The Bear is Back! Russia announces "spheres of interest"

The Bear is Back!

Russia announces ''spheres of interest.''

Russia’s president Dmitry Medvedev on Sunday announced Moscow’s intention to preserve geographical spheres “of privileged interest” on or near its borders as part of a five point foreign policy statement in a television interview.

The announcement, in the wake of the recent conflict in Georgia, is likely to raise the political temperature in neighbouring states, especially those with significant Russian minorities, as they try to gauge Russia’s appetite for future conflicts in the region.

He said that Russia would defend “the life and dignity” of Russian citizens “no matter where they are located”. He was referring to Russia’s intervention in Georgia with the declared aim of defending Russian citizens in South Ossetia against Georgian forces.
Mr Medvedev’s announcement that Russia has “regions of priviledged interest” is likely to be greeted with concern in the west, where it might be interpreted as the announcement that Moscow has imperial ambitions in the former Soviet Union. It is also likely to resonate in Crimea, the province of Ukraine that is dominated by ethnic Russians, ethnically Russian northern Kazakhstan, and Baltic states with large Russian minorities.

“Russia, like other countries in the world, has regions in which it has privileged interests” said Mr Medvedev. “In these regions are located countries which have friendly relations…Russia will work attentively in these regions" he said, adding these "privileged" regions included states bordering Russia, but not only those.

Russian analyst points to link between Georgian attack and Iran: here.

More below:

SOCHI, August 31 (RIA Novosti) - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev outlined on Sunday the five points upon which Moscow's future foreign policy will be based, and also said that it could if necessary introduce sanctions against other states.
Speaking near the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Medvedev also said that Russia would not alter its decision to recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia. He also said that Moscow's agreements with them envisaged military as well as economic support.

The five points, Medvedev said, were firstly, the superiority of the fundamental principles of international law.

The second point was that the world must be multipolar.

"A uni-polar world is unacceptable," said Medvedev, adding that Russia could "not accept a world order where all decisions are made by one side, even such a powerful one as the U.S."

"Such a world is unstable and threatened by conflicts," he added.

Thirdly, he said, Russia does not seek confrontation with any other country.

"Russia is not looking for isolation," he said. "We will develop, in as much as is possible, friendly ties with Europe, the U.S., and other countries in the world."

Fourthly, Russia will protect the lives of its citizens, "wherever they are."

The fifth point was that Moscow would seek to develop ties in friendly regions.

On the topic of Moscow introducing sanctions against other states, he said that these would be unproductive, adding that sanctions should only be used in "extreme situations."

Medvedev was speaking the day before an EU emergency meeting on Georgia. The 27-nation organization is expected to discuss future relations with Russia. A number of member states, including Britain and Poland, have called for sanctions against Moscow, as well as the postponement of talks on a new partnership and cooperation agreement with Russia.

Russia ups the ante: here.

Paul Craig Roberts: White Nationalist James Bond

Paul Craig Roberts:
White Nationalist James Bond
Roberts, Paul Craig Roberts:

Thinking about the massive failure of the US media to report truthfully is sobering. The United States, bristling with nuclear weapons and pursuing a policy of world hegemony, has a population that is kept in the dark--indeed brainwashed--about the most important and most dangerous events of our time.

The power of the Israel Lobby is an important component of keeping Americans in the dark. Recently I watched a documentary that demonstrates the control that the Israel Lobby exercises over Americans’ view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The documentary is available here. ...

Americans have become perfect subjects for George Orwell’s Big Brother. They sit stupidly in front of the TV news or the New York Times or Washington Post and absorb the lies fed to them. What is wrong with Americans? Why do they put up with it? Are Americans the nation of sheep that Judge Andrew P. Napolitano says they are? Americans flaunt "freedom and democracy" and live under a Ministry of Propaganda. ...

The real issues are suffocated by the media. The American middle class is being destroyed by jobs offshoring and work visas for foreigners, while the incomes of the super rich are soaring. The US dollar’s reserve currency status is eroded. The US is massively in debt at home and abroad. Health insurance is unaffordable for the vast majority of the population. Injured veterans are being nickeled and dimed, while Halliburton’s profits escalate. Americans are losing their homes, while the US government bails out banks. Wars with Iran, Russia, and China are being planned in order to secure US hegemony.

