About Anna Louise Strong, author of a number of books about Tibet prior to 1959

 On Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Louise_Strong

Reportage and travelogues

• The First Time in History: Two Years of Russia's New Life. New York: Boni & Liveright. 1924. (with preface by Leon Trotsky), also on Internet Archive.
• Children of Revolution; story of the John Reed Children's Colony on the Volga, which is as well a story of the whole great structure of Russia. Seattle: Sydney Strong. 1925.
• Modern Farming – Soviet Style: The Revolution in the Russian Village. Boston: International Publishers. 1930., also available at Hathi Trust.
• The Road to the Grey Pamir. Boston: Little, Brown & Company. 1931.
• The Soviets Conquer Wheat. New York: Henry Holt and Company. 1931.
• China's millions: the revolutionary struggles from 1927 to 1935. New York: Knight Publishing Company. 1935.
• The Soviet World. New York: Henry Holt and Company. 1936.
• Spain in Arms, 1937. New York: Henry Holt and Company. 1937.
• The New Soviet Constitution: A Study in Socialist Democracy. New York: Henry Holt and Company. 1937.
• One-fifth of mankind. New York: Modern Age Books. 1938.
• Lithuania's New Way. Boston: Lawrence and Wishart. 1941.
• The Soviets Expected It. New York: The Dial Press. 1942.
• Soviet Farmers. New York: National Council of American-Soviet Friendship. 1944.^[44]
• Peoples of the USSR. New York: The Macmillan Company. 1944., second printing in 1945.
• I Saw The New Poland. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company. 1946.
• Tomorrow's China. New York: Committee for a Democratic Far Eastern Policy. 1948.
• Inside North Korea: an Eye-witness Report. Montrose, California. 1949.
• The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream Publishers. 1956., also in a PDF format.
• The rise of the Chinese people's communes. Peking: New World Press. 1959.
• Tibetan interviews. Peking: New World Press. 1959.
• When Serfs Stood Up in Tibet. Peking: New World Press. 1960., also on Internet Archive
• Cash and Violence in Laos and Vietnam. New York: Mainstream Publishers. 1962.
• Letters from China, Numbers 1–10. Peking: New World Press. 1963.

http://www.democracyandsocialism.com/FameSocialism/Anna_Louise_Strong.html

Anna Louise Strong (1885-1970)

Anna Louise strong was a passionate journalist, writer, pacifist, workers advocate, and a champion of child welfare. An internationalist who was admired by revolutionary and workers’ leaders all around the world. She was a woman ahead of her time.

Anna was born on November 24th, in a socially conscious religious family. Her family left Friend, Nebraska for Seattle, Washington when she was about two years old. At the age of 19, she graduated from Oberon College, Ohio. At the age of 23, she finished her education in philosophy and became the youngest woman ever to receive a doctorate degree from the University of Chicago.

During her father’s missionary works across America, Anna became acquainted with child labor, child poverty, miserable lives of working class families, and the racial discrimination rampant in the U.S. society.

As a passionate advocate of child welfare, she organized an exhibit of child poverty and toured it vastly across the U.S. and abroad. During May 1914, this exhibition attracted more than 40,000 people, only in Seattle.

Anna first believed that with better social arrangements, injustice could be put under restraint. But soon after she realized that there is an economic base for all of human miseries and that is capitalism and its final stage, imperialism. To change the world, you have to change its underlying cause, the economic system.

Anna became a member of the Industrial Workers of the World union. On November 5th 1916, when the Everett, Washington massacre of workers by police and vigilantly took place, she was there as a journalist. By witnessing the brutality of the reactionary forces, she became a passionate advocate and spokesperson for workers’ rights.

In 1917, as the U.S. entered World War I, she spoke out fervently against the draft and opposed military training in schools. This move was supported widely by women’s clubs and by the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA).

She wrote fiery pro-labor articles in the Union Record newspaper and promoted Soviet government in the state of Washington. Meanwhile, she supported and reported the 1919 Seattle General Strike.

In 1921, as a correspondent for the American Friends Service Committee, Anna traveled to Poland and Russia, sending reports among them, for Hearst magazines and the North American Newspaper Alliance. A year later, she was named Moscow correspondent for the International News Service. By watching the events happening in Soviet Russia, she became more and more interested in socialism and a dedicated supporter of the Soviet Union.

