Pappa. Onåbar. Och jag försöker vänja mig vid det där ordet, pappa. Även i vuxen ålder har jag svårt för att kalla honom det. Mitt fel, inte hans.

Dad. Unreachable. I try desperately to feel comfortable with that word - dad. To this day I have a hard time calling him just that. Entirely my fault, not his.

Я совершенно не знаю хорошо (или правильно) употреблять русские глаголы, поэтому я думала, что очень хорошая идея была бы начинать с глаголами движения. ХАХА. Я это здесь пишу чтобы легко потом найти информацию, например когда я в работе и хочу говорить о моём желание идти домой.

Глаголы

(unidirectional/multidirectional), несовершённые

идти / ходить  =  to go, walk

ехать / ездить  =   to travel, ride

бежать / бегать  =  to run

лететь / летать  =  to fly

плыть / плавать  =  to swim

нести / носить  =  to carry (while walking)

вести / водить  =  to lead

везти / возить  =  to convey, to transport

Unidirectional

Зачем? Функции.

* Movement in one particular direction (not necessarily in a straight line), usually on one occasion, always advancing the subject or object along a line of progression

- the destination may be specified or unspecified, or generally specified (east, west)
- a goal or destination is expressed by the preposition на + внительный (acc) of nouns denoting places, or к + дательный (dat) for nouns denoting people. A goal can also be expressed by directional adverbs, домой, сюда, туда.
- in the past and future tenses, the unidirectional verbs are usually used to provide a background against which some other action occurs. The verb of motion is in one clause, and in the other we can have an imperfective or perfective verb:

1. Imperfective: it is a simultaneous action, it occurs as the same time as the verb of motion.
2. Perfective: it is an action that will be completed or was completed during the time the motion was/will be in progress.

NOTE: The future of unidirectional verbs is less common than the present/past.

Примеры:

-- Некоторые время мы шли молча (идти, one occasion) - For some time we walked along in silence
-- Три дня и три ночи нас везли в арестантском вагоне (везти, one occasion) - For three days and nights we were transported in a convict truck.
-- Он плыл против ветра и был слабее нас (плыть, progression) - He was swimming against the current and was weaker than we were.
-- Шурка долго шёл лесом, унося ежа подальше от жилья (идти, progression) - Shurka walked through the forest for a long while, carrying the hedgehog further and further away from human habitation.
-- К заливу шли через парк (идти, specified direction) - They were walking through the park towards the bay
-- Поезд шёл на восток (идти, general direction) -- The train was on its way east.
-- Когда я летел в самолете, я читал детектив (past of лететь, past of imperfective читать, background with simultaneous ongoing action) - When I was flying in the airplane, I was reading a detective novel.
-- Когда ты будешь идти мимо киоска, купи мне газету (future of идти, perfective купить, background, action that will be completed) - When you are walking past the newsstand, buy me a newspaper.

Unidirectional verbs are often translated into english with "are [verb]ing", "was [verb]ing".

* Movement in one particular direction in frequentative contexts

- habitual actions are usually expressed using multidirectional verbs, but there are exceptions:

1. When movement in one direction is particularly stressed.
2. Where references is to actions or processes occuring in sequence.

Примеры:

-- Я иду на работу целых полчаса (идти, movement in one direction) - I take a whole half-hour to get to work. compare with: Каждый день я хожу на работу. (Every day I go to work (and back))
-- Обычно я иду с работы пешком, а на работу еду на автобусе (идти, ехать, movement in one direction) - I usually walk home from work but go to work on the bus
-- Письма 5-6 дней идут отсюда в Россию (идти, movement in one direction) - Letters take 5-6 days to get from here to Russia
-- Когда я иду на работу, я всегда покупаю газету (идти, within a given time frame, background) - When I am on my way to work, I always buy a newspaper
-- Осенью журавли летят на юг (летить, in one direction, within a time frame) - In the autumn the cranes fly south
-- Каждое утро встаю, завтракаю и иду на автобусную остановку (идти, in sequence) - Every morning I get up, eat breafast and go to the bus stop.
-- Каждый год, как только наступает лето, я еду на море (ехать, sequence) - Every year, as soon as summer comes, I am off to the sea-side (compare with: Каждый год я езжу на море - Every year I go off to the sea-side and come back)

* Other usages

- an unidirectional verb in the present tense may be used to denote an action that is intended for the near future.
- when there is special focus on some circumstance or characteristic of the one-way motion, like the speed or the manner or the means of travel.
- figurative motion in idiomatic expressions.

Примеры:

-- Сегодня вечером я иду в кино (идти, near future) - Tonight I'm going to the movies.
-- Письмо шло к нам неделю (идти, circumstance - speed of travel) - The letter reached us in a week.
-- Она шла в кинотеатр одна (идти, circumstance - how she went) - She went to the cinema alone.
-- Как летит время! (лететь, idiomatic expression) - How time flies!
-- Сегодня шёл дождь (идти, idiomatic expression) - It rained today.
-- Летом здесь часто идут дождь (идти, idiomatic expression) - In the summer it often rains here.
-- Что идёт в кинотеатре? (идти, idiomatic expression) - What's playing at the cinema?

Interpretation can be an insidious vice, when practiced while in torment or in prey to an egocentrism crisis. Even the most intelligent people become fools if they let themselves be controlled by such emotions as anger, disappointment, regret, covetousness, or frustration. It gets even worse when pride, stubborness and vanity come along, as those personality traits simply obstruct a person's way of thinking and analysing soundly, sanely and objectively.