Americans no longer have a government that is for the people and by the people. They have a government for and by special interests and an insane ideology. ...

Americans are filled with hubris, not with knowledge. They have no awareness of the calamity that their government’s pursuit of hegemony is bringing to themselves and to life on earth.

The Altenberg 16 & the "extended evolutionary synthesis": The triumph of Transudationism!

TRANSUDATIONISM
TRIUMPHS!













The Altenberg 16 & the "extended evolutionary synthesis": The triumph of Transudationism!

In July 2008, a gathering of 16 biologists and philosophers of rock star stature – let's call them "the Altenberg 16" – who recognize that the theory of evolution which most practicing biologists accept and which is taught in classrooms today, is inadequate in explaining our existence. It's pre the discovery of DNA, lacks a theory for body form and does not accomodate "other" new phenomena. So the theory Charles Darwin gave us, which was dusted off and repackaged 70 years ago, seems about to be reborn as the "Extended Evolutionary Synthesis."

I challenge ANYONE to watch the below video and not concede that Transudationism is a rational hypothesis:

SELF-ORGANIZATION IS REAL: WHY THE MEDIA GAG?

IF YOU WATCH THIS VIDEO, YOU WILL SEE THAT TRANSUDATIONISM IS A RATIONAL HYPOTHESIS!

To view the video, click on the below photo:

Evolutionary Biologist Stuart Newman

It's "random" - except when it isn't

In his Autobiography, Charles Darwin stated, "There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course the wind blows." It is thus quite odd that a ScienceDaily.com article earlier this year with the headline "New Findings Confirm Darwin's Theory" should go on to say "Evolution Not Random." This study may be confirming some theory, but it isn’t Darwin’s theory. ...

If anything here isn’t random, it's the retraction of a mistaken article that tries to recast Darwinian evolution as something it isn’t, probably for political reasons.

Dead Zones Multiplying (no, not the space between Bush's ears)

Coastal dead zones multiplying fast

DO THE RIGHT THING:

TRANSUDATIONISM!

The Big Seed in the news

The Big Seed in the news:

2042

White Americans no longer a majority by 2042

WASHINGTON (AP) — White people will no longer make up a majority of Americans by 2042, according to new government projections. That's eight years sooner than previous estimates, made in 2004.

The nation has been growing more diverse for decades, but the process has sped up through immigration and higher birth rates among minority residents, especially Hispanics.

It is also growing older.

"The white [sic] population is older and very much centered around the aging baby boomers who are well past their high fertility years," said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. "The future of America is epitomized by the young people today. They are basically the melting pot we are going to see in the future."

The Judeo-plutocrats have opened our borders; they have prostituted our women; they have denuded, deflowered, and debased our culture; they have used “terror” as a pretext to intern us inside a police state; they have exported our industries; they have poisoned not merely our minds, but our very souls, with their colostomy bag culture and their media monopoly; they have subjected us to hate crime laws; they have pilfered our wealth and ruined our economy; they have usurped our freedom of speech with hate speech laws; they and their allies – myopic, nimbus numbed Christians and sanguinary non-whites – have sullied, spat upon, mocked, ridiculed, scorned, and torn down every – every – single principle and precept upon which our White constitutional Republic was founded; they have concentrated and centralized all power into the hands of the Federal Government, and they have seized control of the Federal Government with their media and their money-power and used it as a weapon to enslave us. The Judeo-plutocracy has, to encapsulate, waged relentless, all out psychological warfare as well as military warfare, to destroy our People while they drain our Blood and treasury to ensconce themselves as global tyrants of the New World Order.

34 years. 34 years, and our Nation is lost - forever. And probably much sooner than that; 2042 might be when the scale finally tips, but functional incapacity will come much, much sooner: indeed, arguably, we're already there.

And still - still - no one has the spine, the guts to speak out logically, coherently, articulately, and honestly and seize the moral high ground and simply say:

It is not wrong, it is not immoral, to want one's People/ethnoculture/Kind to survive and prosper.

So I'll say it: read The Declaration of White Independence: The Founding Documents of Transudationism.

The multiverse hypothesis is materialist philosophy

Very nicely done job here debunking the multiverse hypothesis.