During the late 1920’s and early 1930’s, she traveled to Central Asia and China. In 1930, she returned back to Moscow and helped the founding of Moscow News, the first English-language newspaper in the city. She met many Soviet leaders and even taught English to Trotsky.

In 1932, Anna married Joel Shubin a dedicated Soviet socialist. They were often separated due to their political assignments. Shubin died in 1942, when Anna was far from her husband. Anna never married again.

In 1936, Anna returned to the U.S. one additional time. Privately unhappy with the wrong direction of socialism in USSR, she wrote for the Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, the Nation and Asia.

In 1937, as a journalist and to support progressive forces against Franco’s fascists, Anna visited Spain and reported from its battlefields. Her many visits resulted in her book, Spain in Arms.

At the time of World War II, Anna followed the Red Army in its advances in Eastern Europe against the Nazis and sent back first hand reports of fascists’ brutalities.

In 1946, she interviewed Mao Tse-Tung in a Yennan cave and became a close friend of Chou En-Lai.

In the 1950s, when Anna was in China, she met William Edward B. DuBois, the prominent African-American civil rights activist and the Father of Pan-Africanism. They shared many ideas and both supported the Policies of China’s Communist Party and its Revolution.

In 1959, during the land distribution in Tibet and resistance of the landlords, lamas and CIA trained mercenaries against the reforms. Anna was there and wrote a book titled, “When Serfs Stood Up in Tibet”, based on her experience during this period. She also visited an exhibition of torture tools used during the “Shangri-La” period of Tibet. She wrote: “there were handcuffs of all sizes, including small ones for children, and instruments for cutting off noses and ears, gouging out eyes, breaking off hands, and hamstringing legs. There were hot brands, whips, and special implements for disemboweling. The exhibition presented photographs and testimonies of victims who had been blinded or crippled or suffered amputations for thievery. There was the shepherd whose master owed him a reimbursement in Yuan and wheat but refused to pay. So he took one of the master’s cows, for this he had his hands severed. Another herdsman, who opposed having his wife taken from him by his lord, had his hands broken off. There were pictures of Communist activists with noses and upper lips cut off, and a woman who was raped and then had her nose sliced away”. (Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 91-96.)

In her 80th birthday party in Shanghai, she was greeted by Mao Tse-Tung and toasted by Chou En-Lai. On March 29th 1970, when Anna Louise Strong died in Beijing, she was officially mourned by the state and buried in a special cemetery for martyrs of the Revolution.

“Witness to Revolution” is a 27 minute documentary produced in 1984, which portrays Anna Louise Strong. (Available on VHS and DVD.)

Anna wrote some thirty books and hundreds of articles which were published in different newspapers and magazines around the world.

Some of her works are:

• No One Knows Where. (1919)

• The First Time in History. (1925)

• Children of Revolution. (1925)

• China’s Millions. (1928)

• The Red Star of Samarkand. (1929)

• The Soviets Conquer Wheat. (1931)

• Remaking of an American. (1935)

• My Native Land. (1940)

• Talk With Mao Tse-Tung. (1946)

• I Saw The New Poland. (1946)

• In North Korea: First Eye-Witness Report. (1949)

• The Stalin Era. (1956)

• Letters From China. (1963)

Tibetan Interviews - by Anna Louise Strong

Book available affordably at AbeBooks.com 

https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&cm_sp=SearchF-_-home-_-Results&an=strong&tn=Tibetan+interviews&kn=

WHEN SERFS STOOD UP IN TIBET bv Anna Louise Strong - book readable free online

 WHEN SERFS STOOD UP IN TIBET bv Anna Louise Strong

https://www.bannedthought.net/Journalists/Strong-AL/WhenSerfsStoodUpInTibet-ALStrong-1976.pdf

Tibet - The Myth of Shangri-La - An article revisiting the history of Tibet by C R Sridhar

https://www.scribd.com/document/153106366/Tibet-The-Myth-of-Shangri-La

Tibet - The Myth of Shangri-La

An article revisiting the history of Tibet by C R Sridhar

What we don't hear about Tibet - feudalism and abuse in Tibetan culture has been conveniently forgotten

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/feb/10/tibet-china-feudalism?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other 

What we don't hear about Tibet

Sorrel Neuss

While the world moralises over China's occupation, feudalism and abuse in Tibetan culture has been conveniently forgotten

Wed 11 Feb 2009 17.00 EST

Sexual abuse in monasteries and oppressive feudalism in traditional Tibetan society has been factored out of the argument against China's occupation, oversimplifying it.

