Terrorism is the Weed in the Garden of Civilization

by Dr. James W. Jackson

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

Demosthenes gave wise counsel when he admonished, “Beware lest in your anxiety to avoid a war you obtain a master.” Historically, acts of declared war between tribes and nations have left regrettable havoc and loss of life. But, terrorism is different. Its intent is to manipulate and gain psychological advantage through stark fear and the savage and brutal display of destruction. Adolf Hitler proclaimed that, “Terrorism is the best political weapon, for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death.” He later bragged, “Being daily better informed about their knowledge than my adversaries themselves, I argued till finally one day they applied one means that wins the easiest victory over reason: terror and fear.”

Yasser Arafat, one of recent history’s most brutal and vicious terrorists, recruited and mentored Osama Bin Laden and convinced him that terrorism works successfully, and that terrorists can be praised and rewarded by a craven world. Terrorism doesn’t require a large and expensive army. It takes only a few extremists to control the masses by sudden and horrific fear. Terrorism destroys lives of innocent civilians and personal property. It is an on purpose and calculated means of national or religious aggression, and has become a frightening phenomenon of our present global society. The acts are carried out with highly secretive planning and open and shocking execution.

No other method so successfully robs the mind of all its powers of reasoning and acting as does fear. People seem to be willing to give their enemies what they want rather than have to endure the fear of the terrorists brutally taking it away from them. And the terrorists seem to have figured it out that their only limits of terror are prescribed by the endurance of people they terrorize.

Therein lies an interesting fact” acts of terrorism can backfire on the terrorists themselves. Fear is an unpredictable intoxicant. The fumes of fear invade the brain and can actually make men combative rather than compliant. It is dangerous to play the game of terror because the terrorist never can be certain when he goes too far and his hideous acts of terror just might trip the trigger of the oppressed.

I have experienced terrorism up close and personal. My travels into Somalia, Albania, Kosovo, Serbia, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Uganda, Congo, Lebanon, Gaza, West Bank, North Korea, Cuba, Nagorno Karabakh, Pakistan, Sudan, and even Iraq and Afghanistan have given me a better understanding about the mind of the terrorist. I have concluded that in order to change the fruit you must alter the root. Most of terrorism is fueled by the feelings of hatred based on fear of extinction, extreme despair based on perceptions of gross inequities, and utter hopelessness based on eradication of viable options.

I have come to believe that the most effective deterrent for the phenomenon of terror is a mass infusion of hope. Terrorism is engineered to create fear. But fear is also the necessary element to ignite terrorism. Left unchecked, terror can only escalate because it takes on a life of its own, and one act of terror demands to be answered by another act of terror. Genuine hope dispels fear and short-circuits the need for terror. The whole vicious cycle of fear and terror unravels with the introduction of genuine hope.

The real problem of terrorism comes where the entire garden of civilization is eventually overrun by the weed of terrorism, and in order to rid the garden of the noxious weed the entire garden is destroyed. You simply can’t kill everyone in order to rid the civilization of terrorists. There has to be a more excellent way. I am coming to believe that the answer to the problem of terrorism is kindness, justice, and righteousness on this earth. There is nothing stronger in the world than goodness and gentleness. I am not a dove but a hawk when it comes to protecting my country, family, and home. But, I believe it is time to try channeling our energy and creativity toward winning the hearts and minds of the people of this world.

Project C.U.R.E. is a humanitarian organization specializing in taking help and hope to many countries around the world. It has been involved in some of the most politically explosive “hot spots” in recent years. Project C.U.R.E. has discovered that if you are going to deal with the world of conflict and terrorism you have to plant seeds of hope.

Project C.U.R.E. exists to break down the destructive cycle of hopelessness. We are discovering that dealing with the element of hope is perhaps the most effective method known to strike a blow at the main root of terrorism. The weed of terrorism needs to be eradicated from the Garden of Civilization. The application of the element of hope will go a long way toward that eradication.

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com

Passion - The Road to Success

by Dr. James W. Jackson

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

Put your heart, mind, and soul into even the smallest acts . . . this is the secret of success.

I have a lot of good memories of Central Asia. At one time or another I visited all of the individual republics of the old Soviet Union. Their history is rich and colorful and includes such eccentrics as Genghis Kahn, Timor Tourmaline, Alexander the Great, Joseph Stalin and Khrushchev. Ancient tales of adventures along the Old Silk Road are still retold around Uzbek, Kazak, and Afghan firesides. 

By 1904, the Japanese had invaded and occupied the Korean peninsula. Many Koreans escaped and migrated into the Russian province of Primorsky. By 1937, Stalin loaded the Koreans into railroad box cars and inhumanly shipped them as slave laborers into Central Asia. Thousands died en route without food and water. The survivors were put to work in Soviet industrial sites and agricultural operations in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Many times the displaced Koreans had only grass to eat and infected water to drink. Since the death of Stalin, things have improved for them. Today, approximately 500,000 transmigrated Korean refugees still live in that part of Central Asia.