The multiverse hypothesis is the cosmological equivalent of the "they hate us for our freedom" meme: they both smell like manufactured, self-serving rationalizations; glib, half-assed, unsubstantiated assertions that everybody believes - or pretends to, because, after all: authority must be right, otherwise it wouldn't be authority.

The multiverse hypothesis: proof the Emperor has no Brain.

Power does what power wants –– George Carlin

Earth like planets should be quite common in the universe

Earth like planets should be quite common in the universe:















The common mantra that there is nothing special about our place in the universe is questioned today by a simulation of the birth of our Solar System.

• Cosmos may be teeming with alien worlds
• Stephen Hawking: Aliens probably exist
• 'Revolutionary' new technique aims to find Earth-like planets

The prevailing theoretical models attempting to explain its origins have assumed it to be average in every way.

Now a new study by Northwestern University astronomers, using recent data from the 300 planets discovered orbiting other stars, turns that view on its head.

"These other planetary systems don't look like the solar system at all," said Prof Frederic Rasio, senior author of a study in the journal Science.

However, it does suggest that Goldilocks planets such as Earth, which are not too hot and not too cold for life to thrive, could still be common.

The study illustrates that if early conditions had been just slightly different, very unpleasant things could have happened - like planets being thrown into the sun or jettisoned into deep space.

However, the good news is that it does not seem to make life less likely elsewhere in the cosmos, adds coauthor Prof Edward Thommes of the University of Guelph, Canada: "By themselves, rocky terrestrial planets like the Earth grow very readily; they basically sprout like mushrooms under almost any conditions, we think. So, Earths should be quite common throughout the universe.

The first review of The Declaration of White Independence: The Founding Documents of Transudationism is in!

The first review of The Declaration of White Independence: The Founding Documents of Transudationism is in!

The seed of the universe is the big bang, says Kyle McDermott in "The Declaration of White Independence: The Founding Documents of Transudationism". An explanation of this view which holds that all of current humanity and life on Earth today was intentionally set in motion all those billions of years ago, "The Declaration of White Independence" probes matters of cosmological significance with straightforward candor and accessibility. Featuring intriguing concepts and ideas, "The Declaration of White Independence" is highly recommended for metaphysical studies shelves.

Midwest Book Review

How does an egg cell divide and direct its progeny to morph into its Kind?

How does an egg cell divide and direct its progeny to turn into each of the many types of cell needed by the adult?

Evolutionary transubstantiation

Big Seed { space-time * matter-energy ~ evolution } Spirit

The Crown of the Sun

The Crown of the Sun

Credit & Copyright: Hartwig Luethen

Do Whites have the right to survive?

Do Whites have the right to survive?

Foreshadowing the nation’s changing makeup, one in four American counties have passed or are approaching the tipping point where black, Hispanic and Asian children constitute a majority of the under-20 population, according to analyses of census figures released Thursday.

Mapping "diversity," eh? Have you had enough ridiculous euphemisms yet? What's called "diversity" is nothing more or less than the study of the dispossession of our People - and that's all it is.

Do Whites have the right to survive?

Don't listen to the government/corporate-media-education elites: they're nothing but Whores who'll do anything, say anything, make-believe anything, as long as they get what they want - and what they want is more power, more money, more entrenchment of their vested interests. And they literally - literally - don't give a fuck about you. Let that sink in for a while.

Do Whites have the right to survive?

Jettison the pejorative bullshit. Completely disregard the Orwellian brainwashing phraseology that the government/corporate-media-education triumvirate bombard you with every day of your life:

• racism
• sexism
• homophobia
• xenophobia
• anti-Semitism
• ethnocentrism
• hate speech
• diversity
• multiculturalism

It goes on and on, and it's all pure, out-and-out propaganda. Do you know how to think for yourself? Are you capable of it? Is that a TV you're carrying around on your shoulders - or is it a Mind? I can't answer that question; only you can. So what's your answer?

Do Whites have the right to survive?

My fellow Whites around the world: Either we destroy the global Judeo-plutocracy - or it will destroy us. And the day will come when all of the accomplishments of our People, all of our art, history, music, literature, science - everything - will be wiped out just as surely as if they'd never existed.

