. An enormous gearing, whose first motor is the gnat, and whose last wheel, is the zodiac.

My edit of a favourite passage from Les Miserables, that I read along with some poetry at the 25 November Campaign Dinner in Leura for Janet Mays, independent candidate for the seat of the Blue Mountains at the forthcoming New South Wales state election, to be held on 26 March 2011.

HOW BAD WERE THE BORGIAS REALLY?

In October 2002 a major exhibition opened at the Palazzo Ruspoli in Rome, The Borgias: The Art of Power. It drew together more than two hundred artworks from museums around the world. In addition to Pinturicchio, who decorated the Borgia apartments in the Vatican, and who painted Giulia Farnese as the Virgin Mary for Alexander’s bedchamber, other artists who met the Borgias, and whose works were part of the exhibition, included Michelangelo, Titian and Bellini. One room was dedicated solely to Cesare Borgia’s military costumery. 

Intent upon the question of whether the Borgias really were as bad as history has presented them, the exhibition’s curators were keen to mount a strong defence. Co-curator and Borgia scholar Learco Andalo said at the opening, ‘The aim of the show is to put the record straight. The Borgias are the victims of biased historical accounts based on malicious rumour.’1

While few could deny the ruthless machinations of Rodrigo Borgia - Pope Alexander VI - and his son Cesare, the organisers in particular cast doubt upon the more shocking stories, such as incest with Lucrezia. Co-curator Carlo Alfano said many alleged crimes of Lucrezia were untrue, adding: ‘Nor were claims that she had had an incestuous relationship with her father true, probably'2, and attested to the view that rumours of Borgia incest were spread by Lucrezia’s jilted and disgruntled spouse, Giovanni Sforza.

Many historians concur that the accounts of incest were probably fabricated by Sforza, but that is not to say Alexander and Cesare did not behave in a scandalous manner in other respects, in particular the strong suspicion that Cesare raped Caterina Sforza. But it would appear with regard to Lucrezia at least, some basic human taboos were observed by the Borgias.

Pope Alexander VI, Rodrigo Borgia 

Various accounts deem Lucrezia a woman wronged by previous generations whose stories became mingled with luridly colourful fictions about her, growing into a literary cottage industry which flourished during the nineteenth century. The Lucrezia industry shows little sign of slowing down. With new books, stage productions and films still being developed and released about her life, the name would appear to return its mystery and allure for authors, directors and public alike.

What then is the truth of the popular reputation of the Borgias as poisoners, which has rightly or wrongly persisted for generations? It seems again that an intermingling of history and Romantic fiction, and the fact that poisoning was common during the Renaissance, may have led to the prevailing view.

The Borgias are said to have killed up to seventy of their rivals through poisoning, with some accounts of them killing people at a rate or one or two a week. In some versions Lucrezia’s chef and poisoner worked side by side in her kitchens - surely very dangerous if they got their mixing bowls confused.

Their poison of choice was popularly a white powder called cantarella, said to have had a pleasant taste but be extremely toxic and leading quickly to death. Its purported use grew into the stuff of proverbs - which may have come from the Borgia’s political foes - such as “tasting the cup of the Borgias”, being a synonym for sudden, mysterious death. 

Cesare Borgia

According to the more macabre accounts, Alexander and Cesare experimented in applying arsenic to the entrails of freshly slaughtered beasts, from the decaying flesh of which they later harvested the fabled cantarella, less detectable and far more powerful than arsenic itself. Another version has the Borgias force-feeding arsenic to a bear, and extracting cantarella from its vomit.

