To the memory of Jan Patocka

“The Power of the Powerless” (October 1978) was originally written (“quickly,” Havel said later) as a discussion piece for a projected joint Polish Czechoslovak volume of essays on the subject of freedom and power. All the participants were to receive Havel’s essay, and then respond to it in writing. Twenty participants were chosen on both sides, but only the Czechoslovak side was completed. Meanwhile, in May 1979, some of the Czechoslovak contributors who were also members of VONS (the Committee to Defend the Unjustly Prosecuted), including Havel, were arrested, and it was decided to go ahead and “publish” the Czechoslovak contributions separately.

Havel’s essay has had a profound impact on Eastern Europe. Here is what Zbygniew Bujak, a Solidarity activist, told me: “This essay reached us in the Ursus factory in 1979 at a point when we felt we were at the end of the road. Inspired by KOR [the Polish Workers' Defense Committee], we had been speaking on the shop floor, talking to people, participating in public meetings, trying to speak the truth about the factory, the country, and politics. There came a moment when people thought we were crazy. Why were we doing this? Why were we taking such risks? Not seeing any immediate and tangible results, we began to doubt the purposefulness of what we were doing. Shouldn’t we be coming up with other methods, other ways?

“Then came the essay by Havel. Reading it gave us the theoretical underpinnings for our activity. It maintained our spirits; we did not give up, and a year later-in August ig8o-it became clear that the party apparatus and the factory management were afraid of us. We mattered. And the rank and file saw us as leaders of the movement. When I look at the victories of Solidarity, and of Charter 77, I see in them an astonishing fulfillment of the prophecies and knowledge contained in Havel’s essay.”

Translated by Paul Wilson, “The Power of the Powerless” has appeared several times in English, foremost in The Power of the Powerless: Citizens Against the State in Central-Eastern Europe, edited by John Keane, with an Introduction by Steven Lukes (London: Hutchinson, 1985). That volume includes a selection of nine other essays from the original Czech and Slovak collection.

I

ASPECETR is haunting Eastern Europe: the specter of what in the West is called “dissent” This secter has not appeared out of thin air. It is a natural and inevitable consequence of the present historical phase of the system it is haunting. It was born at a time when this system, for a thousand reasons, can no longer base itself on the unadulterated, brutal, and arbitrary application of power, eliminating all expressions of nonconformity. What is more, the system has become so ossified politically that there is practically no way for such nonconformity to be implemented within its official structures.

Who are these so-called dissidents? Where does their point of view come from, and what. importance does it have? What is the significance of the “independent initiatives” in which “dissidents” collaborate, and what real chances do such initiatives have of success? Is it appropriate to refer to “dissidents” as an opposition? If so, what exactly is such an opposition within the framework of this system? What does it do? What role does it play in society? What are its hopes and on what are they based? Is it within the power of the “dissidents”-as a category of subcitizen outside the power establishment-to have any influence at all on society and the social system? Can they actually change anything?

I think that an examination of these questions-an examination of the potential of the “powerless”-can only begin with an examination of the nature of power in the circumstances in which these powerless people operate.

II

Our system is most frequently characterized as a dictatorship or, more precisely, as the dictatorship of a political bureaucracy over a society which has undergone economic and social leveling. I am afraid that the term “dictatorship,” regardless of how intelligible it may otherwise be, tends to obscure rather than clarify the real nature of power in this system. We usually associate the term with the notion of a small group of people who take over the government of a given country by force; their power is wielded openly, using the direct instruments of power at their disposal, and they are easily distinguished socially from the majority over whom they rule. One of the essential aspects of this traditional or classical notion of dictatorship is the assumption that it is temporary, ephemeral, lacking historical roots. Its existence seems to be bound up with the lives of those who established it. It is usually local in extent and significance, and regardless of the ideology it utilizes to grant itself legitimacy, its power derives ultimately from the numbers and the armed might of its soldiers and police. The principal threat to its existence is felt to be the possibility that someone better equipped in this sense might appear and overthrow it.

Even this very superficial overview should make it clear that the system in which we live has very little in common with a classical dictatorship. In the first place, our system is not limited in a local, geographical sense; rather, it holds sway over a huge power bloc controlled by one of the two superpowers. And although it quite naturally exhibits a number of local and historical variations, the range of these variations is fundamentally circumscribed by a single, unifying framework throughout the power bloc. Not only is the dictatorship everywhere based on the same principles and structured in the same way (that is, in the way evolved by the ruling super power), but each country has been completely penetrated by a network of manipulatory instruments controlled by the superpower center and totally subordinated to its interests. In the stalemated world of nuclear parity, of course, that circumstance endows the system with an unprecedented degree of external stability compared with classical dictatorships. Many local crises which, in an isolated state, would lead to a change in the system, can be resolved through direct intervention by the armed forces of the rest of the bloc.

In the second place, if a feature of classical dictatorships is their lack of historical roots (frequently they appear to be no more than historical freaks, the fortuitous consequence of fortuitous social processes or of human and mob tendencies), the same cannot be said so facilely about our system. For even though our dictatorship has long since alienated itself completely from the social movements that give birth to it, the authenticity of these movements (and I am thinking of the proletarian and socialist movements of the nineteenth century) gives it undeniable historicity. These origins provided a solid foundation of sorts on which it could build until it became the utterly new social and political reality it is today, which has become so inextricably a part of the structure of the modern world. A feature of those historical origins was the “correct” understanding of social conflicts in the period from which those original movements emerged. The fact that at the very core of this “correct” understanding there was a genetic disposition toward the monstrous alienation characteristic of its subsequence development is not essential here. And in any case, this element also grew organically from the climate of that time and therefore can be said to have its origin there as well.

One legacy of that original “correct” understanding is a third peculiarity that makes our systems different from other modern dictatorships: it commands an incomparably more precise, logically structured, generally comprehensible and, in essence, extremely flexible ideology that, in its elaborateness and completeness, is almost a secularized religion. It of fears a ready answer to any question whatsoever; it can scarcely be accepted only in part, and accepting it has profound implications for human life. In an era when metaphysical and existential certainties are in a state of crisis, when people are being uprooted and alienated and are losing their sense of what this world means, this ideology inevitably has a certain hypnotic charm. To wandering humankind it offers an immediately available home: all one has to do is accept it, and suddenly everything becomes clear once more, life takes on new meaning, and all mysteries, unanswered questions, anxiety, and loneliness vanish. Of course, one pays dearly for this low-rent home: the price is abdication of one’ s own reason, conscience, and responsibility, for an essential aspect of this ideology is the consignment of reason and conscience to a higher authority. The principle involved here is that the center of power is identical with the center of truth. (In our case, the connection with Byzantine theocracy is direct: the highest secular authority is identical with the highest spiritual authority.) It is true of course that, all this aside, ideology no longer has any great influence on people, at least within our bloc (with the possible exception of Russia, where the serf mentality, with its blind, fatalistic respect for rulers and its automatic acceptance of all their claims, is still dominant and combined with a superpower patriotism which traditionally places the interests of empire higher than the interests of humanity). But this is not important, because ideology plays its role in our system very well (an issue to which I will return) precisely because it is what it is.

Fourth, the technique of exercising power in traditional dictatorships contains a necessary element of improvisation. The mechanisms for wielding power are for the most part not established firmly, and there is considerable room for accident and for the arbitrary and unregulated application of power. Socially, psychologically, and physically, conditions still exist for the expression of some form of opposition. In short, there are many seams on the surface which can split apart before the entire power structure has managed to stabilize. Our system, on the other hand, has been developing in the Soviet Union for over sixty years, and for approximately thirty years in Eastern Europe; moreover, several of its long-established structural features are derived from Czarist absolutism. In terms of the physical aspects of power, this has led to the creation of such intricate and well-developed mechanisms for the direct and indirect manipulation of the entire population that, as a physical power base, it represents something radically new. At the same time, let us not forget that the system is made significantly more effective by state ownership and central direction of all the means of productionThis gives the power structure an unprecedented and uncontrollable capacity to invest in itself (in the areas of the bureaucracy and the police, for example) and makes it easier for that structure, as the sole employer, to manipulate the day-to-day existence of all citizens.

Finally, if an atmosphere of revolutionary excitement, heroism, dedication, and boisterous violence on all sides characterizes classical dictatorships, then the last traces of such an atmosphere have vanished from the Soviet bloc. For, some time now this bloc has ceased to be a kind of enclave, isolated from the rest of the developed world and immune to processes occurring in it. To the contrary, the Soviet bloc is an integral part of that larger world, and it shares and shapes the world’s destiny. This means in concrete terms that the hierarchy of values existing in the developed countries of the West has, in essence, appeared in our society (the long period of co-existence with the West has only hastened this process)In other words, what we have here is simply another form of the consumer and industrial society, with all its concomitant social, intellectual, and psychological consequences. It is impossible to understand the nature of power in our system properly without taking this into account.

The profound difference between our system-in terms of the nature of power-and what we traditionally understand by dictatorship, a difference I hope is clear even from this quite superficial comparison, has caused me to search for some term appropriate for our system, purely for the pur poses of this essay. If I refer to it henceforth as a “posttotalitarian” system, I am fully aware that this is perhaps not the most precise term, but I am unable to think of a better one. I do not wish to imply by the prefix “poso” that the system is no longer totalitarian; on the contrary, I mean that it is totalitarian in a way fundamentally different from classical dictatorships, different from totalitarianism as we usually understand it.

The circumstances I have mentioned, however, form only a circle of conditional factors and a kind of phenomenal framework for the actual composition of power in the posttotalitarian system, several aspects of which I shall now attempt to identify.

III

The manager of a fruit-and-vegetable shop places in his window, among the onions and carrots, the slogan: “Workers of the world, unite!” Why does he do it? What is he trying to communicate to the world? Is he genuinely enthusiastic about the idea of unity among the workers of the world? Is his enthusiasm so great that he feels an irrepressible impulse to acquaint the public with his ideals? Has he really given more than a moment’s thought to how such a unification might occur and what it would mean?

I think it can safely be assumed that the overwhelming majority of shopkeepers never think about the slogans they put in their windows, nor do they use them to express their real opinions. That poster was delivered to our greengrocer from the enterprise headquarters along with the onions and carrots. He put them all into the window simply because it has been done that way for years, because everyone does it, and because that is the way it has to be. If he were to refuse, there could be trouble. He could be reproached for not having the proper decoration in his window; someone might even accuse him of disloyalty. He does it because these things must be done if one is to get along in life. It is one of the thousands of details that guarantee him a relatively tranquil life “in harmony with society,” as they say.
Obviously the greengrocer is indifferent to the semantic content of the slogan on exhibit; he does not put the slogan in his window from any personal desire to acquaint the public with the ideal it expresses. This, of course, does not mean that his action has no motive or significance at all, or that the slogan communicates nothing to anyone. The slogan is really a sign, and as such it contains a subliminal but very definite message. Verbally, it might be expressed this way: “I, the greengrocer XY, live here and I know what I must do. I behave in ihe manner expected of me. I can be depended upon and am beyond reproach. I am obedient and therefore I have the right to be left in peace.” This message, of course, has an addressee: it is directed above, to the greengrocer’s superior, and at the same time it is a shield that protects the greengrocer from potential informers. The slogan’s. real meaning, therefore, is rooted firmly in the greengrocer’s existence. It reflects his vital interests. But what are those vital interests?

Let us take note: if the greengrocer had been instructed to display the slogan “I am afraid and therefore unquestion~ ingly obedient;’ he would not be nearly as indifferent to its semantics, even though the statement would reflect the truth. The greengrocer would be embarrassed and ashamed to put such an unequivocal statement of his own degradation in the shop window, and quite naturally so, for he is a human being and thus has a sense of his own dignity. To overcome ihis complication, his expression of loyalty must take the form of a sign which, at least on its textual surface, indicates a level of disinterested conviction. It must allow the greengrocer to say, “What’s wrong with ihe workers of the world uniting?” Thus the sign helps the greengrocer to conceal from himself the low foundations of his obedience, at the same time concealing the low foundations of power. It hides them behind the facade of something high. And that something is ideology.

Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers human beings the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality while making it easier for them to part with them. As the repository of something suprapersonal and objective, it enables people to deceive their conscience and conceal their true position and their inglorious modus vivendi, both from the world and from ihemselves. It is a very pragmatic but, at the same time, an apparently dignified way of legitimizing what is above, below, and on either side. It is directed toward people and toward God. It is a veil behind which human beings can hide their own fallen existence, their trivialization, and iheir adaptation to the status quo. It is an excuse that everyone can use, from the greengrocer, who conceals his fear of losing hisjob behind an alleged interest in the unification of the workers of the world, to the highest functionary, whose interest in staying iu power can be cloaked in phrases about service to the working class. The primary excusatory function of ideology, therefore, is to provide people, both as victims and pillars of the post-totalitarian system, with the illusion that the system is in harmony with the human order and the order of the universe.

The smaller a dictatorship and the less stratified by modernization the society under it, the more directly the will of the dictator can be exercised- In other words, the dictator can employ more or less naked discipline, avoiding the complex processes of relating to the world and of selfjustification which ideology involves. But the more complex the mechanisms of power become, the larger and more stratified the society they embrace, and the longer they have operated historically, the more individuals must be connected to them from outside, and the greater the importance attached to the ideological excuse. It acts as a kind of bridge between the regime and the people, across which the regime approaches the people and the people approach the regime. This explains why ideotogy plays such an importaut role in the post-totalitarian system: that complex machinery of units, hierarchies, transmission belts, and indirect instruments of manipulation which ensure in countless ways ihe integrity of the regime, leaving nothing to chance, would be quite simply unthinkable without ideology acting as its all-embracing excuse and as the excuse for each of its parts.

IV

Between the aims of the post-totalitarian system and the aims of life there is a yawning abyss: while life, in its essence, moves toward plurality, diversity, independent self-constitution, aud self organization, in short, toward the fulfillment of its own freedom, the post-totalitarian system demands conformity, uniformity, and discipline. While life ever strives to create new and improbable structures, the posatotalitarian system contrives to force life into its most probable states. The aims of the system reveal its most essential characteristic to be introversion, a movement toward being ever more completely and unreservedly itself, which means that the radius of its influence is continually widening as well. This system serves people only to the extent necessary to ensure that people will serve it. Anything beyond this, that is to say, anything which leads people to overstep their predetermined roles is regarded by the system as an attack upon itsel^ And in this respect it is correct: every instance of such transgression is a genuine denial of the system. It can be said, therefore, that the inner aim of the post-totalitarian system is not mere preservation of power in the hands of a ruling clique, as appears to be the case at first sight. Rather, the social phenomenon of self-preservation is subordinated to something higher, to a kind of blind automatism which drives the system. No matter what position individuals hold in the hierarchy of power, they are not considered by the system to be worth anything in themselves, but only as things intended to fuel and serve this automatism. For this reason, an individual’s desire for power is admissible only in so far as its direction coincides with the direction of the automatism of the system.

Ideology, in creating a bridge of excuses between the system and the individual, spans the abyss between the aims of the system and the aims of life. It pretends that the requirements of the system derive from the requirements of life. It is a world of appearances trying to pass for reality.

The post-totalitarian system touches people at every step, but it does so with its ideological gloves on. This is why life in the system is so thoroughly permeated with hypocrisy and lies: government by bureaucracy is called popular government; the working class is enslaved in the name of the work ing class; the complete degradation of the individual is presented as his ultimate liberation; depriving people of in formation is called making it available; the use of power to manipulate is called the public control of power, and the arbitrary abuse of power is called observing the legal code; the repression of culture is called its development; the expansion of imperial intluence is presented as support for the oppressed; the lack of free expression becomes the highest form of freedom; farcical elections become the highest form of democracy; banning independent thought becomes the most scientific of world views; military occupation becomes fraternal assistance. Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics. It pretends not to possess an omnipotent and unprincipled police apparatus. It pretends to respect human rights. It pretends to persecute no one. It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing.

Individuals need not believe all these mystifications, but they must behave as though they did, or they must at least tolerate them in silence, or get along well with those who work with them. For this reason, however, they must live within a lie. They need not accept the lie. It is enough for them to have accepted their life with it and in it. For by this very fact, individuals confirm the system, fulfill the system, make the system, are the system.

V

We have seen that the real meaning of the greengrocer’s slogan has nothing to do with what the text of the slogan actually says. Even so, this real meaning is quite clear and generally comprehensible because the code is so familiar: the greengrocer declares his loyalty (and he can do no other if his declaration is to be accepted) in the only way the regime is capable of hearing; that is, by accepting the prescribed ritual, by accepting appearances as reality, by accepting the given rules of the game. In doing so, however, he has himself become a player in the game, thus making it possible for the game to go on, for it to exist in the first place.
If ideology was originally a bridge between the system and the individual as an individual, then the moment he steps on to this bridge it becomes at the same time a bridge between the system and the individual as a componenc of the system. That is, if ideology originally facilitated (by acting outwardly) the constitution of power by serving as a psychological excuse, then from the moment that excuse is accepted, it constitutes power inwardly, becoming an active component of that power. It begins to function as the principal instrument of ritual communication within the system of power.

The whole power structure (and we have already discussed its physical articulation) could not exist at all if there were not a certain metaphysical order binding all its components together, interconnecting them and subordinating them to a uniform method of accountability, supplying the combined operation of all these components with rules of the game, that is, with certain regulations, limitations, and legalities. This metaphysical order is fundamental to, and standard throughout, the entire power structure; it integrates its communication system and makes possible the internal exchange and transfer of information and instructions. It is rather like a collection of traffic signals and directional signs, giving the process shape and structure. This metaphysical order guar antees the inner coherence of the totalitarian power structure. It is the glue holding it together, its binding principle, the instrument of its discipline. Without this glue the structure as a totalitarian structure would vanish; it would disintegrate into individual atoms chaotically colliding with one another in their unregulated particular interests and inclinations. The entire pyramid of totalitarian power, deprived of the element that binds it together, would collapse in upon itself, as it were, in a kind of material implosion.

As the interpretation of reality by the power structure, ideology is always subordinated ultimately to the interests of the structure. Therefore, it has a natural tendency to disengage itself from reality, to create a world of appearances, to become ritual. In societies where there is public competition for power and therefore public control of that power, there also exists quite naturally public control of the way that power legitimates itself ideologically. Consequently, in such conditions there are always certain correctives that effectively prevent ideology from abandoning reality altogether. Under totalitarianism, however, these correctives disappear, and thus there is nothing to prevent ideology from becoming more and more removed from reality, gradually turning into what it has already become in the post-totalitarian system: a world of appearances, a mere ritual, a formalized language deprived of semantic contact with reality and transformed into a system of ritual signs that replace reality with pseudo-reality.

Yet, as we have seen, ideology becomes at the same time an increasingly important component of power, a pillar providing it with both excusatory legitimacy and an inner coher ence. As this aspect grows ín importance, and as it gradually loses touch with reality, it acquires a peculiar but very real strength. It becomes reality itself, albeit a reality altogether self-contained, one that on certain levels (chietly inside the power structure) may have even greater weight than reality as such. Increasingly, the virtuosity of the ritual becomes more important than the reality hidden behind it. The significance of phenomena no longer derives from the phenomena themselves, but from their locus as concepts in the ideological context. Reality does not shape theory, but rather the reverse. Thus power gradually draws closer to ideology than it does to reality; it draws its strength from theory and becomes entirely dependent on it. This inevitably leads, of course, to a paradoxical result: rather than theory, or rather ideology, serving power, power begins to serve ideology. It is as though ideology had appropriated power from power, as though it had become dictator itself. It then appears that theory itself, ritual itself, ideology itself, makes decisions that affect people, and not the other way around.

If ideology is the principal guarantee of the inner consistency of power, it becomes at the same time an increasingly important guarantee of its continuity. Whereas succession to power in classical dictatorship is always a rather complicated affair (the pretenders having nothing to give their claims reasonable legitimacy, thereby forcing them always to resort to confrontations of naked power), in the post-totalitarian system power is passed on from person to person, from clique to clique, and from generation to generation in an essentially more regular fashion. In the selection of pretenders, a new “king-maker” takes part: it is ritual legitimation, the ability to rely on ritual, to fulfill it and use it, to allow oneself, as it were, to be borne aloft by it. Naturally, power struggles exist in the post-totalitarian system as well, and most of them are far more brutal than in an open society, for the struggle is not open, regulated by democratic rules, and subject to public control, but hidden behind the scenes. (It is difficult to recall a single instance in which the First Secretary of a ruling Communist Party has been replaced without the various military and security forces being placed at least on alert.) This struggle, however, can never (as it can in classical dictatorships) threaten the very essence of the system and its continuity. At most it will shake up the power structure, which will recover quickly precisely because the binding substance-ideologyremains undisturbed. No matter who is replaced by whom, succession is only possible against the backdrop and within the framework of a common ritual. It can never take place by denying that ritual.

Because of this dictatorship of the ritual, however, power becomes clearly anonymous. Individuals are almost dissolved in the ritual. They allow themselves to be swept along by it and frequently it seems as though ritual alone carries people from obscurity into the light of power. Is it not characteristic of the post-totalitarian system that, on all levels of the power hierarchy, individuals are increasingly being pushed aside by faceless people, puppets, those uniformed flunkeys of the rituals and routines of power?

The automatic operation of a power structure thus dehumanized and made anonymous is a feature of the fundamental automatism of this system. It would seem that it is precisely the diktats of this automatism which select people lacking individual will for the power structure, that it is precisely the diktat of the empty phrase which summons to power people who use empty phrases as the best guarantee that the automatism of the post-totalitarian system will continue.

Western Sovietologists often exaggerate the role of individuals in the post-totalitarian system and overlook the fact that the ruling figures, despite the immense power they possess through the centralized structure of power, are often no more than blind executors of the system’s own internal laws-laws they themselves never can, and never do, reflect upon. In any case, experience has taught us again and again that this automatism is far more powerful than the will of any individual; and should someone possess a more independent will, he must conceal it behind a ritually anonymous mask in order to have an opportunity to enter the power hierarchy at all. And when the individual finally gains a place there and tries to make his will felt within it, that automatism, with its enormous inertia, will triumph sooner or later, and either the im dividual will be ejected by the power structure like a foreign organism, or he will be compelled to resign his individuality gradually, once again blending with the automatism and becoming its servant, almost indistinguishable from those who preceded him and those who will follow. (Let us recall, for instance, the development of Husák or Gomukka.) The necessity of continually hiding behind and relating to ritual means that even the more enlightened members of the power struc ture are often obsessed with ideology. They are never able to plunge straight to the bottom of naked reality, and they always confuse it, in the fmal analysis, with ideological pseudoreality. (In my opinion, one of the reasons the Dubček leadership lost control of the situation in ig68 was precisely because, in extreme situations and in final questions, its members were never capable of extricating themselves completely from the world of appearances.)

It can be said, therefore, that ideology, as that instrument of internal communication which assures the power structure of inner cohesion is, in the posctotalitarian system, some thing that transcends the physical aspects of power, something that dominates it to a considerable degree and, therefore, tends to assure its continuity as well. It is one of the pillars of the system’s external stability. This pillar, however, is built on a very unstable foundation. It is built on lies. It works only as long as people are willing to live within the lie.

VI

Why in fact did our greengrocer have to put his loyalty on display in the shop window? Had he not already displayed it sufficiently in various internal or semipublic ways? At trade union meetings, after all, he had always voted as he should. He had always taken part in various competitions. He voted in elections like a good citizen. He had even signed the “antiCharter.” Why, on top of all that, should he have to declare his loyalty publicly? After all, the people who walk past his window will certainly not stop to read that, in the greengrocer’s opinion, the workers of the world ought to unite. The fact of the matter is, they don’t read the slogan at all, and it can be fairly assumed they don’t even see it. If you were to ask a woman who had stopped in front of his shop what she saw in the window, she could certainly tell whether or not they had tomatoes today, but it is highly unlikely that she noticed the slogan at all, let alone what it said.

It seems senseless to require the greengrocer to declare his loyalty publicly. But it makes sense nevertheless. People ignore his slogan, but they do so because such slogans are also found in other shop windows, on lampposts, bulletin boards, in apartment windows, and on buildings; they are everywhere, in fact. They form part of the panorama of everyday life. Of course, while they ignore the details, people are very aware of that panorama as a whole. And what else is the greengrocer’s slogan but a small component in that huge backdrop to daily life?

The greengrocer had to put the slogan in his window, therefore, not in the hope that someone might read it or be persuaded by it, but to contribute, along with thousands of other slogans, to the panorama that everyone is very much aware of. This panorama, of course, has a subliminal meaning as well: it reminds people where they are living and what is expected of them. It tells them what everyone else is doing, and indicates to them what they must do as well, if they don’t want to be excluded, to fall into isolation, alienate themselves from society, break the rules of the game, and risk the loss of iheir peace and tranquility and security.

The woman who ignored the greengrocer’s slogan may well have hung a similar sloganjust an hour before in the corridor of the office where she works. She did it more or less without thinking,just as our greengrocer did, and she could do so precisely because she was doing it against the background of the general panorama and with some awareness of it, ihat is, against the background of the panorama of which the greengrocer’s shop window forms a part. When the greengrocer visits her office, he will not notice her slogan either, just as she failed to notice his. Nevertheless, their slogans are mutually dependent: both were displayed with some awareness of the general panorama and, we might say, under its diktat. Both, however, assist in the creation of that panorama, and therefore they assist in the creation of that diktat as well. The greengrocer and the office worker have both adapted to the conditions in which they live, but in doing so, they help to create those conditions. They do what is done, what is to be done, what must be done, but at the same time-by that very token-they confirm that it must be done in fact. They conform to a particular requirement and in so doing they themselves perpetuate that requirement. Metaphysically speaking, without the greengrocer’s slogan the office worker’s slogan could not exist, and vice versa. Each proposes to the other that something be repeated and each accepts the other’s proposal. Their mutual indifference to each other’s slogans is only an illusion: in reality, by exhibiting their slogans, each compels the other to accept the rules of the game and to confirm thereby the power that requires the slogans in the first place. Quite simply, each helps the other to be obedient. Both are objects in a system of control, but at the same time they are its subjects as well. They are both victims of the system and its instruments.

If an entire district town is plastered with slogans that no one reads, it is on the one hand a message from the district secretary to the regional secretary, but it is also something more: a small example of the principle of social auto-totality at work. Part of the essence of the post-totalitarian system is that it draws everyone into its sphere of power, not so they may realize themselves as human beings, but so they may surrender their human identity in favor of the identity of the system, that is, so they may become agents of the system’s general automatism and servants of its self-determined goals, so they may participate in the common responsibility for it, so they may be pulled into and ensnared by it, like Faust by Mephistopheles. More than this: so they may create through their involvement a general norm and, thus, bring pressure to bear on their fellow citizens. And further: so they may learn to be comfortable with their involvement, to identify with it as though it were something natural and inevitable and, ultimately, so they may-with no external urging-come to treat any non-involvement as an abnormality, as arrogance, as an attack on themselves, as a form of dropping out of society. By pulling everyone into its power structure, the posttotalitarian system makes everyone an instrument of a mutual totality, the auto-totality of society.

Everyone, however, is in fact involved and enslaved, not only the greengrocers but also the prime ministers. Differing positions in the hierarchy merely establish differing degrees of involvement: the greengrocer is involved only to a minor extent, but he also has very little power. The prime minister, naturally, has greater power, but in return he is far more deeply involved. Both, however, are unfree, each merely in a somewhat different way. The real accomplice in this involvement, therefore, is not another person, but the system itself.

Position in the power hierarchy determines the degree of responsibility and guilt, but it gives no one unlimited responsibility and guilt, nor does it completely absolve anyone. Thus the conflict between the aims of life and the aims of the system is not a conflict between two socially defined and separate communities; and only a very generalized view (and even that only approximative) permits us to divide society into the rulers and the ruled. Here, by the way, is one of the most important differences between the post-totalitarian system and classical dictatorships, in which this line of conflict can still be drawn according to social class. In the post-totalitarian system, this line runs de facto through each person, for everyone in his own way is both a victim and a supporter of the system. What we understand by the system is not, therefore, a social order imposed by one group upon another, but rather something which permeates the entire society and is a factor in shaping it, something which may seem impossible to grasp or deflne (for it is in the nature of a mere principle), but which is expressed by the entire society as an important feature of its life.

The fact that human beings have created, and daily create, this self-directed system through which they divest themselves of their innermost identity is not therefore the result of some incomprehensible misunderstanding of history,. nor is it history somehow gone off its rails. Neither is it the product of some diabolical higher will which has decided, for reasons unknown, to torment a portion of humanity in this way. It can happen and did happen only because there is obviously in modern humanity a certain tendency toward the creation, or at least the toleration, of such a system. There is obviously something in human beings which responds to this system, something they reflect and accommodate, something within them which paralyzes every effort of their better selves to revolt. Human beings are compelled to live within a lie, but they can be compelled to do so only because they are in fact capable of living in this way. Therefore not only does the system alienate humanity, but at the same time alienated humanity supports this system as its own involuntary masterplan, as a degenerate image of its own degeneration, as a record of people’s own failure as individuals.

The essential aims of life are present naturally in every person. In everyone there is some longing for humanity’s rightful dignity, for moral integrity, for free expression of being and a sense of transcendence over the world of existence. Yet, at the same time, each person is capable, to a greater or lesser degree, of coming to terms with living within the lie. Each person somehow succumbs to a profane trivialization of his inherent humanity, and to utilitarianism. In everyone there is some willingness to merge with the anonymous crowd and to flow comfortably along with it down the river of pseudolife. This is much more than a simple conflict between two identities. It is something far worse: it is a challenge to the very notion of identity itself..

In highly simplified terms, it could be said that the posttotalitarian system has been built on foundations laid by the historical encounter between dictatorship and the consumer society. Is it not true that the farreaching adaptability to living a lie and the effortless spread of social auto-totality have some connection with the general unwillingness of consumption-oriented people to sacrifice some material certainties for the sake of their own spiritual and moral integrity? With their willingness to surrender higher values when faced with the trivializing temptations of modern civilization? With their vulnerability to the attractions of mass indifference? And in the end, is not the grayness and the emptiness of life in the post-totalitarian system only an intlated caricature of modern life in general? And do we not in fact stand (although in the external measures of civilization, we are far behind) as a kind of warning to the West, revealing to its own latent tendencies?

VII

Let us now imagine that one day something in our greengrocer snaps and he stops putting up the slogans merely to ingratiate himself. He stops voting in elections he knows are a farce. He begins to say what he really thinks at political meetings. And he even finds the strength in himself to express solidarity with those whom his conscience commands him to support. In this revolt the greengrocer steps out of living within the lie. He rejects the ritual and breaks the rules of the game. He discovers once more his suppressed identity and dignity. He gives his freedom a concrete significance. His revolt is an attempt to live within the truth.

The bill is not long in coming. He will be relieved of his post as manager of the shop and transferred to the warehouse. His pay will be reduced. His hopes for a holiday in Bulgaria will evaporate. His children’s access to higher education will be threatened. His superiors will harass him and his fellow workers will wonder about him. Most of those who apply these sanctions, however, will not do so from any authentic inner conviction but simply under pressure from conditions, the same conditions that once pressured the greengrocer to display the official slogans. They will persecute the greengrocer either because it is expected of them, or to demonstrate their loyalty, or simply as part of the general panorama, to which belongs an awareness that this is how situations of this sort are dealt with, that this, in fact, is how things are always done, particularly if one is not to become suspect oneself. The executors, therefore, behave essentially like everyone else, to a greater or lesser degree: as components of the post-totalitarian system, as agents of its automatism, as petty instruments of the social auto-totality.

Thus the power structure, through the agency of those who carry out the sanctions, those anonymous components of the system, will spew the greengrocer from its mouth. The system, through its alienating presence ín people, will punish him for his rebellion. It must do so because the logic of its automatism and self-defense dictate it. The greengrocer has not committed a simple, individual offense, isolated in its own uniqueness, but something incomparably more serious. By breaking the rules of the game, he has disrupted the game as such. He has exposed it as a mere game. He has shattered the world of appearances, the fundamental pillar of the system. He has upset the power structure by tearing apart what holds it together. He has demonstrated that living a lie is living a lie. He has broken through the exalted facade of the system and exposed the real, base foundations of power. He has said that the emperor is naked. And because the emperor is in fact naked, something extremely dangerous has happened: by his action, the greengrocer has addressed the world. He has enabled everyone to peer behind the curtain. He has shown everyone that it is possible to live within the truth. Living within the lie can constitute the system only if it is universal. The principle must embrace and permeate everything. There are no terms whatsoever on which it can co-exist with living within the truth, and therefore everyone who steps out of line denies it in principle and threatens it in its entirety.

This is understandable: as long as appearance is not confronted with reality, it does not seem to be appearance. As long as living a lie is not confronted with living the truth, the perspective needed to expose its mendacity is lacking. As soon as the alternative appears, however, it threatens the very existence of appearance and living a lie in terms of what they are, both their essence and their all-inclusiveness. And at the same time, it is utterly unimportant how large a space this alternative occupies: its power does not consist in its physical attributes but in the light it casts on those pillars of the system and on its unstable foundations. After all, the greengrocer was a threat to the system not because of any physical or actual power he had, but because his action went beyond itself, because it illuminated its surroundings and, of course, because of the incalculable consequences of that illumination. In the post-totalitarian system, therefore, living within the truth has more than a mere existential dimension (returning humanity to its inherent nature), or a noetic dimension (revealing reality as it is), or a moral dimension (setting an example for others). It also has an unambiguous political dimension. If the main pillar of the system is living a lie, then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living the truth. This is why it must be suppressed more severely than anything else.

In the post-totalitarian system, truth in the widest sense of the word has a very special import, one unknown in other contexts. In this system, truth plays a far greater (and, above all, a far different) role as a factor of power, or as an outright political force. How does the power of truth operate? How does truth as a factor of power work? How can its power-as power-be realized?

VIII

Individuals can be alienated from themselves only because there is something in them to alienate. The terrain of this violation is their authentic existence. Living the truth is thus woven directly into the texture of living a lie. It is the repressed alternative, the authentic aim to which living a lie is an inauthentic response. Only against this background does living a lie make any sense: it exists because of that background. In its excusatory, chimerical rootedness in the human order, it is a response to nothing other than the human predisposition to truth. Under the orderly surface of the life of lies, therefore, there slumbers the hidden sphere of life in its real aims, of its hidden openness to truth.

The singular, explosive, incalculable political power of living within the truth resides in the fact that living openly within the truth has an ally, invisible to be sure, but omnipresent: this hidden sphere. It is from this sphere that life lived openly in the truth grows; it is to this sphere that it speaks, and in it that it finds understanding. This is where the potential for communication exists. But this place is hidden and therefore, from the perspective of power, very dangerous. The complex ferment that takes place within it goes on in semidarkness, and by the time it finally surfaces into the light of day as an assortment of shocking surprises to the system, it is usually too late to cover them up in the usual fashion. Thus they create a situation in which the regime is confounded, invariably causing panic and driving it to react in inappropriate ways.

It seems that the primary breeding ground for what might, in the widest possible sense of the word, be understood as an opposition in the post-totalitarian system is living within the truth. The confrontation between these opposition forces and the powers that be, of course, will obviously take a form essentially different from that typical of an open society or a classical dictatorship. Initially, this confrontation does not take place on the level of real, institutionalized, quantifiable power which relies on the various instruments of power, but on a different level altogether: the level of human consciousness and conscience, the existential level. The effective range of this special power cannot be measured in terms of disciples, voters, or soldiers, because it lies spread out in the fifth column of social consciousness, in the hidden aims of life, in human beings’ repressed longing for dignity and fundamental rights, for the realization of their real social and political interests. Its power, therefore, does not reside in the strength of deFmable political or social groups, but chiefly in the strength of a potential, which is hidden throughout the whole of society, including the official power structures of that society. Therefore this power does not.rely on soldiers of its own, but on the soldiers of the enemy as it were-that is to say, on everyone who is living within the lie and who may be struck at any moment (in theory, at least) by the force of truth (or who, out of an instinctive desire to protect their position, may at least adapt to that force). It is a bacteriological weapon, so to speak, utilized when conditions are ripe by a single civilian to disarm an entire division. This power does not participate in any direct struggle for power; rather, it makes its influence felt in the obscure arena of being itself. The hidden movements it gives rise to there, however, can issue forth (when, where, under what circumstances, and to what extent are difficult to prediet) in something visible: a real political act or event, a social movement, a sudden explosion of civil unrest, a sharp conflict inside an apparently monolithic power structure, or simply an irrepressible transformation in the social and intellectual climate. And since all genuine problems and matters of critical importance are hidden beneath a thick crust of lies, it is never quite clear when the proverbial last straw will fall, or what that straw will be. This, too, is why the regime prosecutes, almost as a reflex action preventively, even the most modest attempts to live within the truth.

Why was Solzhenitsyn driven out of his own country? Certainly not because he represented a unit of real power, that is, not because any of the regime’s representatives felt he might unseat them and take their place in government. Solzhenitsyn’s expulsion was something else: a desperate attempt to plug up the dreadful wellspring of truth, a truth which might cause incalculable transformaeions in social consciousness, which in turn might one day produce political debacles unpredictable in their consequences. And so the posttotalitarian system behaved in a characteristic way: it defended the integrity of the world of appearances in order to defend itself. For the crust presented by the life of lies is made of strange stuff. As long as it seals off hermetically the entire society, it appears to be made of stone. But the moment someone breaks through in one place, when one person cries out, “The emperor is naked!”-when a single person breaks the rules of the game, thus exposing it as a game-everything suddenly appears in another light and the whole crust seems then to be made of a tissue on the point of tearing and disintegrating uncontrollably.

When I speak of living within the truth, I naturally do not have in mind only products of conceptual thought, such as a protest or a letter written by a group of intellectuals. It can be any means by which a person or a group revolts against manipulation: anything fsom a letter by intellectuals to a workers’ strike, from a rock concert to a student demonstration, from refusing to vote in the farcical elections to making an open speech at some official congress, or even a hunger strike, for instance. If the suppression of the aims of life is a complex process, and if it is based on the multifaceted manipulation of all expressions of life, then, by the same token, every free expression of life indirectly threatens the posttotalitarian system politically, including forms of expression to which, in other social systems, no one would attribute any potential political significance, not to mention explosive power.

The Prague Spring is usually understood as a clash between two groups on the level of real power: those who wanted to maintain the system as it was and those who wanted to reform it. It is frequently forgotten, however, that this encounter was merely the final act and the inevitable consequence of a long drama originally played out chiefly in the theatre of the spirit and the conscience of society. And that somewhere at the beginning of this drama, there were individuals who were willing to live within the truth, even when things were at their worst. These people had no access to real power, nor did they aspire to it. The sphere in which they were living the truth was not necessarily even that of political thought. They could equally have been poets, painters, musicians, or simply ordinary citizens who were able to maintain their human dignity. Today it is naturally difficult to pinpoint when and through which hidden, winding channel a certain action or attitude influenced a given milieu, and to trace the virus of truth as it slowly spread through the tissue of the life of lies, gradually causing it to disintegrate. One thing, however, seems clear: the attempt at political reform was not the cause of’ society’s reawakening, but rather the fmal outcome of that reawakening.

I think the present also can be better understood in the light of this experience. The confrontation between a thousand Chartists and the post-totalitarian system would appear to be politically hopeless. This is true, of course, if we look at it through the traditional lens of the open political system, in which, quite naturally, every political force is measured chieíly in terms of the positions it holds on the level of real power. Given that perspective, a mini-party like the Charter would certainly not stand a chance. If, however, this confrontation is seen against the background of what we know about power in the post-totalitarian system, it appears in a fundamentally different light. For the time being, it is impossible to say with any precision what impact the appearance of Charter qq, its existence, and its work has had in the hidden sphere, and how the Charter’s attempt to rekindle civic self-awareness and confidence is regarded there. Whether, when, and how this investment will eventually produce dividends in the form of specific political changes is even less possible to predict. But that, of course, is all part of living within the truth. As an existential solution, it takes individuals back to the solid ground of their own identity; as politics, it throws them into a game of chance where the stakes are all or nothing. For this reason it is undertaken only by those for whom the former is worth risking the latter, or who have come to the conclusion that there is no other way to conduct real politics in Czechoslovakia today. Which, by the way, is the same thing: this conclusion can be reached only by someone who is unwilling to sacrifice his own human identity to politics, or rather, who does not believe in a politics that requires such a sacrifice.

The more thoroughly the posrtotalitarian system frustrates any rival alternative on the level of real power, as well as any form of politics independent of the laws of its own automatism, the more definitively the center of gravity of any potential political threat shifts to the area of the existential and the pre-political: usually without any conscious effort, living within the truth becomes the one natural point of departure for all activities that work against the automatism of the system. And even if such activities ultimately grow beyond the area of living within the truth (which means they are transformed into various parallel structures, movements, institutions, they begin to be regarded as political activity, they bring real pressure to bear on the official structures and begin in fact to have a certain influence on the level of real power), they always carry with them the specific hallmark of their origins. Therefore it seems to me that not even the so-called dissident movements can be properly understood without constantly bearing in mind this special background from which they emerge.

IX

The profound crisis of human identity brought on by living within a lie, a crisis which in turn makes such a life possible, certainly possesses a moral dimension as well; it appears, among other things, as a deep moral crisis in society. A person who has been seduced by the consumer value system, whose identity is dissolved in an amalgam of the accouterments of mass civilization, and who has no roots in the order of being, no sense of responsibility for anything higher than his own personal survival, is a demoralized person. The system depends on this demoralization, deepens it, is in fact a projection of it into society.

Living within the truth, as humanity’s revolt against an enforced position, is, on the contrary, an attempt to regain control over one’s own sense of responsibility. In other words, it is clearly a moral act, not only because one must pay so dearly for it, but principally because it is not self-serving: the risk may bring rewards in the form of a general amelioration in the situation, or it may not. In this regard, as I stated previously, it is an all-or-nothing gamble, and it is difficult to imagine a reasonable person embarking on such a course merely because he reckons that sacrifice today will bring rewards tomorrow, be it only in the form of general gratitude. (By the way, the representatives of power invariably come to terms with those who live within the truth by persistently ascribing utilitarian motivations to them-a lust for power or fame or wealth-and thus they try, at least, to implicate them in their own world, the world of general demoralization.)

If living within the truth in the post-totalitarian system becomes the chief breeding ground for independent, alternative political ideas, then all considerations about the nature and future prospects of these ideas must necessarily reflect this moral dimension as a potitical phenomenon. (And if the revolutionary Marxist belief about morality as a product of the “superstructure” inhibits any of our friends from realizing the full significance of this dimerision and, in one way or another, from including it in their view of the world, it is to their own detriment: an anxious fidelity to the posculates of that world view prevents them from properly understanding the mechanisms of their own political intluence, thus paradoxically making them precisely what they, as Marxists, so often suspect others of being-victims of “false consciousness.”) The very special political significance of morality in the post-totalitarian system is a phenomenon that is at the very least unusual in modern political history, a phenomenon that might well have-as I shall soon attempt to showfar-reaching consequences.

X

Undeniably, the most important political event in Czechoslovakia after the advent of the Husák leadership in ig6g was the appearance of Charter 77. The spiritual and intellectual climate surrounding its appearance, however, was not the product of any immediate political event. That climate was created by the trial of some young musicians associated with a rock group called “The Plastic People of the Universe.” Their trial was not a confrontation of two differing political forces or conceptions, but two differing conceptions of life. On the one hand, there was the sterile puritanism of the posttotalitarian establishment and, on the other hand, unknown young people who wanted no more than to be able to live within the truth, to play the music they enjoyed, to sing songs that were relevant to their lives, and to live freely in dignity and partnership. These people had no past history of political activity. They were not highly motivated members of the opposition with political ambitions, nor were they former politicians expelled from the power structures. They had been given every opportunity to adapt to the status quo, to accept the principles of living within a lie and thus to enjoy life undisturbed by the authorities. Yet they decided on a different course. Despite this, or perhaps precisely because of it, their case had a very special impact on everyone who had not yet given up hope. Moreover, when the trial took place, a new mood had begun to surface after the years of waiting, of apathy and of skepticism toward various forms of resistance. People were “tired of being tired”; they were fed up with the stagnation, the inactivity, barely hanging on in the hope that things might improve after all. In some ways the trial was the final straw. Many groups of differing tendencies which until then had remained isolated from each other, reluctant to cooperate, or which were committed to forms of action that made cooperation difficult, were suddenly struck with the powerful realization that freedom is indivisible. Everyone understood that an attack on the Czech musical underground was an attack on a most elementary and important thing, something that in fact bound everyone together: it was an attack on the very notion of living within the truth, on the real aims of life. The freedom to play rock music was understood as a human freedom and thus as essentially the same as the freedom to engage in philosophical and political reflection, the freedom to write, the freedom to express and defend the various social and political interests of society. People were inspired to feel a genuine sense of solidarity with the young musicians and they came to realize that not standing up for the freedom of others, regardless of how remote their means of creativity or their attitude to life, meant surrendering one’s own freedom. (There is no freedom without equality before the law, and there is no equality before the law without freedom; Charter 77 has given this ancient notion a new and characteristic dimension, which has immensely important implications for modern Czech history. What Sládeček, the author of the book Sixty-eight, in a brilliant analysis, calls the “principle of exclusion,” lies at the root of all our present-day moral and political misery. This principle was born at the end of the Second World War in that strange collusion of democrats and communists and was subsequently developed further and further, right to the bitter end. For the first time in decades this principle has been overcome, by Charter 77: all those united in the Charter have, for the first time, become equal partners. Charter 77 is not merely a coalition of communists and noncommunists-that would be nothing historically new and, from the moral and political point of view, nothing revolutionary-but it is a community that is a priori open to anyone, and no one in it is a priori assigned an inferior position.) This was the climate, then, in which Charter 77 was created. Who could have foreseen that the prosecution of one or two obscure rock groups would have such far-reaching consequences?