You can go on screwing and eating and watching TV and chasing paper money - and then you can go to "hell" (i.e., the Abyss): or you can coalesce and build a beautiful world truly worthy of sentient, intelligent, conscious beings; it really is your call.

Do Whites have the right to survive?

Which is worse: being called a name or losing your soul? The real haters in this world are the ones who point that very same finger at you. It's not about hate; it's about love.

Transudationists love ALL mankind and advocate for the survival of ALL life, are law-abiding, and are peaceful. All the varieties of mankind have the right to survive. Transudationists believe that this right applies to Whites just as much as it does to any other group.

Is that hate? Is that intolerance?

Do Whites have the right to survive?

Good article from Ilana Mercer

Good article from Ilana Mercer:

I call them English niceties. They are those mannerisms the English-speaking people share—idiosyncrasies that make life so very pleasant. You notice them not at all when they pervade the culture, and pine for them when they're gone.

And they are slowly disappearing in America, by and large due to the twin evils of multiculturalism and mass immigration. ...

American opinion has always been as patronizing as it is ignorant about South Africa. It considered the Old South Africa an exotic, multicultural society because it was predominantly black. But it was nothing of the sort. Settled and shaped by the Dutch in the mid 1600s, the Old South Africa was Christian, conservative, and, broadly speaking, bi-racial. Blacks had long since been missionized. In South Africa, the white man’s quaint, western ways have only lately come under a full frontal assault. ...

As a consequence, South Africa was a culturally homogenous, if politically fractious, society. It will surprise some to learn that I experienced the greatest multicultural shock to my system in Canada and the US. The very first time I had been unable to communicate with a neighbor was not in faraway South Africa, or Israel, but in Canada, where I lived among Iranian, Korean, and Iraqi immigrants. (They seemed perfectly charming, but I had no way of telling for sure.) ...

“Progressive” doesn’t imply progress. Like successive American governments, the “progressive”, lax-on-law-and-order African National Congress government is indifferent to immigration enforcement. And, although South Africa is slowly going the way of Zimbabwe, it still has some distance to go before there is nothing left to loot and distribute. In the meantime, the rest of Africa wants in. ...

Indeed, Africa moves in mysterious ways. Tribe and territory trump political abstractions. The neoconservative propositional nation, held together as it is by notional ideas, doesn’t much move most Africans. Neighbors are what count.

These brutal actions were underwritten by a deeply felt impulse, to which Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam indirectly—and reluctantly—lent scientific imprimatur. Putnam discovered that the greater the diversity in a community, the greater the distrust and the despair. His unexceptional observation that diversity was devastating communities across America did not drive Putnam to issue an S.O.S. Rather, he sat on his findings for some time before publishing Diversity and Community in the Twenty-First Century. Like many a social scientist living in symbiosis with the state, Putnam’s loyalties were not with its suffering subjects.

In the multiplying multicultural communities Professor Putnam described herein, people "hunker down": They withdraw, have fewer "friends and confidants," distrust their neighbors regardless of the color of their skin, expect the worst from local leaders, volunteer and car-pool less, give less to charity and "agitate for social reform more," with little hope of success.

Unlike Americans, Africans don’t huddle in front of the television, alternating between activism and escapism, unhappiness and ennui. Instead, they seek and destroy the causes of their misery. (Yet the press in the West maligns the Minutemen more than it does killers of newcomers!

Defense of environment presupposes personal conversion, says Pope

He [Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombari] said that when asked about the Catholic view on protecting the environment, Benedict XVI stressed that “God, as Creator, cannot be excluded from history.” ...

The Pope believes that those who are conscious of the fact that God has entrusted man with creation have a solid foundation for respecting the environment Father Lombardi explained,. “But if one denies God, the world is reduced to the material, and in a world closed in on its materialism, it is easier for the human being to make himself the dictator of all other creatures and of nature,” he said.

More here:

Speth asks us to consider deeply what represents good growth as opposed to ruthless or irresponsible economic growth. Good growth means growth with equity, employment, care for the environment and empowerment. But present day capitalism (which needs to be distinguished, as Pope John Paul II did in his encyclical, Centessimus Annus, from a ‘market economy’) is both destructive of the environment and no longer really enhancing human well being. Speth, who was once considered a careful, moderate environmentalist, now turns more ‘radical’, supporting moves to revoke corporate charters which undermine the common good; to roll back ‘ limited liability’ for corporations; to re-examine the concept of corporate personhood; to get corporations out of politics.