Borgia biographer Marion Johnson, while pointing out that many people at the time were interested in trying to poison others, believes it was at best a very imprecise skill. ‘Poisoning was an art practised all over Italy... The science however, was defective, and more was attempted than accomplished... Legend portrays Cesare as an inveterate poisoner. No doubt he was interested, but the method was far too unsure for one who aimed to practise an efficient terror.’3 

Lucrezia Borgia

The curators of the The Borgias exhibition refuted any inference that Lucrezia was a poisoner. ‘Lucrezia poisoned no-one,’ Learco Andaro stated. ‘She was poisoned by the pen of history and nineteenth century Romanticism. She was instead a gifted stateswoman. She even ran the Vatican in her father’s absence.’4 

It would appear the jury is less decided, however, about whether Cesare was a poisoner. Nineteenth century historian Jacob Burckhardt considered that in addition to his fixer Don Michelotto, Cesare employed his own personal poisoner, a Spaniard called Sebastiano Pinzon.5 Here too is historian Garrett Mattingly’s assessment of Cesare:

‘It was said that he was his father’s rival for his sister’s bed. (Almost certainly false.) It was said that after the horrible sack of Capua he seized forty beautiful highborn maidens and added them to his personal harem. (Highly unlikely, Cesare does not seem to have shared his father’s excessive appetite. The maidens were probably commandeered by Cesare’s captains, though perhaps in his name.) It was said that he seduced that gallant youth Astorre Manfredi, and when he tired of him had him murdered. (Possibly, but the motive for the murder was more probably purely political.) It was said he murdered his brother, the Duke of Gandia. (Probable. At least his father seems to have believed it.) And that he had his brother-in-law, Lucrezia’s second husband, murdered. (Pretty certainly true). But it was a dull week when one, at least, of the embassies of Rome did not chalk up another murder to Cesare’s credit, sometimes by poison, sometimes by the hands of hired assassins, sometimes by his own dagger. Probably he really was responsible for a fair share of those bodies hauled out of the Tiber... As he marched through the anarchic Papal States, seizing one town after another, by bribery or trickery or the sheer terror of his name, his legend hung over him like a thundercloud.’6

That thundercloud lifted with the deaths of Rodrigo and Cesare Borgia. The final judgement on Rodrigo fell to the men entrusted with his corpse, their feelings of whom may have mirrored those of other ordinary Romans. ‘...the body was carried to the Chapel of Santa Maria della Febbre and placed in its coffin next to the wall in a corner by the altar. Six labourers or porters, making blasphemous jokes about the pope and in contempt of his corpse, together with two master carpenters, performed this task. The carpenters had made the coffin too narrow and short, and so they placed the pope’s mitre at his side, rolled his body up in an old carpet, and pummelled and pushed it into the coffin with their fists. No wax tapers or lights were used, and no priests or other persons attended to his body.’7

Actress Anne Lambert in the role of Lucrezia Borgia

1. The Borgias: The Art of Power http://www.italica.rai.it/index.php?categoria=art&scheda=borgia
2. ibid.
3. Johnson, M., The Borgias, Penguin Books, London, 2001, pp186-187
4. http://www.italica.rai.it/index.php?categoria=art&scheda=borgia
5. Burckhardt, J., The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, Mentor, New York City, 1960, p109
6. Mattingly, G., in Plumb, J.H. (ed), Renaissance Profiles, Harper Torchbook, New York City, 1965, p23
7. Testimony of Johann Burchard, papal master of ceremonies, in Walsh, M.J., he Popes: 50 Celebrated Occupants of the Throne of St Peter, Quercus Publishing, London, 2007, p155

The Medici and the Murder In the Duomo 

http://larrybuttrose.blogspot.com/2011/04/medici-and-murder-in-duomo.html

from my book, Tales of the Popes: From Eden to El Dorado.

http://www.newholland.com.au/product.php?isbn=9781741106664

To read more about the Borgias, please go to another of my postings on the subject:

http://larrybuttrose.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/borgia-papal-bull.html

AUNG SAN SUU KYI Nobel Prize speech

   

Aung San Suu Kyi's release from house arrest last weekend has raised hopes yet again for a peaceful transition to democracy in Burma. This optimism is tempered, however, by the past behaviour of the ruling military junta, of re-arresting her at will.  

The daughter of Burmese national leader Aung San who was assassinated while she was still an infant, Aung San Suu Kyi has become recognised worldwide for her selfless and unremitting struggle over two decades for Burmese freedom from military dictatorship.