I think that the origins of Charter 77 illustrate very well what I have already suggested above: that in the posttotalitarian system, the real background to the movements that gradually assume political significance does not usually consist of overtly political events or confrontations between different forces or concepts that are openly political. These movements for the most part originate elsewhere, in the far broader area of the “pre-political,” where living within a lie confronts living within the truth, that is, where the demands of the post-totalitarian system conflict with the real aims of life. These real aims can naturally assume a great many forms. Sometimes they appear as the basic material or social inter ests of a group or an individual; at other times, they may appear as certain intellectual and spiritual interests; at still other times, they may be the most fundamental of existential demands, such as the simple longing of people to live their own lives in dignity. Such a conflict acquires a political character, then, not because of the elementary political nature of the aims demanding to be heard but simply because, given the complex system of manipulation on which the post-totalitarian system is founded and on which it is also dependent, every free human act or expression, every attempt to live within the truth, must necessarily appear as a threat to the system and, thus, as something which is political par excellerece. Any eventual political articulation of the movements that grow out of this “pre-political” hinterland is secondary. It develops and matures as a result of a subsequent confrontation with the system, and not because it started off as a political program, project, or impulse.

Once again, the events of 1968 confirm this. The communist politicians who were trying to reform the system came forward with their program not because they had suddenly experienced a mystical enlightenment, but because they were led to do so by continued and increasing pressure from areas of life that had nothing to do with politics in the traditional sense of the word. In fact, they were trying in political ways to solve the social conflicts (which in fact were confrontations between the aims of the system and the aims of life) that almost every level of society had been experiencing daily, and had been thinking about with increasing openness for years. Backed by this living resonance throughout society, scholars and artists had defined the problem in a wide variety of ways and students were demanding solutions.

The genesis of Charter 77 also illustrates the special political significance of the moral aspect of things that I have mentioned. Charter 77 would have been unimaginable without that powerful sense of solidarity among widely differing groups, and without the sudden realization that it was impossible to go on waiting any longer, and that the truth had to be spoken loudly and collectively, regardless of the virtual certainty of sanctions and the uncertainty of any tangible results in the immediate future. “There are some things worth suffering for,” Jan Patočka wrote shortly before his death. I think that Chartists understand this not only as Patočka’s legacy, but also as the best explanation of why they do what they do.

Seen from the outside, and chiefly from the vantage point of the system and its power structure, Charter 77 came as a surprise, as a bolt out of the blue. It was not a bolt out of the blue, of course, but that impression is understandable, since the ferment that led to it took place in the “hidden sphere,” in that semidarkness where things are difficult to chart or analyze. The chances of predicting the appearance of the Charter werejust as slight as the chances are now of predicting where it will lead. Once again, it was that shock, so typical of moments when something from the hidden sphere suddenly bursts through the moribund surface of living within a lie. The more one is trapped in the world of appearances, the more surprising it is when something like that happens.

XI

In societies under the post-totalitarian system, all political life in the traditional sense has been eliminated. People have no opportunity to express themselves politically in public, let alone to organize politically. The gap that results is filled by ideological ritual. In such a situation, peoplé s interest in political matters naturally dwindles and independent political thought, insofar as it exists at all, is seen by the majority as unrealistic, farfetched, a kind of self-indulgent game, hopelessly distant from their everyday concerns; something admirable, perhaps, but quite pointless, because it is on the one hand entirely utopian and on the other hand extraordinarily dangerous, in view of the unusual vigor with which any move in that direction is persecuted by the regime.

Yet even in such societies, individuals and groups of people exist who do not abandon politics as a vocation and who, in one way or another, strive to think independently, to express themselves and in some cases even to organize politically, because that is a part of their attempt to live within the truth.
The fact that these people exist and work is in itself immensely important and worthwhile. Even in the worst of times, they maintain the continuity of political thought. If some genuine political impulse emerges from this or that “pre-political” confrontation and is properly articulated early enough, thus increasing its chances of relative success, then this is frequently due to these isolated generals without an army who, because they have maintained the continuity of political thought in the face of enormous difficulties, can at the right moment enrich the new impulse with the fruits of their own political thinking. Once again, there is ample evidence for this process in Czechoslovakia. Almost all those who were political prisoners in the early 1970s, who had appar ently been made to suffer in vain because of their quixotic efforts to work politically among an utterly apathetic and demoralized society, belong today-inevitably-among the most active Chartists. In Charter 77, the moral legacy of their earlier sacrifices is valued, and they have enriched this movement with their experience and that element of political thinking.

And yet it seems to me that the thought and activity of those friends who have never given up direct political work and who are always ready to assume direct political responsibility very often suffer from one chronic fault: an insufficient understanding of the historical uniqueness of the posttotalitarian system as a social and political reality. They have little understanding of the specific nature of power that is typical for this system and therefore they overestimate the importance of direct political work in the traditional sense. Moreover, they fail to appreciate the political significance of those “pre-political” events and processes that provide the living humus from which genuine political change usually springs. As political actors-or, rather, as people with political ambitions-they frequently try to pick up where natural political life left off. They maintain models of behavior that may have been appropriate in more normal political circumstances and thus, without really being aware of it, they bring an outmoded way of thinking, old habits, conceptions, categories, and notions to bear on circumstances that are quite new and radically different, without first giving adequate thought to the meaning and substance of such things in the new circumstances, to what politics as such means now, to what sort of thing can have political impact and potential, and in what way- Because such people have been excluded from the structures of power and are no longer able to influence those structures directly (and because they remain faithful to traditional notions of politics established in more or less democratic societies or in classical dictatorships) they frequently, in a sense, lose touch with reality. Why make compromises with reality, they say, when none of our proposals will ever be accepted anyway? Thus they Fmd themselves in a world of genuinely utopian thinking.

As I have already tried to indicate, however, genuinely farreaching political events do not emerge from the same sources and in the same way in the post-totalitarian system as they do in a democracy. And’ if a large portion of the public is indif ferent to, even skeptical of, alternative political models and programs and the private establishment of opposition political parties, this is not merely because there is a general feeling of apathy toward public affairs and a loss of that sense of higher responsibility; in other words, it is not just a consequence of the general demoralization. There is also a bit of healthy social instinct at work in this attitude. It is as if people sensed intuitively that “nothing is what it seems any longer,” as the saying goes, and that from now on, therefore, things must be done entirely differently as well.

If some of the most important political impulses in Soviet bloc countries in recent years have come initially-that is, before being felt on the level of actual power-from mathematicians, philosophers, physicians, writers, historians, ordinary workers, and so on, more frequently than from politicians, and if the driving force behind the various dissident movements comes from so many people in nonpolitical professions, this is not because these people are more clever than those who see themselves primarily as politicians. It is because those who are not politicians are also not so bound by traditional political thinking and political habits and therefore, paradoxically, they are more aware of genuine political reality and more sensitive to what can and should be done under the circumstances.

There is no way around it: no matter how beautiful an alternative political model can be, it can no longer speak to the “hidden sphere,” inspire people and society, call for real political ferment. The real sphere of potential politics in the post-totalitarian system is elsewhere: in the continuing and cruel tension between the complex demands of that system and the aims of life, that is, the elementary need of human beings to live, to a certain extent at least, in harmony with themselves, that is, to live in a bearable way, not to be humiliated by their superiors and officials, not to be continually watched by the police, to be able to express themselves freely, to find an outlet for their creativity, to enjoy legal security, and so on. Anything that touches this field concretely, anything that relates to this fundamental, omnipresent, and living tension, will inevitably speak to people. Abstract projects for an ideal political or economic order do not interest them to anything like the same extent-and rightly so-not only because everyone knows how little chance they have of succeeding, but also because today people feel that the less political policies are derived from a concrete and human here and now and the more they fix their sights on an abstract “someday,” the more easily they can degenerate into new forms of human enslavement. People who live in the posttotalitarian system know only too well that the question of whether one or several political parties are in power, and how these parties define and label themselves, is of far less importance than the question of whether or not it is possible to live like a human being.

To shed the burden of traditional political categories and habits and open oneself up fully to the world of human existence and then to draw political conclusions only after having analyzed it: this is not only politically more realistic but at the same time, from the point of view of an “ideal state of affairs,” politically more promising as well. A genuine, profound, and lasting change for the better-as I shall attempt to show-can no longer result from the victory (were such a victory possible) of any particular traditional political conception, which can ultimately be only external, that is, a struotural or systemic conception. More than ever before, such a change will have to derive from human existence, from the fundamental reconstitution of the position of people in the world, their relationships to themselves and to each other, and to the universe. If a better economic and political model is to be created, then perhaps more than ever before it must derive from profound existential and moral changes in society. This is not something that can be designed and introduced like a new car. If it is to be more than just a new variation of the old degeneration, it must above all be an expression of life in the process of transforming itself. A better system will not automatically ensure a better life. In fact, the opposite is true: only by creating a better life can a better system be developed.

Once more I repeat that I am not underestimating the importance oF political thought and conceptual political work. On the contrary, I think that genuine political thought and genuinely political work is precisely what we continually fail to achieve. If I say “genuine,” however, I have in mind the kind oF thought and conceptual work that has freed itself of all the traditional political schemata that have been imported into our circumstances from a world that will never return (and whose return, even were it possible, would provide no permanent solution to the most important problems).

The Second and Fourth Internationals, like many other political powers and organizations, may naturally provide significant political support for various efforts of ours, but neither of them can solve our problems for us. They operate in a different world and are a product of different circumstances. Their theoretical concepts can be interesting and instructive to us, but one thing is certain: we cannot solve our problems simply by identifying with these organizations. And the attempt in our country to place what we do in the context of some of the discussions that dominate political life in democratic societies often seems like sheer folly. For example, is it possible to talk seriously about whether we want to change the system or merely reform it? In the circumstances under which we live, this is a pseudo-problem, since for the time being there is simply no way we can accomplish either goal. We are not even clear about where reform ends and change begins. We know from a number of harsh experiences that neíther reform nor change is in itself a guarantee of anything. We know that ultimately it is all the same to us whether or not the system in which we live, in the light of a particular doctrine, appears changed or reformed. Our concern is whether we can live with dignity in such a system, whether it serves people rather than people serving it. We are struggling to achieve this with the means available to us, and the means it makes sense to employ. Westernjournalists, submerged in the political banalities in which they live, may label our approach as overly legalistic, as too risky, revisionist, counterrevolutionary, bourgeois, communist, or as too right-wing or left-wing. But this is the very last thing that interests us.

XII

One cocept that is a constant source of confusion chief7y because it has been imported into our circumstances from circumstances that are entirely different is the concept of an opposition. What exactly is an opposition in the posttotalitarian system?

In democratic societies with a traditional parliamentary system of government, political opposition is understood as a political force on the level of actual power (most frequently a party or coalition of parties) which is not a part of the government. It offers an alternative political program, it has ambitions to govern, and it is recognized and respected by the government in power as a natural element in the political life of the country. It seeks to spread its influence by political means, and competes for power on the basis of agreed-upon legal regulations.

In addition to this form of opposition, there exists the phenomenon of the “extra-parliamentary opposition,” which again consists of forces organized more or less on the level of actual power, but which operate outside the rules created by the system, and which employ different means than are usual within that framework.
In classical dictatorships, the term “opposition” is understood to mean the political forces which have also come out with an alternative political program. They operate either legally or on the outer limits of legality, but in any case they cannot compete for power within the limits of some agreedupon regulations. Or the term “opposition” may be applied to forces preparing for a violent confrontation with the ruling power, or who feel themselves to be in this state of confrontation already, such as various guerrilla groups or liberation movements.

An opposition in the post-totalitarian system does not exist in any of these senses. In what way, then, can the term be used?

1. Occasionally the term “opposition” is applied, mainly by Western journalists, to persons or groups inside the power structure who find themselves in a state of hidden conflict with the highest authorities. The reasons for this conflict may be certain differences (not very sharp differences, naturally) of a conceptual nature, but more frequently it is quite simply a longing for power or a personal antipathy to others who represent that power.

2. Opposition here can also be understood as everything that does or can have an indirect political effect in the sense already mentioned, that is, everything the post-totalitarian system feels threatened by, which in fact means everything it is threatened by. In this sense, the opposition is every attempt to live within the truth, from the greengrocer’s refusal to put the slogan in his window to a freely written poem; in other words, everything in which the genuine aims of life go beyond the limits placed on them by the aims of the system.

3. More frequently, however, the opposition is usually understood (again, largely by Western journalists) as groups of people who make public their nonconformist stances and critical opinions, who make no secret of their independent thinking and who, to a greater or lesser degree, consider themselves a political force. In this sense, the notion of an opposition more or less overlaps with the notion of dissent, although, of course, there are great differences in the degree to which that label is accepted or rejected. It depends not only on the extent to which these people understand their power as a directly political force, and on whether they have ambitions to participate in actual power, but also on how each of them understands the notion of an opposition.

Again, here is an example: in its original declaration, Charter 77 emphasized that it was not an opposition because it had no intention of presenting an alternative political program. It sees its mission as something quite different, for it has not presented such programs. In fact, if the presenting of an alternative program defines the nature of an opposition in post-totalitarian states, then the Charter cannot be considered an opposition.

The Czechoslovak government, however, has considered Charter 77 as an expressly oppositional association from the very beginning, and has treated it accordingly. This means that the government-and this is only natural-understands the term “opposition” more or less as I defmed it in point z, that is, as everything thac manages to avoid total manipulation and which therefore denies the principle that the system has an absolute claim on the individual.

If we accept this definition of opposition, then of course we must, along with the government, consider the Charter a genuine opposition, because it represents a serious challenge to the integrity of post-totalitarian power, founded as it is on the universality of living with a lie.

It is a different matter, however, when we look at the extent to which individual signatories of Charter 77 think of themselves as an opposition. My impression is that most base their understanding of the term “opposition” on the traditional meaning of the word as it became established in democratic societies (or in classical dictatorships); therefore, they understand opposition, even in Czechoslovakia, as a politically defined force which, although it does not operate on the level of actual power, and even less within the framework of certain rules respected by the government, would still not reject the opportunity to participate in actual power because it has, in a sense, an alternative political program whose proponents are prepared to accept direct political responsibility for it. Given this notion of an opposition, some Chartists-the great majority-do not see themselves in this way. Others-a minority-do, even though they fully respect the fact that there is no room within Charter 77 for “oppositional” activity in this sense. At the same time, however, perhaps every Chartist is familiar enough with the specific nature of conditions in the post-totalitarian system to realize that it is not only the struggle for human rights that has its own peculiar political power, but incomparably more “innocent” activities as well, and therefore they can be understood as an aspect of opposition. No Chartist can really object to being considered an opposition in this sense.

There is another circumstance, however, that considerably complicates matters. For many decades, the power ruling society in the Soviet bloc has used the label “opposition” as the blackest of indictments, as synonymous with the word “enemy.” To brand someone “a member of the opposition” is tantamount to saying he is trying to overthrow the government and put an end to socialism (naturally in the pay of the imperialists). There have been times when this label led straight to the gallows, and of course this does not encourage people to apply the same label to themselves. Moreover, it is only a word, and what is actually done is more important than how it is labeled.

The final reason why many reject such a term is because there is something negative about the notion of an “opposition.” People who so define themselves do so in relation to a prior “position.” In other words, they relate themselves specifically to the power that rules society and through it, define themselves, deriving their own position from the position of the regime. For people who have simply decided to live within the truth, to say aloud what they think, to express their solidarity with their fellow citizens, to create as they want and simply to live in harmony with their better self, it is naturally disagreeable to feel required to define their own original and positive position negatively, in terms of something else, and to think of themselves primarily as people who are against something, not simply as people who are what they are.

Obviously, the only way to avoid misunderstanding is to say clearly-before one starts using them-in what sense the terms “opposition” and “member of the opposition” are being used and how they are in fact to be understood in our circumstances.

XIII

If the term “opposition” has been imported from democratic societies into the post-totalitarian system without general agreement on what the word means in conditions that are so different, then the term “dissident” was, on the contrary, chosen by Western journalists and is now generally accepted as the label for a phenomenon peculiar to the posGtotalitarian system and almost never occurring-at least not in that form-in democratic societies.

Who are these “dissidents”?

It seems that the term is applied primarily to citizens of the Soviet bloc who have decided to live within the truth and who, in addition, meet the following criteria:

1. They express their nonconformist positions and critical opinions publicly and systematically, within the very strict limits available to them, and because of this, they are known in the West.

2. Despite being unable to publish at home and despitc every possible form of persecution by their governments, they have, by virtue of their attitudes, managed to win a certain esteem, both from the public and from their government, and thus they actually enjoy a very limited and very strange degree of indirect, actual power in their own milieu as well. This either protects them from the worst forms of persecution, or at least it ensures that if they are persecuted, it will mean certain political complications for their governments.

3. The horizon of their critical attention and their commiG ment reaches beyond the narrow context of their immediate surroundings or special interests to embrace more general causes and, thus, their work becomes political in nature, although the degree to which they think of themselves as a directly political force may vary a great deal.

4. They are people who lean toward intellectual pursuits, that is, they are “writing” people, people for whom the written word is the primary-and often the only-political medium they command, and that can gain them attention, particularly from abroad. Other ways in which they seek to live within the truth are either lost to the foreign observer in the elusive local milieu or-if they reach beyond this local framework-they appear to be only somewhat less visible complements to what they have written.

5. Regardless of their actual vocations, these people are talked about in the West more frequently in terms of their activities as committed citizens, or in terms of the critical, political aspects of their work, than in terms of the real work they do in their own fields. From personal experience, I know that there is an invisible line you cross-without even wanting to or becoming aware of it-beyond which they cease to treat you as a writer who happens to be a concerned citizen and begin talking of you as a “dissident” who almost incidentally (in his spare time, perhaps?) happens to write plays as well.

Unquestionably, there are people who meet all of these criteria. What is debatable is whether we should be using a special term for a group defined in such an essentially accidental way, and speciflcally, whether they should be called “dissidents.” It does happen, however, and there is clearly nothing we can do about it. Sometimes, to facilitate communication, we even use the label ourselves, although it is done with distaste, rather ironically, and almost always in quotation marks.

Perhaps it is now appropriate to outline some of the reasons why “dissidents” themselves are not very happy to be referred to in this way. In the first place, the word is problematic from an etymological point of view. A “dissident,” we are told in our press, means something like “renegade” or “backslider.” But dissidents do not consider themselves renegades for the simple reason that they are not primarily denying or rejecting anything. On the contrary, they have tried to affirm their own human identity, and if they reject anything at all, then it is merely what was false and alienating in their lives, that aspect of living within a lie.

But that is not the most important thing. The term “dissident” frequently implies a special profession, as if, along with the more normal vocations, there were another special onegrumbling about the state of things. In fact, a “dissident” is simply a physicist, a sociologist, a worker, a poet, individuals who are doing what they feel they must and, consequently, who find themselves in open conflict with the regime. This conflict has not come about through any conscious intention on their part, but simply through the inner logic of their thinking, behavior, or work (often confronted with external circumstances more or less beyond their control). They have not, in other words, consciously decided to be professional malcontents, rather as one decides to be a tailor or a blacksmith.

In fact, of course, they do not usually discover they are “dissidents” until long after they have actually become one. “Dissent” springs from motivations far different from the desire for titles or fame. In short, they do not decide to become “dissidents,” and even if they were to devote twenty-four hours a day to it, it would still not be a profession, but primarily an existential attitude. Moreover, it is an attitude that is in no way the exclusive property of those who have earned themselves the title of “dissident” just because they happen to fulfill those accidental external conditions already mentioned. There are thousands of nameless people who try to live within the truth and millions who want to but cannot, perhaps only because to do so in the circumstances in which they live, they would need ten times the courage of those who have already taken the first step. If several dozen are randomly chosen from among all these people and put into a special category, this can utterly distort the general picture. It does so in two different ways. Either it suggests that “dissidents” are a group of prominent people, a protected species who are permitted to do things others are not and whom the government may even be cultivating as living proof of its generosity; or it lends support to the illusion that since there is no more than a handful of malcontents to whom not very much is really being done, all the rest are therefore content, for were they not so, they would be “dissidents” too.

But that is not all. This categorization also unintentionally supports the impression that the primary concern of these “dissidents” is some vested interest that they share as a group, as though their entire argument with the government were no more than a rather abstruse conflict between two opposed groups, a conflict that leaves society out of it altogether. But such an impression profoundly contradicts the real importance of the “dissident” attitude, which stands or falls on its interest in others, in what ails society as a whole, in other words, on an interest in all those who do not speak up. If “dissidents” have any kind of authority at all, and if they have not been exterminated long ago like exotic insects that have appeared where they have no business being, then this is not because the government holds this exclusive group and their exclusive ideas in such awe, but because it is perfectly aware of the potential political power of living within the truth rooted in the hidden sphere, and well aware too of the kind of world “dissent” grows out of and the world it addresses: the everyday human world, the world of daily tension between the aims of life and the aims of the system. (Can there be any better evidence of this than the government’s action after Charter 77 appeared, when it launched a campaign to compel the entire nation to declare that Charter q~ was wrong? Those millions of signatures proved, among other things, that just the opposite was true.) The political organs and the police do not lavish such enormous attention on “dissidents”-which may give the impression that the government fears them as they might fear an alternative power clique-because they actually are such a power clique, but because they are ordinary people with ordinary cares, differing from the rest only in that they say aloud what the rest cannot say or are afraid to say. I have already mentioned Solzhenitsyn’s political influence: it does not reside in some exclusive political power he possesses as an individual, but in the experience of those millions of Gulag victims which he simply amplified and communicated to millions of other people of good will.

To institutionalize a select category of well-known or prominent “dissidents” means in fact to deny the most intrinsic moral aspect of their activity. As we have seen, the “dissident” movement grows out of the principle of equality, founded on the notion that human rights and freedoms are indivisible. After all, did no well-known “dissidents” unite in KOR to defend unknown workers? And was it not precisely for this reason that they became “well-known dissidents”? And did not the well-known “dissidents” unite in Charter qq after they had been brought together in defense of those unknown musicians, and did they not unite in the Charter precisely with them, and did they not become “well-known dissidents” precisely because of that? It is truly a cruel paradox that the more some citizens stand up in defense of other citizens, the more they are labeled with a word that in effect separates them from those “other citizens.”

This explanation, I hope, will make clear the significance of the quotation marks I have put around the word “dissident” throughout this essay.

XIV

AT the time when the Czech lands and Slovakia were an integral part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and when there existed neither the historical nor the political, psychological, nor social conditions that would have enabled the Czechs and Slovaks to seek their identity outside the framework of this empire, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk established a Czechoslovak national program based on the notion of “small-scale work” (dro6ncí práce). By that he meant honest and responsible work in widely different areas of life but within the existing social order, work that would stimulate national creativity and national self-confidence. Naturally he placed particular emphasis on intelligent and enlightened upbringing and education, and on the moral and humanitarian aspects of life. Masaryk believed that the only possible starting point for a more dignified national destiny was humanity itself. Humanity’s first task was to create the conditions for a more human life; and in Masaryk’s view, the task of transforming the stature of the nation began with the transformation of human beings.

This notion of “working for the good of the nation” took root in Czechoslovak society and in many ways it was successful and is still alive today. Along with those who exploit the notion as a sophisticated excuse for collaborating with the regime, there are still many, even today, who genuinely uphold the ideal and, in some areas at least, can point to indisputable achievements. It is hard to say how much worse things would be if there were not many hard-working people who simply refuse to give up and try constantly to do the best they can, paying an unavoidable minimum to living within a lie so that they might give their utmost to the authentic needs of society. These people assume, correctly, that every piece of good work is an indirect criticism of bad politics, and that there áre situations where it is worthwhile going this route, even though it means surrendering one’s natural right to make direct criticisms.

Today, however, there are very clear limitations to this attitude, even compared to the situation in the 1960s. More and more frequently, those who attempt to practice the principle of “small-scale work” come up against the post-totalitarian sys tem and flnd themselves facing a dilemma: either one retreats from that position, dilutes the honesty, responsibility, and consistency on which it is based, and simply adapts to circumstances (the approach taken by the majority), or one continues on the way begun and inevitably comes into conflict with the regime (the approach taken by a minority).

If the notion of small-scale work was never intended as an imperative to survive in the existing social and political structure at any cost (in which case individuals who allowed themselves to be excluded from that structure would necessarily appear to have given up “working for the nation”), then today it is even less significant- There is no general model of behavior, that is, no neat, universally valid way of determining the point at which small-scale work ceases to be for the good of the nation and becomes detrimental to the nation. It is more than clear, however, that the danger of such a reversal is becoming more and more acute and that small-scale work, with increasing frequency, is coming up against that limit beyond which avoiding conflict means compromising its very essence.

In 1974, when I was employed in a brewery, my immediate superior was a certain Š, a person well versed in the art of making beer. He was proud of his profession and he wanted our brewery to brew good beer. He spent almost all his time at work, continually thinking up improvements, and he frequently made the rest of us feel uncomfortable because he assumed that we loved brewing as much as he did. In the midst of the slovenly indifference to work that socialism encourages, a more constructive worker would be difficult to imagine.

The brewery itself was managed by people who understood their work less and were less fond of it, but who were politically more influential. They were bringing the brewery to ruin and not only did they fail to react to any of Š’s suggestions, but they actually became increasingly hostile toward him and tried in every way to thwart his efforts to do a good job. Eventually the situation became so bad that S felt compelled to write a lengthy letter to the manager’s superior, in which he attempted to analyze the brewery’s difficulties. He explained why it was the worst in the district and pointed to those responsible.

His voice might have been heard. The manager, who was policically powerful but otherwise ignorant of beer, a man who loathed workers and was given to intrigue, might have been replaced and conditions in the brewery might have been improved on the basis of Š’s suggestions. Had this happened, it would have been a perfect example of small-scale work in action. Unfortunately, the precise opposite occurred: the manager of the brewery, who was a member of the Communist Partý s district committee, had friends in higher places and he saw to it that the situation was resolved in his favor. Š’s analysis was described as a “defamatory document” and S himself was labeled a “political saboteur.” He was thrown out of the brewery and shifted to another one where he was given a job requiring no skill. Here the notion of small-scale work had come up against the wall of the post-totalitarian system. By speaking the truth, Š had stepped out of line, broken the rules, cast himself out, and he ended up as a subcitizen, stigmatized as an enemy. He could now say anything he wanted, but he could never, as a matter of principle, expect to be heard. He had become the “dissident” of the Eastern Bohemian Brewery.

I think this is a model case which, from another point of’ view, illustrates what I have already said in the preceding section: you do. not become a “dissident” just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career. You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well, and ends with being branded an enemy of society. This is why our situation is not comparable to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, when the Czech nation, in the worst period of Bach’s absolutism, had only one real “dissident,” Karel Havlíček, who was imprisoned in Brixen. Today, if we are not to be snobbish about it, we must admit that “dissidents” can be found on every street corner.

To rebuke “dissidents” for having abandoned “small-scale work” is simply absurd. “Dissent” is not an alternative to Masaryk’s notion, it is frequently its one possible outcome. I say “frequently” in order to emphasize that this is not always the case. I am far from believing that the only decent and re~ sponsible people are those who fmd themselves at odds with the existing social and political structures. After all, the brewmaster Š might have won his battle. To condemn those who have kept their positions simply because they have kept them, in other words, for not being “dissidents,” would be just as absurd as to hold them up as an example to the “dissidents.” In any case, it contradicts the whole “dissident” attitudeseen as an attempt to live within the truth-if one judges human behavior not according to what it is and whether it is good or not, but according to the personal circumstances such an attempt has brought one to.

XV

Our greengrocer’s attempt to live within the truth may be confined to not doing certain things. He decides not to put tlags in his window when his only motive for putting them there in the first place would have been to avoid being reported by the house warden; he does not vote in elections that he considers false; he does not hide his opinions from his superiors. In other words, he may go no further than “merely” refusing to comply with certain demands made on him by the system (which of course is not an insignificant step to take). This may, however, grow into something more. The greengrocer may begin to do something concrete, something that goes beyond an immediately personal self-defensive reaction against manipulation, something that will manifest his newfound sense of higher responsibility. He may, for example, organize his fellow greengrocers to act together in defense of their interests. He may write letters to various institutions, drawing their attention to instances of disorder and injustice around him. He may seek out unoft3cial literature, copy it, and lend it to his friends.

If what I have called living within the truth is a basic existential (and of course potentially political) starting point for all those “independent citizens’ initiatives” and “dissident” or “opposition” movements this does not mean that every ae tempt to live within the truth automatically belongs in this category. On the contrary, in its most original and broadest sense, living within the truth covers a vast territory whose outer limits are vague and diffieult to map, a territory full of modest expressions of human volition, the vast majority of which will remain anonymous and whose political impact will probably never be felt or described any more concretely than simply as a part of a social climate or mood. Most of these expressions remain elementary revolts against manipulation: you simply straighten your backbone and live in greater dignity as an individual.

Here and there-thanks to the nature, the assumptions, and the professions of some people, but also thanks to a number of accidental circumstances such as the specific nature of the local milieu, friends, and so on-a more coherent and visible initiative may emerge from this wide and anonymous hinterland, an initiative that transcends “merely” individual revolt and is transformed into more conscious, structured, and pur poseful work. The point where living within the truth ceases to be a mere negation of living with a lie and becomes articulate in a particular way is the point at which something is born that might be called the “independent spiritual, social, and political life of society.” This independent life is not separated from the rest of life (“dependent life”) by some sharply defined line. Both types frequently co-exist in the same people. Nevertheless, its most important focus is marked by a relatively high degree of inner emancipation. It sails upon the vast ocean of the manipulated life like little boats, tossed by the waves but always bobbing back as visible messengers of living within the truth, articulating the suppressed aims of life.

What is this independent life of society? The spectrum of its expressions and activities is naturally very wide. It includes everything from self education and thinking about the world, through free creative activity and its communication to others, to the most varied free, civic attitudes, including instances of independent social self-organization. In short, it is an area in which living within the truth becomes articulate and materializes in a visible way.

Thus what will later be referred to as “citizens’ initiatives,” “dissident movements,” or even “oppositions,” emerge, like the proverbial one tenth of the iceberg visible above the water, from that area, from the independent life of society. In other words, just as the independent life of society develops out of livlng within the truth in the widest sense of the word, as the distinct, articulated expression of that life, so “dissent” gradually emerges from the independent life of society. Yet there is a marked difference: if the independent life of society, externally at least, can be understood as a higher form of living within the truth, it is far less certain that “dis sident” movements are necessarily a higher form of the independent life of society. They are simply one manifestation of it and, though they may be the most visible and, at first glance, the most political (and most clearly articulated) expression of it, they are far from necessarily being the most mature or even the most important, not only in the general social sense but even in terms of direct political influence. After all, “dissent” has been artificially removed from its place of birth by having been given a special name. In fact, however, it is not possible to think of it separated from the whole background out of which it develops, of which it is an integral part, and from which it draws all its vital strength. In any case, it follows from what has already been said about the peculiarities of the post-totalitarian system that what appears to be the most political of forces in a given moment, and what thinks of itself in such terms, need not necessarily in fact be such a force. The extent to which it is a real political force is due exclusively to its pre-political context.

What follows from this description? Nothing more and nothing less than this: it is impossible to talk about what in fact “dissidents” do and the effect of their work without first talking about the work of all those who, in one way or an other, take part in the independent life of society and who are not necessarily “dissidents” at all. They may be writers who write as they wish without regard for censorship or official demands and who issue their work-when official publishers refuse to print it-as samizdat. They may be philosophers, historians, sociologists, and all those who practice independent scholarship and, if it is impossible through official or semi-official channels, who also circulate their work in samizdat or who organize private discussions, lectures, and seminars. They may be teachers who privately teach young people things that are kept from them in the state schools; clergymen who either in office or, if they are deprived of their charges, outside it, try to carry on a free religious life; painters, musicians, and singers who practice their work regardless of how it is looked upon by official institutions; everyone who shares this independent culture and helps to spread it; people who, using the means available to them, try to express and defend the actual social interests of workers, to put real meaning back into trade unions or to form independent ones; people who are not afraid to call the attention of officials to cases of injustice and who strive to see that the laws are observed; and the different groups of young people who try to extricate themselves from manipulation and live in their own way, in the spirit of their own hierarchy of values. The list could go on.

Very few would think of calling all these people “dissidents.” And yet are not the well-known “dissidents” simply people like them? Are not all these activities in fact what “dissidents” do as well? Do they not produce scholarly work and publish it in samizdat? Do they not write plays and novels and poems? Do they not lecture to students in private “universities”?

Do they not struggle against various forms of injustice and attempt to ascertain and express the genuine social interests of various sectors of the population?

After having tried to indicate the sources, the inner structure, and some aspects of the “dissident” attitude as such, I have clearly shifted my viewpoint from outside, as it were, to an investigation of what these “dissidents” actually do, how their initiatives are manifested, and where they lead.

The first conclusion to be drawn, then, is that the original and most important sphere of activity, one that predetermines all the others, is simply an attempt to create and support the independent life of society as an articulated expression of living within the truth. In other words, serving truth consistently, purposefully, and articulately, and organizing this service. This is only natural, after all: if living within the truth is an elementary starting point for every attempt made by people to oppose the alienating pressure of the system, if it is the only meaningful basis of any independent act of political import, and if, ultimately, it is also the most intrinsic existential source of the “dissident” attitude, then it is difficult to imagine that even manifest “dissent” could have any other basis than the service of truth, the truthful life, and the attempt to make room for the genuine aims of life.

XVI

The post-totalitarian system is mounting a total assault on humans and humans stand against it alone, abandoned and isolated. It is therefore entirely natural that all the “dissident” movements are explicitly defensive movements: they exist to defend human beings and the genuine aims of life against the aims of the system.

Today the Polish group KOR is called the “Committee for Social Self-Defense:’ The word “defense” appears in the names of other similar groups in Poland, but even the Soviet Helsinki monitoring group and our own Charter 77 are clearly defensive in nature.

In terms of traditional politics, this program of defense is understandable, even though it may appear minimal, provisional, and ultimately negative. It offers no new conception, model, or ideology, and therefore it is not politics in the proper sense of the word, since politics always assumes a positive program and can scarcely limit itself to defending someone against something.

Such a view, I think, reveals the limitations of the traditionally political way of looking at things- The post-totalitarian system, after all, is not the manifestation of a particular political line followed by a particular government. It is something radically different: it is a complex, profound, and long-term violation of society, or rather the self violation of society. To oppose it merely by establishing a different political line and then striving for a change in government would not only be unrealistic, it would be utterly inadequate, for it would never come near to touching the root of the matter. For some time now, the problem has no longer resided in a political line or program: it is a problem of life itself.

Thus, defending the aims of life, defending humanity, is not only a more realistic approach, since it can begin right now and is potentially more popular because it concerns people’s everyday lives; at the same time (and perhaps precisely because of this) it is also an incomparably more consistent approach because it aims at the very essence of things.

There are times when we must sink to the bottom of our misery to understand truth, just as we must descend to the bottom of a well to see the stars in broad daylight. It seems to me that today, this “provisional,” “minimal,” and “negative” program-the “simple” defense of people-is in a particular sense (and not merely in the circumstances in which we live) an optimal and most positive program because it forces politics to return to its only proper starting point, proper that is, if all the old mistakes are to be avoided: individual people. In the democratic societies, where the violencc done to human beings is not nearly so obvious and cruel, this fundamental revolution in politics has yet to happen, and some things will probably have to get worse there before the urgent need for that revolution is reflected in politics. In our world, precisely because of the misery in which we find ourselves, it would seem that politics has already undergone that transformation: the central concern of political thought is no longer abstract visions of a self-redeeming, “positive” model (and of course the opportunistic political practices that are the reverse of the same coin), but rather the people who have so far merely been enslaved by those models and their practices.

Every society, of course, requires some degree of organization. Yet íf that organízatíon is to serve people, and not the other way around, then people will have to be liberated and space created so that they may organize themseJves in meaningful ways. The depravity of the opposite approach, in which people are first organized in one way or another (by someone who always knows best “what the people need”) so they may then allegedly be liberated, is something we have known on our own skins only too well.

To sum up: most people who are too bound to the traditional political way of thinking see the weaknesses of the “dissident” movements in their purely defensive character. In contrast, I see that as their greatest strength. I believe that this is precisely where these movements supersede the kind of politics from whose poine of view their program can seem so inadequate.

XVII

In the “dissident” movements of the Soviet bloc, the defense of human beings usually takes the form of a defense of human and civil rights as they are entrenched in various official documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Ríghts, the International Covenants on Human Rights, the Concluding Act of the Helsinki Agreement, and the constitutions of individual states. These movements set out to defend anyone who is being prosecuted for acting in the spirit of those rights, and they in turn act in the same spirit in their work, by insisting over and over again that the regime rec ognize and respect human and civil rights, and by drawing attention to the areas of life where this is not the case.

Their work, therefore, is based on the principle of legality: they operate publicly and openly, insisting not only that their activity is in line with the law, but that achieving respect for the law is one of their main aims. This principle of legality, which provides both the point of departure and the framework for their activities, is common to all “dissident” groups in the Soviet bloc, even though individual groups have never worked out any formal agreement on that point. This circumstance raises an important question: Why, in conditions where a widespread and arbitrary abuse of power is the rule, is there such a general and spontaneous acceptance of the principle of legality?

On the primary level, this stress on legality is a natural expression of specific conditions that exist in the posa totalitarian system, and the consequence of an elementary understanding of that specificity. If there are in essence only two ways to struggle for a free society-that is, through legal means and through (armed or unarmed) revolt-then it should be obvious at once how inappropriate the latter alternative is in the post-totalitarian system. Revolt is appropriate when conditions are clearly and openly in motion, during a war, for example, or in situations where social or political conflicts are coming to a head. It is appropriate in a classical dictatorship that is eitherjust setting itself up or is in a state of collapse. In other words, it is appropriate where social forces of comparable strength (for example, a government of occupation versus a nation fighting for its freedom) are confronting each other on the level of actual power, or where there is a clear distinction between the usurpers of power and the subjugated population, or when society finds itself in a state of open crisis. Conditions in the post-totalitarian system-except in extremely explosive situations like the one in Hungary in iggó-are, of course, precisely the opposite. They are static and stable, and social crises, for the most part, exist only latently (though they run much deeper). Society is not sharply polarized on the level of actual political power, but, as we have seen, the fundamental lines of conflict run right through each person. In this situation, no attempt at revolt could ever hope to set up even a minimum of resonance in the rest of society, because that society is soporific, submerged in a consumer rat race and wholly involved in the post-totalitarian system (that is, participating in it and acting as agents of its automatism), and it would simply find anything like revolt unacceptable. It would interpret the revolt as an attack upon itself and, rather than supporting the revolt, it would very probably react by intensifying its bias toward the system, since, in its view, the system can at least guarantee a certain quasi-legality. Add to this the fact that the post-totalitarian system has at its disposal a complex mechanism of direct and indirect surveillance that has no equal in history and it is clear that not only would any attempt to revolt come to a dead end politically, but it would also be almost technically impossible to carry off. Most probably it would be liquidated before it had a chance to translate its intentions into action. Even if revolt were possible, however, it would remain the solitary gesture of a few isolated individuals and they would be opposed not only by a gigantic apparatus of national (and supranational) power, but also by the very society in whose name they were mounting their revolt in the first place. (This, by the way, is another reason why the regime and its propaganda have been ascribing terroristic aims to the “dissident” movements and accusing them of illegal and conspiratorial methods.)

All of this, however, is not the main reason why the “dissident” movements support the principle of legality. That reason lies deeper, in the innermost structure of the “dissident” attitude. This attitude is and must be fundamentally hostile toward the notion of violent change-simply because it places its faith in violence. (Generally, the “dissident” attitude can only accept violence as a necessary evil in extreme situations, when direct violence can only be met by violence and where remaining passive would in effect mean supporting violence: let us recall, for example, that the blindness of European pacifism was one of the factors that prepared the ground for.che Second World War.) As I have already mentioned, “dissidents” tend to be skeptical about political thought based on the faith that profound social changes can only be achieved by bringing about (regardless of the method) changes in the system or in the government, and the belief that such changes-because they are considered “fundamental” justify the sacrifice of “less fundamental” things, in other words, human lives. Respect for a theoretical concept here outweighs respect for human life. Yet this is precisely what threatens to enslave humanity all over again.

“Dissident” movements, as I have tried to indicate, share exactly the opposite view. They understand systemic change as something superficial, something secondary, something that in itself can guarantee nothing. Thus an attitude that turns away from abstract political visions of the future toward concrete human beings and ways of defending them effectively in the here and now is quite naturally accompanied by an intensified antipathy to all forms of violence carried out in the name of a better future, and by a profound belief that a future secured by violence might actually be worse than what exists now; in other words, the future would be fatally stigmatized by the very means used to secure it. At the same time, this attitude is not to be mistaken for political conser vatism or political moderation.. The “dissident” movements do not shy away from the idea of violent political overthrow because the idea seems too radical, but on the contrary, because it does not seem radical enough. For them, the problem lies far too deep to be settled through mere systemic changes, either governmental or technological. Some people, faithful to the classical Marxist doctrines of the nineteenth century, understand our system as the hegemony of an exploiting class over an exploited class and, operating from the postulate that exploiters never surrender their power voluntarily, they see the only solution in a revolution to sweep away the exploitersNaturally, they regard such things as the struggle for human rights as something hopelessly legalistic, illusory, opportunistic, and ultimately misleading because it makes the doubtful assumption that you can negotiate in good faith with your exploiters on the basis of a false legality. The problem is that they are unable to find anyone determined enough to carry out this revolution, with the result that they become bitter, skeptical, passive, and ultimately apathetic-in other words, they end up precisely where the system wants them to be. This is one example of how far one can be misled by mechanically applying, in post-totalitarian circumstances, ideological models from another world and another time.

Of course, one need not be an advocate of violent revolution to ask whether an appeal to legality makes any sense at all when the laws-and particularly the general laws concerning human rights-are no more than a facade, an aspect of the world of appearances, a mere game behind which lies total manipulation. “They can ratify anything because they will still go ahead and do whatever they want anyway”-this is an opinion we often encounter. Is it not true that constantly to take them at their word, to appeal to laws every child knows are binding only as long as the government wishes, is in the end just a kind of hypocrisy, a Švejkian obstructionism and, finally, just another way of playing the game, another form of self-delusion? In other words, is the legalistic approach at all compatible with the principle of living within the truth?

This question can only be answered by first looking at the wider implications of how the legal code functions in the post-totalitarian system.

In a classical dictatorship, to a far greater extent than in the post-totalitarian system, the will of the ruler is carried out directly, in an unregulated fashion. A dictatorship has no reason to hide its foundations, nor to conceal the real workings of power, and therefore it need not encumber itself to any great extent with a legal code. The posetotalitarian system, on the other hand, is utterly obsessed with the need to bind everything in a single order: life in such a state is thoroughly permeated by a dense network of regulations, proclamations, directives, norms, orders, and rules. (It is not called a bureaucratic system without good reason.) A large proportion of those norms function as direct instruments of the complex manipulation of life that is intrinsic to the post-totalitarian system. Individuals are reduced to little more than tiny cogs in an enormous mechanism and their significance is limited to their function in this mechanism. Their job, housing accommodation, movements, social and cultural expressions, everything, in short, must be cosseted together as firmly as possible, predetermined, regulated, and controlled. Every aberration from the prescribed course of life is treated as error, license, and anarchy. From the cook in the restaurant who, without hard-to-get permission from the bureaucratic apparatus, cannot cook something special for his customers, to the singer who cannot perform his new song at a concert without bureaucratic approval, everyone, in all aspects of their life, is caught in this regulatory tangle of red tape, the inevitable product of the post-totalitarian system. With ever-increasing consistency, it binds all the expressions and aims of life to the spirit of its own aims: the vested interests of its own smooth, automatic operation.

In a narrower sense the legal code serves the posttotalitarian system in this direct way as well, that is, it too forms a part of the world of regulations and prohibitions. At the same time, however, it performs the same service in another indirect way, one that brings it remarkably closer-depending on which level of the law is involved-to ideology and in some cases makes it a direct component of that ideology.

1. Like ideology, the legal code functions as an excuse. It wraps the base exercise of power in the noble apparel of the letter of the law; it creates the pleasing illusion thatjustice is done, society protected, and the exercise of power objectively regulated. All this is done to conceal the real essence of posttotalitarian legal practice: the total manipulation of society. If an outside observer who knew nothing at all about life in Gzechoslovakia were to study only its laws, he would be utterly incapable of understanding what we were complaining about. The hidden political manipulation of the courts and of public prosecutors, the limitations placed on lawyers’ ability to defend their clients, the closed nature, de facto, of trials, the arbitrary actions of the security forces, their position of authority over the judiciary, the absurdly broad application of several deliberately vague sections of that code, and of course the state’s utter disregard for the positive sections of that code (the rights of citizens): all of this would remain hidden from our outside observer. The only thing he would take away would be the impression that our legal code is not much worse than the legal code of other civilized countries, and not much different either, except perhaps for certain curiosities, such as the entrenchment in the constitution of a single political party’s eternal rule and the state’s love for a neighboring superpower.