Because he pays extraordinary attention to the empirical data, Speth’s new ‘radicalism’ which calls for both a transformation in consciousness and a transformation in politics (since, at present, the political system, largely dominated by corporate interests, does not work when it comes to correcting the economic system) is compelling. Speth, coming to see the limits in the currently regnant environmentalism, argues now that “working only within the system will, in the end, not succeed when what is needed is transformative change in the system itself.”

I leave it to readers to harvest for themselves the rich analysis in this new book. Two of Speth’s contentions strongly recommend themselves. He defines getting the environment right in the following terms: full protection of human health, no harvesting of resources beyond long-term sustainable yields, no release of waste products beyond assimilative capacities and full protection of ecosystem structure and function.

To guarantee that these goals might, minimally, be achieved in the narrow time-lines before global warming becomes irreversibly destructive, “ the environmental agenda should expand to embrace a profound challenge to consumerism and commercialization and the lifestyles they offer; a healthy skepticism of growthamania and a sharp focus on what society should actually be striving to grow; a challenge to corporate domination and a re-definition of the corporation and its goals, a commitment to building what the economist Gar Alperavitz calls “ the democratization of wealth”. Suffused as it is with notions of genuine human welfare, the common good, subsidiarity, concern for deliberative democracy and the right of citizens to participative voice, devotees of Catholic Social Teaching will find in this new Speth book rich data for their own social policy proposals.

Cosmic Markdown: EPA Says Life Is Worth Less

What is the value of life?

Here's the response of a Transudationist:


















And here's the response of the Whoremaster: here are some lowlights:

Someplace else, people might tell you that human life is priceless. In Washington, the federal government has appraised it like a '96 Camaro with bad brakes.

Last week, it was revealed that an Environmental Protection Agency office had lowered its official estimate of life's value, from about $8.04 million to about $7.22 million. That decision has put a spotlight on the concept of the "Value of a Statistical Life," in which the Washington bureaucracy takes on a question usually left to preachers and poets.

This value is routinely calculated by several agencies, each putting its own dollar figure on the worth of life -- not any particular person's life, just that of a generic American. The figure is then used to judge whether potentially lifesaving policy measures are really worth the cost.

A human life, based on an economic analysis grounded in observations of everyday Americans, typically turns out to be worth $5 million to $8 million -- about as much as a mega-mansion or a middle infielder.

Now, for the first time, the EPA has used this little-known process to devalue life, something that environmentalists say could set a scary precedent, making it seem that lifesaving pollution reductions are not worth the cost.

"By reducing the value of human life, which is really a devious way of cooking the books, the perceived benefits of cleaning up the air seem less," said Frank O'Donnell of the District-based group Clean Air Watch. "That has the effect of weakening the case for pollution cleanup."

I AM A HUMAN BEING: NOT A "HUMAN RESOURCE" - NOT A PIECE OF PAPER.

New Simulation Shows How Seeds of First Stars Formed

New Simulation Shows How Seeds of First Stars Formed

Researchers may not be able to spot the universe's first stars in their telescopes yet, but that hasn't stopped them from taking a close look at how those fireballs emerged from the cold, dark days when the universe was young.

New three-dimensional simulations published in Science show the series of steps by which the uneven fog of hydrogen atoms present before stars took shape would have clumped into protostars—dense balls of hydrogen just 1 percent the mass of the sun.

These stellar seeds would eventually grow into full-fledged stars larger than the sun, fusing hydrogen into helium and then the rest of the elements that make up modern stars, planets and life itself. The results help illuminate the "cosmic dark ages" during the first billion years after the big bang that kicked off the universe some 13.7 billion years ago. ...

Astrophysicist Volker Bromm of the University of Texas at Austin wrote in an editorial accompanying the study that the combination of JWST with other experiments and improved simulations "promises to close the final gap in our cosmic worldview in the decade ahead."

Information ≈ DNA ≈ software

Information ≈ DNA ≈ software

A spiritual garden or a materialistic hellhole?

A spiritual garden or a materialistic hellhole?