This said, it seems that there's no point in being tactful, delicate, or concerned, if what you think being an upright action/attitude could risk to be translated as a machiavellian one, because either you were not straightforward or clear enough in your words, or you were dealing with an ill-minded or an egomaniac.

In most circumstances, it appears then that it is just better to be plainspoken than handling the person with kid gloves, for your attempt to not being brutal will only be considered as a lie. And at the end of the story, you'll be the one unfairly pointed at as the phony and the player.

"May your yes, be a yes. And your no, be a no" Jesus said.

I'll surely remember that for next time.

i am currently trying out the new google browser named chrome and so far loving it.

because it certainly seems a lot faster than firefox

it has a very nice design, minimalistic, clean, simple.

it is open source, so we'll probably be expecting loads of apps, add-on, gimmicks, do-wackys and other such necessary thingamagoos, which is good

and skins and stuff

it has a built in p0rn-surfing mode

the first page displays most visited pages like opera, which is actually really nifty and handy, being smaller and faster at the same time

the id-card things doesn't work, but then again i couldn't get it to work with ff, so who gives a fuck

it is very simple, easy, and comfortable. so buy it! oh wait, it's free. so yay for google

2. 

kuulan momoko pins'i (via popop), mis on täitsa hea uus eesti asi

I really can´t risk getting caught again, this time I got off with a warning, however the next time I´m sure they will fine me plus I won´t get to have my licence issued for another two years. Shit.

Carina cut my hair. It´s short. Well, not actually short-short. But short. It´ll take some getting used to.

It was penciled by Scott McCloud who is famous for  his great comic books such as Understanding comics, a clever and funny study of the way comics work.

Click on the image to go to Blogoscoped, a blog that has the full comic:

• part 7
• part 8
• part 9
• part 10
• part 11
• part 12

sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup

Blind, unwise, and of a narrow mind as I am, I was not foolish and unknowing enough to believe that Christ asks us to give from our surplus: that, even the pagans do.  I was however unskilled and lost in the darkness enough to think - what seems entirely in accord with Christian teaching - that we are asked to give from the little we have, if not even from the very little.  I even went as far as agreeing with the idea that from the parable of the two talants thrown by the widowed woman in the offering box (Mk 12:41-44, Lk 21:1-4) follows that we should give all we have, our entire possessions.

It was needed that I stumbled upon reading, a while ago, a text of the French poet Henri Michaux (1899 - 1988) to understand, trembling, shuddering, that Christ asks something entirely different: to give what we do not have.

How blind, unwise, and of a narrow mind I was. And locked in the chains of the most lamentable common sense.  How could I imagine that Christ-God who accepted to take on a body and be crucified on the cross lust like the unhappiest and most wicked of mortals, would ask us to give from the surplus or the little possessions, or even to give their entirety?  How would He have called us to actions so simple, so of this world, that is, so possible! Did not Paul Claudel define God for us, attributing to Him the saying:  Why do you fear?  I am the impossible who looks at you.

Christ, thus, asks for exactly this: the impossible: to give what we do not have.

But let us listen to Michaux: in the monastery where he would like to be received, a simple candidate to monasticism shows up. He confesses to the geronda: know, Father, that I have neither faith nor light, nor essence, nor courage, nor trust in myself, and I cannot be of any help to myself, much less to any others; I have nothing.

It would have been logical for him to be rejected at once.  Not so, however.  The geronda (abbot, as the French poet says) replies: What does that have to do with anything!  You have no faith, have no light; giving them to others you will have them, too. Searching them for another, you will gain them for yourself.  Your brother, your neighbor and fellow man, him you are duty bound to help with what you do not have.  Go: your cell is on this hallway, third door on the right.

Not from the surplus, not from the little, but from your unpossession, from what you lack.  Giving another that which you do not have - faith, light, confidence, hope - you will acquire them as well.

"You have to help him with what you do not have."

"Giving what you do not have, you acquire too, the naked, the deserted, that which you lack."

"With what you believe you have not, but which is, which will be in you.

Deeper than the depth of your self.  More mysterious, more covered, clearer, fast spring which flows unceasingly, calling, inviting to communion."

Yes, only in this way you will be able to speak as a servant of Christ, of the One full of mystery: paradoxically (as he always has taught us: if you want to rule, serve; if you want to be exalted, humble yourself; if you want to save your soul, lose it for me; if you want to recapture your purity, admit your guilt) and amazingly (if you will give what you do not have, you will also gain what you have given others).

I think that nowhere, except for the Gospels, have more clear and more Christian words been spoken than in Michaux's little poem, which stupefied and enthused me.  Maybe in some fragments of The Brothers Karamazov and The Demons, maybe Cervantes creating El nuestro Senor Don Quijote, El Christo espanol, maybe Albert Camus in the text about Oscar Wilde (titled The Artist in Prison) and about the way to Christ not through suffering and pain (a good way, though an inferior one) but by an excess of happiness and moments of euphoria (a superior way).  I think nowhere a poet or writer has spoken more closely of the unapproachable One.

