The Legacy of Tony Benn

 The Legacy of Tony Benn

Tony Benn was one of my favourite Labour MPs when I was working in UK.

Please do not confuse with Tony Blair (Once a UK PM) who ruined the Labour Party.  Tony Blair lied to the parliament with the aid of president Bush and instrumental in destroying Iraq (biological weapons and weapons of mass destruction campaign-origin of "FAKED NEWS").

Reproduction
Tony Benn on the Legacy of Slavery

By 

Tony Benn

In 2007, Tony Benn – who was an MP for Bristol for 20 years – gave a speech discussing the legacy of slavery, the fight which brought it down and the ideal of common humanity which powers progressive struggles.

I have copied only a part of his speech, relevant to religion and democracy.

Right at this moment in Ceylon, the democracy is at peril due to Buddhist monks supporting a Military Dictator.

Now the other thing that interests me very much is the role of religion in all this, and I know the question ‘am I my brother’s keeper?’ has been raised. On the Internet, from which, I get a lot of very useful information, I got the other day a summary of what all the religions of the world say. Judaism says ‘what is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow men’, that is the entire law, all the rest is commentary. Then Christianity, ‘all things whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do even so to them.’ For Mohammad it was ‘no one of you is a believer until he desires to his brother what he desires for himself’. And the same with Brahmans, the same with Buddhists, the same with the Confucians, and that’s also what’s on every trade union banner, ‘an injury to one is an injury to all’.
So you can see it all coming together as a recognition that you cannot build a society on other than on a moral basis. And that I find very interesting because nowadays, you see, religion is being used as a way of dividing us, you only have to look at what’s said now about Islam and the use of God. Bush said God told him to go to Iraq, I didn’t know God worked in the White House, but apparently he did. Then they say Moses went up Mount Siani and got Palestine allocated to the Jews, I didn’t know God was an estate agent. But the way in which you use religion to justify your power is a tremendously important question.
If you now look at it in a cultural sense, all the religions apart from people who control them, all the religions are part of our culture. I was brought up as a Christian and when I go to church I like the churches, I like seeing bishops in funny outfits. I sing hymns like ‘onward Christian soldiers marching as to war with the cross of Jesus going on before’.
Now if anyone sang ‘onward Muslim soldiers going as to war with Mohammad’s banner going,’ they’d all be locked up at once by John Reid. So you have to recognise that there is, in every religion, a culture. There’s nothing whatsoever in the culture of religion to divide one from another. The people I’m nervous of are the people who use religion to get control of us, and that is the difference.
I mentioned that I was bought up as a Christian, my mother taught me that the story in the Bible was the story of the conflict between the kings who had power and the prophets who preached righteousness, and she taught me to support the prophets against the kings. It’s got me into a lot of trouble in my life but it explained so much. Because it’s one thing to be told love your neighbours as yourself. It’s another thing to be told by a bishop, ‘if you don’t do what I tell you, you will rot in hell’ […]
When I look back is in every period of history, two flames have always been burning in the human heart, the flame of anger against injustice and the flame of hope that you can build a better world and those two flames are really material by which we make progress. To understand that is very important, because if you don’t have some aspiration then you find yourself in a position, which I think about most of the time now – and that is how the human race is going to cope with its problems.
We live in a very remarkable period, quite unlike any other in history, when the human race has the capacity to destroy itself, and you can kill one man with a spear, a few more with a bayonet, one or two with a machine gun or a plane, but with chemical, nuclear and biological weapons it is possible to destroy the human race, that has never, ever been true before.
But it’s also the first generation in history which has the technology and the know-how and the money to solve the problems of the human race. And that’s where you really come right into the contemporary political scene, because a fraction of the cost of the war now would see that everyone in Africa with AIDs would have free drugs. A fraction of the cost of the war would see everyone in America has a health service, would protect New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina. That is the choice.
So the question then you have to ask yourself is, well how do you change the situation? Because there are only three interesting questions in politics, what’s going on? Which is not always easy to find out. Why is it going on? Which is harder to find out. The third question is, what are you going to do about it? And if you look at the way in which it all developed, it developed really with the greatest revolution of all, far more revolutionary than the French or Russian or American revolution, it was the revolution of democracy and reason.
I mention it is because throughout the 19th century a huge change in power occurred, in the olden days all the power was in the hands of the rich. If you were rich you didn’t need a school, you hired tutors, you didn’t have a mortgage from a local authority for your castle because you owned it, you didn’t have to bother about anything else, if you were ill you hired a doctor, when you were old you were okay, you were never unemployed because you never did any work anyway, and that was the basis of society. What happened during the 19th century explains everything, I think, including the national independence movements.
When people had the vote power was transferred from the people with money to the people who didn’t have money. In 1837, when the Birmingham Corporation became law the people of Birmingham, or some of them anyway, had the vote, how did they use the vote? They used to the vote to buy with their vote what they couldn’t afford personally: municipal hospitals, municipal schools, municipal fire brigade, municipal museums, municipal art gallery and what democracy did was to transfer power from the market place to the polling station, from the wallet to the ballot.
What then happened was the whole prospect changed, that’s how the welfare state came about, of course, in the end, the idea of a National Health Service, the idea of state education, the idea, even, of a fire brigade. In the olden days there was no fire brigade, you insured your own house with an insurance company. So if your neighbour’s house burned down they didn’t bother to put that out because he wasn’t insured and that would obviously threaten your house and this idea of welfare, which is looked down upon in mockery, is on the basis that actually the interest of all of us are in common.
If you meet a diseased person your health is threatened, if you work with an uneducated person your work is threatened and so the recognition of the common interests we have in survival and prosperity was a product of democracy, and nobody really likes democracy very much, nobody in power likes democracy very much. I mean, Hitler didn’t like it, Stalin didn’t like it, the Pope doesn’t allow the clergy to elect the Pope, it’s all done by shares of cardinals whom he appoints. I can’t say I find all that much enthusiasm for democracy even in a capitalist society of where the market is everything, because the thing about having a market society is that you don’t have citizens, you only have consumers. Now to be a consumer you have to have some money, I mean homeless people in the streets of London need homes more than anybody else but as they can’t afford them they’re not consumers, and the language used to belittle collective activity is very noticeable.
Now when I look again at the future I think of what’s called ‘cultural diversity.’ When I was born it was terribly boring – they were all white, they had fish and chips, they watched cricket, a little bit of ballroom dancing. Now we’ve got such a fantastic cultural diversity in Britain. Two of my granddaughters are at a primary school in London with 77 nationalities in the school and a refugee centre in the school, so when I go and talk at the school it’s like addressing a meeting of the General Assembly [of the United Nations]. My granddaughters have got Russian friends, American friends, Malaysian friends, West Indian, for them that’s normal, that is the world we live in. It’s complete generational change because I think younger people understand it, very often much better than older people who were brought up in a different tradition.
That’s really what we have to try and, which is why I think the Internet is very valuable because you get access to things which you wouldn’t necessarily find described in The Sun or The Mail. The information you get allows you to reach a judgment of your own which is independent and probably puts you in the category of the prophets against the king. So I warn you don’t use the Internet too loosely or you’ll be in trouble yourself.
I mentioned the trade unions and apartheid. I spoke in Trafalgar Square in 1964 in support of a very well known terrorist and I got denounced in the tabloids. I didn’t meet him for a bit, next time I met him he had a Nobel Peace Prize and was President of South Africa. Well, look at the suffragettes who were locked up for just wanting votes for women.
The way I think progress occurs, you see, is this: to begin with is you’ve got a sensible idea like abolishing slavery or votes for women or trade unions or ending apartheid, and they ignore you. Then if you go on you’re stark staring bonkers, I’ve had a touch of that myself, then if you go on after that you’re dangerous. Then there’s a pause and then you can’t find anyone at the top who doesn’t claim to have thought of it in the first place – and that is how progress is made.
It’s made by movements, by people who understand the world, who feel a sense of commonality with other people and say, ‘why don’t we get together and do it ourselves?’ In order for that to succeed you need to have encouragement and I think encouragement is the most important quality in political leadership, because they do try, all the time, to put you down […]
I went to the Labour conference 18 months ago and the Prime Minister made a speech which I listened to and I got up to go to the loo and I collapsed. I was taken to the Brighton hospital and given a pacemaker. I had a letter from the Prime Minister saying ‘hope my speech didn’t cause it’ and I was too polite to reply.
The interesting thing was this, when I left I discovered that was the worst hospital in Britain under the league tables. Well what if you’re the nurse or a sister or a doctor or porter, what do you make of it if you’re told you work in the worst hospital in Britain?
People want encouragement and that’s what they don’t always want to give you, but if we encourage each other, my God there’s nothing you cannot do. And so that’s how the slave trade really ended, people got together and saw the truth and realised that we’re brothers and sisters and we made an advance.
But one final warning, every generation has to do it for themselves again, there is no railway station called justice that if you catch the right train you get there, every generation has to fight for their rights because rights are taken away. They concede what they have to, and then when the pressure is off, they try and recapture the territory they’ve lost.
So it’s an ongoing struggle. I’m 82 now, and it’s wonderful, if I’d known what fun it was to be 80 I’d have done it years ago, because you have a bit of experience and you don’t want anything. And when I speak, as I do tonight to you, I say you can relax, I am not asking you to vote for me and there’s a great sigh of relief and people saying, “well, if he doesn’t want anything we may as well listen to him.”
So that is really the function of the old, I think it’s to encourage people and to understand. So thank you for asking me here […]