Han Chinese guards deliberately obstruct the pilgrim route through Lhasa to the holy Jokhang temple by sipping tea at strategically placed tables in the middle of the road. In front of the Potala, the Dalai Lama's former seat of power, an imposing guarded concrete square glorifies China's occupation.

Tibet seems like as a celestial paradise held in chains, but the west's tendency to romanticise the country's Buddhist culture has distorted our view. Popular belief is that under the Dalai Lama, Tibetans lived contentedly in a spiritual non-violent culture, uncorrupted by lust or greed: but in reality society was far more brutal than that vision.

Last December, Ye Xiaowen, head of China's administration for religious affairs, published a piece in the state-run China Daily newspaper that, although propaganda, rings true. "History clearly reveals that the old Tibet was not the Shangri-La that many imagine", he wrote "but a society under a system of feudal serfdom."

Until 1959, when China cracked down on Tibetan rebels and the Dalai Lama fled to northern India, around 98% of the population was enslaved in serfdom. Drepung monastery, on the outskirts of Lhasa, was one of the world's largest landowners with 185 manors, 25,000 serfs, 300 pastures, and 16,000 herdsmen. High-ranking lamas and secular landowners imposed crippling taxes, forced boys into monastic slavery and pilfered most of the country's wealth – torturing disobedient serfs by gouging out their eyes or severing their hamstrings.

Tashi Tsering, now an English professor at Lhasa University is representative of Tibetans that do not see China's occupation as worse tyranny. He was taken from his family near Drepung at 13 and forced into the Dalai Lama's personal dance troupe. Beaten by his teachers, Tsering put up with rape by a well-connected monk in exchange for protection. In his autobiography, The Struggle for Modern Tibet, Tsering writes that China brought long-awaited hope when is laid claim to Tibet in 1950.

After studying at the University of Washington, Tsering returned to Chinese-occupied Tibet in 1964, convinced that the country could modernise effectively by cooperating with the Chinese. Denounced during the Cultural Revolution, arrested in 1967 to spend six years in prison and labour camps, he still maintains that Mao Tse-Tung liberated his people.

Caught between a system reminiscent of medieval Europe and a colonial force that brought forced collectivisation and similar human rights abuses, Tibet moved from one oppressive regime to another.

During the 1990s, Tibetans suspected of harbouring nationalist tendencies were arrested and imprisoned and in 2006, Romanian climbers witnessed Chinese guards shooting a group of refugees headed for the Nepalese border. China's abhorrent treatment of "political subversives" has rightly spurned a global Free Tibet movement, diminishing the benefits that it did bring to society.

After 1959, it abolished slavery, serfdom and unfair taxes. Creating thousands of jobs through new infrastructure projects, it built Tibet's first hospitals and opened schools in every major village, bringing education to the masses. Clean water was pumped into the main towns and villages and the average life expectancy has almost doubled since 1950, to 60.

Even so, in 2001 the Dalai Lama said: "Tibet, materially, is very, very backward. Spiritually it is quite rich. But spirituality can't fill our stomachs."

Freedom for Tibet is not simply a case of liberation from China and the reinstatement of traditional values. Around 70 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line and enhanced spirituality alone will not improve economic conditions. Poverty is not quaint no matter how colourful the culture and the Tibet question is one that should be addressed from a rational, rather than an idealised viewpoint.

Nearby Bhutan, which has a similar Buddhist culture that it tried to preserve by banning television until 1999 and limiting foreign visitors, only held its first democratic elections in 2007. The Dalai Lama now promotes democracy, but Tibet may well have looked worse than it does today if the old order had been left to its own devices.

This

Dalai Lama warns Europe could become ‘Muslim’ or ‘African’, "If a female Dalai Lama comes, she should be more attractive," he said while laughing.