Giving what we have no, we gain by rebound what - with unimaginable outrageousness - we have dared to give to another.  The lesson is valid for any Christian, clergy or laity.  For the monk, especially.  Let him not worry, not fear, not be anxious, the monk who feels his inner-self deserted, haunted by lack of belief and weakness, full of darkness and aridness; let him not mind these in the least.  Temptations of hopelessness, unbecoming tricks of the evil and dry one.  Let him give those who come to him, in his cell, in the monastery garden, on the porch of the guest-house, at the alter gates - so they can find faith, strength, light, and a ray of hope, that which they expect from him and which he very well knows that in that moment he may not have.  Let him give them.  And, giving them, they will also refract back on him and he will be benefited by the gift made unto others.

"Giving the light you do not have, you, too, will have it."

Do Michaux's words, perhaps, not clarify in more depth the text from Matthew 25 about the fearful Judgment?  Perhaps, have not the good ones given the thirsty from the water they lacked; the hungry from the food they did not have, the naked one the clothes they themselves were straining after?...

The secret of monastic life shows itself to be: to dare to give that which, temporarily, you may be lacking.  Here then, is the Christian paradox in its entirety, splendor, and virtue.  But here is the amazing promise: giving what you do not have, you gain what you knew to give from the emptiness of your being.  The supra-natural gift is reflected on you, comes back to you like a boomerang, like a ray of light projected at a mirror, and enriches you, fills you up, overwhelms you.

Of course.  If could not be otherwise!  How could we think, even for a moment - not to say anything about years - that Christ wants to give from what we have: the surplus, the little, everything.  Big deal, worthy endeavor!  Too human, the poor, pitiful work!  Something different is asked from us: what seems to be impossible.  Something else is promised: what which cannot be conceived or believed.

Let every fear, uncertainty, shyness, fear of hypocrisy disappear from us, the monks: the monk is meant to give others faith and light even if he may be lacking them a shorter or longer while.  Even if he is in a crisis of listlessness.  Even if he were guilty of a weakening in the zeal and steadiness of monasticism.

Could he?  Could he fulfill the miracle?  Of course, since he is part of those about whom Christ says that "they are not of this world, as I am not of this world" (John 17:16).  And again, "But not only for these I pray, but for those who will believe in Me through their word." (John 17:20).  And in the Book of Acts (20:35) Paul also says: "You have to help the weak and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus: it is more blessed to give than to receive."

Truly, giving above nature, we receive grace above grace.  Let the weak, thus, say: give me, Lord, when I am lost and naked, strength and impudence to be able to give from what I do not have.  And You make this gift of mine - paradoxical, absurd and daring - return to me through your mercy which counts human wisdom ad madness and the adage "Nemo dat quod non habet" sounding brass and clanging cymbal.  You who ask only the impossible and do only what the human mind cannot understand.

Monk Nicolae Steinhardt
Nicolae Steinhardt was born July 12, 1912. He was jewish and mostly known for his “Happiness’ Diary”. His father was the architect and engineer Oscar Steinhardt. In 1934 he graduated from the Law and Literature School of the University of Bucharest. In the same year he published under the pseudonym of Antisthius the parody novel "The same way as Cioran, Noica, Eliade…". He refuses to join and to agree with the communist ideas and becomes a truck driver for a food shop during the communist regime until he has a serious car accident. Following his friends’ pleads he re-enters the literary activity again. In 1980 he becomes a monk and he dies in March, 1989 before he got to witness the Romanian revolution against communism.

"Christ is on the cross, naked; on His head, a crown of thorns; spikes, piercing his ankles and wrists, pin Him to the wood; His body is full of blood and bruises, it secretes only sweat and the silent groan of suffering flesh. He has been slapped, spit upon, pushed around, hit, mocked, He climbed Calvary and more than once fell beneath the burden of the tool of torment. Now He is waiting for agony and shameful death, slow, atrocious, beneath the double sign of mocking and of cursing. He is surrounded, on the foul wasteland of the hill at the edge of the city, only by hostile people and a certain number of the indifferent curious, the usual fans of capital executions and of public cruelties.

At His right and at His left two other crosses, each with its prey, two thieves, two murderers -- two common infractors, so that the humiliation might be even more stinging. It is the noon hour, the sun is scorching, the thirst -- the essence of this mode of destruction -- has begun to manifest itself and all is only worthlessness, defeat, hopelessness, pain, exhaustion. As though it weren't enough, here come the scribes, the scholars, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Herodians, elders, the whole coterie of the winners passes by; and they all wisely shake their gray heads; pityingly and ironically they taunt Him, they laugh at Him, they invite Him to come down off the cross and convince them; they, to all appearances, only ask this much: to see and to believe. Oh no, the thief on the left casts his remarks, too, he provokes Him, he ridicules Him, he insults Him. The one on the right, however, does not: the one on the right, although he too is crucified and in torment and in the horrible waiting, finds the respite and the power to reprimand the hateful one and he finds, as well, the altruism and the magnanimity and the nobility to say soothing and respectful words to his neighbor. He can't help Him at all, He can't unbind Him and take Him off the cross, he can't change his terrible situation in the least, can't ease His punishment, can't shorten His agony, can't intervene in the implacable unfolding of the crucifixion scene.