This transcript originally appeared on the blog of Socialist Unity.

About the Author

Tony Benn was a Labour Party Member of Parliament (MP) for forty seven years, serving as Party Chairman, Postmaster General, Minister of Technology, Secretary of State for Industry and Energy. He ran unsuccessfully for the party deputy leadership and leadership in the 1980s and was President of the Stop the War Coalition until his death in 2014.

Rationalist Movement in Decline

Rationalist Movement in Decline

A short essay in honour of Carlo Fonseka

September 14, 2019, 8:34 pm

by Kumar David

The high point of modern rationalism as a theory and as a movement, internationally and in the domestic scene, was the 1960s. From the 1980s its appeal as an NGO dimmed in both arenas. The modern icon of worldwide rationalism was the brilliant Bertrand Russell; its guru in Ceylon, Abraham Kovoor (1898-1978). The torch of leadership of the Rationalist Society passed from Kovoor to Carlo sometime before Kovoor’s death if memory serves me right. As a student and young university don in the 1960s and 1970s I was an enthusiast but not a member of RS; exhaustively wrapped into the then LSSP as I was. Many close university pals though, Chris Ratnayake, MWW Dharmawardhana and Madusoothanan were card-carrying rationalists.

Kovoor was an irrepressible ghost-buster and a god-buster. Following in the steps of legions of famed Indian ghost-busters, many of them Malayalis like Kovoor, he spared no effort touring the country exposing hoaxes, debunking fakes and kattadiyas and waging relentless war on superstition. His services to enlightenment were immense. His god-busting was less well known but no less important. He once related how he chased Sai Baba all over India in an attempt to corner him into an "interview" where, under controlled and supervised conditions, he would expose Baba’s "miracles" as no more than conjuring tricks. Baba fled from city to city but never granted Kovoor a meeting.

Carlo rose to fame when he exposed fire-walking as a sham. He proved it by training himself his recruits with fairly thick soles, to move quickly across hot embers, letting feet linger momentarily. It was a great success; the press was there and the exhibition buried the myth of fire-walking as of religious significance; (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2gAvTp_rakand). Carlo and volunteers enjoyed a bottle of arrack and indulged in a pork feed before the fire-walk, but gentleman that he was, my plea that they loudly utter sacrilegious profanities to conclusively drive home the point fell on deaf ears.

Before taking up my theme today, the vicissitudes of Rationalism at home and abroad, I need to say that Carlo’s main life-time contribution was not to rationalism but to medical education, a topic not within the scope of this essay. Carlo has a splendid little booklet of essays "Essays of a Lifetime" which I reviewed for the Sunday Island, I can’t remember when, and Ratnajeevan Hoole reviewed in Colombo Telegraph on 28 Feb 2017. https://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/essays-of-a-lifetime-by-professor-carlo-fonseka/

But I must copy this from Hoole: "Science now, however, is so specialized with small incremental advances that there are few polymaths today. Carlo Fonseka (MBBS (First Class), University of Ceylon; Ph D, University of Edinburgh; Emeritus Professor of Physiology at the University of Ceylon) is an exception – engaging in medicine, management of public bodies, theology, music, left-wing politics and many other things, and bringing these to the public through op-ed pieces, and radio and television talk shows".

The recognition of reason and rational thought as the foundation of knowledge is very old. It was there among Greek philosophers and implicit in Confucius and the early Indian materialists. It is the bedrock of the Buddha’s way of thinking. However, rationalism, empiricism and atheism as these terms are understood today begin with the Enlightenment and René Descartes (1596-1650) dubbed the first of the modern rationalists. Not far behind were Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, (1646-1716). At the peak of the Enlightenment, Voltaire (1694-1778) and Dennis Diderot (1713-1784) championed the primacy of reason.