On one of my trips into Uzbekistan I met a Korean man and his wife and adult daughter. They made all the nasty and inconvenient travel into that ancient part of the world rewarding and very worthwhile to me. They unswervingly believed that success in life was determined by the enthusiastic dedication to helping other people become better off.

Dr. Chong Soo Kim started out his career in Seoul, Korea, as a neurosurgeon. He became very successful. In 1971, Dr. Kim packed up his family and moved them to Indiana University Medical School where he studied hard, graduated, and became certified as a US anesthesiologist. Upon completing his additional education in Indiana, he was offered a lucrative job in southern California as an anesthetist. In a short time the passion he had for his career and the willingness to tirelessly apply himself to his work all paid off. He became very wealthy.

Through the church they were attending in California, Dr. Kim and his wife heard about the medical plight of the Korean people in Uzbekistan. In 1994, they responded to the call. They sold everything they owned and with only a small amount of personal items they moved to Tashkent. Chong Soo Kim and his family found that Uzbekistan was a tough place to work. He put his heart, mind, and soul into even the smallest aspects of his new work. He became convinced that in order to be successful in Uzbekistan he would have to establish personal relationships with the people by doing free medical clinics.

There was a great shortage of medical training in the Tashkent Oblast, so Dr. Kim offered medical classes and taught Western medicine. Most medical textbooks in Uzbekistan were over 20 years old and written in the Russian language. Dr. Kim started teaching out of American textbooks. That required the students to learn English. Dr. Chong Soo Kim’s daughter, Soo Jin Kim, then moved from Evansville, Indiana, to Tashkent to teach English.

At my very first meeting with the talented and energetic Kim family, I determined that Project C.U.R.E. would come along side and help them. Their passion and dedication was both obvious and contagious. But it was going to take a miracle to get the Uzbekistan government to allow us to do what would be needed.

Dr. Kim drove us to the neighboring city of Amalyk, where he had determined to build a private clinic. He had purchased property with old and rundown buildings and a garden of weeds and debris. With passion, they had poured their lives into renovating the old facility and were now ready to open the clinic. But, they had gone as far as they could go. They needed Project C.U.R.E. to furnish the complex with medical supplies and pieces of equipment. They also needed the final approval of the government.

On our way back to Tashkent, I had Dr. Kim stop at the local Uzbek government hospital in Amalyk. It was a typical old Soviet facility, just barely keeping their doors open to the people for lack of everything. While there, I did a complete Needs Assessment Study on the hospital. Then, Dr. Kim and I met with the hospital administration and the Ministry of Health. The miracle happened. I promised them that if they would fully cooperate with honoring Dr. Kim’s passion and intent to help them with their medical needs in Uzbekistan, Project C.U.R.E. would be honored to also help them by sending additional medical goods to their hospital in Amalyk.

When the half million dollars worth of needed supplies and equipment arrived in the large ocean going shipping container from Project C.U.R.E., everyone in Amalyk celebrated. The newspapers had Dr. Kim’s story and photos on the front page. He was a hero. His efforts and passion had paid off. All the people in the Uzbek region were now better off because of Dr. Kim’s concern, diligence, and passion.

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com

Your Presence Is Requested

by Dr. James W. Jackson

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

“I and mine do not convince by arguments, smiles, rhymes;
We convince by our presence.” (Walt Whitman: “Song of the Open Road” 1900)

A major distinctive of Project C.U.R.E. is that we never send anything anywhere unless we have gone personally to that particular requesting hospital or clinic in that country and completed a comprehensive “Needs Assessment Study.” That’s the way we determined the appropriate medical goods to be donated.

Occasionally, we will have a requesting organization give us a little “push back” by saying, “Well, you don’t have to travel to our hospital. We can tell you what we need and you can simply send it.” But, over the years, our policy has proven to be a part of wisdom. Even though it has cost us in commitment, risk of danger, and extreme inconvenience, yet, the investment has yielded great benefit in return.

My answer to the nay-sayers has been very simple. “We are not here to simply take orders for medical goods or to distribute inventory, we are in business to build lasting relationships. The most successful way to accomplish that is to come, meet you face-to-face, walk the hallways of your institution, develop a relationship, and together discover how we can all become better off.”

Many times in the past 25 years, the hospital directors, the department heads, the nurses and upon occasion the Ministers of Health, hugged me and wept, saying, “Why would you come all the way from America to meet with us personally and help us with our desperate needs? No one has ever before cared that much.” Our presence validates their dignity and self worth. Our visit is symbolic and bears witness to our kind, nonjudgmental acceptance. Even though our new partners often feel embarrassed, inferior, and almost ashamed about the condition of their hospital, yet, we come there with love and a demonstrated desire to help. Our presence becomes almost like we are holding their hearts in safe-keeping.