But that is not all: if our observer had the opportunity to study the formal side of the policing andjudicial procedures and practices, how they look “on paper,” he would discover that for the most part the common rules of criminal procedure are observed: charges are laid within the prescribed period following arrest, and it is the same with detention orders. Indictments are properly delivered, the accused has a lawyer, and so on. In other words, everyone has an excuse: they have all observed the law. In reality, however, they have cruelly and pointlessly ruined a young person’s life, perhaps for no other reason than because he made sa~nizdat copies of a novel written by a banned writer, or because the police deliberately falsified their testimony (as everyone knows, from the judge on down to the defendant). Yet all of this somehow remains in the background. The falsified testimony is not necessarily obvious from the trial documents and the section of the Criminal Code dealing with incitement does not formally exclude the application of that charge to the copying of a banned novel. In other words, the legal code-at least in several areas-is no more than a facade, an aspect of the world of appearances. Then why is it there at all? For exactly the same reason as ideology is there: it provides a bridge of excuses between the system and individuals, making it easier for them to enter the power structure and serve the arbitrary demands of power. The excuse lets individuals fool themselves into thinking they are merely upholding the law and protecting society from criminals. (Without this excuse, how much more difficult it would be to recruit new generations ofjudges, prosecutors, and interrogators!) As an aspect of the world of appearances, however, the legal code deceives not only the conscience of prosecutors, it deceives the public, it deceives foreign observers, and it even deceives history itself.

s. Like ideology, the legal code is an essential instrument of ritual communication outside the power structure. It is the legal code that gives the exercise of power a form, a framework, a set of rules. It is the legal code that enables all components of the system to communicate, to put themselves in a good light, to establish their own legitimacy. It provides their whole game with its rules and engineers with their technology. Can the exercise of post-totalitarian power be imagined at all without this universal ritual making it all possible, serving as a common language to bind the relevant sectors of the power structure together? The more important the position occupied by the repressive apparatus in the power structure, the more important that it function according to some kind of formal code. How, otherwise, could people be so easily and inconspicuously locked up for copying banned books if there were no judges, prosecutors, interrogators, defense lawyers, court stenographers, and thick files, and if all this were not held together by some firm order? And above all, without that innocent-looking Section roo on incitement? This could all be done, of course, without a legal code and its accessories, but only in some ephemeral dictatorship run by a Ugandan bandit, not in a system that embraces such a huge portion of civilized humankind and represents an integral, stable, and respected part of the modern world. That would not only be unthinkable, it would quite simply be technically impossible. Without the legal code functioning as a ritually cohesive force, the post-totalitarian system could not exist.

The entire role of ritual, facades, and excuses appears most eloquenfly, of course, not in the proscriptive section of the legal code, which sets out what a citizen may not do and what the grounds for prosecution are, but in the section declaring what he may do and what his or her rights are. Here there is truly nothing but “words, words, words.” Yet even that part of the code is of immense importance to the system, for it is here that the system establishes its legitimacy as a whole, before its own citizens, before schoolchildren, before the international public, and before history. The system cannot afford to disregard this because it cannot permit itself to cast doubt upon the fundamental postulates of its ideology, which are so essential to its very existence. (We have already seen how the power structure is enslaved by its own ideology and its ideological prestige.) To do this would be to deny everything it tries to present itself as and, thus, one of the main pillars on which the,system rests would be undermined: the integrity of the world of appearances.

If the exercise of power circulates through the whole power structure as blood flows through veins, then the legal code can be understood as something that reinforces the walls of those veins. Without it, the blood of power could not circulate in an organized way and the body of society would hemorrhage at random. Order would collapse.

A persistent and never-ending appeal to the laws-not just to the laws concerning human rights, but to all laws-does not mean at all that those who do so have succumbed to the illusion that in our system the law is anything other than what it is. They are well aware of the role it plays. But precisely because they know how desperately the system depends on it-on the “noble” version of the law, that is-they also know how enormously significant such appeals are. Because the system cannot do without the law, because it is hopelessly tied down by the necessity of pretending the laws are observed, it is compelled to react in some way to such appeals. Demanding that the laws be upheld is thus an act of living within the truth that threatens the whole mendacious structure at its point of maximum mendacity. Over and over again, such appeals make the purely ritualistic nature of the law clear to society and to those who inhabit its power structures. They draw attention to its real material substance and thus, indirectly, compel all those who take refuge behind the law to affirm and make credible this agency of excuses, this means of communication, this reinforcement of the social arteries outside of which their will could not be made to circulate through society. They are compelled to do so for the sake of their own consciences, for the impression they make on oue siders, to maintain themselves in power (as part of the system’s own mechanism of self-preservation and its principles of cohesion), or simply out of fear that they will be reproached for being clumsy in handling Ihe ritual. They have no other choice: because they cannot discard the rules of their own game, they can only attend more carefully to those rules. Not to react to challenges means to undermine their own excuse and lose control of their mutual communications system. To assume that the laws are a mere facade, that they have no validity, and that therefore it is pointless to appeal to them would mean to go on reinforcing those aspects of the law that create the facade and the ritual. It would mean confirming the law as an aspect of the world of appearances and enabling those who exploit it to rest easy with the cheapest (and therefore the most mendacious) form of their excuse.

I have frequently witnessed policemen, prosecutors, or judges-if they were dealing with an experienced Chartist or a courageous lawyer, and if they were exposed to public attention (as individuals with a name, no longer protected by the anonymity of the apparatus)-suddenly and anxiously begin to take particular care that no cracks appear in the ritual. This does not alter the fact that a despotic power is hiding behind that ritual, but the very existence of the officials’ anxiety necessarily regulates, limits, and slows down the operation of that despotism.

This, of course, is not enough. But an essential part of the “dissident” attitude is that it comes out of the reality of the human here and now. It places more importance on often repeated and consistent concrete action-even though it may be inadequate and though it may ease only insignificantly the suffering of a single insignificant citizen-than it does in some abstract fundamental solution in an uncertain future. In any case, is not this in factjust another form of “small-scale work” in the Masarykian sense, with which the “dissident” attitude seemed at first to be in such sharp contradiction?

This section would be incomplete without stressing certain internal limitations to the policy of taking them at their own word. The point is this: even in the most ideal of cases, the law is only one of several imperfect and more or less external ways of defending what is better in life against what is worse. By itself, the law can never create anything better. Its purpose is to render a service and its meaning does not lie in the law itself. Establishing respect for the law does not automatically ensure a better life for that, after all, is ajob for people and not for laws and institutions. It is possible to imagine a society with good laws that are fully respected but in which it is impossible to live. Conversely, one can imagine life being quite bearable even where the laws are imperfect and imperfectly applied. The most important thing is always the quality of that life and whether or not the laws enhance life or repress it, not merely whether they are upheld or not. (Often strict observance of the law could have a disastrous impact on human dignity.) The key to a humane, dignified, rich, and happy life does not lie either in the constitution or in the Criminal Code. These merely establish what may or may not be done and, thus, they can make life easier or more difficult. They limit or permit, they punish, tolerate, or defend, but they can never give life substance or meaning. The struggle for what is called “legality” must constantly keep this legality in perspective against the background of life as it really is. Without keeping oné s eyes open to the real dimensions of life’s beauty and misery, and without a moral relationship to life, this struggle will sooner or later come to grief on the rocks of some selfjustifying system of scholastics. Without really wanting to, one would thus become more and more like the observer who comes to conclusions about our system only on the basis of trial documents and is satisfied if all the appropriate regulations have been observed.

XVIII

Is the basicjob of the “dissident” movements is to serve truth, that is, to serve the real aims of life, and if that necessarily develops into a defense of individuals and their right to a free and truthful life (that is, a defense of human rights and a struggle to see the laws respected), then another stage of this approach, perhaps the most mature stage so far, is what Václav Benda called the development of “parallel structures.”

When those who have decided to live within the truth have been denied any direct influence on the existing social structures, not to mention the opportunity to participate in them, and when these people begin to create what I have called the independent life of society, this independent life begins, of itself, to become structured in a certain way. Sometimes there are only very embryonic indications of this process of structuring; at other times, the structures are already quite well developed. Their genesis and evolution are inseparable from the phenomenon of “dissent,” even though they reach far beyond the arbitrarily defined area of activity usually indi~ cated by that term.

What are these structures? Ivan Jirous was the first in Czechoslovakia to formulate and apply in practice the concept of a “second culture.” Although at first he was thinking chiefly of nonconformist rock music and only certain literary, artistic, or performance events close to the sensibilities of those nonconformist musical groups, the term second culture very rapidly came to be used for the whole area of independent and repressed culture, that is, not only for art and its various currents but also for the humanities, the social sciences, and philosophical thought. This second culture, quite naturally, has created elementary organizational forms: samizdat editions of books and magazines, private perfor~ mances and concerts, seminars, exhibitions, and so on. (In Poland all of this is vastly more developed: there are independent publishing houses and many more periodicals, even political periodicals; they have means of proliferation other than carbon copies, and so on. In the Soviet Union, samixdat has a longer tradition and clearly its forms are quite different.) Culture, therefore, is a sphere in which the parallel structures can be observed in their most highly developed form. Benda, of course, gives thought to potential or embryonic forms.of such structures in other spheres as well: from a parallel information network to parallel forms of education (private universities), parallel trade unions, parallel foreign contacts, to a kind of hypothesis on a parallel economy. On the basis of these parallel structures, he then develops the notion of a “parallel polis” or state or, rather, he sees the rudiments of such a polis in these structures.
At a certain stage in its development, the independent life of society and the “dissident” movements cannot avoid a certain amount of organization and institutionalization. This is a natural development, and unless this independent life of society is somehow radically suppressed and eliminated, the tendency will grow. Along with it, a parallel political life will also necessarily evolve, and to a certain extent it exists already in Czechoslovakia. Various groupings of a more or less political nature will continue to define themselves politically, to act and confront each other.

These parallel structures, it may be said, represent the most articulated expressions so far of living within the truth. One of the most important tasks the “dissident” movements have set themselves is to support and develop them. Once agaán, it confirms the fact that all attempts by society to resist the pressure of the system have their essential beginnings in the “pre-political” area. For what else are parallel structures than an area where a different life can be lived, a life that is in harmony with its own aims and which in turn structures itself in harmony with those aims? What else are those initial attempts at social self organization than the efforts of a certain part of society to live-as a society-within the truth, to rid itself of the self-sustaining aspects of totalitarianism and, thus, to extricate itself radically from its involvement in the posttotalitarian system? What else is it but a nonviolent attempt by people to negate the system within themselves and to establish their lives on a new basis, that of their own proper identity? And does this tendency not confirm once more the principle of returning the focus to actual individuals? After all, the parallel structures do not grow a priori out of a theoretical vision of systemic changes (there are no political sects involved), but from the aims of life and the authentic needs of real people. In fact, all eventual changes in the system, . changes we may observe here in their rudimentary forms, have come about as it were de facto, from “below,” because life compelled them to, not because they came before life, somehow directing it or forcing some change on it.

Aistorical experience teaches us that any genuinely meaningful point of departure in an individual’s life usually has an element of universality about it. In other words, it is not something partial, accessible only to a restricted community, and not transferable to any other. On the contrary, it must be potentially accessible to everyone; it must foreshadow a general solution and, thus, it is notjust the expression of an introverted, self contained responsibility that individuals have to and for themselves alone, but responsibility to and for the world. Thus it would be quite wrong to understand the parallel structures and the parallel polis as a retreat into a ghetto and as an act of isolation, addressing itself only to the welfare of those who had decided on such a course, and who are indifferent to the rest. It would be wrong, in short, to consider it an essentially group solution that has nothing to do with the general situation. Such a concept would, from the start, alienate the notion of living within the truth from its proper point of departure, which is concern for others, transforming it ultimately intojust another more sophisticated ver sion of living within a lie. In doing so, of course, it would cease to be a genuine point of departure for individuals and groups and would recall the false notion of “dissidents” as an exclusive group with exclusive interests, carrying on their own exclusive dialogue with the powers that be. In any case, even the most highly developed forms of life in the parallel structures, even that most mature form of the parallel polis can only exist-at least in post-totalitarian circumstances-when the individual is at the same time lodged in the “first,” official structure by a thousand different relationships, even though it may only be the fact that one buys what one needs in their stores, uses their money, and obeys their laws. Certainly one can imagine life in its baser aspects flourishing in the parallel polis, but would not such a life, lived deliberately that way, as a program, be merely another version of the schizophrenic life within a lie which everyone else must live in one way or another? Would it notjust be further evidence that a point of departure that is not a model solution, that is not applicable to others, cannot be meaningful for an individual either? Patočka used to say that the most interesting thing about responsibility is that we carry it with us everywhere. That means that responsibility is ours, that we must accept it and grasp it here, now, in this place in time and space where the Lord has set us down, and that we cannot lie our way out of it by moving somewhere else, whether it be to an Indian ashram or to a parallel podis. If Western young people so often discover that retreat to an Indian monastery fails them as an individual or group solution, then this is obviously because, and only because, it lacks that element of universality, since not everyone can retire to an ashram. Christianity is an example of an opposite way out: it is a point of departure for me here and now-but only because anyone, anywhere, at any time, may avail themselves of it.

In other words, the parallel polis points beyond itself and makes sense only as an act of deepening one’s responsibility to and for the whole, as a way of discovering the most appropriate locus for this responsibility, not as an escape from it.

XIX

I have already talked about the political potential of living within the truth and of the limitations on predicting whether, how, and when a given expression of that life within the truth can lead to actual changes. I have also mentioned how irrelevant trying to calculate the risks in this regard are, for an essential feature of independent initiatives is that they are always, initially at least, an all-or-nothing gamble.

Nevertheless, this outline of some of the work done by “dissident” movements would be incomplete without considering, if only very generally, some of the different ways this work might actually affect society; in other words, about the ways that responsibility to and for the whole might (without necessarily meaning that it must) be realized in practice.

In the first place, it has to be emphasized that the whole sphere comprising the independent life of society, and even more so the “dissident” movement as such, is naturally far from being the only potential factor that might influence the history of countries living under the post-totalitarian system. The latent social crisis in such societies can at any time, independently of these movements, provoke a wide variety of political changes. It may nnsettle the power structure and induce or accelerate various hidden confrontations, resulting in personnel, conceptual, or at least “climactic” changes. It may significantly influenre the general atmosphere of life, evoke unexpected and unforeseen social unrest and explosions of discontent. Power shifts at the center of the bloc can influence conditions in the different countries in various ways. Economic factors naturally have an important influence, as do broader trends of global civilization. An extremely important area, which could be a source of radical changes and political upsets, is represented by international politics, the policies adopted by the other superpower and all the other countries, the changing structure of international interests and the positions taken by our bloc. Even the people who end up in the highest positions are not without significance, although as I have already said, one ought not overestimate the importance of leading personalities in the post-totalitarian system. There are many such influences and combinations of influence, and the eventual political impact of the “dissident” movement is thinkable only against this general background and in the context that this background provides. That impact is only one of the many factors (and far from the most important one) that affect political developments, and it differs from the other factors perhaps only in that its essential focus is reflecting upon that political development from the point of view of a defense of people and seeking an immediate application of that reflection.

The primary purpose of the outward direction of these movements is always, as we have seen, to have an impact on society, not to affect the power structure, at least not directly and immediately- Independent initiatives address the hidden sphere; they demonstrate that living within the truth is a human and social alternative and they struggle to expand the space available for that life; they help-even though it is, of course, indirect help-to raise the confidence of citizens; they shatter the world of appearances and unmask the real nature of power. They do not assume a messianic role; they are not a social avant-garde or elite that alone knows best, and whose task it is to “raise the consciousness” of the “unconscious” masses (that arrogant self-projection is, once again, intrinsic to an essentially different way of thinking, the kind that feels it has a patent on some ideal project and therefore that it has the right to impose it on society). Nor do they want to lead anyone. They leave it up to each individual to decide what he will or will not take from their experience and work. (If official Czechoslovak propaganda described the Chartists as “self appointees,” it was not in order to emphasize any real avantgarde ambitions on their part, but rather a natural ex pression of how the regime thinks, its tendency to judge others according to itself, since behind any expression of criticism it automatically sees the desire to cast the mighty from their seats and rule in their places “in the name of the people,” the same pretext the regime itself has used for years.)

These movements, therefore, always affect the power structure as such indirectly, as a part of society as a whole, for they are primarily addressing the hidden spheres of society, since it is not a matter of confronting the regime on the level of actual power.

I have already indicated one of the ways this can work: an awareness of the laws and the responsibility for seeing that they are upheld is indirectly strengthened. That, of course, is only a specific instance of a far broader influence, the indirect pressure felt from living within the truth: the pressure created by free thought, alternative values and alternative behavior, and by independent social self-realization. The power structure, whether it wants to or not, must always react to this pressure to a certain extent. Its response, however, is always limited to two dimensions: repression and adaptation. Sometimes one dominates, sometimes the other. For exam~ ple, the Polish “flying university” came under increased persecution and the “flying teachers” were detained by the police. At the same time, however, professors in existing official universities tried to enrich their own curricula with several subjects hitherto considered taboo and this was a result of indirect pressure exerted by the “flying university.” The motives for this adaptation may vary from the ideal (the hidden sphere has received the message and conscience and the will to truth are awakened) to the purely utilitarian: the regime’s instinct for survival compels it to notice the changing ideas and Lhe changing mental and social climate and to react flexibly to them. Which of these motives happens to predominate in a given moment is not essential in terms of the final effect.

Adaptation is the positive dimension of the regimé s response, and it can, and usually does, have a wide spectrum of forms and phases. Some circles may try to integrate values of people from the “parallel world” into the official structures, to appropriate them, to become a little like them while trying to make them a little like themselves, and thus to adjust an obvious and untenable imbalance. In the ig6os, progressive communists began to “discover” certain unacknowledged cultural values and phenomena. This was a positive step, al~ though not without its dangers, since the “integrated” or “appropriated” values lost something of their independence and originality, and having been given a cloak of officiality and conformity, their credibility was somewhat weakened. In a further phase, this adaptation can lead to various attempts on the part of the official structures to reform, both in terms of their ultimate goals and structurally. Such reforms are usually halfway measures; they are attempts to combine and realistically coordinate serving life and serving the posttotalitarian automatism. But they cannot be otherwise. They muddy what was originally a clear demarcation line between living within the truth and living with a lie. They cast a smokescreen over the situation, mystify society, and make it difficult for people to keep their bearings. This, of course, does not alter the fact that it is always essentially good when it happens because it opens out new spaces. But it does make it more difficult to distinguish between “admissible” and “inadmissible” compromises.

Another-and higher-phase of adaptation is a process of internal differentiation that takes place in the official struc tures. These structures open themselves to more or less institutionalized forms of plurality because the real aims of life demand it. (One example: without changing the centralized and institutional basis of cultural life, new publishing houses, group periodicals, artists’ groups, parallel research institutes and workplaces, and so on, may appear under pressure from below. Or another example: the single, monolithic youth or ganization run by the state as a typical post-totalitarian “transmission belt” disintegrates under the pressure of real needs into a number of more or less independent organizations such as the Union of University Students, the Union of Secondary School Students, the Organization of Working Youth, and so on.) There is a direct relationship between this kind of differentiation, which allows initiatives from below to be felt, and the appearance and constitution of new structures which are already parallel, or rather independent, but which at the same time are respected, or at least tolerated in varying degrees, by official institutions. These new institutions are more thanjust liberalized official structures adapted to the authentic needs of life; they are a direct expression of those needs, demanding a position in the context of what is already here. In other words, they are genuine expressions of the tendency of society to organize itself. (In Czechoslovakia in ig68 the best-known organizations of this type were KAN, the Club of Committed Non-Communists, and K231, an organization of former political prisoners.)

The ultimate phase of this process is the situation in which the official structures-as agencies of the post-totalitarian system, existing only to serve its automatism and constructed in the spirit of that role-simply begin withering away and dying off, to be replaced by new structures that have evolved from below and are put together in a fundamentally different way.

Certainly many other ways may be imagined in which.the aims of life can bring about political transformations in the general organization of things and weaken on all levels the hold that techniques of manipulation have on society. Here I have mentioned only the way in which the general. organization of things was in fact changed as we experienced it ourselves in Czechoslovakia around ig68. It must be added that all these concrete instances were part of a specific historical process which ought not be thought of as the only alternative, nor as necessarily repeatable (particularly not in our country), a fact which, of course, takes nothing away from the importance of the general lessons which are still sought and found in it to this day.

While on the subject of 1968 in Czechoslovakia, it may be appropriate to point to some of the characteristic aspects of developments at that time. All the transformations, first in the.general mood, then conceptually, and finally structur ally, did not occur under pressure from the kind of parallel structures that are taking shape today. Such structures-which are sharply defined antitheses of the official structures-quite simply did not exist at the time, nor were there any “dissidents” in the present sense of the word. The changes that took place were simply a consequence of pressures of the most varied sort, some thoroughgoing, some partial. There were spontaneous attempts at freer forms of thinking, independent creation, and political articulation. There were longterm, spontaneous, and inconspicuous efforts to bring about the interpenetration of the independent life of society with the existing structures, usually beginning with the quiet institutionalization of this life on and around the periphery of the official structures. In other words, it was a gradual process of social awakening, a kind of creeping process in which the hidden spheres gradually opened out. (There is some truth in the official propaganda which talks about a “creeping counterrevolution” in Czechoslovakia, referring to how the aims of life proceed.) The motive force behind this awakening did not have to come exclusively from the independent life of society, considered as a definable social milieu (although of course it did come from there, a fact that has yet to be fully appreciated). It could also simply have come from the fact that people in the official structures who more or less identified with the official ideology came up against reality as it really was and as it gradually became clear to them through latent social crises and their own bitter experiences with the true nature and operations of power. (I am thinking here mainly of the many antidogmatic reform communists who grew to become, over the years, a force inside the official structures.) Neither the proper conditions nor the raison d’étre existed for those limited, “self-structuring” independent initiatives familiar from the present era of “dissident” movements that stand so sharply outside the official structures and are unrecognized by them en bloc. At that time, the. posb totalitarian system in Czechoslovakia had not yet petrified into the static, sterile, and stable forms that exist today, forms that compel people to fall back on their own organizing capabilities. For many historical and social reasons, the regime in 1968 was more open. The power structure, exhausted by Stalinist despotism and helplessly groping about for painless reform, was inevitably rotting from within, quite incapable of offering any intelligent opposition to changes in the mood, to the way its younger members regarded things and to the thousands of authentic expressions of life on the “prepolitical” level that sprang up in that vast political terrain between the official and the unofficial.

From the more general point of view, yet another typical circumstance appears to be important: the social ferment that came to a head in 1968 never-in terms of actual structural changes-went any further than the reform, the differentiation, or the replacement of structures that were really only of secondary importance. It did not affect the very essence of the power structure in the post-totalitarian system, which is to say its political model, the fundamental principles of social organization, not even the economic model in which all eco~ nomic power is subordinated to political power. Nor were any essential structural changes made in the direct instru~ ments of power (the army, the police, the judiciary, etc.). On that level, the issue was never more than a change in the mood, the personnel, the political line and, above all changes in how that power was exercised. Everything else remained at the stage of discussion and planning. The two officially accepted programs that went furthest in this regard were che April 1968 Action Program of the Communist Party of Czecho~ slovakia and the proposal for economic reforms. The Action Program-it could not have been otherwise-was full of contradictions and halfway measures that left the physical as pects of power untouched. And the economic proposals, while they went a long way to accommodate the aims of life in the economic sphere (they accepted such notions as a plurality of interests and initiatives, dynamic incentives, restrictions upon the economic command system), left untouched the basic pillar of economic power, that is, the principle of state, rather than genuine social ownership of the means of production. So there is a gap here which no social movement in the posttotalitarian system has ever been able to bridge, with the possible exception of those few days during the Hungarian uprising.

What other developmental alternative might emerge in the future? Replying to that question would mean entering the realm of pure speculation. For the time being, it can be said that the latent social crisis in the system has always (and there is no reason to believe it will not continue to do so) resulted in a variety of political and social disturbances. (Germany in rgg3, Hungary, the U.S.S.R. and Poland in 1956, Gzechoslovakia and Poland in 1968, and Poland in 1970 and 1976), all of them very different in their backgrounds, the course of their evolution, and their final consequences. If we look at the enormous complex of different factors that led to such disturbances, and at the impossibility of predicting what ac cidental accumulation of events will cause that fermentation in the hidden sphere to break through to the light of day (the problem of the “final straw”); and if we consider how impossible it is to guess what the Future holds, given such opposing trends as, on the one hand, the increasingly profound integration of the “bloc” and the expansion of power within it, and on the other hand the prospects of the U.S.S.R. disintegrating under pressure from awakening national consciousness in the non-Russian areas (in this regard the Soviet Union cannot expect to remain forever free of the worldwide struggle For national liberation), rhen we must see the hopelessness of trying to make long-range predictions.

In any case, I do not believe that this type of speculation has any immediate significance for the “dissident” movements since these movements, after all, do not develop from speculative thinking, and so to establish themselves on that basis would mean alienating themselves from the very source of their identity.
As far as prospects for the “dissident” movements as such go, there seems to be very little likelihood that future devel opments will lead to a lasting co-existence of two isolated, mutually noninteracting and mutually indifferent bodiesthe main polis and the parallel poLis. As long as it remains what it is, the practice of living within the truth cannot fail to be a threat to the system. It is quite impossible to imagine it continuing to co-exist with the practice of living within a lie without dramatic tension. The relationship of the posttotalitaxian system-as long as it remains what it is-and the independent life of society-as long as it remains the locus of a renewed responsibility for the whole and to the whole-will always be one of either latent or open contlict.

In this situation there are only two possibilities: either thc post-totalitarian system will go on developing (that is, will be able to go on developing), thus inevitably coming closer to some dreadful Orwellian vision of a world of absolute manipulation, while all the more articulate expressions of living within the truth are definitely snuffed out; or the independent life of society (the parallel polis), including the “dissident” movements, will slowly but. surely become a social phenomenon of growing importance, taking a real part in the life of society with increasing clarity and influencing the general situation. Of course this will always be only one of many factors influencing the situation and it will operate rather in the background, in concert with the other factors and in a way appropriate to the background.

Whether it ought to focus on reforming the official structures or on encouraging differentiation, or on replacing them with new structures, whether the intent is to ameliorate the system or, on the contrary, to tear it down: these and similar questions, insofar as they are not pseudo-problems, can be posed by the “dissident” movement only within the context of a particular situation, when the movement is faced with a concrete task. In other words, it must pose questions, as it were, ad hoc, out of a concrete consideration of the authentic needs of life. To reply to such questions abstractly and to formulate a political program in terms of some hypothetical future would mean, I believe, a return to the spirit and methods of traditional politics, and this would limit and alienate the work of “dissent” where it is most intrinsically itself and has the most genuine prospects for the future. I have already emphasized several times that these “dissident” movements do not have their point of departure in the invention of systemic changes but in a real, everyday struggle for a better life here and now. The political and structural systems that life discovers for itself will clearly always be-for some time to come, at least-limited, halfway, unsatisfying, and polluted by debilitating tactics. It cannot be otherwise, and we must expect this and not be demoralized by it. It is of great importance that the main thing-the everyday, thankless, and never ending struggle of human beings to live more freely, truthfully, and in quiet dignity-never impose any limits on itself, never be halfhearted, inconsistent, never trap itself in political tactics, speculating on the outcome of its actions or entertaining fantasies about the future. The purity of this struggle is the best guarantee of optimum results when it comes to actual interaction with the post-totalitarian structures.

XX

The specific nature of post-totalitarian conditions-with their absence of a normal political life and the fact that any farreaching political change is utterly unforeseeable-has one positive aspect: it compels us to examine our situation in terms of its deeper coherences and to consider our future in the context of global, long-range prospects of the world of which we are a part. The fact that the most intrinsic and fundamental confrontation between human beings and the system takes place at a level incomparably more profound than that of traditional politics would seem, at the same time, to determine as well the direction such considerations will take.

Our attention, therefore, inevitably turns to the most essential matter: the crisis of contemporary technological society as a whole, the crisis that Heidegger describes as the ineptitude of humanity face to face with the planetary power of technology. Technology-that child of modern science, which in turn is a child of modern metaphysics-is out of humanity’s control, has ceased to serve us, has enslaved us and compelled us to participate in the preparation of our own destruction. And humanity can find no way out: we have no idea and no faith, and even less do we have a political conception to help us bring things back under human control. We look on helplessly as that coldly functioning machine we have created inevitably engulfs us, tearing us away from our natural affiliations (for instance, from our habitat in the wid~ est sense of that word, including our habitat in the biosphere) just as it removes us from the experience of Being and casts us into the world of “existences.” This situation has already been described from many different angles and many individuals and social groups have sought, often painfully, to find ways out of it (for instance, through oriental thought or by forming communes). The only social, or rather political, at~ tempt to do something about it that contains the necessary element of universality (responsibility to and for the whole) is the desperate and, given the turmoil the world is in, fading voice of the ecological movement, and even there the attempt is limited to a particular notion of how to use technology to oppose the dictatorship of technology.

“Only a God can save us now,” Heidegger says, and he em~ phasizes the necessity of “a different way of thinking,” that is, of a departure from what philosophy has been for centuries, and a radical change in the way in which humanity understands itself, the world, and its position in it. He knows no way out and all he can recommend is “preparing expectations.”

Various thinkers and movements feel that this as yet unknown way out might be most generally characterized as a broad “existential revolution:’ I share this view, and I also share Ihe opinion that a solution cannot be sought in some technological sleight of hand, that is, in some external proposal for change, or in a revolution that is merely philosophical, merely social, merely technological, or even merely political. These are all areas where the consequences of an existential revolution can and must be felt; but their most intrinsic locus can only be human existence in the profoundest sense of the word. It is only from that basis that it can become a generally ethical-and, of course, ultimately a political-reconstitution of society.
What we call the consumer and industrial (or postindustrial) society, and Ortega y Gasset once understood as “the revolt of the masses,” as well as the intellectual, moral, political, and social misery in the world today: all of this is perhaps merely an aspect of the deep crisis in which humanity, dragged helplessly along by the automatism of global technological civilization, finds itself.

The post-totalitarian system is only one aspect-a particularly drastic aspect and thus all the more revealing of its real origins-of this general inability of modern humanity to be the master of its own situation. The automatism of the posttotalitarian system is merely an extreme version of the global automatism of technological civilization. The human failure that it mirrors is only one variant of Ihe general failure of modern humanity.

This planetary challenge to the position of human beings in the world is, of course, also taking place in the Western world, the only difference being the social and political forms it takes- Heidegger refers expressly to a crisis of democracy. There is no real evidence that Western democracy, thac is, democracy of the traditional parliamentary type, can offer solutions that are any more profound. It may even be said Ihat the more room there is in the Western democracies (compared to our world) for the genuine aims of life, the better the crisis is hidden from people and the more deeply do they become immersed in it.

It would appear that the traditional parliamentary democ racies can offer no fundamental opposition to the automatism of technological civilization and the industrial-cousumer society, for they, too, are being dragged helplessly along by it. People are manipulated in ways that are infinitely more subtle and refined than the brutal methods used in the posttotalitarian societies. But this static complex of rigid, conceptually sloppy, and politically pragmatic mass political parties run by professional apparatuses and releasing the citizen from all forms of concrete and personal responsibility; and those complex focuses of capital accumulation engaged in secret manipulations and expansion; the omnipresent dictatorship of consumption, production, advertising, commerce, consumer culture, and all that flood of information: all of it, so often analyzed and described, can only with great difficulty be imagined as the source of humanity’s rediscovery of itsel^ In his June 1978 Harvard lecture, Solzhenitsyn describes the illusory nature of freedoms not based on personal responsibility and the chronic inability of the traditional democracies, as a result, to oppose violence and totalitarianism. In a democracy, human beings may enjoy many .personal freedoms and securities that are unknown to us, but in the end they do them no good, for they too are ultimately victims of the same automatism, and are incapable of defending their concerns about their own identity or preventing their superficialization or transcending concerns about their own personal survival to become proud and responsible members of the polis, making a genuine contribution to the creation of its destiny.

Because all our prospects for a significant change for the better are very long range indeed, we are obliged to take note of this deep crisis of traditional democracy. Certainly, if conditions were to be created for democracy in some countries in the Soviet bloc (although this is becoming increasingly improbable), it might be an appropriate transitional solution that would help to restore the devastated serise of civic awareness, to renew democratic discussion, to allow for the crystallization of an elementary political plurality, an essential expression of the aims of life. But to cling to the notion of traditional parliamentary democracy as one’s political ideal and to succumb to the illusion that only this tried and true form is capable of guaranteeing human beings enduring dignity and an independent role in society would, in my opinion, be at the very least shortsighted.

I see a renewed focus of politics on real people as something far more profound than merely returning to the everyday mechanisms of Western (or, if you like, bourgeois) democracy. In rg68, I felt that our problem could be solved by forming an opposition party that would compete publicly for power with the Communist Party. I have long since come to realize, however, that it isjust not that simple and that no opposition party in and of itself,just as no new electoral laws in and of themselves, could make society proof against some new form of violence. No “dry” organizational measures in themselves can provide that guarantee, and we would be hardpressed to find in them that God who alone can save us.

XXI

And now I may properly be asked the question: What then is to be done?

My skepticism toward alternative political models and the ability of systemic reforms or changes to redeem us does not, of course, mean that I am skeptical of political thought altogether. Nor does my emphasis on the importance of focusing concern on real human beings disqualify me from considering the possible structural consequences flowing from it. On the contrary, if A was said, then B should be said as well. Nevertheless, I will offer only a few very general remarks.

Above all, any existential revolution should provide hope of a moral reconstitution of society, which means a radical renewal of the relationship of human beings to what I have called the “human order,” which no political order can replace. A new experience of being, a renewed rootedness iu the universe, a newly grasped sense of higher responsibility, a newfound inner relationship to other people and to the human community-these factors clearly indicate the direction in which we must go.

And the political consequences? Most probably they could be reflected in the constitution of structures that will derive from this new spirit, from human factors rather than from a particular formalization of political relationships and guarantees. In other words, the issue is the rehabilitation of values like trust, openness, responsibility, solidarity, love. I believe in structures that are not aimed at the technical aspect of the execution of power, but at the significance of that execution in structures held together more by a commonly shared feeling of the importance of certain communities than by commonly shared expansionist ambitions directed outward. There can and must be structures that are open, dynamic, and small; beyond a certain point, human ties like personal trust and personal responsibility cannot work. There must be structures that in principle place no limits on the genesis of different structures. Any accumulation of power whatsoever (one of the characteristics of automatism) should be profoundly alien to it. They would be structures not in the sense of organizations or institutions, but like a community. Their authority certainly cannot be based on long-empty traditions, like the tradition of mass political parties, but rather on how, in concrete terms, they enter into a given situation. Rather than a strategic agglomeration of formalized organizations, it is better to have organizations springing up ad hoc, infused with enthusiasm for a particular purpose and disappearing when that purpose has been achieved. The leaders’ authority ought to derive from their personalities and be personally tested in their particular surroundings, and not from their position in any nomenklatura. They should enjoy great personal confidence and even great lawmaking powers based on that confidence. This would appear to be the only way out of the classic impotence of traditional democratic organizations, which frequently seem founded more on mistrust than mutual confidence, and more on collective irresponsibility than on responsibility. It is only with the full existential backing of every member of the community that a permanent bulwark against creeping totalitarianism can be established. These structures should naturally arise from below as a consequence of authentic social self-organization; they should derive vital energy from a living dialogue with the genuine needs from which they arise, and when these needs are gone, the struc tures should also disappear. The principles of their internal organization should be very diverse, with a minimum of external regulation. The decisive criterion of this selfconstitution should be the structure’s actual significance, and notjust a mere abstract norm.

Both political and economic life ought to be founded on the varied and versatile cooperation of such dynamically appearing and disappearing organizations. As far as the economic life of society goes, I believe in the principle of selfmanagement, which is probably the only way of achieving what all the theorists of socialism have dreamed about, that is, the genuine (i.e., informal) participation of workers in economic decision making, leading to a feeling of genuine responsibility for their collective work. The principles of control and discipline ought to be abandoned in favor of self-control and self-discipline.
As is perhaps clear from even so general an outline, the systemic consequences of an existential revolution of this type go significantly beyond the framework of classical parliamentary democracy. Having introduced the term “posttotalitarian” for the purposes of this discussion, perhaps I should refer to the notion I have just outlined-purely for the moment-as the prospects for a “post-democratic” system.

Undoubtedly this notion could be developed further, but I think it would be a foolish undertaking, to say the least, because slowly but surely the whole idea would become alienated, separated from itself. After all, the essence of such a “post-democracy” is also that it can only develop via facti, as a process deriving directly from life, from a new atmosphere and a new spirit (political thought, of course, would play a role here, though not as a director, merely as a guide). It would be presumptuous, however, to try to foresee the structural expressions of this new spirit without that spirit actually being present and without knowing its concrete physiognomy.

XXII

I would probably have omitted the entire preceding section as a more suitable subject for private meditation were it not for a certain recurring sensation. It may seem rather presumptuous, and therefore I will present it as a question: Does not this vision of “post-democratic” structures in some ways remind one of the “dissident” groups or some of the independent citizens’ initiatives as we already know them from our own surroundings? Do not these small communities, bound together by thousands of shared tribulations, give rise to some of those special humanly meaningful political relationships and ties that we have been talking about? Are not these communities (and they are communities more than organizations)-motivated mainly by a common belief in the profound significance of what they are doing since they have no chance of direct, external success joined together by precisely the kind of atmosphere in which the formalized and ritualized ties common in the official structures are supplanted by a living sense of solidarity and fraternity? Do not these “post-democratic” relationships of immediate personal trust and the informal rights of individuals based on them come out of the background of all those commonly shared difficulties? Do not these groups emerge, live, and disappear under pressure from concrete and authentic needs, unburdened by the ballast of hollow traditions? Is not their attempt to create an articulate form of living within the truth and to renew the feeling of higher responsibility in an apathetic society really a sign of some kind of rudimentary moral recon~ stitution?

In other words, are not these informed, nonbureaucratic, dynamic, and open communities that comprise the “parallel polis” a kind of rudimentary prefiguration, a symbolic model of those more meaningful “post-democratic” political structures that might become the foundation of a better society?

I know from thousands of personal experiences how the mere circumstance of having signed Charter 77 has immediately created a deeper and more open relationship and evoked sudden and powerful feelings of genuine community among people who were all but strangers before. This kind of thing happens only rarely, if at all, even among people who have worked together for long periods in some apathetic official structure. It is as though the mere awareness and acceptance of a common task and a shared experience were enough to transform people and the climate of their lives, as though it gave their public work a more human dimension than is. seldom found elsewhere.

Perhaps all this is only the consequence of a common threat. Perhaps the moment the threat ends or eases, the mood it helped create will begin to dissipate as well. (The aim of those who threaten us, however, is precisely the opposite. Again and again, one is shocked by the energy they devote to contaminating, in various despicable ways, all the human relationships inside the threatened community.)

Yet even if that were so, it would change nothing in the question I have posed.

We do not know the way out of the marasmus of the world, and it would be an expression of unforgivable pride were we to see the little we do as a fundamental solution, or were we to present ourselves, our community, and our solutions to vital problems as the only thing worth doing.

Even so, I think that given all these preceding thoughts on post-totalitarian conditions, and given the circumstances and the inner constitution of the developing efforts to defend human beings and their identity in such conditions, the questions I have posed are appropriate. If nothing else, they are an invitation to reflect concretely on our own experience and to give some thought to whether certain elements of that experience do not-without our really being aware of it-point somewhere further, beyond their apparent limits, and whether right here, in our everyday lives, certain challenges are not already encoded, quietly waiting for the moment when they will be read and grasped.

For the real question is whether the brighter future is really always so distant. What if, on the contrary, it has been here for a long time already, and only our own blindness and weakness has prevented us from seeing it around us and within us, and kept us from developing it?

October 1978

Copyright http://www.vaclavhavel.cz/showtrans.php?cat=eseje&val=2_aj_eseje.html&typ=HTML

Václav Havel (Czech pronunciation: [ˈvaːt͡slav ˈɦavɛl]; 5 October 1936 – 18 December 2011) was a Czech playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and politician.

The post The Power of the Powerless by Václav Havel appeared first on OBRA MAESTRA.

Professor Coyne completed his bachelor’s degree in mathematics and his licentiate in philosophy at Fordham University, New York City, in 1958. He carried out a spectrophotometric study of the lunar surface for the completion of his doctorate in astronomy at Georgetown University in 1962. He spent the summer of 1963 doing research at Harvard University, the summer of 1964 as a National Science Foundation lecturer at the University of Scranton, and the summer of 1965 as visiting research professor at the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (UA LPL). 

George V. Coyne
Born	January 19, 1933 (age 80)  USA Baltimore (Maryland)
Residence	USA Tucson (Arizona)
Fields	Astrophysics
Institutions	Vatican Observatory

Scientific education

Priesthood and theological study

A member of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) since the age of 18, he completed a licentiate in sacred theology at Woodstock College, Woodstock,Maryland, and was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1965. Coyne was visiting assistant professor at the UA LPL in 1966-67 and 1968–69, and visiting astronomer at the Vatican Observatory in 1967-68.

Director of Vatican Observatory

Coyne joined the Vatican Observatory as an astronomer in 1969 and became an assistant professor at the LPL in 1970. In 1976 he became a senior research fellow at the LPL and a lecturer in the UA Department of Astronomy. The following year he served as Director of the UA’s Catalina Observatory and as Associate Director of the LPL.

He became Director of the Vatican Observatory in 1978, and also Associate Director of the UA Steward Observatory. During 1979-80 he served as Acting Director and Head of the UA Steward Observatory and the Astronomy Department. As Director of the Vatican Observatory he has been a driving force in several new educational and research initiatives. He spends five months of the year in Tucson as adjunct professor in the University of Arizona Astronomy Department. Coyne was succeeded as Director of the Vatican Observatory by Fr. José Gabriel Funes in August 2006.^[1]

Scientific research

Coyne’s research interests have been in polarimetric studies of various subjects including the interstellar medium, stars with extended atmospheres and Seyfert galaxies, which are a class of spiral galaxies with very small and unusually bright star-like centers. Polarimetry studies can reveal the properties of cosmic dust and synchrotron radiation regions in galaxies and other astronomical objects. Most recently he has been studying the polarization produced in cataclysmic variables, or interacting binary star systems that give off sudden bursts of intense energy, and dust about young stars. He also has the asteroid 14429 Coyne, named for him.

He is an active member of the International Astronomical Union, the American Astronomical Society, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, the American Physical Society and the Optical Society of America.

Selected Papers

Intelligent Design

Coyne has been a vocal opponent of intelligent design since at least August 2005, when his was published in The Tablet.^[2] This opposition was further publicized in November 2005, when he was quoted by the ANSA news agency as saying “Intelligent design isn’t science even though it pretends to be. If you want to teach it in schools, intelligent design should be taught when religion or cultural history is taught, not science.”^[3] He was also interviewed for the BBC documentary A War On Science where he criticised intelligent design as being unscientific,^[4] and suggested that the Archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn was pressured by the think-tank the Discovery Institute to publish an article in the New York Times critical of evolution.^[5]

Coyne has been forthright in criticizing the Church’s lukewarm admission of responsibility for its prosecution of Galileo in the early seventeenth century.^[6]

Retirement

He retired from the position in 2006 and was replaced by the Argentinean astronomer José Gabriel Funes. As this followed closely Coyne’s prominence in the debate over intelligent design, speculation arose that he was replaced due to his criticism of it and its supporters, particularly Cardinal Schönborn, a friend of Pope Benedict XVI.^[7] During a 2008 interview with Richard Dawkins, Coyne praised a pre-publication version of a new book by Schönborn. Coyne summarizes the book as a distinction by Schönborn between evolution and “evolutionism”, the latter of which extends evolution beyond the science and into reductionist judgements of human worth. Coyne states that the controversy would not have arisen had Schönborn shared those views before.^[8]

In a statement to the Arizona Daily Star, Funes publicly rejected the idea that Coyne’s retirement relates to his views on Intelligent Design.^[9] Coyne himself has said the idea was “simply not true”.^[10]

Coyne was featured in the movie Religulous, by political commentator Bill Maher, commenting that all of the scriptures are written around/between 2000 BC and 200 AD, and modern science has only come into existence in the last couple hundred years, and thus the scriptures in no way contain any science and should not be taught as such.