However, an epistemological gap emerged between the rationalists and the empiricists. The former regraded reason, logic and mathematics as essentially true without proof or need of empirical evidence as they were intrinsically free of contradiction. Descartes and Leibnitz championed this view. The empiricists (Diderot, Spinoza and the scientific community of the next generation) held that empirical validation and physical evidence were necessary to authenticate truth. Cutting across this divide was the atheism that fused together nearly all these great rationalists and empiricists. Voltaire is the best remembered of this breed. John Locke (1632-1704) was a queer bird who advocated religious tolerance but demanded suppression of atheism because it would "undermine social order".

The Ceylon Rationalist Society was mostly home to scientists (Kovoor was a botanist) from whom the distinction between rationalism and empiricism simply drew a shoulder shrug. Secondly, the possibility of being a rationalist and religious was a largely absent issue as they were nearly all at least agnostics. Atheism is not a necessary part of the rationalist tool-kit since one can hold that god moves in mysterious ways that do not affect the physical laws of the universe. The one unconditional demand of ghost-busting rationalists would be that superstition in all its forms be banished.

Rationalism, because of its hostility to entrenched views, did not stand far from political philosophies that rejected the class system imbedded in capitalism. Most rationalists were socialists and quite a few were Marxists. Carlo lived and died a Samasamajist and he was very close to and a great admirer of NM; I believe he was to an extent NM’s personal physician. Russel, of course, was a fierce anti-imperialist and a staunch social-democrat. But historically there has been a gap between Marxism and Rationalism and at times I have felt this tension in Carlo. Russel is the prime example. I find it incomprehensible that such a great mind could so badly misunderstand Marx (see chapter on Marx in History of Western Philosophy) on the role of the subjective factor in history. It’s absurd to say this, but it is as if he had not even read Marx’s great historical pamphlets (18th Brumaire, Civil War in France, Class Struggle in France); but the puzzle remains. This is a mistake that Carlo did not make, but sometimes I felt that he did show diffidence regarding the fullness of Marx’s (and Darwin’s) dialectic which encompasses nothing less than the totality of the scientific method prior to the arrival of quantum uncertainty. (But that was not Carlo’s uncertainty, to make a bad pun).

The importance of the Rationalist Society declined from the late 1980s. Carlo was drawn into issues surrounding the practice and ethics of the practice of medicine, governance of the profession and medical education where he shone as a renowned teacher, deep humanist and respected opinion maker. (Some of my friends say his stand on private medical education was wrong). With ever more of Carlos attention focussed elsewhere, the Rationalist Society lost prominence.

But there is more to it than that; the importance of rationalism itself as a cutting-edge tool in social transformation in Lanka and in the world over declined for bigger reasons. The post-war world changed in the 1980s; liberalism, social-democracy and faith in fairness gave way to the hardness of neo-conservative thought and the heartlessness of neo-liberal economics. Thatcher busted unions and buried the welfare state, Regan and Volker induced the 1981 recession and ended it in America. A new more brutal capitalism replaced the soft welfare state. The beginning was the coup in Chile and slaughter of thousands. This erosion of the economic universe was accompanied by US belligerence in the Middle East leading to a flood of refugees. The arrival of tens of thousands on European shores inevitably transformed the narrative. Learned-societies drew less enthusiasm from undergraduates who were a large part of the rationalist clientele in India and Lanka. A harsher narrative of race and bigotry took its place; rational folk had more pressing and more perilous battles to fight.

Carlo’s copybook was distinguished, offhand I can’t recall the name of any other Lankan scientist-activist who has risen to such versatile eminence. It is a pity then that he blotched the last page of this illustrious copybook in his twilight years by tagging behind Mahinda Rajapaksa, going so far as to endorse 18A and the removal of term-limits on the Executive Presidency. Nevertheless, the good that Caro has done will shine beyond this single failure.

Freedom

 Freedom the Buddhist Perspective
Four freedoms elegantly expressed by former US President F.D.Roosvelt are the freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear. These freedoms are abused to a variable degree worldwide.

What is the reason for this trend?

Is it an important question?

The fear factor (both physical and psychological) is utilized to gain undesirable motives. The psychological fear is the deadliest of all. It seems that from terrorist to teachers (fear of examination) to all beings (in day to day life husbands and wives) are using fear as a method of conduct. The politicians are no exception to this general phenomenon and the use of this lethal weapon by doctors in the form of lightening strikes is unpardonable professionally. The use of this methodology to gain undesirable objectives both locally and globally seems to be the norm whether it is President Bush or Prime Minister Blair. There is mass scale intolerance and the fear factor (the first of the triple of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) is operative in economic, political and social spheres.

If one look at the history of mankind the starting point of faith and religion is the fear the man had perceived for the suffering and the unknown. In latter years of history when religion was challenged by the heretics and pagans the church itself used the fear factor for its own subsistence. Ever since the fear factor had spread to all the fields including economic. It has become a vehicle to perpetuate endless cycle of misery and violence on mankind.

The leaders are conveniently forgetting the other issues from which the poverty originates. Multinational companies are exploiting the third world to the tune of billions of dollars and the dual approach of carrot (Aid) and the FUD (fear) seem to me are the two basic elements in operation worldwide.

Why the social scientists of the west and east are silent on these issues?

It is inexplicable?

The abuse of these freedoms, whether by state controlled media or private media with vested interests (freedom of speech and expression), the willful desecration of religions (freedom of worship), increase of poverty (freedom from want) in the world including the West and the spread of terrorism worldwide (freedom from fear) have engulfed us dangerously.

One has to ponder and ask the vital question what is the price for freedom and what is the meaning of liberty?

Poor man in the street does not understand all the jargon. He will never be freed from poverty as long as the corporate mind set makes the profits the target vision. Without sharing the wealth of information with the competitors to improve the quality and availability at an affordable price the gap between the rich and poor are widening. Free market philosophy is not for liberating the masses. They are there to increase the profits. The belief that profits would filter to the masses is a myth. There is no community involvement as seen in the Linux community. Linux community feels that they are liberated from the corporate giants. Until and unless we are free from both local and foreign corporate giants who are all hell bent on making profits an exercise, the monopoly a bounden right, the freedom of choice is an illusion.

Only the minority will have the freedom to enjoy and exploit. The corporate mind set should change to community mind set with community involvement. There is a limit that the free market philosophy can stretch but beyond that point there are diminishing returns. Like in the Linux community somewhat similar orientation has to take place in the business community in Sri-Lanka and worldwide for the true meaning of freedom to be enjoyed by everybody. Freedom should not be exclusive to a particular class, creed, race, religion or descent. It should be of universal nature that enhances the cooperation rather than segregation. Selfish gains but no devotion to the need of the poor as preached by all the religions is not relevant to the corporate mind set. Wholesome benefits of the many technical advances of the last century want accrue to all unless the trends of the last century in economic fields are reversed.

