I was the last person Gonzalo Lira called before he got arrested and died at the hands of the Ukrainian war regime.
He sent me a direct message and we went into a zoom call. He was in a small room, extremely nervous, smoking one cigarette after the other. I had never seen so directly the mental effect that physical torture and extortion can do to a man.
In the previous months, he had been tortured by his Ukrainian guards, and amounts in the 6 figures were illegally taken from him as they forced him to reveal his passwords through physical torture unto his nails and eyes. One of these amounts was the 6-figure amount that had been dormant in his Patreon account, which his fans had donated to him across the years. Gonzalo was rich enough that he never needed to withdraw it, but I know it was the pride of his life; the idea that a bunch of regular people thought his commentary was worth enough to pay for when they didn’t have to.
Two years before that call, a very intelligent and enlightened version of Gonzalo had called me. He was in the UK, then. He had then told me: “JF I’m about to do something radical. A radical change. I won’t tell you what it is, but things are about to change in my life. I’ll be covering something different.”
link with video and more info on Gonzalo
This is a sad but important read. Gonzalo pushed the limits of speaking truth to power and deserves the respect we still feel for him. Moral courage in many ways is based on physical courage. He displayed both kinds in abundance. ABN
American Buddhist Net 