Nothing, he can do nothing except to endure as well, himself, the agony, until the end of the night. And yet, as he unworthily and helplessly hangs on, what is he given to hear? “Today you will be with Me in Paradise”. Why this extraordinary and completely wonderful promise? Why should he -- the guilty one, the justly-condemned one, the one without the power or means of healing -- why should it be given to him to enter into Paradise together with the Master, when the righteous Noah, the Patriarch Abraham (the one who received the Promise), Moses (the one who gave the Law), the Prophet Isaiah (the one who proclaimed the coming in the flesh of the Deliverer), King David, all the prophets, and all the wise men of antiquity, and all the philosophers in whom the Holy Spirit dwelled partially, and the Forerunner and Baptizer John, are still stagnating in Hell? Why this incomparable honor, this grace upon grace, why this immediateness? Today! How to explain the totally astonishing character of the reward? Where does it come from? Today, with Me, in Paradise! There is an urgency in these words, an elan, a fullness, an excitement which cannot but arouse amazement. Some have sought to understand by referring to the Good Thief's quality of being a colleague in suffering with the Lord.

Yes, he was made worthy of the matchless honor of being subjected to the same sentence as Christ and to be found just a few feet away from the Holy Cross in the last moments of his life. Yes, it is natural that the Lord would have felt a sense of mercy, sympathy, and goodwill toward a comrade in suffering. Others invoke the dignity of the man, his resigned demeanor and his decency toward Christ, as opposed to the ragings and blasphemy of the other one. Yes, there is a dose of truth and logic here too. But these don't seem to me to be the real explanations. Something else appears to me to be essential, a deed (or better, an attitude) seemingly destined to be easily overlooked and yet decisive: the thief could not do anything, but he could soften and sweeten that suffocating atmosphere reeking of ammonia, of evil, of hypocrisy, and venom. That is, he comforted the blameless Crucified One with a good word! Yes, that simple old syntagm, that short little phrase, specific to our ancestral peasant way of talking, constitutes the most plausible explanation for the promise made by the Lord, for its fullness, its immediacy, and its urgency. A good word -- and it was enough! Like a healing balm, like a total remedy, a miracle.

Those few words of respect, of affection, of defense, of confidence, of sympathy, suddenly changed everything and transformed the sinister wasteland, the foul Golgotha, the space poisoned by injustice, cruelty, and revenge, into a corner of humanness, into an antechamber of Paradise. Today, with Me, in Paradise: because you too now, into this wilderness (this wasteland, My servant, T.S. Eliot, will someday call it) of wrath and cunning, have introduced a drop of dew. Because, overlooking your own calamity, you saw Me, you intuitively understood Me, you recognized Me and you didn't hesitate to take My part, to worship Me, to speak to Me words that reached my soul and poured honey into My heart, making you truly a partaker in My sufferings. You didn't remain closed up in yourself, locked up in your own pain, isolated in the all too natural egocentrism of a man without hope.

You didn't complain for yourself, You wept for Me. You eked out the respite and the goodness and the gentleness of soul to try to console and soothe another. With a pitiful good word you transformed this Golgotha and all this head wagging and all their “hoots”, all this odious nightmarish charade and this defiled place, into a garden. Like the sinful woman, you anointed me with the precious oil of mercy and of attention to your neighbor's grief. You gave me to drink -- figuratively, and yet no less intensely -- that cup of cold water about which I said that it will not remain unrewarded. And so us, too, it behooves us, too, to follow the example of Disymas and to perceive what price a good word can have in some circumstances. Silver and gold we don't always have to give, neither objects, neither goods, practically nothing special. Does that mean that we are destined to do nothing, to stand by numbly then, uncaring, our spirit absent, people of ice and of stone? Deaf, blind, with our thoughts elsewhere? Far off, wandering along in the regions of fortified, introverted loneliness? Anytime and anywhere, in spite of the most unfavorable and adverse circumstances, there remains something for us to do: to the unfortunate one near us we can say a good word. This free and inefficacious (from a practical point of view) act, this “surplus”, this uselessness is not an empty word, but a good one. The good word of the thief on the right perfumes the poisoned air of Golgotha and, like the gentle breeze which, on Horeb, proclaimed to Elijah the approach of the Almighty, fills the human soul of the Savior with peace and sweetness.

Constantin Noica has pointed out the philosophical treasures of Romanian speech. The expression a good word can be a guide to help us understand the spiritual nature of our speech. This recourse is always at our disposition: with a good word we can bring dew to the most devastated soul a fellow human being. Let us not lose, whenever it is offered to us, the occasion to wipe the sweat off the face of the persecuted, like the merciful Veronica, or to relieve the soul of a crucified one through a word of comfort and fellowship, like the good thief."

From the book Daruind Vei Dobandi (Giving You Will Receive), Editura Dacia, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, 1997, translated by David Hudson.

NICOLAE STEINHARDT – THE DIARY OF HAPPINESS

Motto: “Envy is a incomparably more active passion than selfishness, which is a benign sickness. And the virus of equality urges us to wish for each other’s harm with obstinacy. The hate for the others can be more powerful than the love for oneself” (N. Steinhardt, 98)

Although literature has a powerful fictional component, being part of the artistic genre, it brings to surface relevant episodes of a political or ideological system, even more convincingly than the mechanisms of historical analysis, which more often than not are cold and unconvincing. Literary confessions, though, lose a part of their fictionality, as they may become a true historical document. As Mircea Eliade put it: “A personal diary has for me a more universal human value than a novel with masses, with tens of thousands of people”1, and Eugen Ionescu gives the same trustful credit to this type of literatyre, considering the diary “preferable to the novel, the tragedy, the poem and the other literary genres, as it is more complete[…] and more true”2. Such is The Diary of Anna Frank, a testimony about the waiting room of the Nazi extermination camp, and The Diary of Happiness, by Nicolae Steinhardt, a testimony about the communist camps and prisons. The literature of confession mediates art with the historical document, and the truth of emotion is more persuasive than that of any scientific recording of the same facts.