Coyne was granted an honorary doctorate by Le Moyne College of Syracuse, NY, a Jesuit institution, on May 17, 2009 in recognition of “his tireless effort to promote an open dialogue between philosophy, theology, and the sciences” as part of his work “to bridge the gap between faith and science.”^[11]

• List of Roman Catholic scientist-clerics

References

• 
  Interviews with Fr. George Coyne, S.J.
• Honoring Web Site at the University of Arizona
• Science Does Not Need God, or Does It? A Catholic Scientist Looks at Evolution
• Vatican astronomer rips Intelligent Design theory
• Articles in The Tablet written by or related to Coyne

See also

• List of Jesuit scientists

Copyright: Wikipedia®

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Il y a déjà 15 ans Jacques Attali faisait cette analyse fulgurante: 

Jacques Attali: less austerity and isolation, more economic growth

Martin LaSalle | 2012 International Summit of Cooperatives | May 19, 2012 – 11:30 am

http://www.2012intlsummit.coop/site/home?template=conferencierDetail&newsID=5763

 

Jacques Attali, one of FOREIGN POLICY’S new contributing editors, is a writer, economist, and philosopher and is president of A&A, an international consulting firm based in Paris. For 10 years he was special adviser to the president of the French Republic. From 1990 to 1993 he was the president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Empire the market economy and democracy appear to have triumphed. Universally praised these two central values of Western society have become the prerequisite for any nation seeking acceptance by the international community or assistance from international financial institutions. Their widespread adoption has been said to herald the end of history or, at least, the final victory of Western civilization. Wherever Western values are not already in place, people seem to be willing to die to achieve them. And the main mission of American diplomacy seems to be their export, at least as long as doing so serves American interests.

Western civilization’s most ardent modem champions could perhaps be forgiven for displaying what their earliest forerunners called “hubris.” Developed after centuries of evolution and preserved in the 20th century through one virtual and two genuine world wars, Western values are today considered to be the building blocks of economic prosperity and individual freedom and were the driving force behind some of humankind’s greatest victories.

Moreover, history would seem to suggest that the market economy and democracy together form the equivalent of a virtuous circle. Not only is it seemingly impossible to have one without the other, but in the long run the two appear to be mutually reinforcing. The market economy needs private property, entrepreneurship, and innovation, which cannot flourish without freedom of thought, speech, and movement. Democracy means that people can choose where to live, what to buy and sell, and how to work, save, and accumulate wealth, none of which is compatible with the collective ownership of industry. In sum, the market economy and democracy appear to be deeply intertwined, with both tied to the fundamental concept of private property.

Yet even the most enthusiastic proponents of both the market economy and democracy would admit that “market democracies”—a shorthand term adopted in recent years by exuberant American policymakers—are not easy to create. The development of a robust market economy in a formerly communist country such as Russia requires more than privatizing industry and allowing the market to determine prices. And the establishment of real democracy in a war-torn nation such as Cambodia calls for more than its much-celebrated free elections. A market economy and democracy can endure only in nations that maintain certain indispensable features: the rule of law, a legal system, a free media, and a social consensus on efficient tax collection.

Despite the prevalent belief that the market economy and democracy combine to form a perpetual-motion machine that propels human progress, these two values on their own are in fact incapable of sustaining any civilization. Both are riddled with weaknesses and are increasingly likely to break down. Unless the West, and particularly its self-appointed leader, the United States, begins to recognize the shortcomings of the market economy and democracy Western civilization will gradually disintegrate and eventually self-destruct.

WHERE THE MARKET AND DEMOCRACY FAIL

While the cracks in the facade of Western civilization are only just beginning to show, an x-ray of its foundation might reveal deep weaknesses that could lead to its total collapse. If we are to prevent such a catastrophe, we must begin by acknowledging that the marriage of democracy and the market economy suffers from three fundamental shortcomings: First, the guiding principles of the market economy and democracy cannot be applied to much of Western society; second, these two sets of principles often contradict one another and are more likely to go head-to-head than hand in hand; and, third, they carry within themselves the seeds of their own destruction.

Inapplicable principles

Consider two core institutions of the West: the private corporation and the civil service. For all of our talk of free markets and equality among individuals, our companies and bureaucracies are organized on the basis of fixed plans and strict hierarchies. Can we imagine a real market relationship between divisions of the same company or between a boss and her assistant? Can we imagine an internal referendum on each decision made by a minister or cabinet secretary? What does it say about Western values that they cannot be applied to such institutions, which are at the heart of the Western system?

Likewise, few Western nations-including the United States-would appreciate an international community where true democracy prevailed. (Imagine, for example, a United Nations where the most important decisions were made not by the Security Council’s oligarchy of five nuclear powers but by the entire General Assembly on the principle of “one citizen, one vote” or one state, one vote.”) If international financial institutions had followed such a democratic system during the so-called Global Negotiations of the 1980s, there would likely have been a drastic shift in the global distribution of wealth that would have jeopardized the interests of the West in general, and of the United States in particular.

Similarly, applying the principles of the market economy both within and among nations is problematic and undesirable. I know of no Western nation that seeks a free market in justice, law enforcement, national defense, education, or even telecommunications—and with good reason. Few if any Westerners would want to live in a country where court rulings were for sale, citizenship and passports could be purchased at airline ticket counters, and air waves were auctioned off to the highest bidder without regard to content. And among nations, a free market for nuclear weapons, illegal narcotics, high technology, potable water, and pollution would promote the rapid growth of supranational political bodies and powerful nonstate entities capable of challenging national governments.

Inherent contradictions

Contrary to popular belief, the market economy and democracy the twin pillars of Western civilization-are more likely to undermine than support one another. What follows is a list of just some of the ways in which they clash:

• In a democratic society, the promotion of the individual is the ultimate goal, while in a market economy the individual is treated as a commodity—one that can be excluded or cast aside for want of the right education, skills, physical characteristics, or upbringing.
• The market economy accepts and fosters strong inequalities between economic agents, whereas democracy is based on the equal rights of all citizens. By depriving some people of the ability to meet their basic economic needs, the market economy also leaves them less able to exercise their full political rights. Witness the swelling ranks of unemployed workers in much of the West who can vote but are otherwise increasingly disenfranchised and alienated.
• The market economy resists the localization of power, discourages coalitions between participants, and encourages selfishness, while democracy depends upon a clear identification of political responsibility, the coalition of citizens in political parties, and a general appreciation of our common fate. Democracies need political parties that are capable of molding platforms based on compromises between individual points of view, while market economies rely on competing individual centers.
• The market economy creates a world of nomads, whereas democracy can apply only to sedentary people. Even as the free circulation of goods, capital, ideas, and people calls for breaking down national borders, democracy needs to maintain them in order to separate aliens from citizens who have the right to vote. The tensions created by this contradiction are evident in the popular anger and resentment in the United States and Europe toward a growing influx of foreign workers.
• The market economy assumes that the aggregation of selfish behavior by all economic agents is best for the group, whereas democracy makes the assumption that the best outcome for any given group will result from the acceptance by a minority of the decision of a majority. Already, rich minorities on both sides of the Atlantic are increasingly reluctant to support tax systems that would benefit the middleclass majority. Worse than that, younger generations-which make up a minority of the population-may be reluctant to finance the pensions of the older generations that will dominate the industrialized world in the coming decades.

Inevitable destruction

Because each is based on the principle of the reversibility of choices-whether of political leaders, consumer goods, technology, or cultural trends-the market economy and democracy combined cannot provide a sound basis for a lasting civilization. For instance, no market democracy has a lasting health policy or a permanent concept of urban planning, and among market democracies there is no set exchange rate. The market economy and democracy tend to favor the ephemeral, the precarious. They encourage their adherents to follow the path of short-term selfishness, not long-term shared interest.

Both the market economy and democracy encourage a herd mentality that can be deeply destabilizing. Known as the self-fulfilling prophecy syndrome, this tendency can amplify problems, triggering runs on markets and financial institutions and even political crises. Information technology is exacerbating this self-destabilizing and self-destructive tendency-in both economics and politics-by providing split-second market results and polling data.

The destructive consequences of this volatility are enormous: Markets leave less and less room for long-term contracts or long-term investments. Older generations neglect the interests of the young, demanding benefits and pensions that their children will not be able to sustain, much less enjoy themselves upon retirement. In politics, unpopular decisions are deferred endlessly for immediate political considerations. Led by managers and politicians who are increasingly skilled at gauging public opinion and evading responsibility, society grows incapable of dealing with vital long-term challenges, whether by strengthening political and economic institutions or confronting the costs of damage to the environment.

THE RISE OF THE MARKET DICTATORSHIP

While each of these three shortcomings of the main values of Western civilization has disturbing implications, none holds greater peril than the second—the inherent conflict between the market economy and democracy. For when two concepts are contradictory, one of them has to come out on top. It seems obvious that, all over the world, the market economy today is more dynamic than democracy. Stronger forces are backing it. The frantic search for money to fund elections, the spread of corruption, and the scale of the criminal economy are all signs of the ascendancy of the market economy over democratic ethics.

The implications of a triumph of the market economy over democracy would be profound. Powerful minorities seeking to take full advantage of the market economy will want total control of their resources and will come to view the collective democratic decisions of poor majorities as intolerable burdens. As legislatures and courts lose power to central banks and corporations, market elites will become stronger than democratic elites, further shrinking the reach and appeal of the public sphere. Indeed, we will see the emergence of a new class of “high-tech nomads” whose primary function will be to produce or channel information. The media will fall into the hands of huge conglomerates that can sway the behavior of citizens worldwide, deepening their skepticism about political matters and democratic values. New technologies will continue to erode democratic institutions by spurring decentralization. As the printing press led to the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire and to the birth of Protestantism, the Internet will lead to the decline of traditional intermediaries (such as bankers and retailers) and global forums (such as large television networks and wholesale markets) all of which will be replaced by specific players with specific constituencies and direct access to citizens at the local level.

Eventually, democracy will fade away, having been replaced by market mechanisms and corruption. We will have a kind of market dictatorship, a “lumpen market,” without strong democratic institutions to serve as countervailing powers. Political outcomes will be bought and sold, and the market economy will rule every element of public life, from police protection, justice, education, and health to the very air that we breathe, paving the way for the final victory of “corporate” economic rights over individual human rights.

Under such circumstances, Western civilization itself is bound to collapse. The decline of national allegiances and the refusal of national elites to exercise their responsibilities, become political leaders, or pay taxes will contribute to a fatal weakening of the traditional nation-state, the emergence of strong authoritarian city-states amidst oceans of informal economies, and conflicts at North-South borders and between city-states for the control of scarce material resources. Meanwhile, aggressive nonstate entities (large companies or, in some cases, illegal entities such as the Mafia, drug cartels, and nuclear traffickers) will exploit the market economy and the absence of strong local authorities to threaten our safety and survival. Even our religious beliefs and social values will crumble, as organized religion becomes corrupted by commercial values and civic virtue gives way to widespread cynicism and despair.

AVERTING THE COMING CRASH

More than any other country, the United States stands to lose from the realization of such an apocalyptic scenario. Internally, the advent of a market dictatorship threatens to replace America’s melting pot with a dysfunctional patchwork of self-interested communities. Externally, such a scenario not only endangers a broad array of American interests but the ideological basis of its global leadership as well. In short, the crash of American civilization will precede the crash of Western civilization.

If we want to avert such a crash, we must seek honest answers to several fundamental questions: What is the real influence of citizens in major decisions? What is the reality of democracy among nations? Why are there always the same winners and losers? Can poverty be overcome by market mechanisms?

To find answers to these questions, Western civilization should first become more modest about its own values. We must recognize the need to find a compromise between the market economy and planning and between democratic and authoritarian decision-making mechanisms. We should be exploring ways to organize that compromise rather than indulging in triumphalist rhetoric about the globalization of values that, in fact, have only limited application even to our own societies. Europeans should learn from American efficiency and Americans from European solidarity. Western civilization should learn to stand on its own two feet—on both sides of the Atlantic.

We also should declare openly that Western civilization has something to learn from others. An efficient society should be able to organize both the expression of differences and the creation of an enduring collective view. Civilizations that draw on other philosophical and ethical beliefs-whether Confucianism or Buddhism-seem to be succeeding where we are failing in efforts to maintain human dignity, foster solidarity, and give long-term meaning to our decisions by fostering a vision of what sort of world we hope to have in the 21st century. The fact that the West may disagree with some aspects of Islam as applied in some countries-the status of women, for example~oes not mean that there is nothing to learn from Islamic societies.

Indeed, while many people in non-Western civilizations are trying to imitate the West, a wellspring of opposition to Western values has erupted in many places as well. In Asia, for example, our way of organizing urban life is increasingly rejected, as demonstrated by the Malaysian experience, where planners are considering reorganizing society to deemphasize the automobile. Asian societies suggest possible answers to the contradictory tenets of the market and democracy; by allowing a stronger role for the state in protecting citizens against some of the risks of competition, these societies balance the contradictory forces.

On our own behalf, the West should improve and strengthen democracy in order to achieve a balance with the power of the market. To accomplish that, we must foster a new government role in enforcing the rule of law, supporting the principles of education, ensuring social justice and the participation of workers in corporate decision making, and leading the fight against corruption and the drug economy.

Small nations must unite with their neighbors to achieve a critical mass in the face of market-driven globalization-and to be able to summon the achievements of past generations while not limiting the freedom of choice of future generations (in terms of culture, language, lifestyle, and ethics, for example). The European Union (EU) is an excellent example of such a construction~ne that protects some specific societal differences, such as the rural way of life, the health system, the urban heritage, and the diversity of languages. The EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, so much criticized in the United States, has played a very positive role in this respect.

Western societies must decide when and by what means long-term foreign residents can be given the right to vote. As the number of expatriots grows with the development of the global market economy, the right to vote will become essential in any effort to increase the feeling of partnership between people living on the same soil. ultimately the civilizations capable of organizing their diasporas will be the winners. We must begin to understand multidimensional citizenship and to recognize cohesion between groups belonging simultaneously to many different entities (e.g., cities and companies). We also must agree on how to build a flexible long-term framework for democracy that goes beyond national constitutions and their amendments. Some dimensions of human dignity (the right to childhood, the integrity of the genome, and the rights of other species) are not yet well protected by these constitutions.

Western civilization is no stranger to predictions of decline and fall. Some of these predictions have been based on historical theory, others on cultural, economic, or even racial assumptions. For the time being, they have fortunately been proven wrong. But no one should accept the assumption that any civilization, however triumphant, is here to stay. The survival of ours is in our hands.

Want to Know More?

Some basic texts are of interest. First and foremost, Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville (New York: A. Knopf, 1993), discusses in detail the dangers of a weak democracy in a market economy. In a February 1997 Atlantic Monthly article, “The Capitalist Threat”, George Soros, one of the world’s premier capitalists, warns that the unfettered spread of market values poses the gravest threat to our democratic society. Joseph Arrow in Social Choice and Individual Values (New York: Wiley, 1963) demonstrates the difficulties faced by a rational democracy in a competitive environment. This question is also discussed in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (London: Harper, 1942) in which Joseph Schumpeter explains that only innovation can compensate for the destructive nature of the market. Lester Thurow, in The Future of Capitalism (New York: W. Morrow, l 996), elaborates on the contradictions between democracy and the aging of a modern market economy, and I have discussed, in Millennium: Winners and losers in the coming world order (New York: Times Books, 1991), the concept of a nomadic society. An alternative theory on the crash of Western civilization can be found in Robert Kaplan’s travel book, The Ends of the Earth (New York: Random House, 1996), in which he expands upon his February 1994 Atlantic Monthly article, “The Coming Anarchy,” arguing that our civilization’s collapse will come as a result of thc spread of crime and disease and the type of overpopulation that is common throughout the developing world.

For links to related Web sites, visit Foreign Policy’s home page at www.foreignpolicycom.

https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/feros-pg.htm

Jacques Attali’s Biography:

Professor, writer, Honorary Member of the Council of State, Special Adviser to the President of the Republic from 1981 to 1991, founder and first President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London from 1991 to 1993, Jacques Attali (www.attali.com) is currently CEO of A&A, an international consulting firm in strategy, based in Paris, and President of PlaNet Finance, an international non-profit organisation assisting microfinance institutions all over the world. PlaNet Finance is the most important world institution of support to the microfinance. PlaNet Finance advises and finances the development of the microfinance in 80 countries, and launched the LH Forum, movement for positive economy (www.ecoplus.tv).

The post The Crash of Western Civilization: The Limits of the Market and Democracy – Summer 1997 – by Jacques Attali appeared first on OBRA MAESTRA.

Life will perish as the environment perishes
21st century ecological economist

Guest post by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

Only in science fiction can humans escape the consequences of destroying their own habitat. In Robert A. Heinlein’s Time Enough For Love, the “Great Diaspora of the Human Race” began “more than two millennia ago” and has spread to more than “two thousand colonized planets.” The once “lovely green planet” Earth is a slum planet barely able to support life where only the poorest live, Earth’s natural capital having been consumed over two thousand years ago. Humans have found the ability to rejuvenate themselves and to live almost endless lives, but they are unable to rejuvenate the planets whose natural capital they devour. Humans have not encountered “one race as mean, as nasty, as deadly as our own.” As homo sapiens use up the environments of colonized planets, “human intergalactic colony ships are already headed out into the Endless Deeps,” leaving their ruins behind them.

In his book, Collapse, University of California biogeography professor Jared Diamond describes the nonfictional past and present destruction of Earth’s natural capital. Surprisingly, Diamond begins his story of the self-destruction of Easter Island, Anasazi, and Maya civilizations with present-day Montana and ends with Australia. We think of these two lands as scenic, lightly populated, and largely untouched, but they have been brought to the brink of ruin. Diamond’s point is that modern scientific and technological man is no better at managing nature’s capital than previous societies.

Many associate ecological destruction with population pressure. However, the toxicity associated with mining, fracking, chemical fertilizer and GMO farming, and the adverse watershed effects of logging is turning even low density states such as Montana into an environment with ruined soil and water.

In Montana mining has produced a legacy of toxicity–mercury, arsenic, cyanide, cadmium, lead, and zinc. These toxic substances have found their way into Montana’s fishing rivers and into reservoirs. From reservoirs toxic substances have leaked into groundwater and into the wells that supply homes. In 1981 groundwater serving family wells in areas of Montana was found with arsenic levels 42 times higher than federal standards permit.

Before Montana could find ways to retrieve its water resources from the toxic run-offs from mining, a new threat has appeared: hydraulic fracking. Fracking uses huge amounts of surface water, which it infuses with toxic chemicals to aid the extraction of underground gas and oil deposits that are otherwise unrecoverable. The energy industry and its media shills are touting “energy independence” in order to sway the public away from environmentalists, who are warning of the dangers.

Some of fracking’s toxic wastes stay in the ground and seep into aquifers, destroying the water supply. The toxic water that comes back up with the gas or oil has to be disposed of. On occasion, it ends up in city or town waste water treatment plants, which cannot detoxify the water, and in streams where toxic run-off can reduce nitrogen and phosphorus and produce golden algae (prymnesium parvum) which destroys all aquatic life. The use of surface water for fracking might already have depleted the streams that supplied the water, lowering their volume and thus making them vulnerable to other pollution, such as septic tank run-offs and algae from higher temperatures due to a lower water level.

While promising “energy independence,” fracking actually threatens to destroy our fresh water supplies. Recently, researchers have given attention to the fact that water might be the limiting resource and end up more valuable than oil, gas, or gold.

Fracking is still in its infancy, but Pennsylvania is already hard hit. There have been reports that some homeowners have been warned to open their windows when they take a shower, because of the methane content of the water which is high enough in some instances for the water to actually burn.

Energy spokesmen claim that methane found in ground water near fracking sites is a natural condition. However, residents say that their water was not infused with methane prior to the fracking operations. A study recently published by the National Academy of Sciences found that the type of methane gas that has appeared in water supplies is the same as the gas nearby wells are extracting with fracking operations. This indicates that the methane is moving into water supplies through underground fractures.

In 2012 Robert Oswald, professor of molecular medicine at Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, published with a coauthor, Veterinarian Michelle Bamberger, a peer-reviewed article that indicated a link between fracking and neurological, reproductive, and gastrointestinal problems of livestock exposed via air or water to toxic chemicals used in fracking.

Fracking, like deep sea drilling and all other dangerous exploitations of nature’s resources, promises large short-run profits for corporations at the expense of everyone else and the future. The cost of the polluted water, dead fish, infertile humans and animals, polluted soil and air, and the increase in diseases are all external costs imposed on third parties who have no stake in the ill-gotten profits.

Pennsylvania, possibly the most corrupt state in the US, has passed a law that prevents health care professionals from sharing information about the health care effects of fracking. “I have never seen anything like this in my 37 years of practice,” says Dr. Helen Podgainy, pediatrician from Coraopolis, Pa.

In other words, as in Robert Heinlein’s Time Enough For Love, in Amerika today a handful of rich control everything. Nothing else counts or matters. Oxfam, an international philanthropy organization, announced on January 18 that the world’s 100 richest people earned an average of $2.4 billion each in 2012. Imagine that! An annual income of $2,400 million, or a daily income of $6,575,000. Compared to this, one of the early billionaires back in the 1990s, Sir James Goldsmith, was a poor man.

Easter Island is a clear example of a civilization that destroyed itself by stripping its environment of its resources. Professor Diamond observes: “ Easter Island was as isolated in the Pacific Ocean as the Earth is in space. When the Easter Islanders got into difficulties there was no where to which they could flee, nor to which they could turn for help; nor shall we modern Earthlings have recourse elsewhere” if we destroy the natural capital of our planet. Indeed, Diamond asks, “if mere thousands of Easter Islanders with just stone tools and their own muscle power sufficed to destroy their environment and thereby their society, how can billions of people with metal tools and machine power now fail to do worse?” Diamond might have added that people producing toxic wastes that poison the air, water, and soil and armed with nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons are certain to destroy Earth, especially when almost every government is unaccountable.

On Easter Island trees were the major resource for the population. Trees provided food, housing, watershed that protected against soil erosion, compost, and the large canoes that allowed the inhabitants to leave the island and to fish offshore. What, Professor Diamond asks, was the ruler thinking when the last tree was cut down?

The answer perhaps is that the ruler was thinking of his own glory. How would his
stone monument be rolled into place without the aid of the last tree? What counts, the ruler thought, is not that the Easter Island population survive, but that I have no less glory in my monuments than my predecessors. Thus, with the last tree felled, Easter Island’s death warrant was signed.

When the original colonists arrived in Australia, they made a mistaken inference and concluded bountiful harvests were in their reach. Alas, there is salinity under the soil and irrigation brings the salt to the surface where it destroys the crops.

Salinity brought to the surface by irrigation then runs off into the surface water. The Murray/Darling River accounts for about half of Australia’s agricultural production. But as the river flows downstream, more and more water is extracted. The river becomes progressively salty as its volume decreases and more released salt deposits run off into the river. Diamond reports that “in some years so much water is extracted that no water is left in the river to enter the ocean.”

Clearing the land of its native vegetation contributes to the release of salinity. Diamond writes that 90% of Australia’s original native vegetation has been cleared.

The problems with Australia’s soils and waters are profound, but don’t expect the government to take them into account. Capitalist enterprises can make short term profits by destroying the fragile soils and waters of Australia. The small population of Australia is all the country can support considering its fragile ecology.

This brings us to the rain forests of Brazil, the most extraordinary modern example of the wanton destruction of immense natural resources by the blind force of unregulated capitalist greed, a destructive force as dangerous as that of nuclear weapons.

In The Fate of the Forest, Susanna Hecht and Alexander Cockburn take us through centuries of destruction of the most valuable forests on earth and the indigenous peoples that inhabited them. This book is an extraordinary learning experience and covers many centuries of man’s destruction of the Amazon rain forests, medicinal plants, waters, indigenous peoples, and animal, vegetable and insect species. Every development plan failed, whether originating in a Brazilian government, private capitalist such as Henry Ford and Daniel Ludwig, or international organization.

Briefly what happened is this. In order for outsiders to gain title to land inhabited by natives, rubber tappers, Brazil nut gatherers, and others who had use rights to the forests and knew how to exploit the forests without damaging them, the trees had to be felled, because titles were granted to cleared land.

Land speculators and cattle ranchers acquired vast land holdings by wiping out forests of mahogany, rubber, and Brazil nut trees along with the native inhabitants. The cleared land, deprived of its stewards and its nutrients, became compacted and infertile after a few years. Cattle farming is profitable for a short time before the soil is exhausted, but the-short term profits exist only because of government subsidies and because the external costs of the value of the forests that were destroyed in order to gain a land title are not counted in the cost of the cattle.

The Fate Of The Forest was published in 1990 by the prestigious University of Chicago Press. The information in the book goes to 1988. What has happened to the Amazon since I do not know. Hecht and Cockburn report that remnants of indigenous peoples, despite the murder of many of their leaders by the land barons who were never held accountable, succeeded in forcing the corrupt government of Brazil to establish “extractive reserves” that were supposed to protect the use rights of existing social organizations to the forests. The authors indicate as of their time of writing that the corrupt rich and well-connected were able to take advantage of the extractive reserves to continue their process of land theft. The same misuse is made of national parks. The indigenous inhabitants are moved off national park lands, but favored capitalists are given access to exploit the resources.

I recommend this book to everyone. It shows conclusively without being didactic that unregulated capitalism is one of the greatest forces of destruction of peoples, animal and plant life, and the Earth’s ecology. The book shows that for short-term profit, capitalists are willing to destroy irreplaceable resources. Future profitability is not important to them.

And so we have GDP accounting that measures the Gross Domestic Product of countries without regard to the cost of polluted air, water, and soil, and without regard, for example, to the dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico from oil spills and chemical fertilizer run-off from farming. We add to GDP the value of the fracked oil and gas, but do not subtract the value of the ruined water supply of peoples and the life in the streams.

When mining corporations blow off the tops of mountains, GDP counts the minerals extracted as an addition to value, but does not offset this value with the cost of the ruined scenery and environmental effects of destroyed mountains.

When fishermen dynamite coral reefs in order to maximize their fish catch, the value of the fish obtained by destroying the environment that produced the fish is not offset by the destruction of the coral environment that would have produced a future supply of fish. The dynamite purchase is counted as GDP, but the destroyed reef is not counted as an offsetting cost.

Ohio has experienced earthquakes from fracking. How severe will these become as the earth is fractured in the interest of short-term profit?

Heinlein recognized “Mankind The Destroyer” and depicts humans as destroyers first of their Galaxy and then of other Galaxies.

Will the real human race, as compared to Heinlein’s fictional one, have the possibility of escaping from a destroyed Earth to other planets? Or is the destruction of Earth’s ecology much closer in time than the ability of humans to colonize space?

Economists have responsibility for earthlings’ ignorance about their environmental dependence. Economics claims that man-made capital is a substitute for nature’s capital. As nature’s capital is depleted, reproducible man-made capital will take its place. This assumption is embodied in the production function that is the basis of modern economic theory. The assumption is absurd, because it assumes that finite resources can support infinite growth. Economists should begin their education with courses in physics.

The correct description of the production process is that natural resources are transformed into useful products and waste products by labor and man-made capital. Nature’s capital and man-made capital are complements, not substitutes. Nature’s capital is used up as resources are exploited to make useful products, and air, land, and water become polluted with the waste products from production. The capacity of the planet’s “waste sinks” is limited.

GDP accounting does not include the costs of environmental destruction as a cost of production. For example, the costs of the unexpected consequences of genetically modified crops are not included in the prices of the wheat, corn, and soybeans. In 2011 plant pathologist and soil microbiologist Don Huber described these costs to the US Secretary of Agriculture. Toxic effects on soil microorganisms have disrupted nature’s balance, resulting in an increase in plant diseases. Soil fertility, micronutrients, and the nutritional value of foods have all been harmed. Animal reproductive problems, weak immune response, and premature aging are linked to herbicide-resistant GMOs that have become animal feed.

According to ecological economist Herman Daly, if all the costs of production are included, the decrease in nature’s capital could outweigh the value of the increase in GDP. As Hecht and Cockburn make clear, this has certainly been the case in the exploitation of the Amazon. The output is worth far less than the resources that were ruined in order to produce it.

There is very little of the earth left that has not been ruined by humans. The little that is left is the Antarctic, the Arctic, and some parts of Alaska such as the wilderness above Alaska’s Bristol Bay. The Antarctic is protected by treaty largely because no major power has figured out how to claim it. However, Shell Oil Company, with Obama’s blessings, is now involved in offshore drilling in the Arctic, and a consortium of global mining corporations is lobbying Congress, the White House, and the Environmental Protection Agency for a green light for the Pebble Mine, an enormous open-pit mine to be placed in wilderness above Alaska’s Bristol Bay. Scientists have concluded that the mine will make a dead zone out of a huge area of spectacular scenery encompassing the largest remaining wild salmon runs, and the wildlife, native inhabitants, and commercial fisherman dependent on the fish.

EPA’s scientists have concluded that the Pebble Mine would be environmentally and economically devastating, but this is a weak argument in the face of the greed of a few powerful moneybags for more profit. Just as Easter Islanders cut down their last trees, Americans are set to destroy their last wilderness and its fish, wildlife, and water resources. The mining lobbyists call this ecological destruction “progress” and “jobs” but do not count as an offset the 14,000 jobs related to the salmon fishery that will be destroyed by the Pebble Mine or the dead waters, fish, and wildlife that their toxic process will certainly produce.

Robert Redford and the National Resources Defense Council have arrayed with the EPA scientists against the Pebble Mine. Will Washington listen to fact, or will homo sapiens yet again discard fact for temporary profit and take another step toward finishing off the planet’s life-sustaining capability?

Will the idiots who rule the earth destroy it before humans can escape to other planets? From all evidence, the destruction of earth’s ecology has an immense head start on homo sapiens’ ability to colonize space.

About Dr. Paul Craig Roberts: he was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following.

His new book: 

 The Failure Of Laissez Faire Capitalism And Economic Dissolution Of The West, is available in ebook form at Amazon.com. Click Here.

The post Nature’s Capital Is The Limiting Resource by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts appeared first on OBRA MAESTRA.

Fish Ecophysiologist (PhD)

The post Dr. Maryline Bossus appeared first on OBRA MAESTRA.

 (Source: medtechsurgical.com)

The Discovery Series ranking is based on several criteria, amongst them the
fact that the most revolutionary high-tech entrepreneurs:

- think beyond what most people believe to be possible,
- bring about revolutionary innovations,
- create innovations which improve people’s lives,
- create innovations which change how things are done,
- have overcome challenges for their innovation to succeed.

What path did Bertin Nahum take to achieve this rank, published in September
2012?

Bertin Nahum is of Beninese origin. He was born in Senegal and raised in
France. His studies at l’Institut National des Sciences Appliquées (INSA,
Lyon, France) [The National Institute of Applied Sciences] confirmed his
vocation: “At the end of my studies, I took part in the design of software
capable of detecting brain injuries automatically using scanners. This
feeling of usefulness gave me the desire to dedicate my career to patients,
but on the technician side, through the creation of robots that could assist
surgeons with their operations.”

Engineering diploma in hand, he earned a Master of Science in Robotics
degree from Coventry University (England) before beginning his career. He
worked for ten years with large groups specializing in robotic surgery such
as Computer Motion Inc. (cardiac surgery, urology, etc.), Integrated
Surgical System Inc. (orthopedic surgery) and IMMI SA (neurosurgery).
Strengthened by these experiences, this self-described “Diverse
Entrepreneur” decided to set forth on his own. In 2002, he formed his own
robotic surgery company which he named Medtech.

Newsletters: http://www.medtechsurgical.com/Press-room/Newsletters

The Company: http://www.medtechsurgical.com/Medtech/Overview

Innovative Surgical Technology:

The ROSA™ device (Unique Robot Assistant for Neurosurgery): http://www.medtechsurgical.com/Products/ROSA

Contact Medtech: Sophie Munoz-Vincent press@medtechsurgical.com / 04 67 10 77 40 (France).

Note: “Le président de Planète Finance (Jacques Attali) a, par ailleurs, salué le fait que qu’un jeune Français – “que personne ne connait” – soit considéré aux Etats-Unis comme l’un des hommes ayant le plus révolutionné l’économie mondiale cette année. Il évoquait ainsi Bertin Nahum, qui dirige à Montpellier une société spécialisée dans la robotique chirurgicale.”

Source http://lci.tf1.fr/

The post Bertin Nahum 4th amongst the 10 most Revolutionary High-Tech Entrepreneurs appeared first on OBRA MAESTRA.

 This guest post is by Derek Sivers

2013-01-06

var a = 5 + '5';
// what is a?

'55'
If either side of + is a string, the other is
converted to a string before adding like strings.

var a = new Array('5');
// what is a?

An array with one item, the string '5': ['5'];

var a = new Array(5);
// what is a?

An empty array with a length of 5.

var a = [20, 10, 5, 1];
// what is a.sort()?

[1, 10, 20, 5]
// sort treats all values as strings

var a = [20, 10, 5, 1];
// sort these in numeric order

function compare(v1, v2) { return(v1 - v2); }
a.sort(compare);

var albums = [
  {name: 'Beatles', title: 'White Album', price: 15},
  {name: 'Zeppelin', title: 'II', price: 7}];
// make this work:
albums.sort(by('name'));
albums.sort(by('title'));
albums.sort(by('price'));

function by(propName) {
  return function(obj1, obj2) {
    v1 = obj1[propName];
    v2 = obj2[propName];
    if (v1 < v2) { return -1; }
    else if (v1 > v2) { return 1; }
    else { return 0; }
  };
}

s = 'string like this'
# Show two ways to turn it into 'String Like This'

s.split.map(&:capitalize).join(' ')
s.gsub(/\b\S/) {|x| x.upcase}

/(a(b)((c)d))/.match('abcd')
# What will $1, $2, $3, $4 be?

$1 = 'abcd'
$2 = 'b'
$3 = 'cd'
$4 = 'c'

class C
  self
end
class D < C
end
d1 = D.new
# which object is self?

class D

Derek Sivers is best known as the founder of CD Baby. A professional musician since 1987, he started CD Baby by accident in 1998 when he was selling his own CD on his website, and friends asked if he could sell theirs, too. CD Baby was the largest seller of independent music on the web, with over $100M in sales for over 150,000 musician clients.In 2008, Sivers sold CD Baby to focus on his new ventures to benefit musicians, including his new company, MuckWork, where teams of efficient assistants help musicians do their “uncreative dirty work.”

“Derek Sivers is changing the way music is bought and sold. A musicians’ savior. One of the last music-business folk heroes.”

Esquire
Source: http://www.ted.com

http://www.ted.com/speakers/derek_sivers.html

The post Memorizing a programming language using spaced repetition software appeared first on OBRA MAESTRA.

Push, push, push. Expanding your comfort zone.

: Derek Sivers is best known as the founder of CD Baby. A professional musician since 1987, he started CD Baby by accident in 1998 when he was selling his own CD on his website, and friends asked if he could sell theirs, too. CD Baby was the largest seller of independent music on the web, with over $100M in sales for over 150,000 musician clients.In 2008, Sivers sold CD Baby to focus on his new ventures to benefit musicians, including his new company, MuckWork, where teams of efficient assistants help musicians do their “uncreative dirty work.”

“Derek Sivers is changing the way music is bought and sold. A musicians’ savior. One of the last music-business folk heroes.”

(French Version/Version Française…)

Poussez, poussez, poussez vos limites. Elargissez votre zone de confort.

13/08/2012

Je suis à 40 mètres sous l’eau. Il commence à faire froid et sombre. C’est seulement le troisième plongeon de ma vie, mais je prends le cours de formation avancé, et l’enseignant Caraibeen était un peu irresponsable, fonçant en avant, en me laissant tout seul.

Le lendemain, je suis dans un bureau du gouvernement, répondant à une interview, et levant ma main droite, pour devenir un citoyen de la Dominique.

Je suis dans la maison d’une famille indienne et musulmane à Staten Island, lavant mes pieds, avec l’Imam en attendant ma cérémonie de conversion. La semaine prochaine, ils seront ma belle-famille. Le mariage musulman rendra sa famille élargie heureuse. J’ai mémorisé les syllabes que je dois dire. “Ash hadu alla ilaha illallah. Ash hadu anna muhammadar rasulullah.”

Nous sommes sur un toit à Rio de Janeiro, à la veille du Nouvel An, faisant la fête avec quelques Brésiliens que nous avons rencontrés la veille. En bas, sur la plage, un million de personnes portent du blanc.

Je suis seul sur un vélo dans une forêt en Suède. Je suis parti de Stockholm il ya 6 heures, vers le sud, avec seulement 50 couronnes, et je commence à avoir faim. Je ne connais pas le chemin du retour.

Nous sommes dans un appartement dortoir crasseux à Guilin, en Chine, nous étudions à l’université locale. A l’épicerie locale, nous faisons notre choix dans un bac de grenouilles vivantes.

Un représentant de l’ambassade de l’Inde me remet un pseudo-passeport qui dit que je suis maintenant officiellement une «personne d’origine indienne» – un pseudo-citoyen de l’Inde.

Je suis à l’arrière d’un camion au Cambodge, trempé jusqu’aux os, faisant de l’auto-stop pour retourner à Phnom Penh après une journée de vélo. Les routes étaient inondées, mais nous sommes passés à vélos malgré tout, avec l’eau du fleuve Mékong à mi-poitrine.

Cette semaine là j’ai pris la parole durant quatre conférences: au Cambodge, à Singapour, à Brunei et en Indonésie. A partir de la 4ème, mon accent américain a commencé à se transformer en quelque chose proche d’un accent asiatique.

Nous sommes dans un hôpital à Singapour, pour une naissance. C’est un garçon, ce qui signifie qu’il va servir 2 ans dans l’armée de Singapour en 2030. Le certificat de naissance dit que sa race est eurasienne, un mot que je n’ai jamais entendu auparavant.

Je suis en mission diplomatique en Mongolie, avec la Singapore Business Federation, m’entretenant avec le Directeur du Développement des Affaires de la Mongolie, et marchant avec le prochain maire d’Oulan-Bator.

Je réprime un rire vu le ridicule de la situation.

Je suis juste un musicien de Californie! Qu’est-ce que je fais ici?

Mais ce sentiment me permet de savoir que je suis sur la bonne voie. C’est exactement ce que je voulais.

Certaines personnes poussent leurs limites physiques, pour voir jusqu’où elles peuvent aller. J’ai fait la même chose culturellement, en essayant en tant qu’enfant de Californie d’élargir ma vision du monde.

J’adore le fait que quand nous Poussons Poussons Poussons nos limites, nous élargissons aussi notre zone de confort. Les choses qui nous semblaient si intimidantes sont maintenant une partie intégrante de nous-mêmes.

Je me souviens combien New York City semblait effrayant quand j’ai emménagé
là bas en 1990, à seulement 20 ans. Deux ans plus tard, c’était «ma» ville – ma zone de confort.

Aujourd’hui l’exotique Singapour d’hier est ma maison confortable et le sera pour un bon moment, alors que je me pousse à explorer des lieux étrangers, des nouvelles entreprises, et des perspectives différentes.

Après des années de trac sur scène, effectuant plus de 1000 spectacles, j’ai une forte dose de «confort sur scène». Être le chanteur du groupe ou orateur sur scène est maintenant ma zone de confort.

Beaucoup de mes amis musiciens ressentent cela en jouant sur scène avec leurs héros légendaires. Vous poussez poussez poussez vos limites, puis un jour vous vous retrouvez sur la scène meme dont vous réviez. Et cela semble si naturel – presque relaxant. C’est votre nouvelle zone de confort.

La question est – qu’est ce qui vous fait peur maintenant? Qu’est-ce qui vous intimide? Quelle est la grande inconnue?

Je continue d’utiliser cette question pour guider mon prochain objectif.

(Cliquez une photo de moi durant la mission diplomatique de la semaine dernière en Mongolie)

©  Derek Sivers

The post Push, push, push. Expanding your comfort zone by Derek Sivers appeared first on OBRA MAESTRA.

Jacques Attali’s Biography

Professor, writer, Honorary Member of the Council of State, Special Adviser to the President of the Republic from 1981 to 1991, founder and first President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London from 1991 to 1993, Jacques Attali (www.attali.com) is currently CEO  of A&A, an international consulting firm (www.aeta.net) specialised in new technologies, based in Paris, and President of PlaNet Finance (www.planetfinance.org), an international non-profit organisation assisting microfinance institutions all over the world. PlaNet Finance is the most important world institution of support to the microfinance.  PlaNet Finance advises and finances the development of the microfinance in 80 countries.