Freedom that costs is not meaningful whether it in social, economic or human.

What then is the Buddhist perspective of freedom?
In Buddhist perspective there are three main hindrances to freedom. The greed, hate and ignorance are the root causes that tie the mankind in bondage to evil. The three positive aspects are generosity, compassion and wisdom.

Wisdom

The wisdom is evidently lacking as far as the pollution of the planet earth is concerned. The pollution of the water resources especially the ocean where the first life began its long evolutionary journey is beyond imagination. It has become dumping ground for industrial waste including surreptitious dumping of nuclear waste. The exploitation of the non renewable resources goes unabated as if the resources are unlimited. Long term vision is lacking and short term economic growth is the norm whether they are capitalistic countries or socialist countries.

Greed
The generosity (sharing of wealth) has a fundamental thrust in Buddhist way of thinking. Buddhist way of life does not exclude trade but it is toned with sustainable income instead of expansive earning. Sustainable economy without going for limitless free market policy is the need of the moment and should be the theme for the current century. Unless we overcome greed with generosity the ever expansive nature of the economic activity cannot be arrested whether it is in the East or West. The generosity should be of global nature and the rich countries while keeping their economic activities sustainable in their own scope, they should allow the exchange of excess wealth to help the poor countries. This is very important in sphere of education. Bringing the global village equitable in the capacity to acquire knowledge base, if not economic base is of vital important. The field of education has become a money spinner globally.

The education is wealth.

The gift of Dhamma is the best gift of all.

In other terms the gift of knowledge is the best gift of all.

Looking around the number of private educational institutions coming up in Sri-Lanka the gift of knowledge seemed to be alien to us. The World Bank and IMF seem to believe that the knowledge is an economic activity. I am in no way a believer that the government giving free books (often outdated by a quarter century) would uplift the system of education. In fact it is detrimental on the long run as shown in Sri-Lanka. I would in fact promote authors outside the closed education system writing the school books. But these books should compete with the international publications. For writers of high quality to emerge in Sri-Lanka the free books scheme should be phased out except some standard books. India is noted for the advances they have made in this field. But what I am advocating is that these books should be priced at an affordable prices and the Education Department should buy them from the publishers and distribute them freely to students. An alternative is for the business community in the locality to buy them and donate them to the schools of their choice and grant them tax concessions to promote the business ventures. Furthermore, they should promote the system of education in such a way that their labour force is trained in the schools in the locality and a certain number of school leavers are absorbed into their industries. This way their economic activity can be expanded and community involvement is actively encouraged. We have to come out of the rigid and monotonous system that we have inherited. Innovative schemes can be planned and implemented. If need arises where local expertise are not available foreign participation should be actively encouraged. JICA is an institute which has this experience in the universities (the university is the dead end structure of our education system) and diverting their resources to Secondary Education would yield better results overall. The rebuilding of schools of tsunami devastated land and making a new working model would be a project the new rulers should venture into. We are not lacking in ideas but our politicians are more obsessed with grabbing the power and they are surrounded by mediocre experts.

There are many ways of toning our greed but I have only chosen education as a model which I consider needs rejuvenating with new ideas but not experimentation or privatization. What ever said and done what ever achievements we have made in the last century were because of our Buddhist attitudes in education. Of course the Swabhasa panacea was the biggest blunder of the last century. It is not possible to kill a mother tongue by introducing working languages (English and Computer) and the contrary is shown in India, our closest neighbour. However the print, electronic and TV channels are doing the destruction to our mother tongue /s (Tamil included) on daily basis.

Hate
The greed and competitiveness breed hate. It is quite evident with the election propaganda live. Even though the street violent is absent to a significant degree the breeding ground is vested with the TV channels. The advertisements are disgrace to our intellectual voter who is economically poor but not spiritually. Only after the election we can have a proper assessment of the impact they have made in the minds of the confused voter. My belief is that it would not. I am a believer that our voters are not stupid. We have inherited the hate for over two decades and the LTTE is the beneficiary.

When we learn to behave?

The number of animals killed for various reasons is another expression of hate.

Ignorance
Ignorance is the biggest evil. Dhamma apart our ignorance of sustainability is evident if we only look at the loss of forest reserve and with it the biodiversity. Ignorance of the economic principles governing a small island nation of ours is evident by its lack. We open our big mouths to support the rich nations who are sending the spoils of the last season when the current harvest is on. Come Christmas we may be eating the foods that were destined for animal food in the West packaged with the expiry date changed cunningly. The other major ignorance is our food habits. The changing from a healthy vegetarian diet to a western diet which the westerners are dropping by each day with the advance of the current medical knowledge is the manifestation of our poor health education (coupled with greed).

Unless we overcome greed (generosity), hate (compassion) and ignorance (wisdom) the meaning of the technical evolution in the last century would not be as meaningful as it would be in the current century. A Buddhist country like ours should emulate these virtues. Economic principles should be toned not by merely stating a Dharmista Society. The worst of our modern history followed after the open economy and Dharmista Society. When history is rewritten this anomaly would be pointed out without grace. It has to be rectified now, not a century later.

In Buddhist perspective the freedom we aspire is the freedom from greed, hate and ignorance. Path to freedom is laid on the virtues of Metta (compassion), Karuna (kindness), Muditha (sympathetic joy) and Upeksa (equanimity).

FUD-Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt

 

FUD-Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt 
Meaning of Freedom
Reproduction which is very OLD but relevant to this Day