A highly cultivated man, of Jewish origin, converted to Greek Orthodoxy, Nicolae Steinhardt was born in 1912, near Bucharest, and died in 1989, near Baia Mare, as a consequence of a crisis of angina. He was a B.A. in Law, and Letters, and held a PhD in Constitutional Law. His destiny was marked by a double persecution: between 1940-1944 he was persecuted on grounds of ethnic origin (his Jewish origin), and between 1947-1958 he was persecuted on political grounds (the ideea of social discrimination, which lies at the basis of political discrimination in communism, is identified in the Diary as a sourse of the evil), along with other Romanian educated men, simply because he refused to acknowledge the false values of communism, especially as the regime allowed him, as well as they allowed Kafka, to work only in domains which were much lower than his degree of education and professional capability. In 1959 he was imprisoned by communists, after a brief investigation at the Securitate, becase he refused to be a witness in the law-suite opened by the communist state against the “lot of mystical-legionary intellectuals”, (legionaries were adherents to extreme nationalism), and convicted to 13 years of hard labour in prison, under the accusation of “crimes of plotting against social order”. Courage is the constant value which he proved to have during his entire life. His father supported him in his decision of not betraying his friends, by disclosing to the Securitate the conversation they had at their meetings; we may say that even from the very beginning of his detention, he was a winner: “It is true, father said, that you will have very difficult days. But your nights will be peaceful […], you will sleep well. While if you accept to be a witness for the prosecution you will have rather good days, to tell the truth, but your nights will be terrible.”3 In 1960, at the Jilava prison, he is converted to Greek Orthodoxy, within an ecumenical ceremonial, a gesture inspired by the Orthodox spirituality which dominated among inmates in the prisons of the communist terror. The very idea of ecumenism is a hypostasis of tolerance, which, in Steinhardt’s vision can beat the evil. In 1964 he was released from prison, as a consequence of a general release act of the political inmates. Since 1978 to his death, he was a librarian at the Rohia Monastery, in Maramures County, where, in 1980 he also becomes a monk.
His book The Diary of Happiness, which was released posthumously in 1991, is – as the author himself names it – a literary testament, but it is part of the so-called literature of the drawer (along other books like Fenomenul Piteşti [The Pitesti Phenomenon] , by Virgil Ierunca, Mărturisiri din mlaştina disperării [Confessions from the Swamp of Dispair], by Dumitru Bordeianu), which contain unpleasant revealings about a period of terror, which some wanted to erase from the collective memory – a form of Romanian anti-communist resistence. The main themes of meditation of the memoirs of the terror camps are related to the continuous degradation of human condition, the undermining of value under the pressure of the forces of evil specific for the totalitarian regimes: psychological and physical torture, the absence of the freedom of speech (which is fundamental especially for the educated people), denouncement as a way of life, aggressive sufficiency, and, above everything, the expanding of the concentration system at the level of the whole country, which becomes a vast prison, as the brave father of the author noticed on the occasion of his son’s getting arrested: “do not be sad, you are leaving a vast prison for a smaller one, and when you get out, do not be too happy, as you will be passing from a small prison in a larger one”4. The first version of the Dairy, unfinished, was confiscated by the Securitate in 1972, but it was given back to him in 1975. In just a short while the only copy of it was confiscated again, and so he had to re-write it from his memory. The memoirs have a documentary importance whose value depends largely on the observing quality of the author. The echo of the phenomena he recorded and evoked shape, without any doubt, the very idea of evil in the communist concentration system. Being a book of mystic initiation, an expression of a Christian existentialism, The Diary of Happiness speaks about the condition of the human being in an extreme moment (the prisons he went through, and the torture he had to suffer), the confrontation with the evil and the modalities to defeat it, as Nicolae Steinhardt was a winner. Fundamentalist ideologies – Communism and Nazism – do not only want to annihilate religious belief, but also to substitute themselves in its place. Both extreme ideologies met initially with success with the masses, as they constituted illusory forms of bringing myth in everyday life. The communist utopia of equality, of the perfect good which can be brought to life through social and community projects stirred the collective imaginary, which had always dreamed of a going back to the paradisiac space, only towards a technological one – that is an imitation of Paradise, of a very poor quality, but the more shiny and noisy, the easier it was to manipulate masses. While capitalism established inequalities, and pointed them out, communism, on the contrary, set out to homogenize everything. On a communist planet, there would exist no single corner forgotten by the technological civilization5. Being more than a political programme, a political myth, communism calls for the times of mythical memory,