I have met so many doctors and nurses in the hospitals and clinics in developing countries that are worn to a frazzle and discouraged to the core because they are forced to watch their patients die for the lack of simple supplies and pieces of medical equipment. There seems to be no answer. With our presence we claim a space to join them in their struggles, and suddenly their eyes become alive and they are emboldened to take a new grip with their tired hands.

There is a sense of joy and humility that comes when given the opportunity to share your own presence, and also share the symbolic presence of goodness. Presence is the immediate proximity of a person, an invisible spirit that can be felt, shared, and appreciated. It’s just a whole lot easier to accomplish that when you are close by and not halfway around the world. Our presence validates the reason why we have come. And during the time we spend together, our presence allows for the evaluation of our intentions and our attitudes as well as our behavior. Every time I travel to a foreign venue, I pray that those with whom I meet will be influenced by my presence and affected by a sense of peace.

Yes, I believe that Walt Whitman was on to something when he wrote, “I and mine do not convince by arguments, smiles, rhymes; we convince by our presence.” But I also know that the concept did not originate with Walt Whitman. In the Scriptures, millennia before, God gave us a powerful insight into his wisdom and personality. He gave us eleven names that he ascribed to himself and indicated that he would like to be referred to by the same. Each name starts with “Jehovah” and describes a certain attribute. One of those names is “Jehovah Shammah,” which means “the Presence of the Lord.” I suppose that has something to do with willingness to go, being near, convincing, intention, and validation. If that’s true, then it seems good enough reason to build company policy on the same. “YOUR PRESENCE IS REQUESTED”

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com

Ebb and Flow of History

by Dr. James W. Jackson

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

Truth is marching on and will probably run right over your detour sign.

There seems to be a curious cadence to the ebb and flow of history. The sands on the beach just keep shifting. Sometimes the cultural charlatans and tyrants move in waves upon the shore and completely desecrate the beach. But after a while, another tide returns, sometimes in tsunami force, and washes out to sea the unsightly debris and restores the breathtaking beauty of the beach.

In 1999, I traveled to the devastated and culturally unglued country of Cambodia where their infamous leader Pol Pot had just died. Formerly, Cambodia had been called “the land of smiles,” but I didn’t see too many smiles. I had been invited to go and see if Project C.U.R.E. could help rebuild a health care delivery system that had been left in total shambles. Pol Pot, who took his presumptuous name from abbreviating the narcissistic phrase “politique potentielle,” had cheated the firing squad by dying before he could be brought to justice for his crimes against humanity.

Few countries in history had experienced the diabolical devastation and genocide that Cambodia had witnessed in such a short period of time. Over 25% of their population had been tortured and then slaughtered. Anyone who could read or write or held any cultural position was killed, and that included doctors and medical personnel. The official motto of the Khmer Rouge forces was “It is of no benefit to save you, it is no loss to kill you.” Pol Pot would say, “This is ‘Year Zero’ and society will be purged. Capitalism, Western culture, city life, religion, and all foreign influences will be extinguished in favor of peasant Communism. There is no further need for money or an economy. What is rotten must be removed. Whether you live or die is not of great significance.”

Pol Pot and his gang of thugs wanted to show China, Russia, North Korea, and the other communist-controlled countries of the world just how a purist Marxist-Leninist country ought to be run. He had watched the brutality of Stalin, and learned from the bloody Cultural Revolution of China where millions and millions of people were purged. Pol Pot decided to outdo them all and go down in communist history as having perfected the purist form of communism in the shortest amount of time. Only those who were farmers and willing to cooperate in a commune, or those who were serving as his brainwashed, deficient soldiers, were spared. Within four years, Pol Pot had murdered over two million of his own people. Eventually, over 4 million would die.

By the time I arrived, the onslaught was over. It was time to rebuild. Truth was marching on.

I had personally observed in my lifetime the cultural charlatans of this world briefly having full sway to carry out their godless experiments of cultural re-engineering with unchecked freedom to slaughter hundreds and millions of innocent lives in an effort to raise men to a level of God and lower decency to the level of dung. Hitler, Pol Pot, and Idi Amin had killed their millions, Stalin and Mao had killed their tens of millions, Kim Il Sung and other despots had drained the blood and talents of their countries in the name of cultural re-engineering. But, also in my lifetime, I had lived to see all of their experiments carried out to their fullest extents, and they had still miserably and utterly failed. The leaders were all dead . . . but Truth just kept marching on. Now, once again, I had been invited to a hurting country to help bring relief to a society that was continuing to pay the fiddler long after the dance had ended.

Today, Cambodia is again becoming “the land of smiles.” The virtues of kindness, justice and righteousness have not been eradicated from civilization. Today, many of the world’s countries are facing political challenges, yet others are blossoming with opportunity, potential, and success. That’s the good news!

There seems to be a curious cadence to the ebb and flow of history. The sands on the beach just keep shifting. Sometimes the cultural charlatans and tyrants move in waves upon the shore and completely desecrate the beach. But after a while, another tide returns, sometimes in tsunami force, and washes out to sea the unsightly debris and restores the breathtaking beauty of the beach.

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com