The dangling of the carrot is the proverbial statement for an offering that is apparently “feasible but not tenable”, that is presented to hoodwink the unsuspecting masses.
Now the operative word is the FUD, a shorthand for Fear, Uncertainty and the Doubt.
FUD the triple of Fear, Uncertainty and the Doubt that is created in the minds of masses by corporate giants and is utilized to sideline the competitors.
Good example is the operation of Microsoft against the competitive Linux distributions. When Linux was emerging as an operating system the FUD was amply utilized to distance the would be computer enthusiast and lure him / her to Microsoft Windows.
But being intellectuals most of the Linux enthusiast overcame this by sheer courage and community spirits. Linux was very flexible and now quite unintentionally FUD is working against its originator. Community spirit prevailed in the Linux community and the Free Software Foundation laid the foundation in overcoming FUD syndrome. The spirit of Free Software Foundation / Linux is the gift of original software to the Internet Community.
As long as the authorship (not ownership) is quoted any modification could be done to the original copy to improve it and remove bugs. However the improved version has to be re-released back to the pool for further development by the community.
It is called the copy left and not copy right.
So the natural evolution of the software takes leaps and bounds within a short space of time for the betterment of the masses.
Much of this principle is very much close to the Buddhist principle of “Dhamma Dhana” but with a difference. What is given away is recycled with added improvement in quality and it is given away for another cycle like the “Sansara” cycle never ending.
One need not improve “The Dhamma” but only have to understand its underlying principles and spread the message of goodwill.
It is interesting to note that a Buddhist monk who had appeared in a court to protect his Pirith cassette, he had been marketing.
Is the “Sabbha Dhanam Dhamma Dhanam Jinathi” spirit of Buddhism being betrayed?
This monk should read the evolution of Linux Community and the General Public License that came with the Free Software Foundation. This Buddhist monk does not understand that the Gift of Dhamma is the supreme gift and it should not be commercialized. A blank CD / cassette is only Rs.25 / 50 and anybody who is selling a Pirith CD / cassette for more than Rs.50 is vandalizing these principles.
If Buddha is alive today I wonder what he would utter.
Would be an another occasion for “Udana Whakya” similar to “Sabbha Dhanam Linux Dhanam Jinathi” and would have a little smile at the corner of his mouth. There would be few more verses added illustrating the illusion of freedom and liberty of the mind filled with lust, hate and delusion.
Are we truly free and liberated?
It is something worth pondering.
All Sri-Lankans whatever the creed may be, believe that they are prisoners of their own conscience.
Sinhalese believe that they have to be free from interference by Tamils.
Tamils believe they are persecuted by the majority.
Are the Tamils free from persecution by their masters?.
The Muslims, believe they have to be free from indulgence from both Tamils and Sinhalese.
Million dollar question is, could the piece mongers (foreign ambassadors of dubious credentials) allay the FUD syndrome?
They in fact created it.
We are in this vicious cycle of suspicion, the LTTE and party in power and party aspiring to come into power are spreading the FUD syndrome viciously to its maximum zenith (peak).
What is needed is to have FUD syndrome at its nadir (depths).
The international community spreads the FUD syndrome to help the propagation of their corporate agenda with dangling the proverbial carrot.
What is happening in the political field in Sri-Lanka is the insensible manifestation of FUD syndrome.
At a philosophical level what Socrates said to an aggressive follower who would stretch his arm for a punch is relevant even today.
“Your freedom ends where my nose begins”.
The international community should realize that they are very close to every one's nose.
It is nice to recapture what Nazurudeen stated about his failure to marry.
It is said that he had been to all the countries looking for a girl he liked.
Ultimately he found one but the girl who matched his interests was also looking for man whom she wanted but alas for him / her that man was not Nazurudeen.
We have being looking for a suitable match maker for   Sri-Lankan bride. Now we are left with a whole harem of foreign ambassadorial girls (donating their vices).
At what price we do not know?
This is where one has to ponder and ask the vital question what is the price for freedom and what is the meaning of liberty?
Poor man on the street does not understand the jargon he will never be freed from his poverty.
As long as there is corporate mind set in making profits without sharing the wealth of information with its competitors to improve the quality and availability at an affordable price the gap between the rich and poor would widen.
Free market philosophy is not for liberating the masses.
They are there to increase the profits.
The belief that profits would filter to the masses is a grand myth.
There is no community involvement as seen in the Linux community. Linux community feels that they are liberated from the corporate giants. Until and unless we are free from both local and foreign corporate giants who are hell bent on making profits and exercise their monopoly, the freedom of choice is an illusion to the majority.
Only the minority will have the freedom to enjoy and exploit.
This corporate mind set should change to community mind set and community involvement.
There is a limit that the free market philosophy can stretch but beyond that point there are diminishing returns.
Like in the Linux community somewhat similar orientation has to take place in the business community in        Sri-Lanka and worldwide for the true meaning of freedom to be enjoyed by all.
Not a privileged and selected minority.
Freedom that costs is meaningless.
Selfish gains but no devotion as is preached by all the religions is not relevant to the corporate mind set.
Microsoft agents doing a few community projects (to lure a few deprived clients in the periphery) without shedding their corporate mentality is of little benefit to the masses.
A wholesome benefits want accrue.
If we do not think in radical terms and initiate changes now, there going to be massive uprising, hitherto unknown in the past. Some of the manifestations in the world today are a sign of this frustration building.
Not only with the poor but in the middle class too.
The middle class gave stability but it is fast disappearing.
With the wide use of the Internet, we would hear of more and more of evolving crisis.
People would like to see the credibility in their leaders which is sadly lacking in the world because of corporate giants pulling their strings behind their leaders.
They determine policy not the larger masses.
The masses would ask what is the meaning of this freedom?
That is the starting point of the crisis of this century.
Leaders have to be groomed with social values and ideals and not individual profiles and party profiles. Leaders should not be trained only to run the corporate giants. Leaders should be trained to lead the community they live.
Emulating western values only, going to be, not enough and begging bowl mentality should give way to equal partners in international dealing whether the country is big or small.
Some of the eastern values of sharing and caring should take precedence over profits. Then only one can call the citizens of sovereign nations are free and liberated.
United Nations will fail in their duty, if they have only Human Right Charter for cosmetic exercises. In that case the amount money that is spent on UNO could be better utilized for some other ventures.
They should rewrite these Charters.
Profit beyond certain acceptable levels should be prohibited or a certain level of compulsion to do community research both eco-friendly and community-friendly should be encouraged.
What is the big idea of having a few rich people and million and millions of poor souls?
How can a man like Tyson a champion one day and then a pauper the next day (in his twilight years)?
It is not acceptable in USA and for that matter any other country in this world.
Where is the social security?
England had a very well organized social security system and in another 50 years time it is going to be all private pensions?
These questions that are raised in the West and are equally relevant to us. The people who raise these voices have no industrial or corporate muscle.
Party politics seem to have ruined the entire world.
Most of the party leaders worldwide are gullible liars and some of them are of course pathological in nature.
Can we trust these leaders?
This is what is emerging in the West.
The covert political mechanisms are firmly embedded and established, in the  current system, only the corrupt and rich can rise to the top.
So, talking about freedom whether it is in the West or East is futile to the average man on the street. They just get the kick out of kicking a party out of power to get another miserable party into power and languish till the next opportunity to make the same mistake again.
In reality, it is a Gamble or a Casino?
One day cricket was much more interesting until this Casino bug bit it in full.
At the end of the day, all the so called democratic exercises are futile and the freedom of choice, a bad dream and a nightmare, just as well, to be forgotten by the majority at stake.
The liberation that the average man is looking for in economic and social fields is not achieved. Goals are set but never achieved due to lack of penetrating insight and vision.
What is done is patchy and ad hoc. We are blindly going through the cycle of events till events take control of our freedom.
Are we truly liberated?
The answer is firm, No.