 

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/dalai-lama-warns-europe-could-become-muslim-or-african

Dalai Lama warns Europe could become ‘Muslim’ or ‘African’

by Zachary Halaschak, Economics Reporter | 

 

 | June 27, 2019 03:21 PM

The Dalai Lama said in a recent interview that refugees to Europe should eventually return home, despite his support for international cooperation and institutions like the European Union.

Last year, the Dalai Lama sparked controversy after he said, “Europe belongs to the Europeans.” He said he is still standing by that view, in an interview with the BBC .

The 83-year-old Tibetan spiritual leader is a refugee himself, exiled from his homeland after China sent troops to the Tibet region in 1959.

During the interview, he said that although Europe should help the refugees fleeing from the Middle East and Africa, it should also educate them with the goal of the refugees returning to their home countries.

“European countries should take these refugees and give them education and training, and the aim is return to their own land with certain skills,” he said.

Despite his insistence on Europe assisting to rebuild the countries from where the refugees fled, the Dalai Lama also addressed those who might want to remain in Europe.

“A limited number is OK. But the whole of Europe [will] eventually become Muslim country — impossible. Or African country, also impossible,” he said.

https://twitter.com/BBCRajiniV/status/1144118198217764869?s=20

and

https://twitter.com/BBCRajiniV/status/1144118198217764869?s=20

The spiritual leader also said that if a woman replaces him, she should be good-looking.

"If a female Dalai Lama comes, she should be more attractive," he said while laughing.

During the same interview, the Dalai Lama also had some tough words for President Trump , whom he said had a “lack of moral principle.”

“When he became president he expressed America first. That is wrong,” the Dalai Lama said, noting that unlike prior U.S. presidents, Trump has not met with him or called him since becoming president.

The Dalai Lama has been the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people for decades. The Dalai Lama has met with dozens of world leaders and notable figures throughout the years, becoming somewhat of a celebrity himself.

Testimony by a person who was monk for 18 years and disrobed

 https://www.en.transtibmed.ethnologie.uni-muenchen.de/testimonies/research-results/index.html

The following results are from the research project TransTibMed and provide contemporary witness reports

Testimony by a person who was monk for 18 years and disrobed

"I was a Buddhist monk for 18 years and most Western monastics receive little to no support. The most I got were free or discounted teachings. The west does not support its monastics well and a lot of them end up disrobing as a consequence." (ABY45T)

"People were instructed not to speak to certain students or ex-students and were told to spend all their time and money at the center outside of work" (ABY45T)

"I tried to be cheerful and accommodating within reason, but they expect way too much from people. At a certain point after working between 8-10 hours or if I got injured, I started telling people I was going to bed. They looked shocked like someone slapped them. Those who worked to exhaustion were seen as the most devoted until they could no longer complete tasks. After I threw my back out building the foundation for the lama's cabin, I refused to do work that would harm me physically (I already had back problems from excessive manual labor during formative years)" (ABY45T)

"In my experience, the teacher works with students by chastising them for their behavior and teaching them mantras and practices. A lot of the work was exploitative where the teacher worked hard to ingratiate himself to students with money or those who were attractive." (ABY45T)

"I wasted almost 2 decades of my life as a monk. I missed out on many normal life experiences because I was stupid and idealistic. I regret everything. I miss my other friends." (ABY45T)

"I no longer identify as any type of Buddhist as a result of the harm that has befallen people I love at the hands of abusive clergy and a corrupt and complicit hierarchy and laity, but I was ordained as a monk in the Drikung Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism for 18 years [...] and have practiced and studied Nyingma and other lineages as well as Chinese and Japanese Buddhism." (ABY45T)

Testimonies concerning children in Buddhist centers

"we were told not to take outside teachings and not to ever discuss teachings from outside the lineage, including the Buddha's words. My first teacher wanted to force me to give up my child and send her to a monastery. I refused and went over his head and said I was out if this was required. the teacher I appealed to agreed with me" (MO997P)

"I didn't adhere to the edicts and rebelled I was shocked when my teacher asked me to give up my child. There was no way in hell I would do that. He was just jealous and wanted complete control." (MO997P)

"Beware of the way that abuse is framed in karmic or spiritual terms and the way that spiritual bypassing is used to obfuscate the atrocities committed by those people trusted to lead them out of suffering and into enlightenment. [...] The abuse of children in monasteries and centers is rampant. It needs to stop." (RT74C)