Jacques Attali (Photo credit: Niccolò Caranti)

Archives

• 6-05-2012: François Hollande, la preuve par l’Europe
• 06-05-2012: Francois Hollande, proof by Europe
• 01-05-2012: Lettre ouverte à un ami de droite
• 01-05-2012: Open letter to a friend from the right
• 29-04-2012: Choisir
• 29-04-2012: Choosing
• 23-04-2012: Questions pour un champion
• 23-04-2012: Questions for a champion
• 16-04-2012: Grains de sable
• 16-04-2012: Grains of sand
• 09-04-2012: Parler sérieusement
• 09-04-2012: Talking seriously
• 03-04-2012: Mohamed Damir, bis
• 03-04-2012: Mohamed Damir, bis
• 02-04-2012: 7 mai, gueule de bois
• 02-04-2012: May 7, hangover
• 26-03-2012: Attention, Monsieur Draghi
• 26-03-2012: Be careful Mr. Draghi
• 20-03-2012: Sont ils fous, ceux qui décident cela?
• 20-03-2012: Are they fools, those who decide this ?
• 19-03-2012: Note secrète, sur la conduite des dernières semaines de campagne
• 19-03-2012: Secret memo, on the management of the campaign in recent weeks
• 13-03-2012: Pour Une Euro-fédération
• 13-03-2012: For a Euro-federation
• 12-03-2012: Pour ou contre « Kony 2012 » ?
• 12-03-2012: For or against « Kony 2012 » ?
• 05-03-2012: Le moment de vérité
• 05-03-2012: The moment of truth
• 27-02-2012: Salut l’artiste !
• 27-02-2012: Hail the artist!
• 21-02-2012: Pour François Hollande
• 21-02-2012: For Francois Hollande
• 13-02-2012: Alea ACTA est
• 13-02-2012: Alea ACTA est
• 06-02-2012: Demain, l’Euro-Allemagne ?
• 06-02-2012: Tomorrow, Euro-Germany?
• 30-01-2012: Le coiffeur de la Banque Centrale
• 30-01-2012: The barber of the Central Bank
• 23-01-2012: Aux quatre coins du monde
• 23-01-2012: All around the world
• 17-01-2012: Positiver!
• 17-01-2012: Be positive!
• 10-01-2012: L’oeil du cyclone
• 10-01-2012: The eye of the cyclone
• 01-01-2012: Maikel Nabil Sanad
• 01-01-2012: Maikel Nabil Sanad
• 25-12-2011: Les dix plus importants évènements qui n’auront pas lieu en 2012
• 25-12-2011: The ten most important events that will not take place in 2012
• 18-12-2011: Penser la France
• 18-12-2011: Envision France
• 11-12-2011: comme j aimerais avoir tort!
• 11-12-2011: I certainly hope I am wrong!
• 05-12-2011: 2012 égale 6 fois 5
• 05-12-2011: 2012 equals 6 times 5
• 27-11-2011: La démocratie et le réel
• 27-11-2011: Democracy and reality
• 20-11-2011: Le cinquième suicide européen
• 20-11-2011: The fifth European suicide
• 13-11-2011: Que cela va etre long…..
• 13-11-2011: The time will seem long…..
• 06-11-2011: Trois générations
• 06-11-2011: Three generations
• 02-11-2011: Au G20, ne pas oublier Fukushima
• 02-11-2011: At the G20, do not forget Fukushima
• 30-10-2011: D’un caravansérail à l’autre
• 30-10-2011: From one caravanserai to another
• 23-10-2011: Passer par les peuples, enfin!
• 23-10-2011: Through the voice of the peoples, finally
• 20-10-2011: Un budget à refaire totalement !
• 20-10-2011: A budget to redo completely!
• 16-10-2011: au voisinage de l’enfer
• 16-10-2011: In the vicinity of hell
• 09-10-2011: « levez vous vite, orages désirés »
• 09-10-2011: « *Arise quickly, oh ye desired winds »
• 02-10-2011: choisir le meilleur socialiste
• 02-10-2011: Choose the best socialist
• 29-09-2011: Vous avez dit « primaire »?
• 29-09-2011: *«primaire»… You said?
• 25-09-2011: La prison de lumière
• 25-09-2011: The prison of light
• 18-09-2011: Faisons un reve
• 18-09-2011: Let’s make a dream
• 11-09-2011: se préparer au pire, pour l’éviter
• 11-09-2011: Prepare for the worst, to avoid it
• 04-09-2011: Elections, mode d’emploi
• 04-09-2011: Elections, user manual
• 28-08-2011: Le monde, selon Jobs
• 28-08-2011: The world, according to Jobs
• 22-08-2011: Le conservatisme frénétique
• 22-08-2011: Frenetic conservatism
• 16-08-2011: Ce que Nicolas Sarkozy et Angela Merkel auraient du déclarer en commun
• 16-08-2011: What Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel should have declared in common
• 15-08-2011: Un jardin d’Eden
• 15-08-2011: Garden of Eden
• 08-08-2011: Tous ruinés dans dix mois?
• 08-08-2011: All ruined in ten months?
• 03-08-2011: Pendant les vacances, l’Histoire continue
• 03-08-2011: During the summer holidays, History goes on
• 31-07-2011: La cohabitation américaine
• 31-07-2011: American cohabitation
• 24-07-2011: La leçon norvégienne
• 24-07-2011: The Norwegian lesson
• 17-07-2011: La démocratie, combien de divisions?
• 17-07-2011: Democracy, how many divisions?
• 10-07-2011: La France de Juillet
• 10-07-2011: France in July
• 03-07-2011: La Grèce, la Pologne et nous.
• 03-07-2011: Greece, Poland and us
• 26-06-2011: Quelles qualités pour un président?
• 26-06-2011: What qualities for a president?
• 19-06-2011: Hadopi – vivre de son art
• 19-06-2011: Hadopi – living off one’s art
• 16-06-2011: Le problème n’est plus grec
• 16-06-2011: The problem is not about Greece anymore
• 12-06-2011: Humain, plus qu’humain
• 12-06-2011: Human, more than human
• 06-06-2011: La démocratie financière
• 06-06-2011: Financial democracy
• 29-05-2011: Le match Facebook contre Google
• 28-05-2011: The match Facebook against Google
• 22-05-2011: Les deux tsunamis
• 22-05-2011: Two tsunamis
• 15-05-2011: Les quatre echelles du temps
• 15-05-2011: The four scales of time
• 09-05-2011: Bienvenue aux binationaux!
• 09-05-2011: Welcome to the binational!
• 01-05-2011: 2012: comment la gauche va perdre
• 01-05-2011: 2012: How the Left will lose
• 24-04-2011: Soyons sérieux!
• 24-04-2011: Let us be serious!
• 23-04-2011: Les Etats Généraux du Monde
• 23-04-2011: Estates General of the World
• 17-04-2011: Le tube et le dentifrice
• 17-04-2011: Toothpaste and tube
• 10-04-2011: Patinage artistique
• 10-04-2011: Figure skating
• 03-04-2011: La dictature de l’insouciance
• 03-04-2011: The dictatorship of heedlessness
• 27-03-2011: Branle bas de combat
• 27-03-2011: Motion for battle
• 20-03-2011: gagner la paix
• 20-03-2011: Winning the peace
• 17-03-2011: Dix premières lecons des événements japonais
• 17-03-2011: Ten first lessons from the events in Japan
• 12-03-2011: Des racines et des ailes
• 12-03-2011: Roots and wings
• 06-03-2011: Vidéomocratie
• 06-03-2011: Videomocracy
• 28-02-2011: L’arrachement
• 28-02-2011: Uprooting
• 19-02-2011: Retour sur le tabac
• 19-02-2011: Back to tobacco
• 15-02-2011: le faux pas de M. Jacob
• 15-02-2011: Mr. Jacob’s « faux pas »
• 13-02-2011: Opération 2022
• 13-02-2011: 2022 operation
• 06-02-2011: Bien pire que le Médiator: le tabac
• 06-02-2011: Much worse than Mediator: tobacco
• 06-02-2011: Aider la Tunisie
• 06-02-2011: Help Tunisia
• 31-01-2011: Transitions
• 31-01-2011: Transitions
• 23-01-2011: Dominique Sarkozy-Kahn
• 23-01-2011: Dominique Sarkozy-Kahn
• 16-01-2011: La Tunisie, et aprés?
• 16-01-2011: Tunisia, and after?
• 10-01-2011: viser au coeur
• 10-01-2011: Aim for the heart
• 03-01-2011: Des projets pour la France
• 03-01-2011: Projects for France
• 01-01-2011: 2011
• 01-01-2011: 2011
• 19-12-2010: L’autruche, le rat et le lynx
• 19-12-2010: The ostrich, the rat, and the lynx
• 12-12-2010: comprendre l’Allemagne
• 12-12-2010: Understand Germany
• 06-12-2010: Verbatim
• 06-12-2010: Verbatim
• 28-11-2010: Roulements de tambours
• 28-11-2010: Drum Rolls
• 21-11-2010: La tyrannie de la solitude
• 21-11-2010: The tyranny of loneliness
• 15-11-2010: Plan de table, pour un diner sur le Titanic
• 15-11-2010: Seating plan for dinner on the Titanic
• 08-11-2010: La machine à perdre
• 08-11-2010: The losing machine
• 01-11-2010: Japon, Madoff, Somalie
• 01-11-2010: Japan, Madoff, Somalia
• 26-10-2010: Un grand projet
• 26-10-2010: A grand project
• 18-10-2010: avant, et aprés
• 18-10-2010: Before, and after
• 11-10-2010: Le désir, la mort, et la croissance
• 11-10-2010: Desire, death, and growth
• 04-10-2010: La guerre des migrants
• 04-10-2010: The migrants’ war
• 27-09-2010: la mode et la rue
• 27-09-2010: Fashion and street
• 22-09-2010: assez plaisanté
• 22-09-2010: Enough joking
• 13-09-2010: Du nouveau sur le site de Jacques Attali
• 12-09-2010: Bouleverser l’école
• 12-09-2010: Turning school upside down
• 07-09-2010: le noeud coulant
• 07-09-2010: The slipknot
• 31-08-2010: Ce que penser faux veut dire
• 31-08-2010: What thinking wrong means
• 22-08-2010: Les idées et les foules
• 22-08-2010: Ideas and crowds
• 16-08-2010: L’urgence du Pakistan
• 16-08-2010: Emergency in Pakistan
• 10-08-2010: Se préparer
• 10-08-2010: Prepare
• 03-08-2010: Sécurité et Croissance
• 03-08-2010: Security and Growth
• 29-07-2010: L’Occidentalisation du monde
• 29-07-2010: The Westernization of the world
• 18-07-2010: La rigueur, évidemment
• 18-07-2010: Rigor, of course
• 12-07-2010: La société démoralisée.
• 12-07-2010: Demoralized society
• 05-07-2010: Le marché, l’Oréal et la démocratie
• 05-07-2010: The market, L’Oréal and democracy
• 28-06-2010: G vain ? Persiste et signe
• 28-06-2010: Vain G-20 ? Confirms and signs
• 21-06-2010: La vie, privée de vie
• 21-06-2010: Life, deprived of life
• 15-06-2010: Une bonne nouvelle ?
• 15-06-2010: Good news ?
• 07-06-2010: La valeur travail
• 07-06-2010: The value of work
• 31-05-2010: Eloge du pessimisme
• 31-05-2010: In praise of pessimism
• 24-05-2010: Nos enfants, ou l’Allemagne?
• 24-05-2010: Our children, or Germany ?
• 17-05-2010: Le soin ou le respect ?
• 17-05-2010: Care or respect ?
• 10-05-2010: Vive la Cavalerie !
• 10-05-2010: Long Life to the Cavalry !
• 03-05-2010: AGISSEZ !!
• 03-05-2010: TAKE ACTION!!
• 26-04-2010: L’ETAT MYTHOMANE
• 26-04-2010: MYTHOMANIAC STATE
• 20-04-2010: Prendre son temps
• 20-04-2010: Take your time
• 13-04-2010: Au bord du précipice.
• 13-04-2010: At the edge of the precipice
• 06-04-2010: Le déshonneur et la guerre
• 06-04-2010: Dishonor and war
• 30-03-2010: Le grand débat
• 30-03-2010: The great debate
• 23-03-2010: Bis Repetitat?
• 23-03-2010: Bis Repetitat?
• 16-03-2010: Pour un Tribunal Financier International
• 16-03-2010: For an International Financial Court
• 09-03-2010: Votez utile
• 09-03-2010: Make a useful vote
• 02-03-2010: UNE MONNAIE POUR LE MONDE
• 02-03-2010: A CURRENCY FOR THE WORLD
• 23-02-2010: Le bonheur, comme au Bhoutan
• 23-02-2010: Happiness, as in Bhutan
• 16-02-2010: En congé de famille.
• 16-02-2010: Family leave
• 09-02-2010: DANS TOUS SES ETATS
• 09-02-2010: IN ALL ITS FORMS
• 02-02-2010: L’urgence nationale
• 02-02-2010: National urgency
• 26-01-2010: Une histoire de prénom
• 26-01-2010: A first name story
• 19-01-2010: Ephémère éternité
• 19-01-2010: Ephemeral eternity
• 12-01-2010: Philippe Seguin ou l’introuvable république
• 12-01-2010: Phillipe Seguin or the nowhere to be found republic
• 05-01-2010: Sortir de l’Histoire
• 05-01-2010: Walking out of History
• 31-12-2009: quelques conseils pour 2010
• 31-12-2009: Some advice for 2010
• 22-12-2009: Que restera t il de 2009 ?
• 22-12-2009: What will remain of 2009?
• 15-12-2009: L’adéqroissance.
• 15-12-2009: The « adéqroissance »
• 08-12-2009: Et si l’éolien n’était que du vent ?…
• 08-12-2009: Wind energy: Just a rush of hot air?
• 01-12-2009: Le pire s’avance à pas de loup
• 01-12-2009: The worst is creeping up on us
• 24-11-2009: Voici venu le temps de la « guerre pacifique »
• 24-11-2009: Now has come the « Pacific War »
• 16-11-2009: L’Afrique , notre avenir
• 16-11-2009: Africa, Our Future
• 11-11-2009: Des voleurs bien sympathiques…
• 11-11-2009: Nice guys, these thieves…
• 03-11-2009: Le génie du français
• 03-11-2009: The genius of the french
• 27-10-2009: Légitime défense ?
• 27-10-2009: Self-defense?
• 20-10-2009: La révolution raisonnable
• 20-10-2009: The reasonable revolution
• 13-10-2009: Un scandale français
• 13-10-2009: A French scandal
• 06-10-2009: L’emprunt de trop
• 06-10-2009: One too many loans
• 29-09-2009: L’irénisme nucléaire
• 29-09-2009: Nuclear irenicism
• 26-09-2009: Oui, le G20 fut vain
• 26-09-2009: Yes, the G-20 was in vain
• 26-09-2009: Sí, el G20 fue en vano
• 21-09-2009: Le G vain
• 21-09-2009: The vain G-20
• 14-09-2009: La France est bleue comme une orange
• 14-09-2009: France is blue like an orange
• 08-09-2009: Qui decide, en France?
• 08-09-2009: Who decides, in France?
• 01-09-2009: Prendre la grippe en grippe
• 01-09-2009: Taking the flu in aversion
• 24-08-2009: Question primaire
• 24-08-2009: About the primaries
• 18-08-2009: Altius, Fortius, Bonus, Malus
• 18-08-2009: Altius, Fortius, Bonus, Malus
• 11-08-2009: La théorie des complots
• 11-08-2009: La teoría de las conspiraciones
• 11-08-2009: The theory of conspiracy
• 04-08-2009: Le coach obèse
• 04-08-2009: El coach obeso
• 04-08-2009: The obese coach
• 29-07-2009: La question allemande
• 29-07-2009: La cuestión alemana
• 29-07-2009: The german question
• 26-07-2009: en vacances de soi
• 26-07-2009: Vacaciones de uno mismo
• 26-07-2009: l’avenir du socialisme
• 26-07-2009: El futuro del socialismo
• 26-07-2009: The Future of Socialism
• 08-07-2009: Fusionner la SNCF et la Deutschebahn
• 08-07-2009: Fusionar la SNCF y Deutschebahn
• 08-07-2009: Merging SNCF and Bundesbahn
• 30-06-2009: Vieillir jeune
• 30-06-2009: Envejecer joven
• 30-06-2009: Getting old young
• 24-06-2009: Un retrogouvernement.
• 24-06-2009: Un retrogobierno
• 24-06-2009: A retro government.
• 23-06-2009: Besoin d’Iran
• 23-06-2009: Necesidad de Irán
• 23-06-2009: In Need of Iran
• 17-06-2009: Promesses des banlieues
• 17-06-2009: Promesas de los suburbios
• 17-06-2009: Promises of the suburbs
• 13-06-2009: Optimismes ?
• 13-06-2009: ¿Optimismos?
• 13-06-2009: Optimisms ?
• 09-06-2009: Trois ans
• 09-06-2009: Tres años
• 09-06-2009: Three years
• 03-06-2009: Passer aux choses sérieuses
• 03-06-2009: Ahora… En serio
• 03-06-2009: Get Down to Business

The post Conversation avec Jacques Attali Lexpress appeared first on OBRA MAESTRA.

François Hollande, la preuve par l’Europe:

LE 6 MAI 2012 20H15 | PAR JACQUES ATTALI

http://blogs.lexpress.fr/attali/2012/05/06/francois-hollande-la-preuve-par-leurope/

http://blogs.lexpress.fr/attali/

Note: Francois Hollande – Mardis de l’ESSEC (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

LA PASSATION DES POUVOIRS ENTRE SARKOZY ET HOLLANDE AURA LIEU LE 15 MAI:

http://blogs.lexpress.fr/attali/2012/05/06/francois-hollande-proof-by-europe/

Photos: French presidential runoff:

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/05/06/europe/gallery/france-election/index.html?iid=article_sidebar

Hollande Ousts Sarkozy in French Presidential Election:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/07/world/europe/hollande-and-sarkozy-in-crucial-runoff-in-france.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

Conversation avec Jacques Attali Lexpress:

• 6-05-2012: François Hollande, la preuve par l’Europe
• 06-05-2012: Francois Hollande, proof by Europe
• 01-05-2012: Lettre ouverte à un ami de droite
• 01-05-2012: Open letter to a friend from the right
• 29-04-2012: Choisir
• 29-04-2012: Choosing
• 23-04-2012: Questions pour un champion
• 23-04-2012: Questions for a champion
• 16-04-2012: Grains de sable
• 16-04-2012: Grains of sand
• 09-04-2012: Parler sérieusement
• 09-04-2012: Talking seriously
• 03-04-2012: Mohamed Damir, bis
• 03-04-2012: Mohamed Damir, bis
• 02-04-2012: 7 mai, gueule de bois
• 02-04-2012: May 7, hangover
• 26-03-2012: Attention, Monsieur Draghi
• 26-03-2012: Be careful Mr. Draghi
• 20-03-2012: Sont ils fous, ceux qui décident cela?
• 20-03-2012: Are they fools, those who decide this ?
• 19-03-2012: Note secrète, sur la conduite des dernières semaines de campagne
• 19-03-2012: Secret memo, on the management of the campaign in recent weeks
• 13-03-2012: Pour Une Euro-fédération
• 13-03-2012: For a Euro-federation
• 12-03-2012: Pour ou contre « Kony 2012 » ?
• 12-03-2012: For or against « Kony 2012 » ?
• 05-03-2012: Le moment de vérité
• 05-03-2012: The moment of truth
• 27-02-2012: Salut l’artiste !
• 27-02-2012: Hail the artist!
• 21-02-2012: Pour François Hollande
• 21-02-2012: For Francois Hollande
• 13-02-2012: Alea ACTA est
• 13-02-2012: Alea ACTA est
• 06-02-2012: Demain, l’Euro-Allemagne ?
• 06-02-2012: Tomorrow, Euro-Germany?
• 30-01-2012: Le coiffeur de la Banque Centrale
• 30-01-2012: The barber of the Central Bank
• 23-01-2012: Aux quatre coins du monde
• 23-01-2012: All around the world
• 17-01-2012: Positiver!
• 17-01-2012: Be positive!
• 10-01-2012: L’oeil du cyclone
• 10-01-2012: The eye of the cyclone
• 01-01-2012: Maikel Nabil Sanad
• 01-01-2012: Maikel Nabil Sanad
• 25-12-2011: Les dix plus importants évènements qui n’auront pas lieu en 2012
• 25-12-2011: The ten most important events that will not take place in 2012
• 18-12-2011: Penser la France
• 18-12-2011: Envision France
• 11-12-2011: comme j aimerais avoir tort!
• 11-12-2011: I certainly hope I am wrong!
• 05-12-2011: 2012 égale 6 fois 5
• 05-12-2011: 2012 equals 6 times 5
• 27-11-2011: La démocratie et le réel
• 27-11-2011: Democracy and reality
• 20-11-2011: Le cinquième suicide européen
• 20-11-2011: The fifth European suicide
• 13-11-2011: Que cela va etre long…..
• 13-11-2011: The time will seem long…..
• 06-11-2011: Trois générations
• 06-11-2011: Three generations
• 02-11-2011: Au G20, ne pas oublier Fukushima
• 02-11-2011: At the G20, do not forget Fukushima
• 30-10-2011: D’un caravansérail à l’autre
• 30-10-2011: From one caravanserai to another
• 23-10-2011: Passer par les peuples, enfin!
• 23-10-2011: Through the voice of the peoples, finally
• 20-10-2011: Un budget à refaire totalement !
• 20-10-2011: A budget to redo completely!
• 16-10-2011: au voisinage de l’enfer
• 16-10-2011: In the vicinity of hell
• 09-10-2011: « levez vous vite, orages désirés »
• 09-10-2011: « *Arise quickly, oh ye desired winds »
• 02-10-2011: choisir le meilleur socialiste
• 02-10-2011: Choose the best socialist
• 29-09-2011: Vous avez dit « primaire »?
• 29-09-2011: *«primaire»… You said?
• 25-09-2011: La prison de lumière
• 25-09-2011: The prison of light
• 18-09-2011: Faisons un reve
• 18-09-2011: Let’s make a dream
• 11-09-2011: se préparer au pire, pour l’éviter
• 11-09-2011: Prepare for the worst, to avoid it
• 04-09-2011: Elections, mode d’emploi
• 04-09-2011: Elections, user manual
• 28-08-2011: Le monde, selon Jobs
• 28-08-2011: The world, according to Jobs
• 22-08-2011: Le conservatisme frénétique
• 22-08-2011: Frenetic conservatism
• 16-08-2011: Ce que Nicolas Sarkozy et Angela Merkel auraient du déclarer en commun
• 16-08-2011: What Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel should have declared in common
• 15-08-2011: Un jardin d’Eden
• 15-08-2011: Garden of Eden
• 08-08-2011: Tous ruinés dans dix mois?
• 08-08-2011: All ruined in ten months?
• 03-08-2011: Pendant les vacances, l’Histoire continue
• 03-08-2011: During the summer holidays, History goes on
• 31-07-2011: La cohabitation américaine
• 31-07-2011: American cohabitation
• 24-07-2011: La leçon norvégienne
• 24-07-2011: The Norwegian lesson
• 17-07-2011: La démocratie, combien de divisions?
• 17-07-2011: Democracy, how many divisions?
• 10-07-2011: La France de Juillet
• 10-07-2011: France in July
• 03-07-2011: La Grèce, la Pologne et nous.
• 03-07-2011: Greece, Poland and us
• 26-06-2011: Quelles qualités pour un président?
• 26-06-2011: What qualities for a president?
• 19-06-2011: Hadopi – vivre de son art
• 19-06-2011: Hadopi – living off one’s art
• 16-06-2011: Le problème n’est plus grec
• 16-06-2011: The problem is not about Greece anymore
• 12-06-2011: Humain, plus qu’humain
• 12-06-2011: Human, more than human
• 06-06-2011: La démocratie financière
• 06-06-2011: Financial democracy
• 29-05-2011: Le match Facebook contre Google
• 28-05-2011: The match Facebook against Google
• 22-05-2011: Les deux tsunamis
• 22-05-2011: Two tsunamis
• 15-05-2011: Les quatre echelles du temps
• 15-05-2011: The four scales of time
• 09-05-2011: Bienvenue aux binationaux!
• 09-05-2011: Welcome to the binational!
• 01-05-2011: 2012: comment la gauche va perdre
• 01-05-2011: 2012: How the Left will lose
• 24-04-2011: Soyons sérieux!
• 24-04-2011: Let us be serious!
• 23-04-2011: Les Etats Généraux du Monde
• 23-04-2011: Estates General of the World
• 17-04-2011: Le tube et le dentifrice
• 17-04-2011: Toothpaste and tube
• 10-04-2011: Patinage artistique
• 10-04-2011: Figure skating
• 03-04-2011: La dictature de l’insouciance
• 03-04-2011: The dictatorship of heedlessness
• 27-03-2011: Branle bas de combat
• 27-03-2011: Motion for battle
• 20-03-2011: gagner la paix
• 20-03-2011: Winning the peace
• 17-03-2011: Dix premières lecons des événements japonais
• 17-03-2011: Ten first lessons from the events in Japan
• 12-03-2011: Des racines et des ailes
• 12-03-2011: Roots and wings
• 06-03-2011: Vidéomocratie
• 06-03-2011: Videomocracy
• 28-02-2011: L’arrachement
• 28-02-2011: Uprooting
• 19-02-2011: Retour sur le tabac
• 19-02-2011: Back to tobacco
• 15-02-2011: le faux pas de M. Jacob
• 15-02-2011: Mr. Jacob’s « faux pas »
• 13-02-2011: Opération 2022
• 13-02-2011: 2022 operation
• 06-02-2011: Bien pire que le Médiator: le tabac
• 06-02-2011: Much worse than Mediator: tobacco
• 06-02-2011: Aider la Tunisie
• 06-02-2011: Help Tunisia
• 31-01-2011: Transitions
• 31-01-2011: Transitions
• 23-01-2011: Dominique Sarkozy-Kahn
• 23-01-2011: Dominique Sarkozy-Kahn
• 16-01-2011: La Tunisie, et aprés?
• 16-01-2011: Tunisia, and after?
• 10-01-2011: viser au coeur
• 10-01-2011: Aim for the heart
• 03-01-2011: Des projets pour la France
• 03-01-2011: Projects for France
• 01-01-2011: 2011
• 01-01-2011: 2011
• 19-12-2010: L’autruche, le rat et le lynx
• 19-12-2010: The ostrich, the rat, and the lynx
• 12-12-2010: comprendre l’Allemagne
• 12-12-2010: Understand Germany
• 06-12-2010: Verbatim
• 06-12-2010: Verbatim
• 28-11-2010: Roulements de tambours
• 28-11-2010: Drum Rolls
• 21-11-2010: La tyrannie de la solitude
• 21-11-2010: The tyranny of loneliness
• 15-11-2010: Plan de table, pour un diner sur le Titanic
• 15-11-2010: Seating plan for dinner on the Titanic
• 08-11-2010: La machine à perdre
• 08-11-2010: The losing machine
• 01-11-2010: Japon, Madoff, Somalie
• 01-11-2010: Japan, Madoff, Somalia
• 26-10-2010: Un grand projet
• 26-10-2010: A grand project
• 18-10-2010: avant, et aprés
• 18-10-2010: Before, and after
• 11-10-2010: Le désir, la mort, et la croissance
• 11-10-2010: Desire, death, and growth
• 04-10-2010: La guerre des migrants
• 04-10-2010: The migrants’ war
• 27-09-2010: la mode et la rue
• 27-09-2010: Fashion and street
• 22-09-2010: assez plaisanté
• 22-09-2010: Enough joking
• 13-09-2010: Du nouveau sur le site de Jacques Attali
• 12-09-2010: Bouleverser l’école
• 12-09-2010: Turning school upside down
• 07-09-2010: le noeud coulant
• 07-09-2010: The slipknot
• 31-08-2010: Ce que penser faux veut dire
• 31-08-2010: What thinking wrong means
• 22-08-2010: Les idées et les foules
• 22-08-2010: Ideas and crowds
• 16-08-2010: L’urgence du Pakistan
• 16-08-2010: Emergency in Pakistan
• 10-08-2010: Se préparer
• 10-08-2010: Prepare
• 03-08-2010: Sécurité et Croissance
• 03-08-2010: Security and Growth
• 29-07-2010: L’Occidentalisation du monde
• 29-07-2010: The Westernization of the world
• 18-07-2010: La rigueur, évidemment
• 18-07-2010: Rigor, of course
• 12-07-2010: La société démoralisée.
• 12-07-2010: Demoralized society
• 05-07-2010: Le marché, l’Oréal et la démocratie
• 05-07-2010: The market, L’Oréal and democracy
• 28-06-2010: G vain ? Persiste et signe
• 28-06-2010: Vain G-20 ? Confirms and signs
• 21-06-2010: La vie, privée de vie
• 21-06-2010: Life, deprived of life
• 15-06-2010: Une bonne nouvelle ?
• 15-06-2010: Good news ?
• 07-06-2010: La valeur travail
• 07-06-2010: The value of work
• 31-05-2010: Eloge du pessimisme
• 31-05-2010: In praise of pessimism
• 24-05-2010: Nos enfants, ou l’Allemagne?
• 24-05-2010: Our children, or Germany ?
• 17-05-2010: Le soin ou le respect ?
• 17-05-2010: Care or respect ?
• 10-05-2010: Vive la Cavalerie !
• 10-05-2010: Long Life to the Cavalry !
• 03-05-2010: AGISSEZ !!
• 03-05-2010: TAKE ACTION!!
• 26-04-2010: L’ETAT MYTHOMANE
• 26-04-2010: MYTHOMANIAC STATE
• 20-04-2010: Prendre son temps
• 20-04-2010: Take your time
• 13-04-2010: Au bord du précipice.
• 13-04-2010: At the edge of the precipice
• 06-04-2010: Le déshonneur et la guerre
• 06-04-2010: Dishonor and war
• 30-03-2010: Le grand débat
• 30-03-2010: The great debate
• 23-03-2010: Bis Repetitat?
• 23-03-2010: Bis Repetitat?
• 16-03-2010: Pour un Tribunal Financier International
• 16-03-2010: For an International Financial Court
• 09-03-2010: Votez utile
• 09-03-2010: Make a useful vote
• 02-03-2010: UNE MONNAIE POUR LE MONDE
• 02-03-2010: A CURRENCY FOR THE WORLD
• 23-02-2010: Le bonheur, comme au Bhoutan
• 23-02-2010: Happiness, as in Bhutan
• 16-02-2010: En congé de famille.
• 16-02-2010: Family leave
• 09-02-2010: DANS TOUS SES ETATS
• 09-02-2010: IN ALL ITS FORMS
• 02-02-2010: L’urgence nationale
• 02-02-2010: National urgency
• 26-01-2010: Une histoire de prénom
• 26-01-2010: A first name story
• 19-01-2010: Ephémère éternité
• 19-01-2010: Ephemeral eternity
• 12-01-2010: Philippe Seguin ou l’introuvable république
• 12-01-2010: Phillipe Seguin or the nowhere to be found republic
• 05-01-2010: Sortir de l’Histoire
• 05-01-2010: Walking out of History
• 31-12-2009: quelques conseils pour 2010
• 31-12-2009: Some advice for 2010
• 22-12-2009: Que restera t il de 2009 ?
• 22-12-2009: What will remain of 2009?
• 15-12-2009: L’adéqroissance.
• 15-12-2009: The « adéqroissance »
• 08-12-2009: Et si l’éolien n’était que du vent ?…
• 08-12-2009: Wind energy: Just a rush of hot air?
• 01-12-2009: Le pire s’avance à pas de loup
• 01-12-2009: The worst is creeping up on us
• 24-11-2009: Voici venu le temps de la « guerre pacifique »
• 24-11-2009: Now has come the « Pacific War »
• 16-11-2009: L’Afrique , notre avenir
• 16-11-2009: Africa, Our Future
• 11-11-2009: Des voleurs bien sympathiques…
• 11-11-2009: Nice guys, these thieves…
• 03-11-2009: Le génie du français
• 03-11-2009: The genius of the french
• 27-10-2009: Légitime défense ?
• 27-10-2009: Self-defense?
• 20-10-2009: La révolution raisonnable
• 20-10-2009: The reasonable revolution
• 13-10-2009: Un scandale français
• 13-10-2009: A French scandal
• 06-10-2009: L’emprunt de trop
• 06-10-2009: One too many loans
• 29-09-2009: L’irénisme nucléaire
• 29-09-2009: Nuclear irenicism
• 26-09-2009: Oui, le G20 fut vain
• 26-09-2009: Yes, the G-20 was in vain
• 26-09-2009: Sí, el G20 fue en vano
• 21-09-2009: Le G vain
• 21-09-2009: The vain G-20
• 14-09-2009: La France est bleue comme une orange
• 14-09-2009: France is blue like an orange
• 08-09-2009: Qui decide, en France?
• 08-09-2009: Who decides, in France?
• 01-09-2009: Prendre la grippe en grippe
• 01-09-2009: Taking the flu in aversion
• 24-08-2009: Question primaire
• 24-08-2009: About the primaries
• 18-08-2009: Altius, Fortius, Bonus, Malus
• 18-08-2009: Altius, Fortius, Bonus, Malus
• 11-08-2009: La théorie des complots
• 11-08-2009: La teoría de las conspiraciones
• 11-08-2009: The theory of conspiracy
• 04-08-2009: Le coach obèse
• 04-08-2009: El coach obeso
• 04-08-2009: The obese coach
• 29-07-2009: La question allemande
• 29-07-2009: La cuestión alemana
• 29-07-2009: The german question
• 26-07-2009: en vacances de soi
• 26-07-2009: Vacaciones de uno mismo
• 26-07-2009: l’avenir du socialisme
• 26-07-2009: El futuro del socialismo
• 26-07-2009: The Future of Socialism
• 08-07-2009: Fusionner la SNCF et la Deutschebahn
• 08-07-2009: Fusionar la SNCF y Deutschebahn
• 08-07-2009: Merging SNCF and Bundesbahn
• 30-06-2009: Vieillir jeune
• 30-06-2009: Envejecer joven
• 30-06-2009: Getting old young
• 24-06-2009: Un retrogouvernement.
• 24-06-2009: Un retrogobierno
• 24-06-2009: A retro government.
• 23-06-2009: Besoin d’Iran
• 23-06-2009: Necesidad de Irán
• 23-06-2009: In Need of Iran
• 17-06-2009: Promesses des banlieues
• 17-06-2009: Promesas de los suburbios
• 17-06-2009: Promises of the suburbs
• 13-06-2009: Optimismes ?
• 13-06-2009: ¿Optimismos?
• 13-06-2009: Optimisms ?
• 09-06-2009: Trois ans
• 09-06-2009: Tres años
• 09-06-2009: Three years
• 03-06-2009: Passer aux choses sérieuses
• 03-06-2009: Ahora… En serio
• 03-06-2009: Get Down to Business

The post French Presidential Election Sunday May 6 2012: Francois Hollande appeared first on OBRA MAESTRA.

Learn the story of the man who was born poor and now donates more than R $ 5 million per month

Manager/Copyright:
www.brazildiario.com

Dr. Milton Afonso

When approaching the anniversary one of the biggest world personalities in entrepreneurship and social work in the country, Brazil Journal, in collaboration with the journalist J. Washington back to you in a special report on the life of Milton Afonso, founder and owner of Golden Cross that was once the largest health company in South America and the fourth largest in the world.

Who sees the life of Milton Afonso, who has had a partner Roberto Marinho was a friend of Tancredo Neves, and now donates a month, more than $ 5 million to fund the studies of 60 000 young people and many other social projects, not imagine that it was once a poor boy, born in 1921, but only registered only in 1934, who was imprisoned during the dictatorship and that a miracle saved his physical and financial.

Behind the great entrepreneur Milton Afonso, there is a magnificent story, uplifting and motivating, where many people, as you may understand that when the dream of man is the same dream of God, nothing in this world can topple it.

Learn about the life story of Milton Afonso
by J. Washington

You must have already heard about Milton Afonso an intrepreneur well succeeded. and the Milton that likes to to hear and tell jokes, discuss after lunch time subjects of the bible and old history ? a simple man that loves to comment about animals and doesn´t hide the happiness of take people to Christ.

In this especial interview,you will see details few  known of the millionaire´s life Milton Afonso.the dramma of being son of alcoholic fatherthe prison for fifteen days and the soffer when tortured,the marked meeting with the love of his life, when slept with 60 million dollars in the bank account and woke up without a peny.how he build a financial empire,why he decided to help scarcity people,invest so many in education,health, and communication.for the first time,a vehicle of communication relates historic fates of this man´s life.

People of various parts of the world were heard,we had access to information that so far the big public nor even imagine and that proves to be possible cociliates faith with success.Dr. Rodrigo Silva travels inveted by Milton, from Sao Paulo to Rio de Janeiro every month for together give some bibles teaching.

The presenter of the evidencies tv program, told that is interesting see him seated in an apartment room showing to a couple of friends passage about the prophetic book of Daniel, taking notes of historic coments,sharing actively his bibles knowledge.”he showed me that evangelism is not even a matter of give money and finance projects, is more than that,it´s personal involviment in God´s proclamation word”states Silva.

The boy who dreamed to be rich and powerful, today is a humble servant that has courage to donate 5 million Reais montly to realize the dream of 60 thousand of young students.Milton doesn´t have attachment to the treasure conquested to the life´s long,in one day he´s flying in his personal helicopter in the other day travels in economic class from Rio de Janeiro to Foz do Iguaçu,carrying his own luggage.in the farm´s house,in Areal,at Angra dos Reis island,or in the residence both in Rio de Janeiro,he always answer the cell phone that has in the digits five times the number 7.

Milton never avoid or forget to return a phone call.but for one thing he doesn´t care; Money.
nor always like that, since his birth he passed difficulties.to understand the origin of the success of Dr.Milton we acute the presented in this historical edition of the magazine More Highlight,in partnership with the publisher”FAZ BEM”and BRASILDIARIO.COM one of the main portals of news in the country.

1921, the year that created the secret formula of Guarana Antarctica, a secret guarded. Was born in that year the Portuguese mathematician José Cardoso Morgado Jr., writer and French sociologist Jean Duvignaud, the American Samuel Cohen, inventor of the neutron bomb. In China, the mathematician Hao Wang was born in Japan physicist Yoichiro Nambu and Brazil, on December 12,Milton Soldani Afonso,The son of Jose Affonso Filho and Geneva Soldani can only be registered on January 2, 1934, 13 years after his birth in the quiet town Nova Lima district of Sabara, Minas Gerais.

The mother became pregnant 11 times. Milton is a survivor.

Milton was born with light brown hair. It was a very smart boy and full of vigor. The parents were poor and therefore the mother was assisted by a midwife, who was his friend. They lived in a modest house with no running water or toilet facilities. There were three bedrooms, a living room and kitchen in a poor neighborhood of Nova Linda, in the Metropolitan Region of Belo Horizonte. His father was an adventurous and well-intentioned, but the game and drink were their biggest weaknesses. Almost all the money he earned, spent to keep these vices. To help increase family income, the mother did sewing work and manufactured homemade sweets. Geneva got up early to make pe de moleque and coconut. Upon reaching the school, the boy was selling candy, barefoot in the streets. Sometimes not resist the temptation and ate part of the profit. The sales and marketing experience gained in this period of Milton Afonso made ??a natural born salesman, the future would be best-selling books. One day after another, imagine how he could escape poverty and help the family. Geneva pregnant eleven times, but only four children survived. Milton regrets the suffering, but has a grateful heart.

I never thought I would become a successful man, born in poverty and never forgot what it represents. Although my position in life has changed a lot, one thing that money has not changed is my faith in God, to whom I owe everything I am. It is my hope that the readers confidence in divine providence and grow all the glory for my success is attributed to the Father Almighty.

Upon hearing the Bible stories narrated by the mother after the death of his father, was encouraged to face challenges as the boy David defeated the giant Goliath. At that time, lived on the outskirts of Campinas, Sao Paulo. The house, almost a shack, was very old and damp in the back of an old sawmill. Milton was only nine years old when he had his first contact with the message of hope proclaimed by the Seventh-day conference led by a preacher Albert Hagen in a small room with capacity for up to 50 people.The missionary could not speak Portuguese well, but the young Milton understood all the messages. A Protestant at death could not be buried in cemeteries that usually belonged to the Catholic Church, and the few who belonged to the municipality were managed by the Catholics. This meant that Christians as Milton Afonso and his mother change their religion.
A boy who knew too much. Dreamed of being an aviator, but Gods dream was different.

In 1934, Milton asked Father Carmelo Carlos Mota why the Catholic Church forbade people to read the Bible. He replied: “That was in the past because people were generally very ignorant. But even today we encourage the reading of the Bible. And as you are a very intelligent boy, Ill give away my Bible and Im going to head-a dedication to him. “The promise was fulfilled a few months later when he was appointed auxiliary bishop of Algisa in Diamantina, Minas Gerais. Later, Carlos Caramelo was appointed Archbishop of Sao Luiz do Maranhao and in 1946, promoted Cardinal of Sao Paulo.The Bible, along with other rare books, is exposed in the Library at the University of Santo Amaro (UNISA). The Word of God changed the life of Milton Afonso. In 1934 he was enrolled in the primary school Bernardo Monteiro, in the neighborhood of Calafate, Belo Horizonte. The teacher Rita de Castro Morais estimated that the boy knew more than the children of their age group. He knew everything about general issues and about the political changes that were happening in the country. At the end of the day, Milton went to fourth grade and one year later he was graduated. By decision of the mother, the boy was studying in Adventist College, traveled two days by train from Minas Gerais to Sao Paulo. How was skinny and pale, was nicknamed by his colleagues of “Pepino.” The life of Milton is definitely not the same.

Miltons mother worked enough as a housekeeper and cook and saved enough money to pay three years of study, feeding, sleeping and washing; 690 000 reis in 1936. The certificate of admission examinations, dated February 23, 1937, proves that the student took 10 in Brazils history, natural sciences and 10 in the same note in oratory. He got 95 in geography, was approved to enter middle school. One of the favorite subjects was French literature. Influenced by the revolution of 1932 and the biography of the father of aviation Alberto Santos Dumontfor a long time dreamed of being the young aviator, wanted to fly as did the first man to fly the 14 bis, a heavier than air of Paris in 1906.God had bigger dreams. Milton Afonso was baptized in 1937 by Adventist pastor Juan Meyer, dormitory preceptor male Brazilian Adventist College (CAB) was founded in 1915, now called UNASP one in the neighborhood of Capon Redondo, in Sao Paulo. In this internship, the first time in my life slept in pajamas, used socks, shoes, toothbrush and toothpaste. Milton was one of 180 students enrolled. When he became an Adventist, the Church had 400,000 members.
He risked his life for a cause. He escaped from prison and won a new ideal.

In 1943, Milton Afonso became political leader among the students who were demonstrating against President Getúlio Vargas, who had closed the Congress to remain in power. There was a massacre that day, two students were killed in confrontation with police.
Do not know how I ended up discovering the police, but a few hours after the demonstration, two investigators arrived at the pension Dona Rita,na Rua da Liberdade, where I lived. There was no way of escape for me. The police found me, dragged me out and took me to the Bureau of Political and Social Order, where I was interrogated and beaten throughout the night. Remember.

The next day, law student, Milton, was taken to the local jail on Avenida Tiradentes and thrown into a filthy cell with many of his colleagues, journalists and politicians from both right and left. One student was arrested Julio de Mesquita Neto, who later became a lawyer, journalist and owner of the main newspaper of Sao Paulo, O Estado de Sao Paulo, in 1969. After spending 15 days in jail, booked and being chased by police, Milton decided to leave Sao Paulo and try life in Rio de Janeiro. Also in November of that year, going up on a tram in “Wonderful Town”, found the most perfect woman in his eyes, Arlete Carvalho da Silva.
The shoulders and arms of this beautiful young woman looked soft as silk. His dark brown hair shone in the sun. He had big brown eyes and beautiful. I could not take his eyes off her. Even his voice was excited. My heart started beating faster. It seemed like I was dreaming. It was love at first sight! Speaks still in love.

On February 28, 1946 Milton asked Arlete in marriage. Exactly one year later, on February 28, 1947, at age 26, the Mineiro Milton married a northerner Arlete.

“As impressive as his dreams, the dream of God is greater”. This lemma guides the life of Milton Afonso

Born the children. Comes the Golden Cross and UNISA. Milton decides to give the entire fortune.
The God of love is still full of miracles. In the land of the Cariocas, all Milton children were born and raised . The first son is named Celso was born on March 31, 1950. On December 12, 1951, his birthday, Milton Soldani Afonso won one more gift: Stuck bachelors degree in law from the Faculty of Niterói, received the title of Doctor of Law and expert in labor law.
In 1951, Milton created the Publishing House of Legislation Federal Legislation and his magazine has become the largest magazine on income taxes in Brazil, reaching the milestone of 50,000 subscribers. The plan to be a famous lawyer moved to the desire to be rich and able to help the poor. God was transforming the heart of Dr. Milton for his great plan of philanthropy. On February 18, 1952 Carlos was born, the couples second son Milton and Arlete. On January 12, 1959 Neide was born, the only daughter. This year, Arlete was baptized by Pastor Roberto Rabello. The youngest sonPaulo, was born in May 1960. All the children work in family business. In 1961, Milton rented an apartment next door to him for his parents to live. José Affonso died when he was a little over 60 years of age. However, before death, became and gave his heart to Jesus. Heroin Geneva, was attended by the daughter and son to 92 years, when she died. Arlete and Milton have always been instruments in the hands of God.
Sometimes people criticize me for being a philanthropist, and accuse me of giving money just to show me. But this is not true. I say honestly that I never boast of having helped someone. Said.

In April 1971, motivated by his friends Joao Alberto Persson and Jose Carlos Elias,the attorney Milton Afonso decided to create the Golden Cross, a philanthropic institution with all profits directed to educational, social care and evangelism. In June this year, the Golden Cross Health Care International was already registered and working in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Porto Alegre. The companys goal was: “Anywhere in the world you are, being covered by the Golden Cross.” In April 1972, ten months after its founding, reached the Golden Cross of thousand members. Three years later he had sold five thousand health plans. It did not take long for 70,000 contracts were sold in one month. In 1984, the Golden Cross had become the largest healthcare company in South America and the fourth largest in the world. Its founder was realized, however wanted to do more in education.

In late 1985, Senator Marco Maciel, then Minister of Education, was asked to Brasilia. Knowing the connection with Milton Afonso President Tancredo Neves and agricultural school was founded in São João del Rei at their request, the Minister asked:
Golden Cross could take over the administration of the Organization Santamarense Education and Culture? The Government would give full support, except in the financial district.

The more studying on the offer both more I realized that college, also known as OSEC, could become part of the realization of his dream of helping needy students. The business prospered Milton and very fast. Its so high that a state decided to give everything to an organization of their confidence. In 1987, Pastor Neal Wilson, then president of the worldwide Seventh-day Adventist Church, said to the entrepreneur:

We sincerely appreciate your generous gesture. In fact, youre more qualified to run an empire as large as the Golden Cross. It was a noble gesture on your part, but signed a document returning it to you and your family. The mission of the church buildings is not to accumulate, but to prepare people for heaven You and your family are able to manage this institution, and God will surely bless you.
The Church had relinquished control of the entire wealth of Milton Afonso, hospitals, universities, schools, orphanages, the making, the Golden Cross. There was no material benefit to him, and no effect was not heard through the media, not the associates. The Golden Cross is no longer a philanthropic organization. It became a health insurance company for profit, and profits are no longer referred to philanthropies, as he did every year, donating tens of millions of dollars. Milton and Arlete always remember the poor background and do everything to help bring hope to millions of people around the world.

The biggest financial hit. Health is shaken and an amazing miracle.

In November 1989 the Golden Cross had more than 60 million U.S. dollars in banks. Then the unexpected happened! On the same day that President Fernando Collor de Mello took office, he signed a decree confiscating all the money in circulation in the country. Milton was sleeping with millions in the bank account and woke the next day without a penny. He panicked. The heart almost stopped. He suffered a coronary spasm but without injury. Milton was not the only victim of confiscation of the money. The nuns most respected Brazil, Sister Dulce called from Bahia to Collors mother, Dona Leda, making an appeal:

_ because of the forfeiture, here we have not even afford to buy rice for the children and the elderly.
Dona Leda telephoned her son President, and sensitized said:

_Fernando, even the orphanages and nursing homes? You took the money from the old? I don´t believe Sister Dulce, poor, is desperate!

So the president Collor called the Minister Zelia Cardoso de Mello and ordered her: _solve This trouble. Release the money for hospices and philanthropic entities.

The next day, all institutions registered in the National Congress of Social Services had their money released. The Golden Cross was one of them got back all the money! Milton Afonso had more money than many banks. During this period, he negotiated the purchase of AMICO by 40 million. The Americans were desperate and anxious to close the transaction. Worried about what could happen in Brazil, the price dropped and the Golden bought the second largest health organization in the country by 30 million. Milton has saved 10 million. Year after year his fortune grew, the blessing took place in several areas, including education. In 1994, a milestone was reached:on 29 December, OSEC has become a fully qualified university, known as UNISA (University of Santo Amaro), became the largest private university in the greater metropolitan area of São Paulo, he even had more than 15,000 students, four beautiful campuses, offering 36 courses. Schools of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, pharmacy, law, computer science and two major teaching hospitals, are some of the successful investments of UNISA. Between 1985 and 1994, Dr. Milton put at least U$ 25 million in this venture. His Grace began in high school, helped pay for the studies of three friends, then extended the benefit to 15 to 6000, and came to hold 60 000 students. Donated 5 million dollars a month to pay for scholarships.

The love for needy children and passion for communication. Start a New Time.

For over 30 years, thousands of children have been cared for and educated for the ministry Milton Afonso. Many of them are doctors, nurses, lawyers, teachers, administrative assistants, instructors and biblical pastors wives. The orphanage project EduCriança transformed lives that today make a positive contribution to society. Milton also impacted millions of people through the media.

“Why the Seventh-day Adventist Church does not make greater use of media? She has a beautiful prophetic message and the world needs to know it.”

With that thought Milton began to encourage and support the Church to have their own stations. In 1989, he bought the Ipanema radio station traditional Rio de Janeiro with an output of 100 kilowatts, enough to reach a large part of Brazil. After five months, sold the station because there was no one to administer it. But the missionary spirit has not left the air shortly thereafter began arevolution in communication Adventist Church in Brazil and worldwide.