What a dark, lonely world this will be if these beautiful creatures ever disappear; isn’t the universe vast and empty enough? (Though still permeated by life.) Must we drive our sentient Brothers into the abyss? Can’t we see: what we do to these innocent, majestic creatures, we do to ourselves. The pain and death and harm we cause them, we do to ourselves. Do you want to live on Planet Stripmall? And when this world is a barren, destitute, burned-out space cinder, who will cry for them?

They are our test. Whatsoever we do to them, we do to ourselves. If we don’t change so that they may live, then we will not survive – and we will not deserve to.

Life is a gift, not a curse. And these creatures are our Brothers. In the name of the Creator: Let them live: let them ALL live.

This planet can be a cosmic oasis of Beauty, Life, elegance, love, peace, meaning, purpose, and hope. Or it can be a money-grubbing shit-hole.

Do you want to be a human being - or do you want to be a venal automaton? A spiritual garden or a materialistic hellhole? Make up your mind; we're very quickly running out of time.
He, who loves money more than life itself, shall have neither.

More primates in peril: here.

A tribute to Alexandr Solzhenitsyn

A tribute to Alexandr Solzhenitsyn:

Born: 11 DEC 18 - Died: 3 AUG 2008

Solzhenitsyn's entire 1970 Stockholm lecture can be viewed here.

Below are excerpts of his lecture, which I find most moving:

One artist sees himself as the creator of an independent spiritual world; he hoists onto his shoulders the task of creating this world, of peopling it and of bearing the all-embracing responsibility for it; but he crumples beneath it, for a mortal genius is not capable of bearing such a burden. Just as man in general, having declared himself the centre of existence, has not succeeded in creating a balanced spiritual system. And if misfortune overtakes him, he casts the blame upon the age-long disharmony of the world, upon the complexity of today's ruptured soul, or upon the stupidity of the public.

Another artist, recognizing a higher power above, gladly works as a humble apprentice beneath God's heaven; then, however, his responsibility for everything that is written or drawn, for the souls which perceive his work, is more exacting than ever. But, in return, it is not he who has created this world, not he who directs it, there is no doubt as to its foundations; the artist has merely to be more keenly aware than others of the harmony of the world, of the beauty and ugliness of the human contribution to it, and to communicate this acutely to his fellow-men. And in misfortune, and even at the depths of existence - in destitution, in prison, in sickness - his sense of stable harmony never deserts him. ...

There is, however, a certain peculiarity in the essence of beauty, a peculiarity in the status of art: namely, the convincingness of a true work of art is completely irrefutable and it forces even an opposing heart to surrender. It is possible to compose an outwardly smooth and elegant political speech, a headstrong article, a social program, or a philosophical system on the basis of both a mistake and a lie. What is hidden, what distorted, will not immediately become obvious. ...

Then a contradictory speech, article, program, a differently constructed philosophy rallies in opposition - and all just as elegant and smooth, and once again it works. Which is why such things are both trusted and mistrusted. ...

In vain to reiterate what does not reach the heart.

But a work of art bears within itself its own verification: conceptions which are devised or stretched do not stand being portrayed in images, they all come crashing down, appear sickly and pale, convince no one. But those works of art which have scooped up the truth and presented it to us as a living force - they take hold of us, compel us, and nobody ever, not even in ages to come, will appear to refute them.

So perhaps that ancient trinity of Truth, Goodness and Beauty is not simply an empty, faded formula as we thought in the days of our self-confident, materialistic youth? If the tops of these three trees converge, as the scholars maintained, but the too blatant, too direct stems of Truth and Goodness are crushed, cut down, not allowed through - then perhaps the fantastic, unpredictable, unexpected stems of Beauty will push through and soar TO THAT VERY SAME PLACE, and in so doing will fulfil the work of all three?

In that case Dostoevsky's remark, "Beauty will save the world", was not a careless phrase but a prophecy? After all HE was granted to see much, a man of fantastic illumination.

And in that case art, literature might really be able to help the world today? ...

Yet we cannot reproach human vision for this duality, for this dumbfounded incomprehension of another man's distant grief, man is just made that way. But for the whole of mankind, compressed into a single lump, such mutual incomprehension presents the threat of imminent and violent destruction. One world, one mankind cannot exist in the face of six, four or even two scales of values: we shall be torn apart by this disparity of rhythm, this disparity of vibrations.