which, unconsciously, refuse the practice of history. As anyone could see, the endeavour to bring myth into history and to give it functional values failed.
A purification of the evil of history, of the vices of other social organizations by means of violence, class hate (social racism the author makes so often reference to as to a catalyser for human hate, paradoxically, in the name of good) only managed to suspend values which had been considered commonly good for centuries, without being able to put anything instead. A source of the communist evil was the lack of capacity of discernement when it came to the society it wanted to replace. This endeavour to find an agreement between the archaic paradisiac myth and the modern, political one was done through modalities which did not ensure a continuity of myth to pragmatism; and, moreover, a refusal to see nuances which would endanger the idea of equality became fatal. Individual salvation from a real and mental concentration system can be done by detecting the sources of the evil, by an inner eliberation, as “one cannot remain intelligent under the empire of ideology”6. The Diary of Happiness is a cultural-mystical introspection of this undertaking by a human being who refuses to be deceived; if you cannot oppose to physical abuse, courage is the main modality through which one can oppose to emotional abuse, to the penetration of evil beyond the material body of man.
The flashes, the fragments the book is made up from reveal the adventure of a tough conscience, who considered that to give in means a humility, and this is a form of diabolic evil. The form of torture that communism brought aobut was the undermining of trust in the people close to a person; if until then when one wanted to destroy somebody they would appeal to his/her enemies, now fundamental needs of the human being were compromised: affection and trust: “the contribution of the new, the most valuable innovation, is that in order to destroy a person they do not go to his enemies, but to his friends, his wife, his children, his mistresses, the ones he loves and in which he humanly, foolishly, has put his trust and his thirst of affection”7. Thus, he is confronted at the Securitate with his lady friend, whom he discreetly calls T., who betrays him with a demeaning zeal, typical for what the human being had become (it is not by chance that
6 Besançon, Alain, Nenorocirea secolului. Despre comunism, nazism şi unicitatea „şoah”-ului,
Ed. Humanitas, Bucureşti, 1999, p. 23

Dante places the traitors in the toughest and straightest circle of the Inferno). Even technically, the investigation wipes out any progress mankind has made from the Middle Ages to the modern period: “The Securitate, once with the new, has come back to the inquisitional system; the answers were not recorded by typing, but by writing down by the investigators, as they did in the case of Joan of d’Arc”8 The answers were distorted by adding to them, or reducing them, in the sense the investigators wanted, creating by these actions instances of guilt out of nothing. The goodness of the world, as the communist ideology self-illusionary claimed to look for, cannot be re-established by any form of terror. The premises were wrong, the falling down of the entire scaffold was predictable. Suspicion inseminated in the entire society, in the name of a utopian good, was the very first phase of refined terror (which still lingers on in post-communist societies). The enemy, usually an imaginary one, could be spotted anywhere, and once the paranoia installed, it affected the inner equilibrium of the individuals, and alienated an entire society. Not only the starting point was destructive, but the entire approach proved to be ceaselessly aggressive: “Mistrust is killing […] it demolishes the one it is targeted to as a human being.”9 There is no specific ethnical group, race, social category which is threatened and put under surveillance, but susceptibility, fear of treason (for they, themselves built the entire regime on treason) was expanded upon the entire society. Nothing can be built on hate, and the violence of the ascending and descending of the “new man” has proven this fully. But, as I have already shown, the models of terror which are applied inside the prison were reflected outside it, too, and vice versa.
If the macro-social environment was marked by suspicion, which was deliberately instilled in people (in fact, it was an even more diabolical enforcement of the Latin saying Divide et impera), neither was the world of the prison saved from this falsehood of “the easily seen through plan of the administration to incite controversies, arguments, by putting in the same room people who had dissimilar political, social, or ethnical values”10. Discord was the natural consequence of suspicion, and it was doomed to provoke at a certain point the destruction of a system which lacked the basic layer of unity. As in Orwell’s Animal Farm, or in E.Ionescu’s play The Rhinoceroses, contamination was fatal. The type of mass contamination in this case was not that with the ideology, be it Communist or Nazi, which can be mimed, can be a mask that may help one survive, but a contamination which operates structurally: “ This is how the terrorized and re-educated (those who had the experience of the communist prisons, those who were under surveillance, or investigated) got to talk to each other, as if there had always been an agent of the Securitate present among them. Then, there is neither need for a traitor, nor for self-censoring: each of them goes on assuming that role, instinctively, automatically. The Pavlovian reflex is obtained.”11Only when the inner freedom is lost, the entire meaning of the world is endangered. Thus, post-communist countries are still suffering, and they should be regarded with more empathy.
The space of the prison, of the investigation room, and that of the court-house seem to be fragments from a labyrinth whose end cannot be even inferred: “Cell 34 is a kind of a long, dark tunnel, endowed with many and powerful elements coming from a nightmare. It is a cave, a sewage canal, it is an under-earth bowl, cold and profoundly hostile, it is a barren mine, a crater belonging to an extinguished volcano, it is a rather well-shaped image of a bleached hell.”12 The tomb-space in which “everything can be soiled; here even light is mean and evil”13, the prison reduces to the essence the dramas that happen in the larger circle outside – the world plagued by fear becomes a huge tomb, because fear is the main source of evil. Next on line is human weakness. The threats they were making against the security of the family that remained in a supervised freedom were part of the arsenal of psychic terror (reflexes that have been preserved in the post-communist society, but in a diluted form). The author experimented both over-crowded cells, in which privacy was an illusion, and the “torture without tools, by placing face to face, in plain vacuum two entities: man and pure time.”14 In the investigation room an entire comedy follows: curtains are drawn (they are made of velvet and of a dark colour) in order to create an atmosphere of panic. Tensioned pauses. The investigators go out and come back in. These are false exists, as in theatre: they stop in the threshold, as if wanting to go out, change their minds and come back.[…] My father’s old age is evoked in detail, and I cannot let him die, you see, of course, like a dog.”15 – a phrase that would frequently recur, threateningly, in the words of the investigators. Interior panic is transmitted to the exterior as well, to those who remained in a false and temporary state of freedom. One could never tell who came next. The court-house was just a simulacrum of solemnity, big and empty, threatening – vacuum itself as the entire system it served: “In the big, empty hall four compact groups of human being will appear, separated one from the other by vacuum-spaces which remind one of the fathomless distances between the swarms of universes.”16
The hardest moments Steinhardt lived in prison were two: the confrontation with the philosopher Constantin Noica, the mentor of the group that was arrested, and the second confrontation with T., his old lady friend. The philosopher was wearing dar glasses int he investigation room, so that he could not see who was present. The long period of torture (horrifying beatings, disease, starvation) had made him give in; not even a shadow of human dignity had remained: “He does not contest anything, he confirms everything, he pronounces my name carelessly, in an enumeration. […] The exam is short and the candidate has given quick and correct answers. The candidate even bows a few times. The balck glasses give the candidate an air as of a cadger, an obeying, sorrowful poor man, exactly like beggars and paupers...”17 A highly educated man, a model of an intellectual, used to subtle argumenting the meanings of existence had been transformed (temporarily, as after his being released from prison he was able to find his se
lf again) in what Hannah Arendt calls the mass man: “The main characteristic of the mass man is not brutality, or presenting a type of retard, but isolation and a lack of normal social relations.”18 Incarceration is the placing in the abyss of any previously known mechanisms regarding social relations – it was abnormality itself. The same thing happened outside prisons, but using less harsh ferocious methods, since the resistance they had to overcome was weaker. T. had become a “professional accuser” of the simulacra trials conducted by the communists. Their wish to destroy social resistance invented political adversaries ceaselessly, and courts had become accusation factories, in which the new order was created and supported.