In all, bought 25 radio stations in Brazil. In 1992, Milton felt the desire to help set up a satellite television network that covers the world. He hired a satellite band of 20 MHz for ten years the monthly payment of $ 82,500. A fortune at the time. Money was no problem to the faith of Milton, let alone helped to bring hope, had more success in business. In 1997, Golden Cross reached the pinnacle of success with a total of 2.5 million members and visionary donated a property with about five acres with a hotel valued at $ 1.5 million, be used as a duck modern media center. Initially, three million dollars were invested in equipment alone.

In 2000, the Adventist Church has covered 50% of the cost of the satellite track. The dream of all Milton reached South America, Central America, southern and eastern parts of the United States, as well as Portugal and elsewhere in Western Europe. He also bought a total of 68 radio stations around the world, the New Age of Communication Network, in Portuguese, Spanish and English, has become a powerful means of salvation.

The desire of the boy Milton to be rich and influential was attended by whoever placed such achievement. In 2003 its main business has grown ten percent and feeling a blessed child, said: “Thank God, because you has raised me so high, I come from so far away.” This year, spared no efforts to help expand the TV signal in the New Age cable TV operators, and thereafter worked for hundreds of municipalities to receive the Hope Channel. The life and works of Milton commented were everywhere. In 2004, his biography has agreed to launch the Brazil Publishing House. The author is Manuel Vásquez, lecturer and author of several books in the United States.

As Miltons dream became reality in communication:

The history of communication produced by the Seventh-day Adventists in Brazil begins in 1944 (when Milton Afonso was 23 years old) on the radio, and in the fifties decade on television. The Voice of Prophecy, Roberto Rabelo, and Faith for Today, with Alcides Long Field are programs that are up to the present day. An important part of this story is due to the It Is Written, which began in the headline, and over 20 years, was seen on Sunday, the Band, RedeTV!, BANDSAT New Time Network and with support from Milton Afonso.

TV Novo Tempo was founded in 1996 and since the first broadcast on 9 November of that year, the focus has always been well defined: to value the human being. Originally from Nova Friburgo (RJ), was called ADSAT as meant to carry message of Christs advent satellite. At the time, the director of the Adventist Communication System (SISAC) Erlo Braun was also the director of the TV. There were only two programs: Is Written in Praise and ADSAT. The rest of the programming was in English and Spanish. The succession of managers of the complex communication occurs Erlo Braun, Neumoel Stina, Milton Souza, Marlon Lopez, and Antonio Tostes. Track the historical development.

In 1997 Jonas Pinho was appointed director of the ADSAT TV. In 1998, Willams Costa Jr. took over. The TV buy more equipment and hire new staff. A new program will air: Jesus, Gods Voice. A little later, the sign of the new TV and radio time are transmitted 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, the antenna TECSAT.

In 2003 is created the Extension Department, which has as its goals, form the New Network Time Cable TV, the open network and put the sign on SKY. The name ADSAT ceases to exist, the program gets new genres and programs such as Life and Health News Now Special Screen, Between Friends, Making Art, Is Your Right, Author and Work, Adding, Pearl Day, up to date with Our Time, the Bible teaches, His House, a home, gang Ka Among Us, Aunt Cecéu Stories, Watch the Origins, It Is Written young, Advances in the Work of God missionaries who want to help, Lessons from the Bible Week in Focus, Young Time, Place of Peace and Hope is Jesus.

For the first time, the Adventist church has a program of 60 minutes daily, on national television by the CNT and Genesis Television Network: “Meet the Life.” On Saturday afternoon, with the support of the Bible School Program begins the new time, live, with the presentation of Williams Costa Jr., and J. Milton Souza Washington, motivating people to collaborate with the growth of television. Milton Afonso encouraged others to donate resources to advance the work of communication.
In 2004, Tenison Shirai, as a director TV, manages the development of new programs and continues the insertion of new scenarios to the look.

In 2005, the New Time Communication System is transferred to the city of Jacareí, São Paulo in a strategic Milton Souza. In the same year, the UHF channel 56, the Word Network and TV da Gente, officially in contract, relayed from one to twelve hours of programming for the New Age capital and São Paulo. Time Magazine New Programs, Open TV, Open Source, Music Profile, Life Mission and the program live, Angels of Hope marked the time.

In May 2006, the New Time Television Network is a partnership with the Sector and the generator takes Pindamonhangaba with a relay and another in Taubaté in São José dos Campos, both with coverage in 30 cities in the Paraíba Valley.
In 2007, Jonathan Conceição producer of the new time from the appearance of it, is to lead the national network. Coordinates the production of new content: Music Box, Flavor & Health, Evidence and New Connection Time, live broadcasts to Brazil and abroad, are frequently made.

In April 2007, J. Washington takes the first generator of Management Network New Age, and May 1, opens the newspaper here, anchored by Darleide Alves. It is the first television news with 30 minutes a day in the history of Adventist communication network. Shortly after the program will air More Success, presented by Fernando Francisco for the corporate segment. In the same year, the Japanese digital TV standard is adopted in the country, and New Age ensures their inclusion in HDTV in the Paraíba Valley.

In 2008, Marlon Lopes arrives at the general direction of New Age Communications Network. The negotiation started in 2007 is finished, and at least 5 million people can see the new time on SKY. New logo, new positioning and concept are aggregated. The Hope Channel starts a new phase in the Internet on television, radio and record label. Odailson Fonseca, former host of Time Young, became the director of the New Time Television Network and the presentation of the Angels of Hope program, live.Broadcasting live now is a constant. In 2008, the New Age is the biggest event coverage missionary in South America, Impact Hope. The main events Adventists are transmitted simultaneously over the Internet, under the direction of Carlos Magalhães. Milton Afonso believes in evangelizing the Web and gives full support for the new time mark presence in the world wide web.
In 2010, Antonio Tostes passes to lead the network envisioned by Milton Afonso. With the help of the same, the Channel of Hope begins to be broadcast on SKY Channel 17 in Sao Jose dos Camposand in Fortaleza remains on channel 141. Milton was sure that the audience would triple, and it worked. One year later, Milton surprises again and supports an audacious project, the acquisition of generating a television commercial, which would facilitate even more the people of Brazil have access to special content of the New Time.

The largest investment partners, the will and great hope.

In 2011, the New Network Airtime strides to meet the market trends in broadcasting. With a diverse program and meeting the demands of viewers of all genres and age, the Channel of Hope fold coverage on free television. Milton Afonso has substantial involvement in the deal that resulted in the transmission of new era for the countrys major squares.
On the 12th of November, will be birthday of Milton Soldani Afonso. With 91 years of life, he walks towards a century of existence with the times without losing the simplicity. Miltons popularity is impressive. A few days after securing his name in the major social networks have millions of fans. People of all ages to interact in (FaceBook.com / MiltonAfonso) in (WocoNews.com / MiltonAfonso) and (Twitter.com / DrMiltonAfonso).
We have also secured the domains: miltonafonso.com miltonafonso.com.br and Admirers from around the world take the opportunity to comment and leave messages of thanks.
For Milton, all media are important. Since she learned to read, spend time in the morning to see magazines and newspapers. By going to the office, at 10, connects the radio frequency of the New Age, which is scheduled on the car stereo. Back home, after 16h, he likes to watch TV programs New Time. Music Box, Evidence, A View of Truth Bible Lessons, New Age Magazine, Music Profile, Balance Extra, Angels of Hope Family and office are some of the viewers favorite programs illustrate. Milton sleep and wake up early, from the beginning was influenced by the ideas of American writer Ellen White in the areas of education, social services and especially health. In 1995, he spent three weeks in Wimar Institute in Northern California, studying health principles with Dr. Lee Blood To date,

Milton practiced a vegetarian diet and an exercise program. Asked the secret of his longevity, he quotes the fifth commandment in the Law of God: ”Honor your father and your mother, that you may live long on earth.” Exodus 20:12
Throughout his life, Milton Afonso had some members, Roberto Marinho, a former president of Globo Organizations, one of them was in Rome insurance One time SA was facing a financial crisis due to several banks and had only one week to prevent the Golden was bankrupt. So a U.S. official went to his office and said he would like to invest U$ 490 million in the company. After settle debts, became a partner in Milton. After three years, there was a surprise. The investor decided to return to the United States and offered the shares acquired in the Golden Cross for its founder, and he could pay as desired. Six months later, Milton received a statement that 60% of the company back to him for only a thousand dollars. With this miracle, the company was about to go bankrupt prospered and came to earn 1 billion and 250 thousand Reais in one year.

Milton Afonso guarantees that God is your best partner and maintainer. Therefore, when making a will, should remember his best friend, your partners most faithful, his Creator. The man who invested millions of dollars to save millions of people have a strategy that can, when implemented, lead many people to Heaven, a place that believes so and is preparing to live. Milton has an enviable health, a spectacular memory, and his dream is more real to see Jesus return. At that time, according to the Bible, Christ will not set foot on earth, everyone will see, will hear and feel. The event that motivates Milton Afonso to be what is has no date but the signs in nature, economy and politics, suggest that is very close. According to the missionary, on these facts, no doubt, there is no secret.

J. Washington is a journalist and broadcaster.

 

The post Milton Afonso reveals secrets of almost 100 years of life appeared first on OBRA MAESTRA.

Reviewed by Anna Cristiana Minoli

In defense of dialogue by Jonas Gahr Støre

Why you should listen to him:

Norway sits on the edge of the strategically important North Atlantic and is blessed with oil, gas and marine resources. Its economy is open and busy, its social programs generous. As Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jonas Gahr Støre’s job is to represent Norway in the international community and work to preserve the nation’s peace and stability — and to help create a modern multicultural society that welcomes immigrants and new traditions. This is not an abstract question after the shocking violence of 2011′s terrorist attack on Norway.

Støre‘s approach to this task: We must talk.

He is a former executive director at the World Health Organization, and was also the Executive Chairman of the Norwegian think-tank ECON Analyse. Before becoming Foreign Minister he served as Secretary General of the Norwegian Red Cross from 2003 to 2005.

Quotes by Jonas Gahr Støre:

“[In modern diplomacy] you don’t have to be neutral to talk. You don’t have to agree when you sit down with the other side, and you can always walk; but if you don’t talk, you can’t engage the other side.”

Century of Dialogue – 11th World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates: Dalai Lama

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30 January 1948 – 30 January 2012 “Faith gains in strength only when people are willing to lay down their lives for it….Faith is not like a delicate flower which would wither away….Robust faith in oneself and brave trust of the opponent, so-called or real, is the best safeguard….A living faith cannot be manufactured by the rule of [the] majority….What is faith if it is not translated into action?…Faith is not imparted like secular subjects. It is given through the language of the heart….Every living faith must have within itself the power of rejuvenation if it is to live. Just as the body cannot exist without blood, so the soul needs matchless and pure strength of faith….My effort should never be to undermine another’s faith but to make him a better follower of his own faith….Even as a tree has a single trunk but many branches and leaves, there is one religion– human religion–but any number of faiths” ~ Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
Born	2 October 1869 Porbandar, Kathiawar Agency,British India
Died	30 January 1948 (aged 78) New Delhi, Dominion of India
Cause of death	Assassination by shooting
Resting place	Rajghat, New Delhi, India 28.6415°N 77.2483°E
Nationality	Indian
Other names	Mahatma Gandhi, Bapu
Alma mater	University College London,[2]University of London
Known for	Prominent figure of Indian independence movement Propounding the philosophy ofSatyagraha and Ahimsa Advocating non-violence Pacifism
Religion	Hinduism
Spouse	Kasturba Gandhi
Children	Harilal Manilal Ramdas Devdas child who died in infancy
Parents	Putlibai Gandhi (Mother) Karamchand Gandhi (Father)
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Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Gujarati: મોહનદાસ કરમચંદ ગાંધી; Hindi: मोहनदास करमचंद गांधी, pronounced: [moːˈɦənd̪aːs kəˈrəmtʃənd̪ ˈɡaːnd̪ʱi] ( listen). 2 October 1869– 30 January 1948) was the pre-eminent political and ideological leader of India during the Indian independence movement. Pioneering the use of non-violent resistance to tyranny through mass civil disobedience, a tool to fight for civil rights and freedom that he called satyagraha, he founded his doctrine of nonviolent protest to achieve political and social progress based upon ahimsa, or total nonviolence for which he is internationally renowned. Gandhi led India to its independence and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. Gandhi is often referred to as Mahatma (or “Great Soul,” an honorific first applied to him by Rabindranath Tagore). In India, he is also called Bapu (or “Father”) and officially honoured as the Father of the Nation. His birthday, 2 October, is commemorated in India as Gandhi Jayanti, a national holiday, and worldwide as the International Day of Non-Violence.

Gandhi first employed non-violent civil disobedience as an expatriate lawyer in South Africa, in the resident Indian community’s struggle for civil rights. After his return to India in 1915, he set about organising peasants, farmers, and urban labourers in protesting excessive land-tax and discrimination. Assuming leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, expanding women’s rights, building religious and ethnic amity, ending untouchability, increasing economic self-reliance, but above all for achieving Swaraj—the independence of India from foreign domination. Gandhi famously led Indians in protesting the British-imposed salt tax with the 400 km (250 mi) Dandi Salt March in 1930, and later in calling for the British to Quit India in 1942. He was imprisoned for many years, upon many occasions, in both South Africa and India. Gandhi strove to practice non-violence and truth in all situations, and advocated that others do the same. He lived modestly in a self-sufficient residential community and wore the traditional Indian dhoti and shawl, woven with yarn he had hand spun on a charkha. He ate simple vegetarian food, and also undertook long fasts as means of both self-purification and social protest.

Gandhi was assassinated on 30 January 1948, by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist who felt Gandhi was sympathetic to the Muslims. January 30, hence is observed as Martyrs’ Day in India.

Early life and background

Mahatma Gandhi in his earliest known photo, aged 7, c. 1876

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on 2 October 1869  in Porbandar, a coastal town which was then part of the Bombay Presidency, British India. He was born in his ancestral home, now known as Kirti Mandir, Porbandar. His father, Karamchand Gandhi (1822–1885), who belonged to the Hindu Modh community, served as the diwan (a high official) of Porbander state, a small princely state in the Kathiawar Agency of British India. His grandfather was Uttamchand Gandhi, fondly called Utta Gandhi. His mother, Putlibai, who came from the Hindu Pranami Vaishnava community, was Karamchand’s fourth wife, the first three wives having apparently died in childbirth. Growing up with a devout mother and the Jain traditions of the region, the young Mohandas absorbed early the influences that would play an important role in his adult life; these included compassion for sentient beings, vegetarianism, fasting for self-purification, and mutual tolerance among individuals of different creeds.

The Indian classics, especially the stories of Shravana and Maharaja Harishchandra, had a great impact on Gandhi in his childhood. In his autobiography, he admits that it left an indelible impression on his mind. He writes: “It haunted me and I must have acted Harishchandra to myself times without number.” Gandhi’s early self-identification with Truth and Love as supreme values is traceable to these epic characters.

In May 1883, the 13-year-old Mohandas was married to 14-year-old Kasturbai Makhanji (her first name was usually shortened to “Kasturba”, and affectionately to “Ba”) in an arranged child marriage, according to the custom of the region. Recalling the day of their marriage, he once said, “As we didn’t know much about marriage, for us it meant only wearing new clothes, eating sweets and playing with relatives.” However, as was also the custom of the region, the adolescent bride was to spend much time at her parents’ house, and away from her husband. In 1885, when Gandhi was 15, the couple’s first child was born, but survived only a few days, and Gandhi’s father, Karamchand Gandhi, had died earlier that year. Mohandas and Kasturba had four more children, all sons: Harilal, born in 1888; Manilal, born in 1892; Ramdas, born in 1897; and Devdas, born in 1900. At his middle school in Porbandar and high school in Rajkot, Gandhi remained an average student. He passed the matriculation exam for Samaldas College at Bhavnagar, Gujarat, with some difficulty. While there, he was unhappy, in part because his family wanted him to become a barrister.

English barrister

Gandhi and his wife Kasturba (1902)

In 1888, Gandhi travelled to London, England, to study law at University College London where he studied Indian law and jurisprudence and to train as abarrister at the Inner Temple. His time in the Imperial capital, was influenced by a vow he had made to his mother in the presence of the Jain monk Becharji, upon leaving India, to observe the Hindu precepts of abstinence from meat, alcohol, and promiscuity. Although Gandhi experimented with adopting “English” customs—taking dancing lessons for example—he could not stomach the bland vegetarian food offered by his landlady, and he was always hungry until he found one of London’s few vegetarian restaurants. Influenced by Henry Salt’s book, he joined the Vegetarian Society, was elected to its executive committee, and started a local Bayswater chapter. Some of the vegetarians he met were members of the Theosophical Society, which had been founded in 1875 to further universal brotherhood, and which was devoted to the study of Buddhist and Hindu literature. They encouraged Gandhi to join them in reading the Bhagavad Gita both in translation as well as in the original. Not having shown interest in religion before, he became interested in religious thought and began to read up on it.

Gandhi was called to the bar in June 1891 and then left London for India, where he learned that his mother had died while he was in London and that his family had kept the news from him. His attempts at establishing a law practice in Bombay failed because he was too shy to speak up in court. He returned to Rajkot to make a modest living drafting petitions for litigants, a business he was forced to close when he ran afoul of a British officer. In 1893 he eagerly accepted a year-long contract from Dada Abdulla & Co., an Indian firm, to a post in the Colony of Natal, South Africa, then part of the British Empire.

Civil rights movement in South Africa (1893–1914)

Main article: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in South Africa

Gandhi in South Africa (1895)

Gandhi spent 21 years in South Africa, where he developed his political views, his ethics, and his political leadership skills. The Indians in South Africa were led by wealthy Muslims, who employed Gandhi as a lawyer, and by impoverished Hindu indentured laborers with very limited rights. Gandhi considered them all to be Indians, taking a lifetime view that “Indianness” transcended religion and caste. He believed he could bridge historic differences, especially regarding religion, and that belief he brought back to India and tried to implement. The South African experience created handicaps that Gandhi did not realize—he was out of contact with the enormous complexities of religious and cultural life in India, and believed he understood India by getting to know and leading Indians in South Africa. Furthermore the officials he was dealing with were much more liberal than the British officials in India—General Smuts, for example, was a world class philosopher with a broad vision; he was an Africaaner willing to negotiate and compromise, not an Englishman defending the Raj against another Mutiny like 1857.

In South Africa, Gandhi faced the discrimination directed at all coloured people. He was thrown off a train at Pietermaritzburg after refusing to move from the first-class; he protested and was allowed on first class the next day. Travelling farther on by stagecoach, he was beaten by a driver for refusing to move to make room for a European passenger. He suffered other hardships on the journey as well, including being barred from several hotels. In another incident, the magistrate of a Durban court ordered Gandhi to remove his turban, which he refused to do. These events were a turning point in Gandhi’s life: they shaped his social activism and awakened him to social injustice. After witnessing racism, prejudice and injustice against Indians in South Africa, Gandhi began to question his place in society and his people’s standing in the British Empire.

Gandhi extended his original period of stay in South Africa to assist Indians in opposing a bill to deny them the right to vote. Though unable to halt the bill’s passage, his campaign was successful in drawing attention to the grievances of Indians in South Africa. He helped found the Natal Indian Congress in 1894, and through this organisation, he moulded the Indian community of South Africa into a unified political force. In January 1897, when Gandhi landed in Durban, a mob of white settlers attacked him and he escaped only through the efforts of the wife of the police superintendent. He, however, refused to press charges against any member of the mob, stating it was one of his principles not to seek redress for a personal wrong in a court of law.

In 1906, the Transvaal government promulgated a new Act compelling registration of the colony’s Indian population. At a mass protest meeting held in Johannesburg on 11 September that year, Gandhi adopted his still evolving methodology of satyagraha (devotion to the truth), or non-violent protest, for the first time. He urged Indians to defy the new law and to suffer the punishments for doing so. The community adopted this plan, and during the ensuing seven-year struggle, thousands of Indians were jailed, flogged, or shot for striking, refusing to register, for burning their registration cards or engaging in other forms of non-violent resistance. The government successfully repressed the Indian protesters, but the public outcry over the harsh treatment of peaceful Indian protesters by the South African government forced South African General Jan Christiaan Smuts to negotiate a compromise with Gandhi. Gandhi’s ideas took shape, and the concept of satyagraha matured during this struggle.

Reactions to blacks

M.K. Gandhi while serving in the Ambulance Corps during the Boer War (1899)

After the black majority came to power in South Africa, Gandhi was proclaimed a national hero with numerous monuments. Gandhi focused his attention on Indians in South Africa, but historians have also examined his changing ideas on the proper role for blacks. White rule enforced strict segregation among all races and generated conflict between these communities). At first Gandhi shared racial notions prevalent in the 1890s. Bhana and Vahed argue that Gandhi’s experiences in jail sensitized him to the plight of blacks. “His negative views in the Johannesburg jail were reserved for hardened African prisoners rather than Africans generally.”

In 1906, the British declared war against the Zulu kingdom in Natal. Gandhi actively encouraged the British to recruit Indians. He argued that Indians should support the war efforts in order to legitimise their claims to full citizenship. The British accepted Gandhi’s offer to let a detachment of 20 Indians volunteer as a stretcher-bearer corps to treat wounded British soldiers. This corps was commanded by Gandhi and operated for less than two months. The experience taught him it was hopeless to directly challenge the overwhelming military power of the British army—he decided it could only be resisted in non-violent fashion by the pure of heart.

Struggle for Indian Independence (1915–45)

See also: Indian independence movement

In 1915, Gandhi returned to India permanently. He brought a reputation as a leading Indian nationalist, theorist and organizer. He joined the Indian National Congressand was introduced to Indian issues, politics and the Indian people primarily by Gopal Krishna Gokhale. Gokhale was a key leader of the Congress Party best known for his restraint and moderation, and his insistence on working inside the system. Gandhi took Gokhale’s liberal approach based on British Whiggish traditions and transformed it to make it look wholly Indian.

Role in World War I

Main article: World War I#The role of India

In April 1918, during the latter part of World War I, the Viceroy invited Gandhi to a War Conference in Delhi. Perhaps to show his support for the Empire and help his case for India’s independence, Gandhi agreed to actively recruit Indians for the war effort. In contrast to the Zulu War of 1906 and the outbreak of World War I in 1914, when he recruited volunteers for the Ambulance Corps, this time Gandhi attempted to recruit combatants. In a June 1918 leaflet entitled “Appeal for Enlistment”, Gandhi wrote “To bring about such a state of things we should have the ability to defend ourselves, that is, the ability to bear arms and to use them…If we want to learn the use of arms with the greatest possible despatch, it is our duty to enlist ourselves in the army.” He did, however, stipulate in a letter to the Viceroy’s private secretary that he “personally will not kill or injure anybody, friend or foe.” Gandhi’s war recruitment campaign brought into question his consistency on nonviolence as his friend Charlie Andrews confirms, “Personally I have never been able to reconcile this with his own conduct in other respects, and it is one of the points where I have found myself in painful disagreement.” Gandhi’s private secretary also had acknowledged that “The question of the consistency between his creed of ‘Ahimsa’ (non-violence) and his recruiting campaign was raised not only then but has been discussed ever since.”

Champaran and Kheda

Main article: Champaran and Kheda Satyagraha

Gandhi in 1918, at the time of the Kheda and Champaran satyagrahas

Gandhi’s first major achievements came in 1918 with the Champaran and Kheda agitations of Bihar and Gujarat. The Champaran agitation pitted the local peasantry against their largely British landlords who were backed by the local administration. The peasantry was forced to grow Indigo, a cash crop whose demand had been declining over two decades, and were forced to sell their crops to the planters at a fixed price. Unhappy wIth this, the peasantry appealed to Gandhi at his ashram in Ahmedabad. Pursuing a strategy of non-violent protest, Gandhi took the administration by surprise and won concessions from the authorities.

In 1918, Kheda was hit by floods and famine and the peasantry was demanding relief from taxes. Using non-cooperation as a technique, Gandhi advocated the non-payment of taxes even under the threat of confiscation of land. Gandhi established an ashram there, organising scores of his veteran supporters and fresh volunteers from the region. He organised a detailed study and survey of the villages, accounting for the atrocities and terrible episodes of suffering, including the general state of degenerate living. Building on the confidence of villagers, he began leading the clean-up of villages, building of schools and hospitals and encouraging the village leadership to undo and condemn many social evils such as untouchability and alcoholism.

His most important impact came when he was arrested by police on the charge of creating unrest and was ordered to leave the province. Hundreds of thousands of people protested and rallied outside the jail, police stations and courts demanding his release, which the court reluctantly granted. Gandhi led organised protests and strikes against the landlords. With the guidance of the British government, these landlords agreed to suspend revenue hikes until the famine ended and to grant the poor farmers of the region increased compensation and control over farming. It was during this agitation that Gandhi was addressed by the people as Bapu (Father) and Mahatma (Great Soul). In Kheda, Sardar Patel represented the farmers in negotiations with the British, who suspended revenue collection and released all the prisoners. Gandhi’s popularity rose in India post this agitation.

Non-cooperation

Main article: Non-cooperation movement

Mahatama Gandhi spinning an yarn

Gandhi employed non-cooperation, non-violence and peaceful resistance as his “weapons” in the struggle against the British Raj. In Punjab, the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of civilians by British troops (also known as the Amritsar Massacre) caused deep trauma to the nation, leading to increased public anger and acts of violence. Gandhi criticised both the actions of the British Raj and the retaliatory violence of Indians. He authored the resolution offering condolences to British civilian victims and condemning the riots which, after initial opposition in the party, was accepted following Gandhi’s emotional speech advocating his principle that all violence was evil and could not be justified. After the massacre and subsequent violence, Gandhi began to focus on winning complete self-government and control of all Indian government institutions, maturing soon into Swaraj or complete individual, spiritual, political independence.

 

Sabarmati Ashram, Gandhi’s home in Gujarat

In December 1921, Gandhi was invested with executive authority on behalf of the Indian National Congress. Under his leadership, the Congress was reorganised with a new constitution, with the goal of Swaraj. Membership in the party was opened to anyone prepared to pay a token fee. A hierarchy of committees was set up to improve discipline, transforming the party from an elite organisation to one of mass national appeal. Gandhi expanded his non-violence platform to include the swadeshi policy—the boycott of foreign-made goods, especially British goods. Linked to this was his advocacy that khadi(homespun cloth) be worn by all Indians instead of British-made textiles. Gandhi exhorted Indian men and women, rich or poor, to spend time each day spinning khadi in support of the independence movement. Gandhi even invented a small, portable spinning wheel that could be folded into the size of a small typewriter. This was a strategy to inculcate discipline and dedication to weeding out the unwilling and ambitious and to include women in the movement at a time when many thought that such activities were not respectable activities for women. In addition to boycotting British products, Gandhi urged the people to boycott British educational institutions and law courts, to resign from government employment, and to forsake British titles and honours.

“Non-cooperation” enjoyed widespread appeal and success, increasing excitement and participation from all strata of Indian society. Yet, just as the movement reached its apex, it ended abruptly as a result of a violent clash in the town of Chauri Chaura, Uttar Pradesh, in February 1922. Fearing that the movement was about to take a turn towards violence, and convinced that this would be the undoing of all his work, Gandhi called off the campaign of mass civil disobedience. This was the third time that Gandhi had called off a major campaign. Gandhi was arrested on 10 March 1922, tried for sedition, and sentenced to six years’ imprisonment. He began his sentence on 18 March 1922. He was released in February 1924 for an appendicitis operation, having served only 2 years.

Without Gandhi’s unifying personality, the Indian National Congress began to splinter during his years in prison, splitting into two factions, one led by Chitta Ranjan Das and Motilal Nehru favouring party participation in the legislatures, and the other led by Chakravarti Rajagopalachari and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, opposing this move. Furthermore, cooperation among Hindus and Muslims, which had been strong at the height of the non-violence campaign, was breaking down. Gandhi attempted to bridge these differences through many means, including a three-week fast in the autumn of 1924, but with limited success.

Salt Satyagraha (Salt March)

Main article: Salt Satyagraha

Original footage of Gandhi and his followers marching to Dandi in the Salt Satyagraha

Gandhi stayed out of active politics and, as such, the limelight for most of the 1920s. He focused instead on resolving the wedge between the Swaraj Party and the Indian National Congress, and expanding initiatives against untouchability, alcoholism, ignorance and poverty. He returned to the fore in 1928. In the preceding year, the British government had appointed a new constitutional reform commission under Sir John Simon, which did not include any Indian as its member. The result was a boycott of the commission by Indian political parties. Gandhi pushed through a resolution at the Calcutta Congress in December 1928 calling on the British government to grant India dominion status or face a new campaign of non-cooperation with complete independence for the country as its goal. Gandhi had not only moderated the views of younger men like Subhas Chandra Bose and Jawaharlal Nehru, who sought a demand for immediate independence, but also reduced his own call to a one year wait, instead of two. The British did not respond. On 31 December 1929, the flag of India was unfurled in Lahore. 26 January 1930 was celebrated as India’s Independence Day by the Indian National Congress meeting in Lahore. This day was commemorated by almost every other Indian organisation. Gandhi then launched a new satyagraha against the tax on salt in March 1930. This was highlighted by the famous Salt March to Dandi from 12 March to 6 April, where he marched 388 kilometres (241 mi) from Ahmedabad to Dandi, Gujarat to make salt himself. Thousands of Indians joined him on this march to the sea. This campaign was one of his most successful at upsetting British hold on India; Britain responded by imprisoning over 60,000 people.

Women

Salt as a household necessity was of special interest to women. Gandhi strongly favoured the emancipation of women, and he went so far as to say that “the women have come to look upon me as one of themselves.” He opposed purdah, child marriage, untouchability, and the extreme oppression of Hindu widows, up to and including sati. He especially recruited women to participate in the salt tax campaigns and the boycott of foreign products.  Sarma concludes that Gandhi’s success in enlisting women in his campaigns, including the salt tax campaign, anti-untouchability campaign and the peasant movement, gave many women a new self-confidence and dignity in the mainstream of Indian public life.

Gandhi as folk hero

Congress in the 1920s appealed to peasants by portraying Gandhi as a sort of Messiah, a strategy that succeeded in incorporating radical forces within the peasantry into the nonviolent resistance movement. In thousands of villages plays were performed that presented Gandhi as the reincarnation of earlier Indian nationalist leaders, or even as a demigod. The plays built support among illiterate peasants steeped in traditional Hindu culture. Similar messianic imagery appeared in popular songs and poems, and in Congress-sponsored religious pageants and celebrations. The result was Gandhi became not only a folk hero but the Congress was widely seen in the villages as his sacred instrument.

Negotiations

Mahadev Desai (left) reading out a letter to Gandhi from the viceroy at Birla House, Bombay, 7 April 1939

The government, represented by Lord Edward Irwin, decided to negotiate with Gandhi. The Gandhi–Irwin Pact was signed in March 1931. The British Government agreed to free all political prisoners, in return for the suspension of the civil disobedience movement. Also as a result of the pact, Gandhi was invited to attend the Round Table Conference in London as the sole representative of the Indian National Congress. The conference was a disappointment to Gandhi and the nationalists, because it focused on the Indian princes and Indian minorities rather than on a transfer of power. Furthermore, Lord Irwin’s successor, Lord Willingdon, began a new campaign of controlling and subduing the nationalist movement. Gandhi was again arrested, and the government tried to negate his influence by completely isolating him from his followers. But this tactic failed.

In 1932, through the campaigning of the Dalit leader B. R. Ambedkar, the government granted untouchables separate electorates under the new constitution. In protest, Gandhi embarked on a six-day fast in September 1932. The resulting public outcry successfully forced the government to adopt an equitable arrangement through negotiations mediated by Palwankar Baloo. This was the start of a new campaign by Gandhi to improve the lives of the untouchables, whom he named Harijans, the children of God.

On 8 May 1933, Gandhi began a 21-day fast of self-purification to help the Harijan movement. This new campaign was not universally embraced within the Dalit community, as prominent leader B. R. Ambedkar condemned Gandhi’s use of the term Harijans as saying that Dalits were socially immature, and that privileged caste Indians played a paternalistic role. Ambedkar and his allies also felt Gandhi was undermining Dalit political rights. Gandhi had also refused to support the untouchables in 1924–25 when they were campaigning for the right to pray in temples. Because of Gandhi’s actions, Ambedkar described him as “devious and untrustworthy”. Gandhi, although born into the Vaishya caste, insisted that he was able to speak on behalf of Dalits, despite the presence of Dalit activists such as Ambedkar.

In the summer of 1934, three attempts were made on Gandhi’s life.

When the Congress Party chose to contest elections and accept power under the Federation scheme, Gandhi resigned from party membership. He did not disagree with the party’s move, but felt that if he resigned, his popularity with Indians would cease to stifle the party’s membership, which actually varied, including communists, socialists, trade unionists, students, religious conservatives, and those with pro-business convictions, and that these various voices would get a chance to make themselves heard. Gandhi also wanted to avoid being a target for Raj propaganda by leading a party that had temporarily accepted political accommodation with the Raj.

Gandhi returned to active politics again in 1936, with the Nehru presidency and the Lucknow session of the Congress. Although Gandhi wanted a total focus on the task of winning independence and not speculation about India’s future, he did not restrain the Congress from adopting socialism as its goal. Gandhi had a clash with Subhas Chandra Bose, who had been elected president in 1938, and who had previously expressed a lack of faith in non-violence as a means of protest. Despite Gandhi’s opposition, Bose won a second term as Congress President, but left the Congress when the All-India leaders resigned en masse in protest of his abandonment of the principles introduced by Gandhi.

World War II and Quit India

Main articles: World War II and Quit India Movement

Gandhi initially favoured offering “non-violent moral support” to the British effort when World War II broke out in 1939, but the Congressional leaders were offended by the unilateral inclusion of India in the war without consultation of the people’s representatives. All Congressmen resigned from office. After long deliberations, Gandhi declared that India could not be party to a war ostensibly being fought for democratic freedom while that freedom was denied to India itself. As the war progressed, Gandhi intensified his demand for independence, calling for the British to Quit India in a speech atGowalia Tank Maidan. This was Gandhi’s and the Congress Party’s most definitive revolt aimed at securing the British exit from India.

Gandhi was criticised by some Congress party members and other Indian political groups, both pro-British and anti-British. Some felt that not supporting Britain more in its struggle against Nazi Germany was unethical. Others felt that Gandhi’s refusal for India to participate in the war was insufficient and more direct opposition should be taken, while Britain fought against Nazism yet continued to contradict itself by refusing to grant India Independence. Quit India became the most forceful movement in the history of the struggle, with mass arrests and violence on an unprecedented scale. Thousands of freedom fighters were killed or injured by police gunfire, and hundreds of thousands were arrested. Gandhi and his supporters made it clear they would not support the war effort unless India were granted immediate independence. He even clarified that this time the movement would not be stopped if individual acts of violence were committed, saying that the “ordered anarchy” around him was “worse than real anarchy.” He called on all Congressmen and Indians to maintain discipline via ahimsa, and Karo Ya Maro (“Do or Die”) in the cause of ultimate freedom.

Gandhi and the entire Congress Working Committee were arrested in Bombay by the British on 9 August 1942. Gandhi was held for two years in the Aga Khan Palace in Pune. It was here that Gandhi suffered two terrible blows in his personal life. His 50-year old secretary Mahadev Desai died of a heart attack 6 days later and his wife Kasturba died after 18 months imprisonment on 22 February 1944; six weeks later Gandhi suffered a severe malaria attack. He was released before the end of the war on 6 May 1944 because of his failing health and necessary surgery; the Raj did not want him to die in prison and enrage the nation. He came out of detention to an altered political scene—the Muslim League for example, which a few years earlier had appeared marginal, “now occupied the centre of the political stage” and the topic of Jinnah‘s campaign for Pakistan was a major talking point. Gandhi met Jinnah in September 1944 in Bombay but Jinnah rejected, on the grounds that it fell short of a fully independent Pakistan, his proposal of the right of Muslim provinces to opt out of substantial parts of the forthcoming political union.

Although the Quit India movement had moderate success in its objective, the ruthless suppression of the movement brought order to India by the end of 1943. At the end of the war, the British gave clear indications that power would be transferred to Indian hands. At this point Gandhi called off the struggle, and around 100,000 political prisoners were released, including the Congress’s leadership.

Partition of India

See also: Partition of India

While the Indian National Congress and Gandhi called for the British to quit India, the Muslim League passed a resolution for them to divide and quit, in 1943. Gandhi is believed to have been opposed to the partition during independence and suggested an agreement which required the Congress and Muslim League to cooperate and attain independence under a provisional government, thereafter, the question of partition could be resolved by a plebiscite in the districts with a Muslim majority. When Jinnah called for Direct Action, on 16 August 1946, Gandhi was infuriated and visited the most riot prone areas to stop the massacres, personally. He made strong efforts to unite the Indian Hindus, Muslims and Christians and struggled for the emancipation of the “untouchables” in Hindu society.

On the 14 and 15 August 1947 the Indian Independence Act was invoked. In border areas people moved from one side to another and upwards of a half million were killed in riots.  But for his teachings, the efforts of his followers, and his own presence, there would have been much more bloodshed during the partition, according to prominent Norwegian historian, Jens Arup Seip.

Stanley Wolpert has argued, The “plan to carve up British India was never approved of or accepted by Gandhi…who realised too late that his closest comrades and disciples were more interested in power than principle, and that his own vision had long been clouded by the illusion that the struggle he led for India’s freedom was a nonviolent one.”

Assassination

See also: Assassination of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

Raj Ghat, Delhi is a memorial to Mahatma Gandhi that marks the spot of his cremation

On 30 January 1948, Gandhi was shot while he was walking to a platform from which he was to address a prayer meeting. The assassin, Nathuram Godse, was a Hindu nationalist with links to the extremist Hindu Mahasabha, who held Gandhi responsible for weakening India by insisting upon a payment to Pakistan. Godse and his co-conspirator Narayan Apte were later tried and convicted; they were executed on 15 November 1949. Gandhi’s memorial (orSamādhi) at Rāj Ghāt, New Delhi, bears the epigraph “Hē Ram”, (Devanagari: हे ! राम or, He Rām), which may be translated as “Oh God”. These are widely believed to be Gandhi’s last words after he was shot, though the veracity of this statement has been disputed. Jawaharlal Nehru addressed the nation through radio:

“Friends and comrades, the light has gone out of our lives, and there is darkness everywhere, and I do not quite know what to tell you or how to say it. Our beloved leader, Bapu as we called him, the father of the nation, is no more. Perhaps I am wrong to say that; nevertheless, we will not see him again, as we have seen him for these many years, we will not run to him for advice or seek solace from him, and that is a terrible blow, not only for me, but for millions and millions in this country.”—Jawaharlal Nehru‘s address to Gandhi

Gandhi’s death was mourned nationwide. Over 2 million people joined the 5 mile long funeral procession that took over 5 hours to reach Raj Ghat from Birla house, were he was assassinated. Gandhi’s body was transported on a weapons carrier, whose chassis was dismantled overnight to allow a high-floor to be installed so that people could catch a glimpse of his body. The engine of the vehicle was not used, instead 4 drag-ropes manned by 50 people each pulled the vehicle. All Indian owned establishments in London remained closed in mourning as Indians from all over Britain converged atIndia House in London.

Khan argues that Gandhi’s death and funeral helped consolidate the authority of the new Indian state. With Nehru in charge, the government made sure everyone knew the guilty party was not a Muslim. Congress tightly controlled the epic public displays of grief over a two-week period—the funeral, mortuary rituals and distribution of the martyr’s ashes—as millions participated and hundreds of millions watched. The goal was to assert the power of the government and legitimize the Congress Party’s control. This move built upon the massive outpouring of Hindu expressions of grief. The government suppressed the RSS, the Muslim National Guards, and the Khaksars, with some 200,000 arrests. Gandhi’s death and funeral linked the distant state with the Indian people and made more understand the need to suppress religious parties during the transition to independence for the Indian people.

Ashes

Gandhi’s ashes were poured into urns which were sent across India for memorial services. Most were immersed at the Sangam at Allahabad on 12 February 1948, but some were secretly taken away. In 1997, Tushar Gandhi immersed the contents of one urn, found in a bank vault and reclaimed through the courts, at the Sangam at Allahabad. Some of Gandhi’s ashes were scattered at the source of the Nile River near Jinja, Uganda, and a memorial plaque marks the event. On 30 January 2008, the contents of another urn were immersed at Girgaum Chowpatty by the family after a Dubai-based businessman had sent it to a Mumbai museum. Another urn has ended up in a palace of the Aga Khan in Pune (where he had been imprisoned from 1942 to 1944) and another in theSelf-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine in Los Angeles. The family is aware that these enshrined ashes could be misused for political purposes, but does not want to have them removed because it would entail breaking the shrines.

Mystery of Gandhi’s two watches

After the death of Gandhi, shot dead by hindu fanatic, Nathuram Godse, two museums were dedicated to his life at Birla House and another at Gandhi museum close to Rajghat. Both museums exhibit two different watches which stopped at his time of death, which Gandhi was said to be wearing, when he was killed. The watch exhibited at Birla House points to 17 minutes past five, while the watch displayed at Gandhi museum points to 12 minutes past five.

Principles, practices and beliefs

See also: Gandhism

Gandhi’s ethical thinking was heavily influenced by a handful of books, which he repeatedly meditated upon. They included especially Plato’s Apology, (which he translated into his native Gujarati);William Salter’s Ethical Religion (1889); Henry David Thoreau’s On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (1847); Leo Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1893) (in which he first discovered the doctrine of non-violence and love); and John Ruskin’s Unto this Last (1862), which he also translated into Gujarati . Ruskin inspired his decision to live an austere life on a commune, at first on the Phoenix Farm in Natal and then on the Tolstoy Farm just outside Johannesburg, South Africa.

Gokhale argues that Gandhi took his philosophy of history from Hinduism and Jainism, supplemented by selected Christian traditions and ideas of Tolstoy and Ruskin. Hinduism provided central concepts of God’s role in history, of man as the battleground of forces of virtue and sin, and of the potential of love as an historical force. From Jainism, Gandhi took the idea of applying nonviolence to human situations and the theory that Absolute Reality can be comprehended only relatively in human affairs.

Spodek argues for the importance of the culture of Gujarat in shaping his methods. He finds that some of Gandhi’s most effective methods such as fasting, noncooperation and appeals to the justice and compassion of the rulers were learned as a youth in Gujarat. Later on, the financial, cultural, organizational and geographical support needed to bring his campaigns to a national audience were drawn from Ahmedabad and Gujarat, his Indian residence 1915–1930.

Tolstoy

In 1908 Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) wrote A Letter to a Hindu, which said that only by using love as a weapon through passive resistance could the Indian people overthrow colonial rule. In 1909, Gandhi wrote to Tolstoy seeking advice and permission to republish A Letter to a Hindu in Gujarati. Tolstoy responded and the two continued a correspondence until Tolstoy’s death in 1910. The letters concern practical and theological applications of non-violence. Gandhi saw himself a disciple of Tolstoy, for they agreed regarding opposition to state authority and colonialism; both hated violence and preached non-resistance. However, they differed sharply on political strategy. Gandhi called for political involvement; he was a nationalist and was prepared to use nonviolent force. He was also willing to compromise. It was at Tolstoy Farm where Gandhi and Hermann Kallenbach (1871–1945) systematically trained their disciples in the philosophy of nonviolence.

Truth and Satyagraha

“God is truth. The way to truth lies through ahimsa (non-violence)”—Sabarmati13 March 1927

Gandhi dedicated his life to the wider purpose of discovering truth, or Satya. He tried to achieve this by learning from his own mistakes and conducting experiments on himself. He called his autobiography The Story of My Experiments with Truth.

Watson argues that Gandhi based satyagraha on the Vedantic ideal of self-realization, and notes it also contains Jain and Buddhist notions of nonviolence, vegetarianism, the avoidance of killing, and ‘agape’ (universal love). Gandhi also borrowed Christian-Islamic ideas of equality, the brotherhood of man, and the concept of turning the other cheek.

Gandhi stated that the most important battle to fight was overcoming his own demons, fears, and insecurities. Gandhi summarised his beliefs first when he said “God is Truth”. He would later change this statement to “Truth is God”. Thus, Satya (Truth) in Gandhi’s philosophy is “God”.

The essence of Satyagraha (lit. ‘insistence/holding of truth’) is that it seeks to eliminate antagonisms without harming the antagonists themselves and seeks to transform or “purify” it to a higher level. A euphemism sometimes used for Satyagraha is that it is a “silent force” or a “soul force” (a term also used by Martin Luther King Jr. during his famous “I Have a Dream” speech). It arms the individual with moral power rather than physical power. Satyagraha is also termed a “universal force,” as it essentially “makes no distinction between kinsmen and strangers, young and old, man and woman, friend and foe.” Gandiji wrote: “There must be no impatience, no barbarity, no insolence, no undue pressure. If we want to cultivate a true spirit of democracy, we cannot afford to be intolerant. Intolerance betrays want of faith in one’s cause.” Civil disobedience and non-cooperation as practised under Satyagraha are based on the “law of suffering”, a doctrine that the endurance of suffering is a means to an end. This end usually implies a moral upliftment or progress of an individual or society. Therefore, non-cooperation in Satyagraha is in fact a means to secure the cooperation of the opponent consistently with truth and justice.

Nonviolence

Gandhi with textile workers at Darwen, Lancashire, 26 September 1931.