A man with two hearts is not for this world, neither shall we be able to live side by side on one Earth. ...

And literature conveys irrefutable condensed experience in yet another invaluable direction; namely, from generation to generation. Thus it becomes the living memory of the nation. Thus it preserves and kindles within itself the flame of her spent history, in a form which is safe from deformation and slander. In this way literature, together with language, protects the soul of the nation.

(In recent times it has been fashionable to talk of the levelling of nations, of the disappearance of different races in the melting-pot of contemporary civilization. I do not agree with this opinion, but its discussion remains another question. Here it is merely fitting to say that the disappearance of nations would have impoverished us no less than if all men had become alike, with one personality and one face. Nations are the wealth of mankind, its collective personalities; the very least of them wears its own special colours and bears within itself a special facet of divine intention.)

But woe to that nation whose literature is disturbed by the intervention of power. Because that is not just a violation against "freedom of print", it is the closing down of the heart of the nation, a slashing to pieces of its memory. The nation ceases to be mindful of itself, it is deprived of its spiritual unity, and despite a supposedly common language, compatriots suddenly cease to understand one another. Silent generations grow old and die without ever having talked about themselves, either to each other or to their descendants. When writers such as Achmatova and Zamjatin - interred alive throughout their lives - are condemned to create in silence until they die, never hearing the echo of their written words, then that is not only their personal tragedy, but a sorrow to the whole nation, a danger to the whole nation.

In some cases moreover - when as a result of such a silence the whole of history ceases to be understood in its entirety - it is a danger to the whole of mankind. ...

Our Twentieth Century has proved to be more cruel than preceding centuries, and the first fifty years have not erased all its horrors. Our world is rent asunder by those same old cave-age emotions of greed, envy, lack of control, mutual hostility which have picked up in passing respectable pseudonyms like class struggle, racial conflict, struggle of the masses, trade-union disputes. The primeval refusal to accept a compromise has been turned into a theoretical principle and is considered the virtue of orthodoxy. It demands millions of sacrifices in ceaseless civil wars, it drums into our souls that there is no such thing as unchanging, universal concepts of goodness and justice, that they are all fluctuating and inconstant. Therefore the rule - always do what's most profitable to your party. Any professional group no sooner sees a convenient opportunity to BREAK OFF A PIECE, even if it be unearned, even if it be superfluous, than it breaks it off there and then and no matter if the whole of society comes tumbling down. As seen from the outside, the amplitude of the tossings of western society is approaching that point beyond which the system becomes metastable and must fall. Violence, less and less embarrassed by the limits imposed by centuries of lawfulness, is brazenly and victoriously striding across the whole world, unconcerned that its infertility has been demonstrated and proved many times in history. What is more, it is not simply crude power that triumphs abroad, but its exultant justification. The world is being inundated by the brazen conviction that power can do anything, justice nothing. ...

And on top of this we are threatened by destruction in the fact that the physically compressed, strained world is not allowed to blend spiritually; the molecules of knowledge and sympathy are not allowed to jump over from one half to the other. This presents a rampant danger: THE SUPPRESSION OF INFORMATION between the parts of the planet. Contemporary science knows that suppression of information leads to entropy and total destruction. Suppression of information renders international signatures and agreements illusory; within a muffled zone it costs nothing to reinterpret any agreement, even simpler - to forget it, as though it had never really existed. (Orwell understood this supremely.) A muffled zone is, as it were, populated not by inhabitants of the Earth, but by an expeditionary corps from Mars; the people know nothing intelligent about the rest of the Earth and are prepared to go and trample it down in the holy conviction that they come as "liberators". ...

What then is the place and role of the writer in this cruel, dynamic, split world on the brink of its ten destructions? After all we have nothing to do with letting off rockets, we do not even push the lowliest of hand-carts, we are quite scorned by those who respect only material power. Is it not natural for us too to step back, to lose faith in the steadfastness of goodness, in the indivisibility of truth, and to just impart to the world our bitter, detached observations: how mankind has become hopelessly corrupt, how men have degenerated, and how difficult it is for the few beautiful and refined souls to live amongst them? ...