"Purifying" childhood abuse though further abuse

"My first lama told my best friend that the sexual abuse he perpetuated against her could heal and purify her childhood sexual abuse trauma" (VT55A)

Testimonies from organisations

Testimony on the Ratna-Shri Drikung Kagyu center in Berkeley, one center and lama in Oregon and on the Tulku Shenpen Rinpoche

"I separated from my first guru (from the now-defunct Ratna-Shri Drikung Kagyu center in Berkeley, California) because he sexually violated my best friend. The lama chose her because she was mentally ill and had a history of abuse. He told her he could heal her trauma through sexual acts. I separated from another center and lama (Dzogchen/Nyingma) in Oregon because students were being worked to exhaustion, financially exploited, and discarded. They were told if their minds were pure, they would not need much sleep and their bodies would not get injured from backbreaking labor. People were told the world was ending and they should use their credit cards and savings to make donations because the merit they would get would be incalculable. This place was run like a cult. The teacher also was very controlling and made homophobic comments. [...] One of the students worked so much, she had a nervous breakdown and ended up in an institution. No one from the sangha visited her and they banned her from the center I practiced on my own for years after this until [...] after I discovered that my best friend's child had been raped by the lama/tulku Shenpen Rinpoche, in addition to other children. I had been struggling with my faith for years prior to this [...] I could no longer represent an organization or faith that did this as a monk. I lost my faith in Buddhism completely after seeing that the historical Buddha subjected rape victims to interrogation and expulsion if their mindfullness during an assault was deemed insufficient. That's not compassion. I also was offended by The Buddha's misogyny in general. I don't even know what enlightenment means anymore." (XVA197Z)

"The lama Shenpen who raped my friend's kid is connected to bad people. He sent thugs to harass a nun he screwed out of a lot of money." (XVA197Z)

Testimony on Rigpa

"I saw directly that while they present a very acceptable public image behind that is a lineage of pure violence. They believe they are accountable to no one and are quite capable of taking someone's head off believing they are above any law. They also use remote viewing to injure people." (46TU9)

"I left immediately I heard about the abuse because I knew one person who highlighted it and knew they were honest and reliable. No help with the decision, didn't need it. I was already separated from the group or organisation so leaving was easy." (46TU9)

"There was a subtle pressure to only take teachings in the group. If people went outside and some did the teacher could mention them publicly at teachings. The people who did go outside the group for teachings just ignored the lama." (46TU9)

Testimony on Pathgate

"PY claims that he is a long-time disciple of the late HH Pema Norbu Rinpoche (the 3rd Penor Rinpoche) of the Tibetan Nyingma Palyul tradition. He claims to have received many precious transmissions from the HH and other senior teachers of the tradition. He implied that he is qualified to teach, but there is no official affiliation between Pathgate and the Palyul tradition. He has not completed the formal education required by teachers in the tradition. He has never completed a 3 year retreat. He explains this away by saying that 'some masters complete their retreat in the world', or 'some masters complete their training in past lives'." (AZL56Y)

"We were expected to clean, translate, and work on projects that advance PY's / Pathgate's cause. The work is expected, we were obliged to contribute, otherwise we would be reprimanded by PY and outcasted by sangha members." (AZL56Y)

"I have seen PY limit his students' choices of personal relationships. I have seen him cause family relationships and romantic relationships to degenerate. He has also manipulated young students' choices of study in university, or their choices of career. I have hardly talked to them about it because PY openly warned us against communicating personal issues with one another, because that is 'disturbing one anothers' minds', and 'creating unnecessary karma'." (AZL56Y)

"I made contact with other ex-students locally, who left Pathgate due to various reasons. PY has warned us against communicated with them. But having heard their stories, I understood that PY wanted to prevent us from knowing his bad behaviour from these ex-students. Understanding what they had went through to cause them to leave Pathgate and PY convinced me that my decision was right." (AZL56Y)

"I did not experienced violence towards me personally. I saw PY verbally abuse students on multiple occasions. I saw him humiliate students publicly several times. I saw him physically strike a female student on 1 occasion. On these occasions the students were upset and crying after. I felt uncomfortable but I justified PY's abuse as 'crazy wisdom', that the teacher was using skilful methods to teach the students and 'purify their negative karma', Now I realise that there was no wisdom in PY's methods, he was simply abusive and there was no justification for it. Many students are so brainwashed and fearful of PY that they are conditioned to accept the abuse." (AZL56Y)

"Professionally, I have not been in a stable job for 6-7 years because PY has discouraged his students to detach from mainstream society." (AZL56Y)

Quotes from contemporary witnesses (from Germany)
These quotations show issues beyond groups and provide insights into contemporary testimonies (Anders, 2018).