Although Gandhi was not the originator of the principle of non-violence, he was the first to apply it in the political field on a large scale. The concept ofnonviolence (ahimsa) and nonresistance has a long history in Indian religious thought and has had many revivals in Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Jewish and Christian contexts. Gandhi explains his philosophy and way of life in his autobiography The Story of My Experiments with Truth. Some of his remarks were widely quoted, such as “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” ”There are many causes that I am prepared to die for but no causes that I am prepared to kill for.”

Gandhi’s views came under heavy criticism in Britain when it was under attack from Nazi Germany, and later when the Holocaust was revealed. He told the British people in 1940, “I would like you to lay down the arms you have as being useless for saving you or humanity. You will invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions… If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourselves, man, woman, and child, to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them.”

In a post-war interview in 1946, he said, “Hitler killed five million Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs… It would have aroused the world and the people of Germany… As it is they succumbed anyway in their millions.”

However, Gandhi realised that this level of nonviolence required incredible faith and courage, which he believed everyone did not possess. He therefore advised that everyone need not keep to nonviolence, especially if it were used as a cover for cowardice, saying, “where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence.”

Vegetarianism and fasting

Hay argues that Gandhi in London looked into numerous religious and intellectual currents. He especially appreciated how the theosophical movement encouraged a religious eclecticism and an antipathy to atheism. Hay says the vegetarian movement had the greatest impact for it was Gandhi’s point of entry into other reformist agendas of the time. The idea of vegetarianism is deeply ingrained in Hindu and Jain traditions in India, especially in his native Gujarat. Gandhi was close to the chairman of the London Vegetarian Society, Dr. Josiah Oldfield, and corresponded with Henry Stephens Salt, a vegetarian campaigner. Gandhi became a strict vegetarian. He wrote the book The Moral Basis of Vegetarianism and wrote for the London Vegetarian Society’s publication.

Gandhi used fasting as a political device, often threatening suicide unless demands were met. Gandhi noted in his autobiography that vegetarianism was the beginning of his deep commitment toBrahmacharya; without total control of the palate, his success in Bramacharya would likely falter. “You wish to know what the marks of a man are who wants to realize Truth which is God,” he wrote. “He must reduce himself to zero and have perfect control over all his senses-beginning with the palate or tongue.”

Congress publicized the fasts as a political action that generated widespread sympathy. In response the government tried to manipulate news coverage to minimize his challenge to the Raj. He fasted in 1932 to protest the voting scheme for separate political representation for Dalits; Gandhi did not want them segregated. The government stopped the London press from showing photographs of his emaciated body, because it would elicit sympathy. Gandhi’s 1943 hunger strike took place during a two-year prison term for the anticolonial Quit India movement. The government called on nutritional experts to demystify his action, and again no photos were allowed. However his final fast in 1948, after India was independent, was lauded by the British press and this time did include full-length photos.

Alter argues that Gandhi’s fixation on diet and celibacy were much deeper than exercises in self-discipline. Rather, his beliefs regarding health offered a critique of both the traditional Hindu system of ayurvedic medicine and Western concepts. This challenge was integral to his deeper challenge to tradition and modernity, as health and nonviolence became part of the same ethics.

Celibacy

A core Gandhian value that came in for much bantering and ribald criticism in the west was his celebacy and his experiments in “brahmacharya” or the elimination of all desire. In 1906 Gandhi, although married and a father, vowed to abstain from sexual relations. In the 1940s, in his mid-seventies, he brought his grandniece Manubehn to sleep naked in his bed as part of a spiritual experiment in which Gandhi could test himself as a “brahmachari.” Two other women also sometimes shared his bed. Gandhi discussed his experiment with friends and relations, and the experiment ceased in 1947.

Nai Talim, Basic Education

Main article: Nai Talim

Nai Talim is a spiritual principle which states that knowledge and work are not separate. Gandhi promoted an educational curriculum with the same name based on this pedagogical principle.

It can be translated with the phrase ‘Basic Education for all’. However, the concept has several layers of meaning. It developed out of Gandhi’s experience with the English educational system and with colonialism in general. In that system, he saw that Indian children would be alienated and ‘career-based thinking’ would become dominant. In addition, it embodied a series of negative outcomes: the disdain for manual work, the development of a new elite class, and the increasing problems of industrialisation and urbanisation.

The three pillars of Gandhi’s pedagogy were its focus on the life-long character of education, its social character and its form as a holistic process. For Gandhi, education is ‘the moral development of the person’, a process that is by definition ‘life-long’.

Swaraj, Self-Rule

Main article: Swaraj

Rudolph argues that after a false start in trying to emulate the English in an attempt to overcome his timidity, Gandhi discovered the inner courage he was seeking by helping his countrymen in South Africa. The new courage consisted of observing the traditional Bengali way of “self-suffering” and, in finding his own courage, he was enabled also to point out the way of ‘satyagraha’ and ‘ahimsa’ to the whole of India.

Gandhi was a self-described philosophical anarchist, and his vision of India meant an India without an underlying government. He once said that “the ideally nonviolent state would be an ordered anarchy.” While political systems are largely hierarchical, with each layer of authority from the individual to the central government have increasing levels of authority over the layer below, Gandhi believed that society should be the exact opposite, where nothing is done without the consent of anyone, down to the individual. His idea was that true self-rule in a country means that every person rules his or herself and that there is no state which enforces laws upon the people. This would be achieved over time with nonviolent conflict mediation, as power is divested from layers of hierarchical authorities, ultimately to the individual, which would come to embody the ethic of nonviolence. Rather than a system where rights are enforced by a higher authority, people are self-governed by mutual responsibilities. On returning from South Africa, when Gandhi received a letter asking for his participation in writing a world charter for human rights, he responded saying, “in my experience, it is far more important to have a charter for human duties.”A free India for him meant the existence of thousands of self-sufficient small communities (an idea possibly from Tolstoy) who rule themselves without hindering others. It did not mean merely transferring a British established administrative structure into Indian hands which he said was just making Hindustan into Englistan.He wanted to ultimately dissolve the Congress Party after independence and establish a system of direct democracy in India, having no faith in the British styled parliamentary system.^[114]

Literary works

Young India, a journal published by Gandhi

Gandhi was a prolific writer. One of Gandhis earliest publications, Hind Swaraj published in Gujarati in 1909 is recognised as the intellectual blueprint of India’s freedom movement. The book was translated into english the next year, with a copyright legend that read “No Rights Reserved”. For decades he edited several newspapers including Harijan in Gujarati, in Hindi and in the English language; Indian Opinion while in South Africa and, Young India, in English, and Navajivan, a Gujarati monthly, on his return to India. Later, Navajivan was also published in Hindi. In addition, he wrote letters almost every day to individuals and newspapers.

Gandhi also wrote several books including his autobiography, An Autobiography of My Experiments with Truth ((Gujarātī “સત્યના પ્રયોગો અથવા આત્મકથા”)), of which he bought the entire first edition to make sure it was reprinted. His other autobiographies included: Satyagraha in South Africa about his struggle there, Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule, a political pamphlet, and a paraphrase in Gujarati of John Ruskin‘s Unto This Last. This last essay can be considered his programme on economics. He also wrote extensively on vegetarianism, diet and health, religion, social reforms, etc. Gandhi usually wrote in Gujarati, though he also revised the Hindi and English translations of his books.

Gandhi’s complete works were published by the Indian government under the name The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi in the 1960s. The writings comprise about 50,000 pages published in about a hundred volumes. In 2000, a revised edition of the complete works sparked a controversy, as Gandhian followers argue that the government incorporated the changes for political purposes.^{[citation needed]}The Indian government later withdrew the revised edition.

Legacy and depictions in popular culture

See also: List of artistic depictions of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

Gandhi with Rabindranath Tagore, 1940

The word Mahatma, while often mistaken for Gandhi’s given name in the West, is taken from the Sanskrit words maha (meaning Great) and atma (meaningSoul). Rabindranath Tagore is said to have accorded the title to Gandhi. In his autobiography, Gandhi nevertheless explains that he never valued the title, and was often pained by it.

Followers and international influence

Mahatma Gandhi on a 1969 postage stamp of the Soviet Union.

Gandhi influenced important leaders and political movements. Leaders of the civil rights movement in the United States, including Martin Luther King and James Lawson, drew from the writings of Gandhi in the development of their own theories about non-violence. Anti-apartheid activist and former President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, was inspired by Gandhi. Others include Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan,^[126] Steve Biko, Aung San Suu Kyi, and Benigno Aquino, Jr.(the Philippine opposition leader during the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos and father of current Philippine presidentBenigno Aquino III).

“Christ gave us the goals and Mahatma Gandhi the tactics.”—Martin Luther King Jr, 1955

In his early years, the former President of South Africa Nelson Mandela was a follower of the non-violent resistance philosophy of Gandhi. Bhana and Vahed commented on these events as “Gandhi inspired succeeding generations of South African activists seeking to end White rule. This legacy connects him to Nelson Mandela…in a sense Mandela completed what Gandhi started.”

Gandhi’s life and teachings inspired many who specifically referred to Gandhi as their mentor or who dedicated their lives to spreading Gandhi’s ideas. In Europe,Romain Rolland was the first to discuss Gandhi in his 1924 book Mahatma Gandhi, and Brazilian anarchist and feminist Maria Lacerda de Moura wrote about Gandhi in her work on pacifism. In 1931, notable European physicist Albert Einstein exchanged written letters with Gandhi, and called him “a role model for the generations to come” in a later writing about him. Lanza del Vasto went to India in 1936 intending to live with Gandhi; he later returned to Europe to spread Gandhi’s philosophy and founded the Community of the Ark in 1948 (modelled after Gandhi’s ashrams). Madeleine Slade (known as “Mirabehn”) was the daughter of a British admiral who spent much of her adult life in India as a devotee of Gandhi.

In addition, the British musician John Lennon referred to Gandhi when discussing his views on non-violence. At the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival in 2007, former U.S. Vice-President and environmentalist Al Gore spoke of Gandhi’s influence on him.^[133]

President of the United States Barack Obama in an address to a Joint Session of the Parliament of India said that:

“I am mindful that I might not be standing before you today, as President of the United States, had it not been for Gandhi and the message he shared with America and the world.”—Barack Obama in an address to a Joint Session of the Parliament of India, 2010

Obama at the Wakefield High School speech in Sept 2009, said that his biggest inspiration came from Mahatma Gandhi. His reply was in response to the question ‘Who was the one person, dead or live, that you would choose to dine with?’. He continued that “He’s somebody I find a lot of inspiration in. He inspired Dr. King with his message of nonviolence. He ended up doing so much and changed the world just by the power of his ethics.” The Mahatma Gandhi District in Houston, Texas, United States, an ethnic Indian enclave, is named after Gandhi. The district officially received its named on 16 January 2010 when the City of Houston held a naming ceremony.

Global holidays

On 15 June 2007, it was announced that the “United Nations General Assembly” has “unanimously adopted” a resolution declaring 2 October as “the International Day of Non-Violence.” First proposed by UNESCO in 1948, as the School Day of Non-violence and Peace (DENIP in Spanish), 30 January of every year is observed the School Day of Non-violence and Peace in schools of many countries In countries with a Southern Hemisphere school calendar, it can be observed on 30 March.^[139]

Awards

Monument to Mahatma Gandhi in New Belgrade, Serbia. On the monument is written “Non-violence is the essence of all religions”.

Time magazine named Gandhi the Man of the Year in 1930. Gandhi was also the runner-up to Albert Einstein as “Person of the Century“ at the end of 1999. Einstein said of Gandhi:

Mahatma Gandhi’s life achievement stands unique in political history. He has invented a completely new and humane means for the liberation war of an oppressed country, and practised it with greatest energy and devotion. The moral influence he had on the consciously thinking human being of the entire civilized world will probably be much more lasting than it seems in our time with its overestimation of brutal violent forces. Because lasting will only be the work of such statesmen who wake up and strengthen the moral power of their people through their example and educational works. We may all be happy and grateful that destiny gifted us with such an enlightened contemporary, a role model for the generations to come.

Time Magazine named The 14th Dalai Lama, Lech Wałęsa, Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, Aung San Suu Kyi, Benigno Aquino, Jr., Desmond Tutu, and Nelson Mandela as Children of Gandhi and his spiritual heirs to non-violence. The Government of India awards the annual Gandhi Peace Prize to distinguished social workers, world leaders and citizens. Nelson Mandela, the leader of South Africa’s struggle to eradicate racial discrimination and segregation, is a prominent non-Indian recipient. In 2011, Time magazine named Gandhi as one of the top 25 political icons of all time.

Gandhi never received the Nobel Peace Prize, although he was nominated five times between 1937 and 1948, including the first-ever nomination by the American Friends Service Committee, though he made the short list only twice, in 1937 and 1947. Decades later, the Nobel Committee publicly declared its regret for the omission, and admitted to deeply divided nationalistic opinion denying the award. Gandhi was nominated in 1948 but was assassinated before nominations closed. That year, the committee chose not to award the peace prize stating that “there was no suitable living candidate” and later research shows that the possibility of awarding the prize posthumously to Gandhi was discussed and that the reference to no suitable living candidate was to Gandhi. When the 14th Dalai Lama was awarded the Prize in 1989, the chairman of the committee said that this was “in part a tribute to the memory of Mahatma Gandhi.”

Film and literature

Mahatma Gandhi has been portrayed in film, literature, and in the theatre. Ben Kingsley portrayed Gandhi in the 1982 film Gandhi, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Gandhi is also a central theme in the 2006 Bollywood film Lage Raho Munna Bhai. The 2007 film, Gandhi, My Father explores the relationship between Gandhi and his son Harilal. The 1996 film, The Making of the Mahatma, documents Gandhi’s time in South Africa and his transformation from an inexperienced barrister to recognised political leader.

Several biographers have undertaken the task of describing Gandhi’s life. Among them are: D. G. Tendulkar with his Mahatma. Life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in eight volumes, and Pyarelal andSushila Nayyar with their Mahatma Gandhi in 10 volumes. There is also another documentary, titled Mahatma: Life of Gandhi, 1869–1948, which is 14 chapters and 6 hours long.

The April 2010 biography, Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India by Joseph Lelyveld contained controversial material speculating about Gandhi’s sexual life. Because of this material, the book was banned in the Indian state of Gujarat, his birthplace.

Lelyveld, however, stated that the press coverage “grossly distort[s]” the overall message of the book.

Current impact within India

The Gandhi MandapamKanyakumari

India, with its rapid economic modernization and urbanization, has rejected Gandhi’s economics but accepted much of his politics and contuinues to revere his memory. Reporter Jim Yardley notes that, “modern India is hardly a Gandhian nation, if it ever was one. His vision of a village-dominated economy was shunted aside during his lifetime as rural romanticism, and his call for a national ethos of personal austerity and nonviolence has proved antithetical to the goals of an aspiring economic and military power.” By contrast he is “given full credit for India’s political identity as a tolerant, secular democracy.”

Gandhi’s birthday, 2 October, is a national holiday in India, Gandhi Jayanti. Gandhi’s image also appears on paper currency of all denominations issued by India, except for the one rupee note. Gandh’s date of passing away is commemorated as Martyrs’ Day in India.

There are two temples in India dedicated to Gandhi. One is located at Sambalpur in Orissa and the other at Nidaghatta village near Kadur in Chikmagalur district ofKarnataka.

The Gandhi Memorial in Kanyakumari resembles central Indian Hindu temples in formThe Tamukkam or Summer Palace in Madurai now houses the Mahatma Gandhi Museum.

• Gandhi Smriti — Government of India website

• Mani Bhavan Gandhi Sangrahalaya Gandhi Museum & Library

The post Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) appeared first on OBRA MAESTRA.

Oskar Schindler
Born	28 April 1908 Zwittau, Moravia, Austria-Hungary (present-day Svitavy,Czech Republic)
Died	9 October 1974 (aged 66) Hildesheim, West Germany
Resting place	Jerusalem, Israel 31.770164°N 35.230423°E
Occupation	Industrialist
Political party	National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi)
Religion	Catholic
Spouse	Emilie Schindler
Parents	Hans Schindler Franziska Luser

Deutsch: Oskar-Schindler-Gedenktafel in Frankfurt am Main. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

Oskar Schindler (28 April 1908 – 9 October 1974) was an ethnic German industrialist born in Moravia. He is credited with saving over 1,100 Jewsduring the Holocaust by employing them in his enamelware and ammunitions factories, which were located in what is now Poland and the Czech Republic respectively. He is the subject of the novel Schindler’s Ark, and the film based on it, Schindler’s List.

Schindler was born on 28 April 1908 into a Sudeten German family in Zwittau, Moravia, Austria-Hungary. His parents, Hans Schindler and Franziska Luser, were divorced when he was 27. Oskar was always very close to his younger sister, Elfriede. Schindler was brought up within the Roman Catholic Church. Although he never formally renounced his religion, Oskar was never more than an indifferent Catholic. After school he worked as a commercial salesman.Early life and career

Oskar and Emilie in 1946

On 6 March 1928, Schindler married Emilie Pelzl (1907–2001), daughter of a wealthy Sudeten German farmer from Maletein. A pious Catholic, Emilie had received most of her education in a nearby monastery. During theGreat Depression, Oskar changed jobs several times. He also tried starting various businesses, but always went bankrupt. He joined the separatist Sudeten German Party in 1935. Though officially a citizen of Czechoslovakia, Schindler also became a spy for the Abwehr, then commanded by Admiral Wilhelm Canaris.  He was convicted of espionage and imprisoned by the Czechoslovakian government in July 1938, but after the Munich Agreement, he was released as a political prisoner. In 1939 Schindler joined the Nazi Party. One source contends that he also continued to work for Canaris and the Abwehr, paving the way for the Wehrmacht‘s invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939.

World War II

The Holocaust

As an opportunistic businessman, Schindler was one of many who sought to profit from the German invasion of Poland in 1939. He gained ownership from a bankruptcy court of an idle enamelware factory in Kraków, named Pierwsza Małopolska Fabryka Naczyń Emaliowanych i Wyrobów Blaszanych “Rekord”,  which he renamed Deutsche Emaillewaren-Fabrik or DEF (location). With the help of his German-speaking Jewish accountant Itzhak Stern,  Schindler obtained around 1,000 Jewish forced labourers to work there.

Schindler soon adapted his lifestyle to his income. He became a well-respected guest at Nazi SS elite parties, having easy chats with high-ranking SS officers, often for his benefit. Initially Schindler may have been motivated by money, as Jewish labour cost less, but later he began shielding his workers without regard for cost. He would, for instance, claim that certain unskilled workers were essential to the factory.

While witnessing a 1943 raid on the Kraków Ghetto, where soldiers were used to round up the inhabitants for shipment to the concentration camp atPłaszów, Schindler was appalled by the murder of many of the Jews who had been working for him. He was a very persuasive individual, and after the raid, increasingly used all of his skills to protect his Schindlerjuden (“Schindler’s Jews”), as they came to be called. Schindler went out of his way to take care of the Jews who worked at DEF, often calling on his legendary charm and ingratiating manner to help his workers get out of difficult situations. Once, says author Eric Silver in The Book of the Just, “Two Gestapo men came to his office and demanded that he hand over a family of five who had bought forged Polish identity papers. ‘Three hours after they walked in,’ Schindler said, ‘two drunk Gestapo men reeled out of my office without their prisoners and without the incriminating documents they had demanded’”. The special status of his factory (“business essential to the war effort”) became the decisive factor for Schindler’s efforts to support his Jewish workers. Whenever “Schindler Jews” were threatened with deportation, he claimed exemptions for them. Wives, children, and even handicapped persons were shown to be necessary mechanics and metalworkers.

In the factory itself, Jewish workers were treated civilly, with none of the “shouting, abuse and random killing” that was going on in the Płaszów camp next-door. The Jews were able to pray in a minyan daily, and gathered at night to learn Chumash and exchange words of Torah and stories of Gedolim. At the close of Shabbat, the workers gathered for Shalosh Seudos and sang zemirot (Shabbat-table songs), said words of Torah, and told stories of tzaddikim.

Schindler’s factory at Kraków in 2006

Schindler’s factory at Brněnec in 2004

Schindler was arrested three times on suspicion of black market activities and complicity in embezzlement, as well as breaking the Nuremberg Laws by kissing a Jewish girl. Amon Göth, the commandant of the Płaszów camp, and other SS guards used Jewish property (such as money, jewellery, and works of art) for themselves, although according to law, it belonged to the Reich. Schindler arranged the sale of such items on the black market. None of his arrests led to a trial, primarily because he bribed government officials to avoid further investigation.

As the Red Army drew nearer to Auschwitz concentration camp and the other easternmost concentration camps, the SS began evacuating the remaining prisoners westward. Amon Göth’s personal secretary, Mietek Pemper, alerted Schindler to the Nazis’ plans to close all factories not directly involved with the war effort, including Schindler’s enamelware facility. Pemper also persuaded and encouraged Schindler to switch production from enamelware to anti-tank grenades in an effort to save Schindler’s Jewish workers. Tipped off to the factory closure, Schindler persuaded the SS officials to allow him to move his 1,200 Jewish workers to Brünnlitz (Czech: Brněnec), in the German-speaking Sudetenland, thus sparing them from certain death in the gas chambers. Mietek Pemper further aided Schindler’s efforts by compiling and typing the list of 1,200 Jews—1,000 of Schindler’s workers and 200 other inmates—who were sent to Brünnlitz in October 1944.

In Brünnlitz, Schindler gained another former Jewish factory, which was scheduled to produce hand grenades and parts for V2 rockets. It is unclear how much armament was actually produced there; Schindler and some of the workers claimed in the immediate post-war years that there had been no production that would have been useful to the German war effort, and even that some or all of the output had been deliberately faulty product.

After the war

Schindler and his wife fled to Austria’s U.S. zone, escaping prosecution by dressing in prison clothes and carrying a letter testifying to their heroic actions. By the end of the war, Schindler had spent his entire fortune on bribes and black-market purchases of supplies for his workers. Virtually destitute, he moved briefly to Regensburg and later Munich, but did not prosper in postwar Germany. In fact, he was reduced to receiving assistance from Jewish organizations. Eventually, Schindler emigrated to Argentina in 1948, where he went bankrupt. He left his wife Emilie in 1957 and returned to Germany in 1958, where he had a series of unsuccessful business ventures. Schindler settled down in a small apartment at Am Hauptbahnhof Nr. 4 in Frankfurt am Main, West Germany and tried again – with help from a Jewish organization – to establish a cement factory. This, too, went bankrupt in 1961. His business partners cancelled their partnership. In 1968 he began receiving a small pension from the West German government.

Commemorative plaque at Goettingstrasse 30, Hildesheim

In 1971, Schindler moved to live with friends at Goettingstrasse Nr. 30 in Hildesheim. Due to a heart complaint he was taken to the Saint Bernward Hospital in Hildesheim on 12 September 1974, where he died on 9 October 1974, at the age of 66. At the time of his death, he was surrounded by friends and family. He died penniless; the costs for his stay in the hospital were paid from social welfare of the city of Hildesheim.

Schindler’s grave

Schindler wanted to be buried in Jerusalem, as he said, “My children are here”. After a Requiem Mass, Schindler was buried at the Catholic Franciscans’ cemetery on Mount Zion, the only member of the Nazi Party to be honoured in this way. A sign at the entrance to the cemetery directs visitors “To Oskar Schindler’s Grave”.

Side view of Schindler’s grave, piled with small stones left by Jewish visitors

Schindler’s grave is located on the mountainside below Zion Gate and the Old City walls. Stones placed on top of the grave are a sign of gratitude from Jewish visitors, according to Jewish tradition, although Schindler himself was not Jewish. On his grave, the Hebrew inscription reads: “Righteous among the Nations“, an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis. The German inscription reads: “The Unforgettable Lifesaver of 1200 Persecuted Jews”

No one knows what Schindler’s motives were. He was quoted as saying “I knew the people who worked for me… When you know people, you have to behave towards them like human beings.”

The writer Herbert Steinhouse, who interviewed Schindler in 1948 at the behest of some of the surviving Schindlerjuden(Schindler’s Jews), wrote:

“Oskar Schindler’s exceptional deeds stemmed from just that elementary sense of decency and humanity that our sophisticated age seldom sincerely believes in. A repentant opportunist saw the light and rebelled against the sadism and vile criminality all around him. The inference may be disappointingly simple, especially for all amateur psychoanalysts who would prefer the deeper and more mysterious motive that may, if it is true, still lie unprobed and unappreciated. But an hour with Oskar Schindler encourages belief in the simple answer.”

Legacy

Schindler’s List (Schindler’s Ark)

Schindler’s story, retold by Holocaust survivor Poldek Pfefferberg, was the basis for Thomas Keneally‘s book Schindler’s Ark (the novel was published in America as Schindler’s List), which was adapted into the 1993 movie Schindler’s List by Steven Spielberg. In the film, he is played by Liam Neeson, who was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal. The film won sevenOscars, including the Academy Award for Best Picture. The prominence of Spielberg’s film introduced Schindler into popular culture. As the film is the sole source of most people’s knowledge of Schindler, he is generally perceived much as Spielberg’s film depicts him: as a man who was instinctively driven by profit-driven amorality, but who at some point made a silent but conscious decision that preserving the lives of his Jewish employees was imperative, even if requiring massive payments to induce Nazis to turn a blind eye.

Other film treatments have included a 1983 British television documentary produced by Thames Television, narrated by Sir Dirk Bogarde entitled, Schindler: The Documentary (released in the US in 1994 as Schindler: The Real Story), and a 1998 A&E Biography special, Oskar Schindler: The Man Behind the List.

Schindler’s suitcase

In late 1999 a suitcase belonging to Schindler was discovered, containing over 7,000 photographs and documents, including the list of Schindler’s Jewish workers. The document, on his enamelware factory’s letterhead, had been provided to the SS stating that the named workers were “essential” employees. Friends of Schindler found the suitcase in the attic of a house in Hildesheim, where he had been staying at the time of his death. The friends took the suitcase to Stuttgart, where its discovery was reported by a newspaper, the Stuttgarter Zeitung. The contents of the suitcase, including the list of the names of those he had saved and the text of his farewell speech before leaving his Jewish workers in 1945, are now at the Holocaust museum of Yad Vashem in Israel.

Schindler’s enamel factory in 2009

List of Schindlerjuden

Main article: List of Schindlerjuden

In early April 2009, a second list was discovered at the State Library of New South Wales, Australia by workers combing through boxes of materials collected by author Thomas Keneally. The 13-page document, yellow and fragile, was filed between research notes and original newspaper clippings. This list, given to Keneally in 1980 by Leopold Pfefferberg, who was listed as worker number 173, differs slightly from the other list, but is nonetheless considered to be genuine and authentic. It is believed that several lists were made during the war as the protected population changed. This particular list, dated 18 April 1945, was given to Keneally by Pfefferberg when he was persuading Keneally to write Schindler’s story. In the last months of the war, German Nazi camps stepped up their extermination efforts. This list is believed to have saved the lives of 801 people from death in the gas chambers. It was this list, taken with the surrounding events of the time, that inspired Keneally to write his novel.

See also

• List of individuals and groups assisting Jews during the Holocaust
• Righteous among the Nations
• Yad Vashem Righteous among the Nations
• List of Righteous among the Nations by country

• Raoul Wallenberg
• Necdet Kent
• Abdol Hossein Sardari
• Chiune Sugihara
• John Rabe
• Leo Rosner
• Ángel Sanz Briz

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d e} “Oskar Schindler, Saved 1200 Jews” (PDF). The New York Times. 13 October 1974. Retrieved 2009-01-20.
2. ^ BBC NEWS | Middle East | Schindler list survivor recalls saviour. Other sources vary, placing the number at 1,098 according to the list, along with an additional 100 people according to a letter signed by Isaak Stern, former employee Pal. Office in Krakow, Dr. Hilfstein, Chaim Salpeter, Former President of the Zionist Executive in Krakow for Galicia and Silesia.
3. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h i} Herbert Steinhouse, “The Real Oskar Schindler”, Saturday Night Magazine, April, 1994.
4. ^ Thomas Keneally, Schindler’s Ark. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982 (ISBN 0-340-33501-7).
5. ^ “Emilie Schindler, 93, Dies; Saved Jews in War”. The New York Times. October 8, 2001. Retrieved 2009-01-20.Schindler’s wife Emilie was born on 22 October 1907, the daughter of Josef and Maria Pelzl, and died on 5 October 2001, at age 93 in a hospital in Berlin. They did not have children.
6. ^ Jitka Gruntová, Legendy a fakta o Oskaru Schindlerovi. Naše vojsko, 2002 (ISBN 80-206-0607-6).
7. ^ Brzoskwinia, Waldemar (19 June 2008). “Spacerownik. Zabłocie: chłodnia i fabryki”. Gazeta Wyborcza (Kraków).
8. ^ ^{a b c d} “Oskar Schindler: An Unlikely Hero”. U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved 2008-05-29.
9. ^ Eric Silver (1992). The book of the just – the silent heroes who saved Jews from Hitler. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson. ISBN 0802113478.
10. ^ Werdyger, Duvid (1993). Songs of Hope. Lakewood, N.J.: CIS Publishers. pp. 161–162. ISBN 1560622261.
11. ^ ^{a b c} “Mietek Pemper”. The Telegraph. 2011-06-15. Retrieved 2011-06-26.
12. ^ ^{a b} Martin, Douglas (2011-06-18). “Mietek Pemper, 91, Camp Inmate Who Compiled Schindler’s List”. New York Times. Retrieved 2011-06-26.
13. ^ Gutman (1995). Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. MacMillan Publishing Company. ISBN 0028645278.
14. ^ Maslin, Janet. “Movies: About Schindler’s List”. The New York Times. Retrieved 20 May 2010.
15. ^ ^{a b} Bulow, Louis (2009). “Oskar Schindler: His List of Life”. oskarschindler.com. Retrieved 2010-07-04.
16. ^ “City of Hildesheim Archives (in German)”. 2 October 1999. Retrieved 2007-12-16.
17. ^ Photos of house and plaque located at Göttingstr.30 in Hildesheim where Oskar Schindler lived from 1972 to his death in 1974. He was a guest of Dr. Staehr and his wife.
18. ^ Deutsches Historisches Museum Article Oskar Schindler.
19. ^ Crowe, David M. (2004). Oskar Schindler: The Untold Account of His Life, Wartime Activities, and the True Story Behind The List. Philadelphia: Westview Press. ISBN 0-8133-3375-X.
20. ^ Bellafante, Ginia. “Test”. The New York Times. Retrieved 20 May 2010.
21. ^ Goodman, Walter. “Test”. The New York Times. Retrieved 20 May 2010.
22. ^ Bulow, Louis (2009). “The Suitcase”. oskarschindler.com.
23. ^ “Schingler” (^{[dead link]}). News (Yahoo!). 2009-04-06.

• 
  The Schindler Story
• Biggest online gallery of images of Oskar Schindler’s Factory in Kraków
• Oskar Schindler’s Factory info and tours
• Oskar and Emilie Schindler – Righteous Among the Nations – Yad Vashem
• Oskar Schindler’s list at Auschwitz.dk
• Aerial Evidence for Schindler’s List
• Holocaust Rescuers Bibliography
• Schindler’s List (film) bibliography via UC Berkeley
• Pictures of Oskar Schindler’s suitcase
• Find-A-Grave profile for Oskar Schindler
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum – Oskar Schindler
• Voices on Antisemitism Interview with Helen Jonas from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• Interview with Mimi Reinhard, Schindler’s secretary

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[John Weidner, 1946, recevant la médaille de la Résistance aux Pays-Bas source photo : Block, Gay and Malka Drucker crédit photo : D.R."][/caption]

Jean Weidner : article de R. Lehmann dans “Dictionnaire du monde religieux dans la France contemporaine” (Beauchesne, 1996)

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By Jimmy D. Brown of iRaize.com

Some things are so obvious they can’t be missed.

When my son, Jacob, was four years old he always wanted to “go, go, go”. It became necessary to find ways to harness and refocus his energy.

This was especially true when we were “waiting” somewhere. Whether it was waiting for a table at a restaurant, waiting in a checkout line or waiting in traffic, it was important to keep him busy without letting him bounce around all over the place like Tigger from Winnie The Pooh.

The solution came in the form of a game I played when I was a young Tigger myself.

Remember the game “I Spy”? In case you have forgotten how to play this simple game it goes like this…

One person mentally finds an object within view and completes the sentence, “I spy something that is _________” by sharing the COLOR of the object. For example: You might spot a blue t-shirt and would announce, “I spy something that is blue.”

Other players then take turns guessing what item you selected. The winner gets to take your place in choosing the next item.

One day Jacob and I were seated in a couple of chairs at the front of a discount clothing store. We were waiting (as usual) for my wife, Paula, to finish checking out. We decided to play our waiting game.

When it was Jacob’s turn he said something like this:

“I spy something that is red.”
“That is over there.” (Pointing)
“That is on that door.”
“That has white around it.”
“That has the word ‘Exit’ on it.”

Hmmmm. “Is it that ‘Exit’ sign?” I asked.

“Yes, daddy, that’s it!” he squealed out in glee as if I had cracked some code with my brilliant deduction skills.

I told him, “Son, you shared and shared and shared until it was obvious what it was. I didn’t have to guess hard to figure it out.”

At that moment something hit me. Isn’t that how you and I should be towards others? Shouldn’t we share and share and share of our time, talents and resources until it’s obvious to all around that we care?

Shouldn’t we share so much good will, acts of kindness, encouraging words and generosity that it doesn’t take much guessing to figure out where our hearts are?

Wouldn’t it be wonderful for those around us to be able to say of you and me, “I spy … someone who cares”?

Imagine for a moment what kind of impact this kind of living would have upon our homes, our neighborhoods, our workplaces … our world. Love can do everything from brighten someone’s day to alter the course of his or her life. Compassion can meet needs that might otherwise go unmet. Encouragement can spring forth optimism and renewed hope. Kindness can touch the heart in profound ways.

As you are “waiting” around today, think about ways you can impact the life of another.
Make it so obvious it can’t be missed. You can make a difference if you choose to do so.

May it be said of you today: I spy someone who cares.

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Jimmy D. Brown is the author of Finish Line Faith: How To Reach Your Goals and the founder of iRaize.com. For just $3 you can purchase a copy of Finish Line Faith with 50% of every sale going to help provide food, shelter and clothing for orphans in Mexico. Get all the details at http://www.iRaize.com

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Origami Boulder

By Jimmy D. Brown of iRaize.com

Some of our investments in life are interesting.

One of my good friends made one of these interesting investments after seeing an offer available at a website.

A vendor online was selling what he described as an “origami boulder” which, by his own definition, is a piece of “wadded up paper”.

That’s right. This guy takes a sheet of paper, wads it up and sells it as “artwork”… an “origami boulder”.

Price for this? $10.00.

A ream of paper is worth a cool $5,000 in this artist’s hands.
?It gets even better.

For an additional $5.00 the vendor will write an original haiku on the piece of paper before wadding it up.

And, as if that wasn’t enough, for $29.00 you can get the origami boulder with haiku AND an attractive bamboo display stand.

No, I’m not making this up.

My friend decided to buy the deluxe version with display and all to place on his desk as a conversation piece. Just for the fun of it.

Shortly after my friend’s “artwork” was placed on display, the cleaning lady came by to straighten things up. You guessed it – she saw the “artwork, thought it was trash and tossed it into the garbage.

My friend promptly ordered another boulder to replace the discarded one!

Apparently he wasn’t an artist himself. Maybe he had no formal training in wadding up paper. I’m not sure. I just know that I’d have sold him an origami boulder for $3.75.

I don’t do haiku (that was an unfortunate rhyme) but I would have thrown in the following limerick for free:

There once was a man named Deiss
Who ordered some artwork in haste
For he had so much money to waste
That he ended up ordering twice!

Hmmm. Not bad. I’m open for business if you’re interested in making a purchase.

On a serious note, what have you and I invested in lately? How are we using our time, resources and talents? Are we investing in things that can be thrown away or things that will last?

One of the greatest things we can invest in is the life of another. So often it takes so little to make a difference. A word of encouragement. An act of kindness. A listening ear. A compassionate gesture. A smile. An offer of hope. A helping hand.

You don’t have to be an artist to turn someone’s wadded up life into real artwork. You don’t have to be a poet to make rhyme from words that would otherwise be void of anything positive.

You just have to care.

Don’t spend your life investing in “origami boulders” – things that might be thrown away. Spend at least a portion of your time and resources on things that matter. Make this world a better place. Make a difference in the life of someone in your pathway that just needs a touch of cheer or compassion. Make your life count for something important.

Do you know how to change the world?

One. Person. At. A. Time.

You may not be able to help millions, but you can help the one down the street, across the office, in the checkout line or around the corner.

Invest in things that will last.

Sooner or later, everything else ends up in the garbage.

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What Love Can Do

By Jimmy D. Brown of iRaize.com

Several years ago a stray dog came shyly into our front yard. He was very timid and acted scared to be around anyone. Whenever I approached him, he fell down on his belly and scooted across the ground instead of walking. Thus, I named him “Scooter”.

Scooter had obviously been beaten. He rarely looked at me in the eyes, choosing instead to hang his head in defeat, always looking down. When I did catch a glimpse of his eyes there was sadness and fright and suspicion hidden within.

This poor dog was so frightened and insecure that just walking his way made him tremble. He would often fall over on his back, thrust his feet into the air and start whimpering.

My heart broke seeing him in such condition. Whenever he let me get near him I made certain that I showed him some good, old-fashioned TLC. I would call to him in a kind, reassuring voice letting him know he could trust me. I often picked him up into my lap and ran my hands over his head and down his back. I told him, “I’m not going to hurt you boy. You can trust me. I’m here for you.”

It took some time to break down those walls of fear and insecurity that Scooter’s past had built around him. It took an investment of effort to show him he had no reason to hold his head in defeat. It took action to show him love and build trust again.

The day came when Scooter was no longer that shy, timid dog. He pranced around the yard and barked and leaped through the air. When I called him, he came running, no longer afraid. A wonderful transformation had occurred!

That’s what love can do.

Sadly, there are “Scooters” all around us. Not just animals, but also people who have been mistreated. Life has beaten them down and robbed them of their hope, trust and confidence. They walk around with their heads bowed in defeat, suspicious and afraid.

They walk shyly into the front yards of our lives. They may never say it, but their hearts yearn for someone to care, someone to help make whole their brokenness. They hope to hear someone say, “I’m not going to hurt you. You can trust me. I’m here for you.”

Who will take the time to break down those walls of fear and insecurity? Who will invest themselves to show that there is no reason to live defeated? Who will make the effort to share love with them?

Will you?

There are people in your pathway today who are hurting. They feel alone and unloved, insecure and fearful. Their lives are wrecked and in shambles. They fall down before you with their legs in the air, whimpering and crying for mercy. Do you see them? Take a close look at those around you, do you see them there?

Show them TLC. Call to them in a kind, reassuring voice to let them know they can trust you. Pick them up. And love them.

No one is a lost cause when love is at work.

It will take time and effort. It may be a painful, uncomfortable process that breaks your heart to see them in such a condition. But if you faithfully and compassionately give of yourself to restore a person who is hurting you may just witness firsthand a wonderful transformation.

Those eyes that are now darkened with doubt may soon dance with hope. That head which now droops in defeat may soon be raised in confidence. That heart which is now broken may soon be filled with joy. That future now bleak may soon be full of promise.

That’s what love can do.

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Jimmy D. Brown is the author of Finish Line Faith: How To Reach Your Goals and the founder of iRaize.com. For just $3 you can purchase a copy of Finish Line Faith with 50% of every sale going to help provide food, shelter and clothing for orphans in Mexico. Get all the details at http://www.iRaize.com

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Great Initiative Jimmy! Thumbs up!

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[Originally published on American Renaissance]

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Good evening, my fellow Americans: First, I should like to express my gratitude to the radio and television networks for the opportunity they have given me over the years to bring reports and messages to our nation. My special thanks go to them for the opportunity of addressing you this evening.

Three days from now, after a half century of service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor.

This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.

Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.

Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on questions of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the nation.

My own relations with Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to the intimate during the war and immediate post-war period, and finally to the mutually interdependent during these past eight years.

In this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the nation well rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the nation should go forward. So my official relationship with Congress ends in a feeling on my part, of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together.

We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America’s leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.

Throughout America’s adventure in free government, such basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among peoples and among nations.

To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people.

Any failure traceable to arrogance or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us a grievous hurt, both at home and abroad.

Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle – with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.

Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in the newer elements of our defenses; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research – these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.

But each proposal must be weighed in light of a broader consideration; the need to maintain balance in and among national programs – balance between the private and the public economy, balance between the cost and hoped for advantages – balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between the actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.

The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their Government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well in the face of threat and stress.

But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise.

Of these, I mention two only.

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system – ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society’s future, we – you and I, and our government – must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without asking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war – as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years – I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.

Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But, so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.

So – in this my last good night to you as your President – I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and peace. I trust that in that service you find some things worthy; as for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future.

You and I – my fellow citizens – need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nations’ great goals.

To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America’s prayerful and continuing aspiration:

We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.

Now, on Friday noon, I am to become a private citizen. I am proud to do so. I look forward to it.

Thank you, and good night.

Source: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/ike.htm

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3-25-10

There was a time when the pen was mightier than the sword. That was a time when people believed in truth and regarded truth as an independent power and not as an auxiliary for government, class, race, ideological, personal, or financial interest.

Image via Wikipedia

Today, Americans are ruled by propaganda. Americans have little regard for truth, little access to it, and little ability to recognize it.

Truth is an unwelcome entity. It is disturbing. It is off limits. Those who speak it run the risk of being branded “anti-American,” “anti-semite” or “conspiracy theorist.”

Truth is an inconvenience for government and for the interest groups whose campaign contributions control government.

Truth is an inconvenience for prosecutors who want convictions, not the discovery of innocence or guilt.

Truth is inconvenient for ideologues.

Today, many whose goal once was the discovery of truth are now paid handsomely to hide it. “Free market economists” are paid to sell offshoring to the American people. High-productivity, high value-added American jobs are denigrated as dirty, old industrial jobs. Relicts from long ago, we are best shed of them. Their place has been taken by “the New Economy,” a mythical economy that allegedly consists of high-tech white collar jobs in which Americans innovate and finance activities that occur offshore. All Americans need in order to participate in this “new economy” are finance degrees from Ivy League universities, and then they will work on Wall Street at million dollar jobs.

Economists who were once respectable took money to contribute to this myth of “the New Economy.”

And not only economists sell their souls for filthy lucre. Recently we have had reports of medical doctors who, for money, have published in peer-reviewed journals concocted “studies” that hype this or that new medicine produced by pharmaceutical companies that paid for the “studies.”

The Council of Europe is investigating the drug companies’ role in hyping a false swine flu pandemic in order to gain billions of dollars in sales of the vaccine.

The media helped the US military hype its recent Marja offensive in Afghanistan, describing Marja as a city of 80,000 under Taliban control. It turns out that Marja is not urban but a collection of village farms.

And there is the global warming scandal, in which NGOs. the UN, and the nuclear industry colluded in concocting a doomsday scenario in order to create profit in pollution.

Wherever one looks, truth has fallen to money.

Wherever money is insufficient to bury the truth, ignorance, propaganda, and short memories finish the job.

I remember when, following CIA director William Colby‘s testimony before the Church Committee in the mid-1970s, presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan issued executive orders preventing the CIA and U.S. black-op groups from assassinating foreign leaders. In 2010 the US Congress was told by Dennis Blair, head of national intelligence, that the US now assassinates its own citizens in addition to foreign leaders.

When Blair told the House Intelligence Committee that US citizens no longer needed to be arrested, charged, tried, and convicted of a capital crime, just murdered on suspicion alone of being a “threat,” he wasn’t impeached. No investigation pursued. Nothing happened. There was no Church Committee. In the mid-1970s the CIA got into trouble for plots to kill Castro. Today it is American citizens who are on the hit list. Whatever objections there might be don’t carry any weight. No one in government is in any trouble over the assassination of U.S. citizens by the U.S. government.

As an economist, I am astonished that the American economics profession has no awareness whatsoever that the U.S. economy has been destroyed by the offshoring of U.S. GDP to overseas countries. U.S. corporations, in pursuit of absolute advantage or lowest labor costs and maximum CEO “performance bonuses,” have moved the production of goods and services marketed to Americans to China, India, and elsewhere abroad. When I read economists describe offshoring as free trade based on comparative advantage, I realize that there is no intelligence or integrity in the American economics profession.

Intelligence and integrity have been purchased by money. The transnational or global U.S. corporations pay multi-million dollar compensation packages to top managers, who achieve these “performance awards” by replacing U.S. labor with foreign labor. While Washington worries about “the Muslim threat,” Wall Street, U.S. corporations and “free market” shills destroy the U.S. economy and the prospects of tens of millions of Americans.

Americans, or most of them, have proved to be putty in the hands of the police state.

Americans have bought into the government’s claim that security requires the suspension of civil liberties and accountable government. Astonishingly, Americans, or most of them, believe that civil liberties, such as habeas corpus and due process, protect “terrorists,” and not themselves. Many also believe that the Constitution is a tired old document that prevents government from exercising the kind of police state powers necessary to keep Americans safe and free.

Most Americans are unlikely to hear from anyone who would tell them any different.