Friends! Let us try to help if we are worth anything at all! Who from time immemorial has constituted the uniting, not the dividing, strength in your countries, lacerated by discordant parties, movements, castes and groups? There in its essence is the position of writers: expressers of their native language - the chief binding force of the nation, of the very earth its people occupy, and at best of its national spirit. ...

We shall be told: what can literature possibly do against the ruthless onslaught of open violence? But let us not forget that violence does not live alone and is not capable of living alone: it is necessarily interwoven with falsehood. Between them lies the most intimate, the deepest of natural bonds. Violence finds its only refuge in falsehood, falsehood its only support in violence. Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his METHOD must inexorably choose falsehood as his PRINCIPLE. At its birth violence acts openly and even with pride. But no sooner does it become strong, firmly established, than it senses the rarefaction of the air around it and it cannot continue to exist without descending into a fog of lies, clothing them in sweet talk. It does not always, not necessarily, openly throttle the throat, more often it demands from its subjects only an oath of allegiance to falsehood, only complicity in falsehood. ...

And the simple step of a simple courageous man is not to partake in falsehood, not to support false actions! Let THAT enter the world, let it even reign in the world - but not with my help. But writers and artists can achieve more: they can CONQUER FALSEHOOD! In the struggle with falsehood art always did win and it always does win! Openly, irrefutably for everyone! Falsehood can hold out against much in this world, but not against art.

And no sooner will falsehood be dispersed than the nakedness of violence will be revealed in all its ugliness - and violence, decrepit, will fall.

That is why, my friends, I believe that we are able to help the world in its white-hot hour. Not by making the excuse of possessing no weapons, and not by giving ourselves over to a frivolous life - but by going to war!

Proverbs about truth are well-loved in Russian. They give steady and sometimes striking expression to the not inconsiderable harsh national experience:

ONE WORD OF TRUTH SHALL OUTWEIGH THE WHOLE WORLD.

And it is here, on an imaginary fantasy, a breach of the principle of the conservation of mass and energy, that I base both my own activity and my appeal to the writers of the whole world.

[All above emphases added.]

Bitter irony here from the NYT:

“The problem is that now, it’s all about consumption — this spirit that has engulfed everybody,” Mr. Zimin said. “People prefer to consume everything, the simplest things, and the faster, the better. Books are something that force you to think, reading books requires some effort. But they prefer entertainment.”

Solzhenitsyn's Harvard address: here:

It would be retrogression to attach oneself today to the ossified formulas of the Enlightenment. Social dogmatism leaves us completely helpless in front of the trials of our times.

Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction. We cannot avoid revising the fundamental definitions of human life and human society. Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man's life and society's activities have to be determined by material expansion in the first place? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our spiritual integrity?

If the world has not come to its end, it has approached a major turn in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will exact from us a spiritual upsurge, we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life where our physical nature will not be cursed as in the Middle Ages, but, even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon as in the Modern era.

This ascension will be similar to climbing onto the next anthropologic stage. No one on earth has any other way left but - upward.

And all that remains is coarse, petty, mean, dehumanizing, materialistic agora-mammonism ...

And all that remains is coarse, petty, mean, dehumanizing, materialistic agora-mammonism ...

"Basically, what we are seeing is a big drive towards intensification which will put huge strains on the environment," he says.

"Set-aside has been abolished with hardly any thought to the implications. We are predicting a threat to many wild species. Biodiversity will feel the heat from this.

"The pressures are quite controversial for farmers", he says.

"We are asked to deliver food for reasonable prices and, at the same time, we are asked to maintain biodiversity.

"And it's a difficult question; should we do the biodiversity thing or should we respond to the market requirements? I don't think we can do both.

"I think a fundamental change is coming. It's that farmers will concentrate less on their role as custodians of the countryside and more on providers of food. The return a farmer gets from the market will always come first."

Lazarus vs. the Dalai Obama: showdown at the I'm okay, you're okay corral!

Lazarus vs. the Dalai Obama: showdown at the I'm okay, you're okay corral!

Lazarus vs. the Dalai Obama!

Democracy just got a whole lot uglier.

Reality is a musical instrument; to be played well, it must be played beautifully - otherwise it's not worth playing at all.