Now aged 65, she was educated at Oxford before returning to Burma in 1988. She soon became the leader of the democracy movement, and was subjected to house arrest and threatened with assassination before the 1990 elections, in which her National League for Democracy party won more than 80 per cent of seats. 

The military junta refused to honour the result, and she was again placed under house arrest. In the nearly two decades since then, much of the time spent under house arrest, she has gained enormous international support, and become one of the world’s best-known advocates for peaceful change. 

Among her many honours was the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, which the military junta prevented her from attending to receive. Here is her acceptance speech, delivered on her behalf by her son, Alexander Aris, in Oslo on 10 December 1991. 

‘The Burmese people can today hold their heads a little higher in the knowledge that in this far distant land their suffering has been heard and heeded. We must also remember that the lonely struggle taking place in a heavily guarded compound in Rangoon is part of the much larger struggle, worldwide, for the emancipation of the human spirit from political tyranny and psychological subjection. The Prize, I feel sure, is also intended to honour all those engaged in this struggle wherever they may be. It is not without reason that today's events in Oslo fall on the International Human Rights Day, celebrated throughout the world.

Mr. Chairman, the whole international community has applauded the choice of your committee. Just a few days ago, the United Nations passed a unanimous and historic resolution welcoming Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar's statement on the significance of this award and endorsing his repeated appeals for my mother's early release from detention. Universal concern at the grave human rights situation in Burma was clearly expressed. Alone and isolated among the entire nations of the world a single dissenting voice was heard, from the military junta in Rangoon, too late and too weak.

This regime has through almost thirty years of misrule reduced the once prosperous “Golden Land” of Burma to one of the world's most economically destitute nations. In their heart of hearts even those in power now in Rangoon must know that their eventual fate will be that of all totalitarian regimes who seek to impose their authority through fear, repression and hatred.

When the present Burmese struggle for democracy erupted onto the streets in 1988, it was the first of what became an international tidal wave of such movements throughout Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa. Today, in 1991, Burma stands conspicuous in its continued suffering at the hands of a repressive, intransigent junta, the State Law and Order Restoration Council. However, the example of those nations which have successfully achieved democracy holds out an important message to the Burmese people; that, in the last resort, through the sheer economic unworkability of totalitarianism this present regime will be swept away. And today in the face of rising inflation, a mismanaged economy and near worthless Kyat, the Burmese government is undoubtedly reaping as it has sown.

However, it is my deepest hope that it will not be in the face of complete economic collapse that the regime will fall, but that the ruling junta may yet heed such appeals to basic humanity as that which the Nobel Committee has expressed in its award of this year's prize...

Although my mother is often described as a political dissident who strives by peaceful means for democratic change, we should remember that her quest is basically spiritual. As she has said, “The quintessential revolution is that of the spirit”, and she has written of the “essential spiritual aims” of the struggle. The realisation of this depends solely on human responsibility. 

At the root of that responsibility lies, and I quote, “the concept of perfection, the urge to achieve it, the intelligence to find a path towards it, and the will to follow that path if not to the end, at least the distance needed to rise above individual limitation...” And she links this firmly to her faith when she writes, 

“...Buddhism, the foundation of traditional Burmese culture, places the greatest value on man, who alone of all beings can achieve the supreme state of Buddhahood. Each man has in him the potential to realise the truth through his own will and endeavour and to help others to realise it.” 

Finally she says, “The quest for democracy in Burma is the struggle of a people to live whole, meaningful lives as free and equal members of the world community. It is part of the unceasing human endeavour to prove that the spirit of man can transcends the flaws of his nature.”’

The campaign Aung San Suu Kyi leads remains one of the world’s most pressing struggles for freedom and democracy. The Burmese military junta’s ruthless suppression of dissent led by Buddhist monks in late 2007, refocussed world attention upon the terrible plight of the Burmese people, as have the recently staged elections, with any meaningful opposition banned, and voters urged to boycott the poll.

*Aung San Suu Kyi's speech is from my book, "Speeches of War and Peace", published by New Holland Publishers

http://www.newholland.com.au/product.php?isbn=9781741108682