Although apparently benign, ignorance is a source that generates evil in totalitarian regimes; as in the case of the Nazi system, the free world (be it only apparently free) observed for a long time everything, pretending not to know what was going on. A spirit of self-preservation took the place of the wish for inner liberation: “Ignorance, stupidity, a blind passing through life and among things, or a careless living, all come from the devil. The Samaritan was not only good, he was also attentive: he knew how to see.”19 Commitment, activism, which a privileged social position owes humanity, are methods of annihilation of evil. Forgiveness ought not to be mistaken with complicity: “Man […], even if he has an important position, or is placed somewhere in the lead of public affairs does not have the right to appeal to the principle of forgiveness in order to remain distant and cold in the presence of evil, and to let innocent people be victims of the villains.”20 Or “by becoming identical with great evil, weakness shown towards stupidity is the same with letting criminals go wild.”21 Silence, submission do not re-activate, revaluate, or give back meaning to the old values of humanity, but, on the contrary, they let these dissolve. Harsh experiences in prison, in the presence of so various types of people, will make him draw the conclusion that social origin has no importance in life, nor do political, or religious beliefs, or philosophical options – the mark of the fundamental attitude of man when faced with extreme moments at a certain moment is given by character.
The mystical experiences he underwent identified as sources of evil the devil himself – which meant the loss of harmony with the self and with the others, the breaking of world’s mysterious balance; evil is an active principle whom one must answer to by activism as well: “The introduction of evil in the world, as an active principle, is an act of creation, analogous with the divine act. Satan was tempting Adam whispering: <you will be like God>. Talking this way, Satan did not lie entirely: the being, for one minute, became divine; he created in parallel with divinity: he created evil. Which contaminated the world.”22 Or “In the light drizzle along the street, I understand that it is not proper for us to harm anyone, since any act of disorder, rudeness, brutality, quarrel, anger, contempt, offence comes from the devil.”23 Evil is a malady whose impersonal character has to be exorcised in order to find human authenticity. But this is possible only by becoming aware of this malady, by being brave enough to look it in the eye, in the mirror. Atararxia as a philosophical form of indifference favours the dissemination of evil in the world. Nicolae Steinhardt succeeds in contradicting Alain Besançon de facto. The latter draws in his book a comparison between communism and Nazism, which has allegedly a model value: “Christians have not freed themselves totally from communist ideas, which are mixed in their minds with humanitarian ideas introduced by the latter among believers and clergy.”24 Nevertheless, Steinhardt was a convinced anti-communist, affirming that communist ideology does not have a principle – “as many heads, as many principles”25- cut loose and dismembered to alienation from the divine essence of the universe. Besançon’s affirmation would be much more suitable to mediocre psychologies, ready to attach themselves, brainlessly, to ideologies that just sound will, without trying their applicability, or their real interest for humanity. After he x-rayed mercilessly the environment he lived in even after coming out of prison, he arrived at a relentless diagnostic, crashing the aura of idealism that communism usually tries to put on: “This is him, not another. Vengeful. Small. Stinky. Vulgar. Envious. A believer in the trinity: hate, suspicion, envy. Foul-mouthed like a dowdy, and hateful like a flunkey.”26 Frustration, social complexes that are violently manifested is everything that remains from a society that exiled its humane traditional values. The dislocation of the elites, and the invasion of the barbarians, that is the stupid, the uneducated who cease power and act destructively. Communism taught them only to deny, only later to build, but without a sane base. Misunderstood tolerance, which can be assimilated to cowardice, manifested by decent people, facilitated the access of violent ignorant people who think they are the owners of the unique formula of happiness. It is a world that does not ask for the effort to construct the self, but only for the exacerbation of primary instincts: “Evil can be done by anyone, no matter how wimpish he may be. Good, though, is only meant for tough souls, for tempered characters. Evil: milk for children; good: meat for adults.”27 Courage, heroism, even ability sometimes, are forms to defeat weakness, fear, egocentrism – facile, but devastating sources of evil. Love for the self, when in excess, can hardly bear failures, which make the egocentric fall apart when faced with serious problems of life.
Very quickly, paradisiac utopia becomes a bloody one. The interior of the prison was the reflex of the evil in its exterior, reduced to the essence, but the torturers could not suspect the powerful resources the human being had stored during millennia, in direct relation with the traditional values of humanity, which had been filtered, and verified by time. The new man, the communist, like Nietzsche’s superman, failed. A new system fo values, which proposed itself, cannot ignore the experience of humanity. Artistic avant-garde is one thing, human reality another; it does not allow the same experiments that annihilate the mechanisms for inner adjusting.
Ph.D. Carmen Dărăbuş, North University, Roumania