I was associate editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal. I was Business Week’s first outside columnist, a position I held for 15 years. I was columnist for a decade for Scripps Howard News Service, carried in 300 newspapers. I was a columnist for the Washington Times and for newspapers in France and Italy and for a magazine in Germany. I was a contributor to the New York Times and a regular feature in the Los Angeles Times. Today I cannot publish in, or appear on, the American “mainstream media.”

For the last six years I have been banned from the “mainstream media.” My last column in the New York Times appeared in January, 2004, coauthored with Democratic U.S. Senator Charles Schumer representing New York. We addressed the offshoring of U.S. jobs. Our op-ed article produced a conference at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. and live coverage by C-Span. A debate was launched. No such thing could happen today.

For years, I was a mainstay at the Washington Times, producing credibility for the Moony newspaper as a Business Week columnist, former Wall Street Journal editor, and former Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. But when I began criticizing Bush’s wars of aggression, the order came down to Mary Lou Forbes to cancel my column.

The American corporate media does not serve the truth. It serves the government and the interest groups that empower the government.

America’s fate was sealed when the public and the anti-war movement bought the government’s 9/11 conspiracy theory. The government’s account of 9/11 is contradicted by much evidence. Nevertheless, this defining event of our time, which has launched the US on interminable wars of aggression and a domestic police state, is a taboo topic for investigation in the media. It is pointless to complain of war and a police state when one accepts the premise upon which they are based.

These trillion dollar wars have created financing problems for Washington’s deficits and threaten the U.S. dollar’s role as world reserve currency. The wars and the pressure that the budget deficits put on the dollar’s value have put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block. Former Goldman Sachs chairman and U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is after these protections for the elderly. Fed chairman Bernanke is also after them. The Republicans are after them as well. These protections are called “entitlements” as if they are some sort of welfare that people have not paid for in payroll taxes all their working lives.

With over 21 per cent unemployment as measured by the methodology of 1980, with American jobs, GDP, and technology having been given to China and India, with war being Washington’s greatest commitment, with the dollar over-burdened with debt, with civil liberty sacrificed to the “war on terror,” the liberty and prosperity of the American people have been thrown into the trash bin of history.

The militarism of the U.S. and Israeli states, and Wall Street and corporate greed, will now run their course. As the pen is censored and its might extinguished, I am signing off.

Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury.

His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press.

http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/CounterPunch_Books.html

He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts03242010.html

Paul Craig Roberts: How The Law Was Lost

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Christian was born in Brooklyn, New York, to British and American parents. He grew up in Africa and in England, where he earned his B.A. and Ph.D. at Oxford University.

Translated into French (France) by Joel Bomane
Reviewed by Timothée Parrique

Subsequently Dr. Christian taught at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia for thirty years before moving to San Diego State University in 2002. Originally a historian of Russia who wrote several books on that subject, including a history of vodka, Christian has in recent years become interested in writing history, as he puts it, “on very large scales.” To this end, he has developed a World History course informally entitled “Big History” which tells the story of the universe – the entire universe, from the moment of the Big Bang 13 billion years ago to the present day.

Using this novel approach, Dr. Christian structures the course to reflect, roughly, the relatively minuscule role played by the human race in the Earth’s overall development: homo sapiens does not appear until more than midway through a 15-week semester. Dr. Christian’s book Maps of Time, published by the University of California Press, mirrors the content of the course.

Dr. Christian’s presentation of Big History was recently made into a 48 lecture course (30 minutes each) for The Teaching Company.

Bill Gates presented David Christian at the TED 2011 Conference in Long Beach, CA. At that time, Dr. Christian announced his initiative, The Big History Project, to teach big history to secondary school students in Australia and the United States. He is currently serving as President of the International Big History Association.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

PUBLICATIONS TIMELINE:

http://worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n96-115443

THE GREAT COURSES:

Big History: The Big Bang, Life on Earth, and the Rise of Humanity

David Christian weaves together a story that helps explain how the universe gradually built greater and greater complexity and reveals what makes humans special. Learn more at the Big History Project.

The post Dr. David Christian Big History appeared first on OBRA MAESTRA.

Born 1977 (age 33–34)
New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
Residence Mountain View, California

Education Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard Business School
Occupation Educator

Website: khanacademy.org

Salman Khan (Bengali: সলমান খান, born 1977) is an American educator and founder of the Khan Academy, a free online education platform and not-for-profit organization. He has produced over 2200 popular videos elucidating a wide spectrum of concepts, mainly focusing on mathematics and the sciences, in his home. His official channel, ‘Khan Academy’ has, as of March 2011, attracted more than 45 million views.

TED.COM video: Traduction Francaise de la vidéo (plus bas)

About Salman Khan

In 2004, Salman Khan, a hedge fund analyst, began posting math tutorials on YouTube. Six years later, he has posted more than 2.000 tutorials, which are viewed nearly 100,000 times around the world…

About this talk

Salman Khan talks about how and why he created the remarkable Khan Academy, a carefully structured series of educational videos offering complete curricula in math and, now, other subjects. He shows the power of interactive exercises, and calls for teachers to consider flipping the traditional classroom script — give students video lectures to watch at home, and do “homework” in the classroom with the teacher available to help.

Note: French Translation – Traduction Francaise de la vidéo

Salman Khan parle du pourquoi et du comment de la création de la remarquable Khan Academy, une collection soigneusement structurée de vidéos éducatives qui offrent un programme complet en mathématiques, et, maintenant, dans d’autres domaines. Il démontre le pouvoir des exercices interactifs, et appelle les enseignants à réviser le contenu d’une classe traditionnelle — en donnant aux étudiants des conférences vidéos à regarder à la maison, et en faisant les “devoirs” dans la salle de classe avec l’enseignant disponible pour apporter de l’aide.

Translated into French (France) by Hugo Wagner
Reviewed by Joel Bomane

Note: Cliquez sur “View Subtitles” et faire le choix “French”…afin d’accéder à la Traduction française.

Background

Salman Khan was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana by two immigrant parents from Barisal, Bangladesh and Calcutta, India. Khan was valedictorian of his high school class and attained a perfect score in the math portion of his SATs. Khan holds three degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: a BS in mathematics, a BS in electrical engineering and computer science, and an MS in electrical engineering and computer science. He also holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Khan Academy

In late 2004, Khan began tutoring his cousin, Nadia, in mathematics over the internet using Yahoo!’s Doodle notepad. When other relatives and friends sought his tutelage, he decided it would be more practical and beneficial to distribute the tutorials on YouTube where he created an account on 16 November 2006. Their popularity on the video sharing website and the testimonials of appreciative students prompted Khan to quit his job as a hedge fund analyst in late 2009 to focus on developing his YouTube channel, ‘Khan Academy’, full-time.

His videos proved popular, attracting on average more than 20,000 hits each. Students from around the world have been attracted to Khan’s concise, practical, and relaxed teaching method.

Khan outlined his mission as to ‘accelerate learning for students of all ages. With this in mind, we want to share our content with whoever may find it useful.’ Khan also plans to extend his ‘free school’ to cover topics such as English and history. Programs are being undertaken to use Khan’s videos to teach those in isolated areas of Africa and Asia. He delineated his motives:

With so little effort on my own part, I can empower an unlimited amount of people for all time. I can’t imagine a better use of my time.

Bill Gates on Salman Khan and Khan Academy.

http://www.thegatesnotes.com/TED/Speakers-Topics/Sal-Khan

Thanks to Wikipedia.com, Ted.com,  The Gates Notes

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NOTE: pour la FRANCE, cf.

http://www.criirad.org/

http://www.corinnelepage.fr/index.php/2011/03/22/nucleaire-et-desinformation

Foot-dragging in recognizing obvious problems and the resultant delays in preventing exposure and mitigating the effects lies at the door of nuclear power advocates more interested in preserving the status quo than in helping millions of innocent people who are suffering through no fault of their own. – Nesterenko, A. V., Nesterenko, V. B. and Yablokov, Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment.

 

© AP/NTV
Smoke ascends from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant’s Unit 3 on Monday 14 after a second hydrogen explosion.

We have had conflicting reports from mainstream news sources regarding the nuclear emergency in Fukushima, Japan. Some say that it is not nearly as bad as the Chernobyl catastrophe, others say that it will be much worse than Chernobyl. What are we to make of this? Who can we trust?

With the current state of affairs, I think it is reasonable enough to expect and prepare for the worst, hope for the best and take what comes. It is with this state of mind that I set out to review the available literature about accessible and alternative therapies in case of nuclear disasters as well as data about the Chernobyl catastrophe. What I found was shocking enough but know that there is also well-documented essential knowledge that can protect you and your loved ones.

This article includes an overview of the publication Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment which appeared in Annals of the New York Academy (2009). The authors – Alexey V. Nesterenko (Institute of Radiation Safety (BELRAD), Belarus) and Alexey V. Yablokov (Russian Academy of Sciences) along with Vassily B. Nesterenko – synthesized information from several thousand cited scientific papers and other materials, including successful and widely available natural therapies that worked. There are also other numerous studies about alternative effective treatments in case of radiation. It will give you a clear idea of what to expect and what you can do in case of a nuclear disaster in Japan.

This is a matter that concerns all of us as no country in the world is capable of providing complete protection from radiation for those living in affected areas and from eating locally grown foods that are contaminated with radiation.

A Lesson from History or What to Expect: The Chernobyl Catastrophe

We have to look only as far back to Chernobyl to understand why we are having so many conflicting reports and little information about what is happening in Japan.

In the last days of spring and the beginning of summer of 1986, radioactivity was released from the Chernobyl power plant and fell upon hundreds of millions of people. The resulting levels of radionuclides were hundreds of times higher than that from the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

The normal lives of tens of millions were destroyed. Today, more than 6 million people live on land with dangerous levels of contamination. More than 20 years after the catastrophe, due to the natural migration of radionuclides, the dangerous consequences in these areas have not decreased, but have actually increased and will continue to do so for many years to come.

Authorities typically provided the least possible financial means for detoxification therapies and disaster control while they denied the facts and documented data concerning dangerous levels of radiation among the population, in foods and the environment.

Sound familiar? This attitude has been the norm rather than the exception.

As a result of the catastrophe, 40% of Europe was contaminated with dangerous radioactivity. Asia and North America were also exposed to significant amounts of radioactive fallout. According to Yablokov et al., the claim by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), and several other groups that the Chernobyl radioactive fallout added “only” 2% to the natural radioactive background ignores several facts:

“First, many territories continue to have dangerously high levels of radiation. Second, high levels of radiation were spread far and wide in the first weeks after the catastrophe. Third, there will be decades of chronic, low-level contamination after the catastrophe. Fourth, every increase in nuclear radiation has an effect on both somatic [body] and reproductive cells of all living things.”

 

Another important lesson from the Chernobyl experience is that experts and organizations tied to the nuclear industry have dismissed and ignored the consequences of the catastrophe. It was only after 8 or 9 years from the catastrophe that the medical authorities began to finally admit the universal increase in cataracts among the population. The same occurred with thyroid cancer, leukemia and organic central nervous system disorders.

In addition to that, it is known that the percentage of food products with radioactive contamination in excess of official permissible levels did not decrease for 14 years after the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe. On the contrary, this percentage began to increase in 1996. In spite of official secrecy, the full picture of Chernobyl food contamination in countries as far away as the United States has finally begun to emerge:

“Many people suffer from continuing chronic low-dose radiation 23 years after the catastrophe, owing primarily to consumption of radioactively contaminated food. An important consideration is the fact that given an identical diet, a child’s radiation exposure is three- to fivefold higher than that of an adult. Since more than 90% of the radiation burden nowadays is due to Caesium-137, which has a half-life of about 30 years, contaminated areas will continue to be dangerously radioactive for roughly the next three centuries.

 

“When children have the same menu as adults, they get up to five times higher dose burdens from locally produced foodstuffs because of their lower weight and more active processes of metabolism. Children living in rural villages have a dose burden five to six times higher than city children of the same age.

“Daily exposure to small amounts of radionuclides (mostly Cs-137) is virtually unavoidable as they get into the body with food (up to 94%), with drinking water (up to 5%), and through the air (about 1%). Accumulation of radionuclides in the body is dangerous, primarily for children, and for those living in the contaminated territories where there are high levels of Cs-137 in local foodstuffs. The incorporation of radionuclides is now the primary cause of the deterioration of public health in the contaminated territories.

“Experience has shown that existing official radioactive monitoring systems are inadequate (not only in the countries of the Former Soviet Union). Generally, the systems cover territories selectively, do not measure each person, and often conceal important facts when releasing information. The common factor among all governments is to minimize spending for which they are not directly responsible, such as the Chernobyl meltdown, which occurred 23 years ago. Thus officials are not eager to obtain objective data of radioactive contamination of communities, individuals, or food.

“We have to take responsibility not only for our own health, but for the health of future generations of humans, plants, and animals, which can be harmed by mutations resulting from exposure to even the smallest amount of radioactive contamination. [Nesterenko, A. V., Nesterenko, V. B. and Yablokov]

Chernobyl Disaster

All people living in territories heavily contaminated by Chernobyl fallout continue to be exposed to low doses of chronic radiation. Without special equipment to identify levels of environmental contamination, it is impossible to know what radionuclide levels are in our food and water or have been incorporated into our bodies.

The radioactive elements Caesium-137 (Cs-137), Strontium-90 (Sr-90), Plutonium (Pu), and Americium (Am) released in Chernobyl concentrate in the roots of plants and it is now known that they will continue to be mobilized for decades, even up to several hundreds of years into the future. Agricultural products have contained – and will continue to contain – radioactivity in all of the Northern Hemisphere countries contaminated by Chernobyl.

The level of radionuclide incorporation in our bodies varies according to each organ. In Chernobyl the most affected organs (from autopsies) were the thyroid gland, the adrenal glands, the pancreas, the thymus, the skeletal muscle, the spleen, the heart and the liver (in decreasing order).

The thyroid gland is the most affected since radioactive iodine (Iodine-131) binds to it, making supplemental non-radioactive iodine a key therapy in the case of nuclear radiation. The natural iodine will bind to the thyroid, blocking the radioactive iodine from binding to it. The affliction of the adrenals is worthy of attention, since there were many “new” diseases that emerged after the Chernobyl disaster whose symptoms resemble those of adrenal fatigue.

The total Chernobyl death toll for the period from 1987 to 2004 has reached nearly 417,000 in other parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and nearly 170,000 in North America, accounting for nearly 824,000 deaths worldwide. This number of Chernobyl victims will continue to increase for several generations.

A Note on Radiation

Radiation poisoning damages organ tissues by excessive exposure to ionizing radiation. Ionizing radiation consists of particles or electromagnetic waves that are energetic enough to detach electrons from atoms or molecules, thus ionizing them. Direct ionization from the effects of single particles or single photons produces free radicals, which are atoms or molecules containing unpaired electrons, and which tend to be especially chemically reactive due to their electronic structure.

This means that they become chemically unstable and highly reactive ions as free radicals are formed. These unstable metabolic by-products strive to stabilize by ‘stealing’ a replacement electron from any neighboring molecule, leaving even more damaged molecules in their wake. This is how free radicals in our bodies are produced and cause inflammation, a process that is best known as oxidative stress, oxidative damage or lipid peroxidation. Oxidation can even cause debilitating changes to your DNA. This is why anti-oxidants are so important. Antioxidants help to counteract or neutralize the free radicals before they can damage our healthy cells by lending a hand (actually, an electron) when stabilization is needed. This is the reason why we are fond of so many antioxidants such as vitamin C, E, carotenoids, resveratrol, taurine, coenzyme Q10 and melatonin, to name but a few.

Medical Syndromes

Nuclear or ionizing radiation that penetrates the body can affect your body in a number of different ways, and the adverse health effects of extreme radiation exposure may not be apparent for many years.

Among the specific health disorders associated with Chernobyl radiation there was increased morbidity and prevalence of the following groups of diseases:

• Circulatory system (owing primarily to radioactive destruction of the endothelium, the internal lining of the blood vessels).

 

• Endocrine system (especially nonmalignant thyroid problems).
• Immune system (“Chernobyl AIDS,” increased incidence and seriousness of all illnesses).
• Respiratory system.
• Urogenital tract and reproductive disorders.
• Musculoskeletal system (including pathologic changes in the structure and composition of bones: osteopenia and osteoporosis).
• Central nervous system (changes in frontal, temporal, and occipitoparietal lobes of the brain, leading to diminished intelligence and behavioral and mental disorders).
• Eyes (cataracts, vitreous destruction, refraction anomalies, and conjunctive disorders).
• Digestive tract.
• Congenital malformations and anomalies (including previously rare multiple defects of limbs and head).
• Thyroid cancer (All forecasts concerning this cancer have been erroneous; Chernobyl-related thyroid cancers have rapid onset and aggressive development, striking both children and adults. After surgery the person becomes dependent on replacement hormone medication for life.)
• Leukemia (blood cancers) not only in children and liquidators, but in the general adult population of contaminated territories.
• Other malignant neoplasms.

[Nesterenko, A. V., Nesterenko, V. B. and Yablokov, Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment.]

Other health consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophe include:

• Changes in the body’s biological balance, leading to increased numbers of serious illnesses owing to intestinal toxicoses, bacterial infections, and sepsis.

 

• Intensified infectious and parasitic diseases (e.g., viral hepatitis and respiratory viruses).
• Increased incidence of health disorders in children born to radiated parents (both to liquidators and to individuals who left the contaminated territories), especially those radiated in utero. These disorders, involving practically all the body’s organs and systems, also include genetic changes.
• Catastrophic state of health of liquidators (especially liquidators who worked in 1986 – 1987).
• Premature aging in both adults and children.
• Increased incidence of multiple somatic and genetic mutations.

Chernobyl actually “enriched” the medical vocabulary with such terms as “cancer rejuvenescence,” as well as three new syndromes:

• “Vegetovascular dystonia” – dysfunctional regulation of the nervous system involving cardiovascular and other organs (also called autonomic nervous system dysfunction), with clinical signs that present against a background of stress.

 

• “Incorporated long-life radionuclides” – functional and structural disorders of the cardiovascular, nervous, endocrine, reproductive, and other systems owing to absorbed radionuclides.
• “Acute inhalation lesions of the upper respiratory tract” – a combination of a rhinitis, throat tickling, dry cough, difficulty breathing, and shortness of breath owing to the effect of inhaled radionuclides, including “hot particles.”

[Nesterenko, A. V., Nesterenko, V. B. and Yablokov, Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment.]

Several other new syndromes, reflecting increased incidence of some illnesses, appeared after Chernobyl. Among them:

• “Chronic fatigue syndrome” – excessive and unrelieved fatigue, fatigue without obvious cause, periodic depression, memory loss, diffuse muscular and joint pains, chills and fever, frequent mood changes, cervical lymph node sensitivity, weight loss; it is also often associated with immune system dysfunction and CNS disorders.

 

• “Lingering radiating illness syndrome” – a combination of excessive fatigue, dizziness, trembling, and back pain.
• “Early aging syndrome” – a divergence between physical and chronological age with illnesses characteristic of the elderly occurring at an early age.

Specific Chernobyl syndromes such as “radiation in utero“, “Chernobyl AIDS”, “Chernobyl heart”, “Chernobyl limbs,” and others await more detailed and definitive medical descriptions.

But deterioration of public health (especially of children) in the Chernobyl-contaminated territories 23 years after the catastrophe is not due to psychological stress or radiophobia, or from resettlement… it is mostly and primarily due to Chernobyl irradiation. Other than the first powerful shock in 1986 there is the continual chronic low-dose and low-dose-rate radionuclide exposure.

Psychological factors (“radiation phobia”) simply have no bearing on the pathologies described because morbidity continued to increase for some years after the catastrophe, whereas radiation concerns have decreased.

Infections on the Rise

There is evidence of increased incidence and severity of diseases characterized by intestinal toxicoses, gastroenteritis, bacterial sepsis, viral hepatitis, and respiratory viruses in areas contaminated by Chernobyl radionuclides (Batyan and Kozharskaya, 1993; Kapytonova and Kryvitskaya, 1994; Nesterenko et al., 1993; Busuet at al., 2002; and others). Genetic instability markedly increased in the contaminated territories and has resulted in increased sensitivity to viral and other types of infections (Vorobtsova et al., 1995).

 

© Unknown
Chernobyl children

Whether activation and dispersion of dangerous infections is due to mutational changes in the microorganisms (which render them more pathogenic), impaired immunological defenses in the populations, or a combination of both, has not yet been fully answered.

One gram of soil contains some 2,500,000,000 microorganisms (bacteria, microfungi, and protozoa). Up to 3 kg of the mass of an adult human body is made up of bacteria, viruses, and microfungi. In spite of the fact that these represent such important and fundamentally live ecosystems, there are only scarce data on the various microbiological consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophe. – Nesterenko, A. V., Nesterenko, V. B. and Yablokov

 

There was activation of retroviruses (Kavsan et al., 1992). Tuberculosis became more virulent in the more contaminated areas of Belarus (Chernetsky and Osynovsky, 1993; Belookaya, 1993; Borschevsky et al., 1996). From 1993 to 1997 the hepatitis viruses B, C, D, and G became noticeably activated in the heavily contaminated areas of Belarus (Zhavoronok et al., 1998a,b). Herpes viruses were activated in the heavily contaminated territories of Belarus 6 to 7 years after the catastrophe (Matveev, 1993; Matveev et al., 1995; Voropaev et al., 1996). Among soil bacteria that most actively accumulate Cs-137 are Agrobacterium sp., Enterobacter sp. and Klebsiella sp. Sharp reduction in the abundance of healthy gut bacteria (bifidus bacteria) and the prevalence of microbes of the class Escherichia; in particular, a sharp increase in E. coli has been noted in the intestines of evacuee children living in Ukraine.

All microorganisms (viruses, bacteria, fungi, and protozoa) and microbiological communities as a whole undergo rapid changes after any additional irradiation. The mechanism of such changes is well known: inclusion and increase in the frequency of mutations by natural selection and preservation of beneficial novel genes that for whatever reason appear more viable under the new conditions. This microevolutionary mechanism has been activated in all radioactively contaminated areas and leads to activation of old and the occurrence of new forms of viruses and bacteria. All but a few microorganisms that have been studied in Chernobyl-affected territories underwent rapid changes in heavily contaminated areas.

 

Our contemporary knowledge is too limited to understand even the main consequences of the inevitable radioactive-induced genetic changes among the myriad of viruses, bacteria, protozoa, and fungi that inhabit the intestines, lungs, blood, organs, and cells of human beings. The strong association between carcinogenesis and viruses (papilloma virus, hepatitis virus, Helicobacter pylori, Epstein – Barr virus, Kaposi’s sarcoma, and herpes virus) provides another reason why the cancer rate increased in areas contaminated by Chernobyl irradiation (for a review, see Sreelekha et al., 2003).

Not only cancer, but also many other illnesses are connected with viruses and bacteria. Radiologically induced pathologic changes in the microflora in humans can increase susceptibility to infections, inflammatory diseases of bacterial and viral origin (influenza, chronic intestinal diseases, pyelonephritis, cystitis, vaginitis, endocolitis, asthma, dermatitis, and ischemia), and various pathologies of pregnancy.

The long-term consequences for microbial biota may be worse than what we understand today.

- Nesterenko, A. V., Nesterenko, V. B. and Yablokov

A Note on Environmental Consequences

All the initial forecasts of rapid clearance or decay of the Chernobyl radionuclides from ecosystems were wrong, it is now known that they are taking much longer than predicted because they recirculate. The overall state of the contamination in water, air, and soil appears to fluctuate greatly and the dynamics of Sr-90, Cs-137, Pu, and Am contamination still present surprises to Chernobyl scientists.

“As a result of the accumulation of Cs-137, Sr-90, Pu, and Am in the root soil layer, radionuclides have continued to build in plants over recent years. Moving with water to the above-ground parts of plants, the radionuclides (which earlier had disappeared from the surface) concentrate in the edible components, resulting in increased levels of internal irradiation and dose rate in people, despite decreasing total amounts of radionuclides from natural disintegration over time.

 

“In 1986 the levels of irradiation in plants and animals in Western Europe, North America, the Arctic, and eastern Asia were sometimes hundreds and even thousands of times above acceptable norms. The initial pulse of high-level irradiation followed by exposure to chronic low-level radionuclides has resulted in morphological, physiological, and genetic disorders in all the living organisms in contaminated areas that have been studied – plants, mammals, birds, amphibians, fish, invertebrates, bacteria, and viruses.

“What happened to voles and frogs in the Chernobyl zone shows what can happen to humans in coming generations: increasing mutation rates, increasing morbidity and mortality, reduced life expectancy, decreased intensity of reproduction, and changes in male/female sex ratios.

[Nesterenko, A. V., Nesterenko, V. B. and Yablokov, Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment.]

Proven Effective Detox Protocols

The therapies described here are widely available as over-the-counter supplements in most countries.

Green stuff and other sea food

In Chernobyl, 5 grams of spirulina for 45 days was used successfully against radiation poisoning. Chlorella algae also has shown radio-protective effects. A study showed that spirulina reduced urine radioactivity levels by 50% after only 20 days and so the Institute of Radiation Safety in Belarus developed a special program to treat 100 children every 20 days with spirulina. Furthermore, the healing occurred during the continuous presence of radiation as well as the presence of radiation contaminated food and water sources. In particular, spirulina given to children with accumulated high doses of radionuclides reduced radioactive cesium. No side effects were registered. Only buy spirulina or chlorella from a certified heavy-metal free source.

Studies on sea vegetables with sodium alginate have shown that they selectively bound with radioactive strontium and eliminated it from the body. Sodium alginate is found in many seaweeds, especially kelp. Sodium alginate binds tightly to such substances as strontium, calcium, barium, cadmium and radium. Some seaweeds are contaminated with lead or arsenic so you only want to consume seaweed that is deep ocean harvested or has been tested to be free of metal toxicity (such as kelp from the west coast of South Africa).

Black and green tea have shown radioprotective effects when taken either before or after exposure to radiation. This anti-radiation effect was observed in several Japanese studies, and studies from China also suggest that the ingredients in tea are radioactive antagonists. Tea catechins are associated with antioxidant properties and can have radio-protective effects when taken both before and after irradiation.

Kelp also has organic iodine which will saturate the thyroid so radioactive iodine will not be absorbed. You can take 1 or 2 tsp or 5 to 10 tablets.

Pectin

Pectin is one of the most effective means of protecting against radiation when consumption of contaminated food becomes unavoidable. Pectin preparations, along with vitamins and minerals, have demonstrated a high efficiency in eliminating incorporated radionuclides. The recommended dose is 5 grams once or twice a day for one month, 4 times a year.

“In 1999 BELRAD together with “Hermes” Hmbh (Munich, Germany) developed a composition of apple pectin additives known as Vitapect® powder, made up of pectin (concentration 18 – 20%) supplemented with vitamins B1, B2, B6, B12, C, E, beta-carotene, folic acid; the trace elements K, Zn, Fe, and Ca; and flavoring. BELRAD has been producing this food additive, which has been approved by the Belarussian Ministry of Health, since 2000.

 

“The pectin additive Vitapect with clean nutrition appears to be 50% more effective in decreasing the levels of Cs-137 than clean nutrition alone (Nesterenko et al., 2004).

“A clinical study of 94 children, 7 to 17 years of age, divided into two groups according to their initial level of Cs-137 contamination determined by whole body counting (WBC) and given Vitapect orally for 16 days (5 g twice a day) revealed both a significant decrease in incorporated Cs-137 and marked improvement in their electrocardiograms.

“From 1996 to 2007 a total of more than 160,000 Belarussian children received pectin food additives during 18 to 25 days of treatment (5g twice a day). As a result, levels of Cs-137 in children’s organs decreased after each course of pectin additives by an average of 30 to 40%.

“Based on long-term experience, the BELRAD Institute recommends that all children living in radioactive contaminated territories receive a quadruple course of oral pectin food additives annually along with their conventional food ration. Eleven years of BELRAD’s activities in controlling levels of incorporated Cs-137 in more than 327,000 children has not caused alarm in the population or radiophobia and has led to the spread of knowledge concerning radiation protection and an increased sense of personal responsibility for one’s health.”

[Nesterenko, A. V., Nesterenko, V. B. and Yablokov, Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment.]

Antioxidants and Sulfur Compounds

DMSO is available in various formats.

Sulfur has a long history of use as an antidote for acute exposure to radioactive material. Antioxidants have the capacity to reduce toxic effects of radiation in our bodies. Early research identified sulfur-containing antioxidants as among those with the most beneficial therapeutic effects.

Dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) is the classical sulfur compound and a powerful anti-oxidant, exactly what we need for detoxification and protection from radiation. A Japanese study showed that even low concentrations of DMSO had radio-protective effects through the facilitation of DNA double-strand break repair, providing protection against radiation damage at all cellular levels in the whole body. The information and experience on DMSO is so fascinating that it can be described only as miraculous. Due to its importance, we have dedicated an entire article to it. See DMSO: The Antidote for Radiation Poisoning.

The use of anti-oxidants such as alpha lipoic acid, Vitamin E, Vitamin C (ascorbic acid), vitamin B, selenium, N-acetylcysteine and other sulfur compounds becomes crucial. It is important to use several of them, as they work best as a team. In addition to that, individual anti-oxidants can act as pro-oxidants when they themselves are oxidized, therefore individual anti-oxidants could enhance the progression of post-irradiation damage to tissues and organs. Several studies have shown the importance of anti-oxidant supplementation to be an effective therapy against radiation hazards.

Alpha Lipoic Acid (ALA) is a crucial supplement. It is water and fat soluble and it is also capable of crossing the blood-brain barrier. This means that it is capable of reaching and preventing damage in our fatty tissues, our brains, and every single organ for that matter. ALA also repairs DNA. It is a good heavy metal chelator, it protects the heart and brain from cell death, stimulates the regeneration of liver tissue and is rapidly absorbed high up into the digestive tract. ALA recycles other antioxidants such as vitamin C, vitamin E, and glutathione which is an indispensable antioxidant for detoxification and is synthesized within the mitochondrion. Glutathione may not reliably be augmented by oral supplementation because it cannot always pass over the mitochondrial membrane, therefore it must be synthesized within the mitochondrion. ALA and its metabolite DHLA provoke the cell to produce significantly higher levels of glutathione (even by 70%). So if the glutathione levels in a cell are kept up to a satisfactory level by ALA, even if the cell is poisoned, the cell will have a better chance of recovering instead of dying. It is of critical importance in order to reduce or reverse radiation-induced oxidative damage after radiotherapy. The recommended dose of ALA is 100mg twice a day with meals, although others have used higher doses of between 300mg and 600mg. A study conducted on some of those who worked on the Chernobyl clean-up operation 10 years after the accident showed that 600 mg of lipoic acid for two months was able to normalize many, but not all, of their lab abnormalities.

The anti-oxidant N-acetyl cysteine (NAC), as a source of glutathione and sulfur, is an excellent supplement to take. Studies have suggested that it might prove efficient in saving individuals exposed to lethal and sub-lethal radiation doses with few or no side effects on individuals exposed to lower doses. It is also widely available. Around 500mg twice a day is a good dose, although some have used with great success around 5 grams of NAC (per day, in a hospital setting) in 7 day cycles in order to detoxify heavy metals.

Other important supplements include magnesium and vitamin C. For more information on the many forms of magnesium and dose recommendation, see here. Calcium and magnesium both help your body to pass off Strontium 90, but make sure to take enough magnesium in order to properly metabolize the levels of calcium.

For vitamin C (ascorbic acid), 1-4 grams as a daily maintenance is a good dose, but during detox or acute exposure, more will probably be required. Vitamin C cannot only protect against radiation but also repair damage from previous exposure. It will also be very handy in case of infections. You can try taking 4 grams of vitamin C 3 times per day. If you have diarrhea or abdominal bloating, cut out one dose. If there are no signs of intestinal “gurgles”, you can increase your dose throughout the day.

Consider taking also a good B complex which help to normalize the red and white blood cell count, since the destruction of white blood cells by radiation can last for extended periods of time.

Vitamin E 800-1000 IU per day and selenium 200 mcg per day are also important since radiation studies support evidence for the synergistic effects of vitamin E and Selenium in protecting from oxidative damage.

Zinc has been successfully used to chelate americium-241 from a nuclear accident victim. Natural zinc will also help the body eliminate several toxic heavy metals including cadmium, aluminum and lead. The recommended dose is 50 mg per day. You might want to supplement yourself with a good mineral complex in order to avoid deficiencies or imbalances brought on by increasing your zinc intake.

If there is a deficiency in potassium , radionuclides like cesium-137, cesium-134, potassium-40 and potassium-42, are absorbed through selective uptake. Too much potassium supplementation can be dangerous, so make sure to follow label instructions.

Melatonin, other than being our “sleeping hormone”, also has powerful antioxidant properties. Animals subjected to whole-body irradiation and given melatonin exhibited increased survival and the protection against radiation-induced oxidative damage was apparent throughout the body. More importantly, melatonin administered orally results in higher circulating levels and more rapidly increasing tissue concentrations. As soon as an exposure occurs, depending on the wind direction after radiation explosion, people living at a distance could protect themselves by oral administration of melatonin, which can be ingested repeatedly as required.

Curcumin is a naturally occurring compound contained in the spice turmeric. Curcumin has been found to have antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and anti-tumor activity in a variety of animal models of human diseases including radiation-induced pulmonary diseases.

Breathing and meditation techniques

The Éiriú Eolas Healing and Rejuvenation program is a key ingredient in detoxing

The proven and effective Éiriú Eolas program includes well-known stress control techniques that stimulate the vagus nerve, which then activates the parasympathetic system which is a powerful anti-inflammatory system. It also includes well known emotional releasing techniques. It can be applied to improve symptoms associated with breathing difficulties, autoimmune diseases and mood problems. It reduces oxidative stress with an improvement of the overall antioxidant status, and thus it has application in numerous diseases including, chronic radioactive exposure.

There is no question but that social and economic factors are dire for those sick from radiation. Sickness, deformed and impaired children, death of family and friends, loss of home and treasured possessions, loss of work, and dislocation are serious financial and mental stresses. – Alexey V. Yablokov, Vassily B. Nesterenko, and Alexey V. Nesterenko.

 

During the breathing exercises and the meditation portion of the program, levels of the anti-stress hormones GABA, melatonin, and serotonin are increased, and levels of the stress hormones cortisol and norepinephrine are decreased. Learn more about the many benefits of this program here. The program is available for free at eebreathe.com.

Diet

There are several simple cooking techniques that decrease radionuclides: boil foods several times and discard the water, wash food thoroughly, soak some foods and discard the water, avoid the peels of fruits and vegetables, salt and pickle some foods but throw away the pickling juice! Avoid eating strong broths, use butter, etc.

Remember that another way of boosting your body’s detox capabilities and overall anti-oxidant levels is through the foods we eat which then become key to survival in these stressful times. Being on a detox diet is crucial to regaining health in a toxic environment. Our extensive experience and research shows that those on a no grain/low carb (no gluten) and non dairy diet fare MUCH better.

Chronic ailments often involves an imbalanced immune/defense system in which food sensitivities are involved even if they are not the cause of the problem, leading in turn to chronic inflammation – which translates into disease. This is why it is important to undergo an elimination diet in order to balance the body’s immune system. Some of our immune cells take 6 months to regenerate, so it can take that much time in order to see results if you are very sick. But often you can see positive results in the first two weeks on an appropriate diet, even when you can’t afford any other detox therapies. You can find the diet and how to transition to it here.

Everyone is different and it is only by testing foods that we can discern our individual problematic foods. Having said that, no one should be eating cereals or dairy products or high processed foods because the human system is simply not constructed to digest them properly. What we eat is crucial in recovering our health and it is a great healing medicine when done correctly.

Garlic and onions, being sulfur containing foods, help bind and deactivate both the radioactive isotopes and toxic metals such as cadmium, lead and mercury. The sulfur will help the kidneys and liver detoxify the body.

The most direct way of decreasing radionuclide intake is to avoid foods that are potentially heavily contaminated and to consume foodstuffs with lower levels. However, this is not easy to do because the average level of radionuclide bio-accumulation differs in each region owing to differences in soils, agricultural techniques, etc.

The Chernobyl experience tells us that soaking in water, boiling, salting and pickling foods such as vegetables can decrease the amount of radionuclides in some foods several-fold. Milk always contains high levels of radiation; processed products that reduce contamination levels, such as butter and ghee butter, are safer.

Radionuclide concentrations in the visceral organs of animals are usually significantly higher than in muscle tissue. Among visceral organs the order of decreasing levels of Cs-137 is: lung > kidney > liver > fat.

The Chernobyl experience showed that in contaminated territories the same species of fish taken from rivers and streams have significantly lower radionuclide levels than those from lakes and ponds. Plant feeding fish had three to four times lower radionuclide levels than predatory species (catfish, pike, etc.). Fishes at lower levels of the ocean (crucian, tench, etc.) had several times more contamination than fish which live in the top water layers (small fry, chub, etc.).

It is very important to avoid radionuclides in food and if they are consumed to try to eliminate them from the body as quickly as possible. In a baby, the biological half-life of Cs-137 is 14 days; for a 5-year old it is 21 days; for a 10-year old, 49 days; for teenagers, about 90 days; and for a young male, about 100 days (Nesterenko, 1997).

 

From the Chernobyl experience, the order of decreasing levels of Cs-137 were: chicken > beef > lamb > pork. Meats from older animals have more radionuclides that meat from younger ones owing to accumulation over time. Bones of young animals have more Sr-90. Eggs: shell > egg-white > yolk.

Pork and fats were not only the safest, they also prove to be a very healthy option for detox and healing purposes. For more information, see ‘I have high cholesterol, and I don’t care‘.

The biological properties of Cs-137 are similar to those of stable potassium and Rubidium, and Sr-90 and Pu are similar to calcium. These properties determine where they concentrate in the body so the use of stable elements may help to decrease the absorption of radionuclides.

Foods rich in potassium include potatoes, beets, raisins, dried apricots, bananas, tea, nuts, lemons, and dried plums. Calcium rich foods include butter and ghee butter, eggs, horseradish, green onions, turnip, parsley, dill, and spinach. Green vegetables, apples, sunflower seeds, black chokeberries are rich in iron; and Rubidium is found in red grapes.

A diet to protect against radioactive contamination should include uncontaminated fruits and vegetables, especially those rich in pectin such as apples to promote the rapid elimination of radionuclides.

Sleeping in Total Darkness

Low melatonin production leaves you not only susceptible to radiation damage, but it also leaves you vulnerable to accelerated aging, depression, weight gain. People with lower levels of melatonin have lower immune/defense function, less antioxidant activity and accelerated cancer cell proliferation, and they also tend to have more unhealthy imbalances in gut bacteria. But sleeping in total darkness is a natural way of enhancing the secretion of melatonin during the night. The room where you sleep has to be completely dark to the point of not been able to see anything. If lights seeps underneath your door, put a towel along the base. Cover your electric clock radio with something. Even the smallest light can decrease melatonin secretion, even if you’re not able to see it with your own eyes.

Miscellaneous

Natural zeolites (i.e., those found in volcanogenic sedimentary rocks) is a mineral which possesses attractive properties that contribute directly to their use in the extraction of Cs and Sr from nuclear wastes and the mitigation of radioactive fallout, but also as a dietary supplement for heavy metal detoxification. It also has anti-bacterial properties and it stimulates the immune system. It was used during successfully during Chernobyl.

Organic Germanium (Ge-132) protects cells exposed to cesium-137 without affecting cellular growth or survival. 25 mg to 100 mg per day has been typically used. (My favorite colon cleanser has organic germanium on it).

Activated charcoal has the ability to absorb and neutralize radioactive substances and some toxic materials. Researchers report that 10 grams or 1 tablespoon of charcoal can absorb about 3 to 7 grams of materials.

There are excellent articles out there focusing on iodine, clays, magnesium therapies and sodium bicarbonate. For more information, see:

Treatments for Nuclear Contamination

Iodine Treatments for Radiation Exposure

Greenmedinfo.com – Radioprotective

All this information will help you to not only protect yourself from chronic radiation exposure, but it will also help you to regain your health by improving your mood and mental functions in these crucial and stressful times.

Sources

• Bill Bodri. How to help support the body’s healing after intense radioactive or radiation exposure. Top Shape Publishing, LLC. 2004.

 

• Brown SL, Kolozsvary A, Liu J, Jenrow KA, Ryu S, Kim JH. Antioxidant diet supplementation starting 24 hours after exposure reduces radiation lethality. Radiat Res. 2010 Apr;173(4):462-8.
• Burt Berkson, M.D., PhD. The Alpha Lipoic Acid Breakthrough, New York: Three Rivers Press, 1998.
• James C. Lee, Paul A. Kinniry, Evguenia Arguiri, Matthew Serota, Stathis Kanterakis, Shampa Chatterjee, Charalambos C. Solomides, Prashanthi Javvadi, Constantinos Koumenis, Keith A. Cengel and Melpo Christofidou-Solomidou (2010) Dietary Curcumin Increases Antioxidant Defenses in Lung, Ameliorates Radiation-Induced Pulmonary Fibrosis, and Improves Survival in Mice. Radiation Research: May 2010, Vol. 173, No. 5, pp. 590-601.
• Dan Jia, Nathan A. Koonce, Robert J. Griffin, Cassie Jackson and Peter M. Corry (2010) Prevention and Mitigation of Acute Death of Mice after Abdominal Irradiation by the Antioxidant N-Acetyl-cysteine (NAC). Radiation Research: May 2010, Vol. 173, No. 5, pp. 579-589.
• Davis GD, Masilamoni JG, Arul V, Kumar MS, Baraneedharan U, Paul SF, Sakthivelu IV, Jesudason EP, Jayakumar R. Radioprotective effect of DL-alpha-lipoic acid on mice skin fibroblasts. Cell Biol Toxicol. 2009 Aug;25(4):331-40. Epub 2008 Jun 13.
• Kashino G, Liu Y, Suzuki M, Masunaga S, Kinashi Y, Ono K, Tano K, Watanabe M.An alternative mechanism for radioprotection by dimethyl sulfoxide; possible facilitation of DNA double-strand break repair. J Radiat Res (Tokyo). 2010;51(6):733-40.
• Mumpton FA. La roca magica: uses of natural zeolites in agriculture and industry.Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1999 Mar 30;96(7):3463-70.
• Nesterenko, A. B., Nesterenko, V. B. and Yablokov, A. V. (2009), Chapter II. Consequences of the Chernobyl Catastrophe for Public Health. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1181: 31 – 220. doi: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.04822.x
• Nesterenko, A. V., Nesterenko, V. B. and Yablokov, A. V. (2009), Chapter IV. Radiation Protection after the Chernobyl Catastrophe. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1181: 287 – 327. doi: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.04836.x
• Okunieff P, Swarts S, Keng P, Sun W, Wang W, Kim J, Yang S, Zhang H, Liu C, Williams JP, Huser AK, Zhang L. Antioxidants reduce consequences of radiation exposure. Adv Exp Med Biol. 2008;614:165-78. Review.
• Parcell S. Sulfur in human nutrition and applications in medicine.Altern Med Rev. 2002 Feb;7(1):22-44.
• Vijayalaxmi, Reiter RJ, Tan DX, Herman TS, Thomas CR Jr. Melatonin as a radioprotective agent: a review. Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys. 2004 Jul 1;59(3):639-53.
• Chris Wambi, Jenine Sanzari, X. Steven Wan, Manunya Nuth, James Davis, Ying-Hui Ko, Carly M. Sayers, Matthew Baran, Jeffrey H. Ware and Ann R. Kennedy (2008) Dietary Antioxidants Protect Hematopoietic Cells and Improve Animal Survival after Total-Body Irradiation. Radiation Research: April 2008, Vol. 169, No. 4, pp. 384-396.
• Weiss JF, Landauer MR. Protection against ionizing radiation by antioxidant nutrients and phytochemicals.. Toxicology. 2003 Jul 15;189(1-2):1-20.
• T. S. Wiley, Bent Formby. Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar, and Survival. Atria (2001).
• Yablokov, A. V., Nesterenko, V. B. and Nesterenko, A. V. (2009), Chapter III. Consequences of the Chernobyl Catastrophe for the Environment. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1181: 221 – 286. doi: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.04830.x

Original content © 2002-2011 by SOTT.net/Signs of the Times.  Fair Use Policy

——-

Note:

“The Japanese Nuclear Commission had the following goals set in 2003:

” The mean value of acute fatality risk by radiation exposure resultant from an accident of a nuclear installation to individuals of the public, who live in the vicinity of the site boundary of the nuclear installation, should not exceed the probability of about 1×10^6 per year (that is , at least 1 per million years)”.

That policy was designed only 8 years ago.

Their one in a million-year accident almost occurred about 8 year later (I am not even sure if it is at best a near miss).

We are clearly in the Fourth Quadrant there.” Nassim Nicholas Taleb Author of “The Black Swan”

FOOD FOR THOUGHTS: “Rule of Law”

“Bill Joy muses on what’s next”

About Bill Joy

The co-founder of Sun Microsystems, Bill Joy has, in recent years, turned

his attention to the biggest questions facing humanity:

Where are we going?

What could go wrong?

What’s the next great thing?

French:

http://www.creafirm-consultant.com/bill-joy-reflechit-sur-ce-qui-va-arriver

Note: Cliquez sur “View Subtitles ‘ et faire le choix “French”…

afin d’accéder à la Traduction française.

“It’s time to question Bio-engineering”

by Paul Root Wolpe:

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