Freedom
Four freedoms elegantly expressed by former US President F.D.Roosevelt have given way to FUD factor. 

The freedom of speech and expression (state controlled media and private media with vested interests), 

freedom of worship (desecrating religions), 

freedom from want (poverty) and last but not least 

freedom from fear (terrorism) has no meaning today worldwide.
The last factor the fear (from both physical and psychological) is utilized to gain undesirable motives.
The psychological fear is the deadliest of all and our doctors are using this to the detriment of the profession (both public and private).

 

Buddhist Outlook

Satara Biya

 

Four Fears

Death

Greed

Dosa

Moha

Microsoft is a Cancer one have to Live and Die

 

Microsoft is a Cancer one have to Live and Die

In Early 2000 I made a Free Article called FUD.

Fear 

Uncertainty 

Doubt 

That is the Corporate Mentality.

Microsoft was in the thick of it.

I have nothing against Bill Gate but as an old time pediatrician, I am against all pedophiliac agents including Epstein. 

There were 37 members of the parliament in England who were paediphiliacs including a Prime Minister in the 1960s and later in the early 1980s.

I left UK never to return.

Bill Gate of Course, is now a disgrace to himself.

In their Halloween disclosures Bill Gates associates described Linux as a Cancer.

But Linux has weathered the storm and even NASA uses Linux.

My plan is to make Linux desktop penetration 10%.

It has already passed the 5% threshold.

 

Real Life story of my ACER Laptop.

This laptop cannot be booted by a Linux Image on USB stick due to Microsoft’s hold on its BIOS. 

When, I purchased, it had Windows without any software.

 On my frequent sojourns abroad, I accidentally found it in Mustafa Centre in Singapore. I purchased it damn cheap, without knowing it had an issue with its Boot Menu.  Additionally it had the figure of 8 virus which inserts itself at many entry points without an input. I now know how to negotiate this irritating inconvenience.

 In my usual careless attitude on holidays, I did not have the  inborn sense to test it before purchasing. 

Of course, the sales person would not volunteer the defects he or she is privy of.

Beware if one purchases a "Marked Down" gadget even in Singapore.

 

Coming to Microsoft, it tries to own the hardware I have already fully paid for. 

This laptop with Microsoft Interference is the very reason, I migrated to Linux for good.

Nowadays, I use Puppy Linux to test but before that Knoppix.

 After a while, Windows  Installation was erased with TRUE OS which is defunct now. 

I used the TRUE OS CD to connect to the Internet, thereby bypassing the use of USB Slot to boot the laptop.

Microsoft owns the device by secret alliance with the O.E.M guys. 

One has to be smart to bypass the Microsoft Hegemony.

 

I paid for the hardware and Microsoft cannot own it after the point of purchase.

 

What I do with the hardware is entirely my business.

 

This laptop is working fine with Endless OS installed. 

 

In the first instance, I used Russian Astra Linux to erase any trace of Microsoft and Endless OS came to my sphere of activity much later. 

Astra Linux had only a limited application bundle and I could not install even Abiword my favourite word processor. 

I gave up Russian Linux for good on that issue alone.

By the way, Russians have moved away from MATE desktop and using Gnome in ALT Linux. 

Microsoft Hegemony

 

Microsoft Hegemony

Microsoft Hegemony and my First Laptop

This Laptop could not be booted by a USB stick due to Microsoft’s hold on its BIOS. It also has a BIOS Virus, I call it figure of 8 virus.

Figure 8 repeating itself in an endless chain. 

The Chinese guys in Singapore rather Indian Mustafa guys cheated me.

"Rarely seen without a bustling crowd of customers, Mustafa Centre is set in the Little India district. A cult favourite in the Singaporean shopping scene, it’s the best place to go if you’re after a bargain or enjoy shopping late into the twilight hours. Mustafa may not be as fancy as some of Singapore’s other malls, but it has a great range of items, and good prices to match. Here, you’ll get a bargain on just about everything, from clothes, perfume, souvenirs, electronics, makeup, confectionery and even food and groceries. "

It had Windows without any software.     

On my frequent sojourns abroad, I accidentally found it in Mustafa Centre in Singapore. 

I purchased it for a cheap price, without knowing it had an issue on its Boot Menu. 

Additionally it had the figure of 8 virus which inserts itself at text level and at many entry points. 

I now know how to negotiate this inconvenience and this laptop probably was the very reason, I migrated to Linux for good.

I did not have the  proper sense to test it before purchasing and beware if, one purchases a "marked down" gadget even in Singapore.

After a while, Windows  Installation was erased with TRUE OS which is defunct now using the the TRUE OS Boot CD to connect to the Internet thereby, bypassing the use of USB Slot as a boot device which Microsoft owns by secret alliance with the O.E.M guys.

One has to be smart to bypass the Microsoft Hegemony. 

I paid for the hardware and Microsoft cannot own it after the point of purchase!

This laptop is working fine with Endless OS installed. 

I updated it few days ago.

It has all my archived Linux images.

It is very slow.  

I have no intention of looking for a DDR4 RAM. 

It has two slots. 

If the DDR4 fails, which is unlikely with Linux installed, I am going to dish it out and by a Mini Computer for less than 300 dollars.

My Learning Curve of Debian 6 to Current 9.9.0

Saturday, May 4, 2019

My Learning Curve of Debian 6 to Current 9.9.0

 

Debian 13 is coming soon.

My Learning Curve of Debian 6 to Current 9.9.0 was not smooth but with lot of hiccoughs but it was worth all the same.

I am writing this while waiting for Debian to be installed on a laptop.
I erased the Windows for good (laptop) but it did not allow me to mount a Linux distributions.
 

The current UEFI of Microsoft was created to ban dual booting.

Sinister and a sadistic ploy and the ESP boot partition is filled with a batch of Microsoft Secretive BIG Virus Package (figure of 8 virus)..

Even Debian could not bypass this strategic ploy.

But I found a way.

It is Open Solaris in TrueOS that ruthlessly eliminated the ESP partition from ROOT to the RUMP of the partition table and let me use TrueOS. (TrueOS is defunct now)
 

It created TrueOS version of ESP partition to boot.

The TrueOS is for developers' item and I found a way to delete its TANK partition and install Debian. Since TANK partition cannot be resized, I had to devise my own solution without coexisting with the TrueOS.
 