Missing friendships due to subtle playing off group members against each other

"[...] that no real friendships were possible there, always mistrust, competition - [...] played us all off against each other, very subtly."

"The action always originated from the Master [...], who could very subtly drop comments or force a wedge between people. One doesn't actually notice it because it often happens in the context of a relationship or a process / work with another person - I have reconstructed this afterwards."

Levels of manipulation

by the example of the organization Pagode Phat Hue (Buddha's Way) Frankfurt am Main:
"Unfortunately, I often didn't know the truth. For example, when I wrote the speech to remove his robes and the entire presentation on the outside, I was called to Frankfurt to write everything, and nobody, not even anyone from the Sangha, who had been friends and had visited me [...] privately, told me that the reason Thay had given me (I want to take a new spiritual direction, adapted to Western society) [was incorrect]. For the actual reason, as I understood 1.5 years later, was that a legal investigation had been initiated against him."

by the example of the organization Rigpa Germany:
"Typical public methods at Rigpa: public humiliation, abuse, exposure, exaggerated false praise, promoting or degrading people in the "Rigpa Ranking". Promoting and exploiting intrigues, power games and denunciation among students. Encouraging a sense of value within the collective and for the individual by cleverly presenting the Lama and his organisation as unique, exceptional, significant, superior to others, more advanced, etc. and then reducing the pupils to pocket size by public speech. I have called this attracting and domestizing. Secrecy as a measure to create unofficial, subtle, non-formal structures within the so-called "sangha". Ideologically, this is justified by the selective use of specific parts of texts from the canon of Tibetan Buddhist texts, partly in a quite subtle and manipulative ways. Encouraging unhealthy ambitiousness and worldly interest by publicly displaying students' diligence, dedication, working enthusiasm, readiness to donate, etc. by setting up a gold standard in devotion. Great "devotion" = greater progress on the path, thus also greater appreciation by the collective, thus higher ranking. The longing for alternatives for family and social belonging is being exploited to a very great extent."
"Very often utterly incompetent individuals were employed, I got the impression the permanent chaos associated with that allows for better manipulation."

Failure of ethics and publicly presenting individuals as "psychologically peculiar"

"My person [...] was ridiculed accordingly, portrayed as psychologically " strange ". Generally, this happened with most "dissidents", this was one of the reasons to leave, any form of ethics was missing completely. True was what was in the master's mind or what was considered so. One could call it a "general refusal to dialogue".

Methods of defamation and slander

by the example of Rigpa Germany:
"It was striking that Rigpa wanted to find out if and which other teacher I would turn to. [...] When I first came to a seminar, rather soon after I had left, I met a "senior student" of Rigpa, we knew each other. He was a bit uneasy about me. He had already conveyed messages from Sogyal Lakar to other Lamas on several previous occasions, as I knew. Anyway, as Rigpas' representative, he paid his respects and handed over a letter. Then the Lama intensely looked at me, and upon parting he told me to come again, in a compassionate tone. I cannot prove it, but I know of similar cases where lamas were informed that student xyz would come, he/she would have difficulties, or too much lung or something similar. At this point I would consider that as a precaution against negative information about Sogyal Lakar which ex-disciples could tell."

Non-verifiable qualification of teachers and demanding blind trust

"The lamas were already qualified by definition, the problem for me was that it had to be trust in advance, and thus also the door opener to blind trust. By definition, in this case: it was never questioned. Many lamas mention their time here and there with this and that master, this and that Geshe and other titles, but that is not verifiable, and therefore rather theoretical. [...] That of course is opening the gates to all charlatans."

The method of intransparency

"Everything is completely intransparent, and a lot happens because one knows the right people and is then integrated in a network of favors, obligations, etc. From a certain amount of donations, acquaintance level, there are certain privileges, with the danger of being brought back to normal zero."

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