Coming back to my difficult experience with Debian in my early days, I migrated to Mandriva, to Redhat to Open Solaris and finally settled down with TestStar’s PCLinux (Fullmonty) for my work.
 

These were 32 bit power hungry old computers with low RAM.

Come 64 bits I changed to Peppermint (coming from UK is useless) and Debian.

I erased all my paid Window’s versions for good.

I now use Debian exclusively without any problem.

Even managed to make a USB stick for installation on a laptop.

When I have time I play with Elementary OS, PinguyOS, Peppermint OS, Elive, Emmabantus and a few more.
 

Since I now use Debian only I feel I should voluntarily retire from taking about other distributions from now onward.

Sorry guys and girls (developers) other than Debian.
Keep up the good work.
Thank YOU.

My Grouse with Microsoft Windows

Even though, I do not use Window at all, the catalyst for my migration to Linux was none other than Microsoft Monopoly.

1. I was new to Linux.

2. I made a leaflet for presentation for university non academic staff.

3. I found a bright guy who was in the minor staff.

4. I trained him for hardware stuff. 

 

The guy who occupied the official technical slot was an idiot.

5. Slide Numbers allowed for my presentation was deliberately limited.

6. A formal certificate was awarded.

7. This was long time ago.

8. One of the non technical (clerical and she was assigned to me) girl was allowed to attend on the request made by the chief technician. 

This guy is diseased.

I could not refuse.

9. She went to Canada within a month. 

She did not tell me that she was leaving. 

My grouse was she took the place which somebody else deserved.

She only typed a single letter (by this time I was doing my stuff myself, including my Thesis), for me in nearly five months.

10. I called her and said, she cannot put me as a referee for her work in Canada. 

I would give bad reference, in fact the real reference. 

 

After this incident nobody asked any reference from me.

 

Outside the University, I identified three and guided them in Linux.

Two (asked them not to come back) went abroad on their own accord and the third guy Indika, now holds an executive post in MobiTel.

That is a long preamble.

Coming to Microsoft, at about the same time, I met a young (tiny) guy in Kandy who was running a computer outlet in his home coveted to sales outlet. 

He used to go to Singapore and bring stuff which I used to buy at exorbitant price. None of them (Window based) are in working order now. 

I vandalized them for hardware parts.

1. He organized an exhibition in Kandy for schools so that he can dish out all shoddy Microsoft stuff.

2. He gave me an invitation.

3. He did not know, I was an Amateur Linux Guy. 

I asked him to reserve a stall for me with 3 computers. 

He said OK.

4. I went there on the opening day with a friend of mine. 

Invited a few others none came. 

There not coming save me a huge embarrassment. 

We could not get in until all the students were allowed. 

 

Thinking that I have stall inside, I did not bother.

5. We went in and there was no stall for me and the guy was hiding, unable to face me.

6. This was hosted in Queen's Hotel ballroom. 

This is were we had the last Medical Dance.

So I went with my friend for a beer (I never take the stuff in the morning only after working hours well past 4.30PM).

7. Then we saw a few, may be six, school children ordering beer. 

We chased them away. 

They were bribed by this guy. 

 

We got to know Rs.500,000/= was dished out by Microsoft to hold the exhibition.

8. Immediately, I posted a Web  Piece exposing this sordid affair.

9. I became a full time Linux Guy on that day.

10. The booklet revised became my first book on Linux on Amazon Books. 

It is available for purchase but there are more than five more books on Linux by me, there.

My next book "Linux Essentials" is ready for publication.

This piece is a pre-publication advertisement. 

 

I think I would insinuate this piece in that book.

 

My First Computer to Intel's NUC

My basic  NUC with WiFi and Bluetooth is cute.

My first computer was huge, heavy and was a  beast (a behemoth).

I cannot lift it BUT it's RAM is only 4MB.

 

It boots up with only a Floppy Drive and I cannot believe all my research work was done on it.

This may be the first research work done on a computer (earlier it was done on paper and a typewriter) in my Faculty.

The University did not have a computer.

I did the some pioneering work on the network of computers  (only 5 computers) having RAM of 16MB, computers discarded from America).

By the way network does not need lot of memory and the server did provide the workload. 

For my research work I used Windows 95 and Office.

 

The office with bad macros could not get my paper output for publication of the research thesis and the full print out (I bought a dot mat printer and later Cannon Large printer and still later a digital scanner from my pocket saving from UK). 

University had none.

They all are in working order except the dot max printer (which I threw, to the junk yard) and they are filling my bedroom. 

This piece is about my entry into Linux distributions. 

Since my paper out put of Microsoft Office was bad was bad I used Sun Solaris OpenOffice 1 for my research work. It removed all the Microsoft Macros and I got the paper layout of my research thesis in A4 papers amounting to about 180 pages.

Then I did some research and found Debian, Suse, Mandriva, XandrOS and Redhat Boot CDs and booted them on a 10 GB hard disk.

 

That is my Linux beginning without a GURU but with lot of books. 

I still have those Boot CDS but the computer is dead.

 

Multiple distributions in one PC with only 4MB Video RAM and 128RAM.

I never looked back on Microsoft  again after my research work was accepted by the University.

Original hard disk was only 2GB.

I revived the computer and stuck a 80 GB hard disk and I would try to install Debian on it today (only one CD) and others need at least 3 CDs for installation.

Windows had about 40 odd floppies.

 

Migration from HDD (Parallel) to  serial SATA was a long journey and I love the NUC with 8GB RAM and 320 SATA inside and another 320GB on an external case.

In my NUC, I have Mint (Ubuntu replacement), Debian, Emmabantus and Ubuntu installed and they are running smoothly on 18 Watts out put and without noise.

 

Currently it has 4 instances of Debian ONLY. 

Endless OS is on my OLD ACER Laptop.

What a turn around in my life with Linux.

 

Beauty of Linux is Linux run on any old hardware and new hardware, too.

I tend to do this just before Christmas BUT I did it by 3rd of October, 2023.

 

I have three month holiday from Linux.

Why I hate Microsoft and Bill Gate

Windows is a shoddy operating system and resource hungry where my first computer with 2 MB RAM could not handle Win 95 but I used Debian 6 with over 6CDs could do a better job then.
Later I migrated to Redhat since there were many books written from Redhat 7 onward.

Then of course, Caldera, Debian and Mandriva and still later Knoppix took me to New Heights in Linux.

About Mr. Bill Gate I have nothing personal to say and his divorce probably is good for both.

Hanging onto a breaking relationship is nerve racking to any human being.

I hope both do some productive work on their own volition.

My grouse with him is his ploy with manufacturers to insinuate OEM hardware with  BOGUS UEFI-MEFI (it was named Unified Framework but I used M for Microsoft here for his personal use) or framework interface was an atrocious business plan to stifle Linux users.

I do not have to take permission from Bill Gate to use open source Linux in my laptop initially installed with Microsoft Windows.

It does not let me use legacy BIOS and still have a UEFI script hidden in the memory or within the hardware architecture of the OEM portion.

Simple method to overcome this ploy is to stick a SD of at least 32 GB and install the boot loader there.

UEFI won't let you use legacy GRUB to boot multiple Linux distributions.

I have now tried Linux ESP partition to bypass UEFI blocking mechanism.

If OEM guys says no boot medium even after having installed a Linux.distribution, this is what you have to do.

1. Download BSD TRUE OS DVD, Debian DVD 1 and Genome Partition (GPT) iso CD.

2. Install TRUE OS and it virtually takes over the Disk Drive of your laptop.

3. Unfortunately it does not let you boot any other distribution.

4. Boot GPT partition disk.
Delete the tank partition of BSD leaving only the ESP partition which the TRUE OS had created.

Then.partition the disk.with Ex4 or Btrfs partitions.

5. Mount Debian DVD and install.

You.have the option of using the unused part of the hard disk but remember to.mount ESP partition (but do not format the  ESP lest partition.details are erased).

There is a very simple solution, if the Microsoft Media is not bootable.

1. Buy a mounted SATA disk and attach it to the Laptop.
One terabyte is cheap now.
I sometime go.to.Singapore and do my usual shopping and see offers for about a week and by all.the stuff one third the price in Ceylon.
Now Coronavirus has put a stop to it.

Coming back to the external SATA disk one partitions it, they way one likes it.

Ultimately install a Linux distribution to boot from.while attached to the laptop.

The GRUB boot loader will detect the distributions unbootable from the laptop and boot them via the external disk.

One can use a SD card or USB but installing  a distribution in a tightly packed USB is slow and may break down in the middle  of the installation.

That problem one does not encounter with a one terabyte external disk.

I have used my innovative methods to erase OEM blocking ploy with BSD and then to install Debian thereafter.

Unfortunately even Ubuntu gives up and succumb to UEFI ploy and it destroyed my booting options.

Only BSD does erase everything and install ESP partition.

Not even Debian can handle it.

Lyx, LaTeX, Neovim and Notepaqq

These are all CODE Crunches in Linux.

PYTHON and Visual Studio are not the ONLY computer languages.

VIM, RUBY and PHP I used as a training exercise 25 years or so ago.

R I never tried is for statistics.

I used SPSS in the past.

I even tried DATA base languages but all forgotten due to lack of use. Once I got a hang ( I was OK with Physics and Mathematics), of something I did not stagnate but move to something else.

That is how I got to Linux.

It has gone above in PC market.

I want it to be 10% before, I kick the bucket. I thing it is enevitable.

Thanks to all the contributors Young and Old.

I am now into Phosh and Lomiri the cellphone applications in Debian Linux.

I haven't got data in my cellphone to test drive them. ZIM Card is from CEYLON and Australian ZIM cards are very expensive and I gave up after 6 weeks.

I am going to do some work on Blender not on KODI or Kdenlive.

No interest in politics or gossip.

Both Fedora and SuSe are Cheating the Newbies

Both Fedora and SuSe do not have a stable Community Base as was 20 years ago.

Fedora Live and SuSe Leap are Ages behind Debian and ARCH Linux Derivatives like Reborn, Endeavor, CachyOS and Manjaro.

By the way, MX Linux is a good distribution and AntiX has gone into hibernation.

Their stable Isos like 16 in SuSe and Redhat 10 are not available for free downloads to test.

Those that are released are untested images with a label STABLE to deceive the Newbies.

They do not provide torrents and if they have a torrent file no seeders at all.

I always prefer a iso image of an unknown Linux or untested Linux Distribution. I use Transmission and I test the image before writinh to a USB.

So please do not get driven by the market-hype but use common sense.

Companies have overheads and they are only worried about profit margin.

That is the bottom line.

SuSe leap 42.3 I cannot mount on Virtual Box Utility with 8GB RAM.

My Linux UPDATES and Testing Time are winding down for Christmas for 6 weeks.

Happy holidays for all.

Selecting a Desktop, is it a Big ASK?

Selecting a Desktop, is it a Big ASK?

I am not talking about Compiz, Wayland and Tiling Window Managers. They are not at all my interests.

Yes selecting is a desktop may be a big ask, due to many reasons. 

Desktop is a Desktop and there is nothing more in it. 

It has no applications and can be compared to a dress one wears. A dress one can wear as one pleases but Desktop is Fixed one cannot change but its front end appearance.

There is a caveat here, each desktop by default has a bundle of applications that goes with it except one big application, LibreOffice which everybody try to bundle.

I prefer desktops that does not bundle LibreOffice.

REBORN OS

On that specification, I really like REBORN OS and its Gnome Desktop.

It is minimal and out of 18.5GB /root partition it leaves me 10GB to add any application I need and 4 in particular.

VLC does to take much space but number of plug in are staggering

Audacity has almost every audio format.

GIMP is fantastic for photo editing.

Blender and blender takes the most space up to 1GB in total. 

LibreOffice is a low priority for me since I use AbiWord for my book writing for ages, in fact from Microsoft Windows era.

 Let me finish with Reborn OS, I installed all of the above and a few more and like Kdenlive and KODI and I have 2.5GB left of my root partition. This is because i have also used big /var and /opt partitions.

Desktops

I have been using Gnome of Debian for ages and I have had no problems at all and i stick with it.

Out of the lot below i only like Cutefish.

I have Plasma Desktop for comparison but rarely use it. The simple reason it takes a lot of time booting. 

I want the start up brisk with line of text telling me what is going on behind before booting. Only Debian Gnome does it.

Gnome distribution is out and it has no Synaptic package manager.

The most beautiful KDE Desktop belongs to ARCH based BlueStar Linux and I have it installed in my NUC.

KDE desktop guys are still struggling and it is still RAW package stage and one cannot install it. 

I found a ARCH based KDE desktop which was sleek like Trinity Desktop but it ruined by hard disk including EFI partition. 

It is called KaOS. 

Please do not use it.

1. Plasma desktop consumed about 500MB.

2. Cutefish which I really like consumed 300MB

3. Cosmic desktop about 500MB

4. KODI about 100 to 200MB

5. Kdenlive may be 500MB or more on top of Dolphin. 

6. Cinnamon only about 50MB since it is built on top of Gnome

I did not try Budgie and MATE

7. DeepIn from China was a pain.

8.  Anduino which is Microsoft emulation of course from China and I hate the most.