1 Eliade, Mircea , Originalitate şi autenticitate în Oceanografie, Ed. Humanitas, Bucureşti, 1991, p. 126
2 Ionescu, Eugen , Nu, Ed. Vremea, Bucureşti, 1934, p. 279
3 Steinhardt, Nicolae , Jurnalul fericirii, Ed. Dacia, Cluj-Napoca,, 1992, p. 23
4 Steinhardt, Nicolae , Jurnalul fericirii, Ed. Dacia, Cluj-Napoca, 1992, p. 88
5 Boia, Lucian , Mitologia ştiinţifică a comunismului, Ed. humanitas, Bucureşti, 2005, p. 109
7 Steinhardt, N. , ibidem, p. 16
8 Steinhardt, N. , ibidem, p. 16
9 Steinhardt, N., ibidem, p. 103
10 Steinhardt, N., ibidem, p. 164
11 Steinhardt, N. , idem, p 192
12 Steinhardt, N. , ibidem, p. 30
13 Steinhardt, N. , ibidem, p. 30
14 Steinhardt, N., p. 253
15 Steinhardt, N. , ibidem, p. 46
16 Steinhardt, N. , ibidem, p. 46
17 Steinhardt, N. , ibidem, p. 26
18 Arendt, Hannah , Originile totalitarismului, Ed. Humanitas, Bucureşti, 1994, p. 416
19 Steinhardt, N. , ibidem, p. 52
20 Steinhardt, N. , ibidem, p. 52
21 Steinhardt, N. , ibidem, p. 52
22 Steinhardt, N., idem, p. 185
23 Steinhardt, N., idem, p. 185
24 Steinhardt, N., idem, p. 185
25 Besançon, Alain, Nenorocirea secolului..., idem, p. 113
26 Steinhardt, N., idem, p. 151
27 Steinhardt, N., idem, p. 152

Nicolae Steinhardt (born Nicu-Aurelian Steinhardt; July 12, 1912-March 29, 1989) was a Romanian writer, Orthodox hermit and father confessor.

Biography

Early life

He was born in Pantelimon commune, near Bucharest, from a Jewish father and a Romanian mother. His father was an engineer, architect and decorated World War I participant (following the Battle of Mărăşti). Due to his lineage from his father side, he was to be subject to anti-semitic discrimination during the fascist governments of World War II Romania.

Between 1919 and 1929, he attended Spiru Haret primary school and college in Bucharest, where, despite his background, he was taught Religion by a Christian priest. His talent for writing was first noticed when he joined the Sburătorul literary circle.

Early career and World War II

In 1934, he took his license diploma from the Law and Literature School of the University of Bucharest. Under the pseudonym Antisthius, one of La Bruyères Caractères, he published his first volum, the parodic novel În genul lui Cioran, Noica, Eliade... ("In the Manner of Cioran, Noica, Eliade..."). In 1936, he took his PhD in Constitutional Law, and between 1937 and 1938, he traveled to Switzerland, Austria, France and England.

In 1939 Steinhardt worked as an editor for Revista Fundaţiilor Regale (a government-sponsored literary magazine), losing his job between 1940 and 1944, during the ethnic cleansing under the Iron Guard regime (the National Legionary State) and the Ion Antonescu one. Despite his problems with the latter, he would forgive Antonescu, and even praise him for allegedly having saved several hundred thousands Jews (which he claimed had occurred after a face-to-face debate with Adolf Hitler at Berchtesgaden).

Communist persecutions and imprisonment

In 1944 he was reinstated at the Revista Fundaţiilor Regale, and held his job until 1948, when King Michael I was forced to abdicate by the Communist Party of Romania.

From 1948 until 1959, he witnessed a new period of deprivation, this time from the Romanian Communist regime - when non-communist intellectuals were deemed "enemies of the people". In 1959, during the kangaroo court trial of his former school colleague Constantin Noica, he refused to take part as a witness against him. As a consequence, he was accused of "crimes of conspiracy against social order", he was included in the "batch of mystical-Iron Guardist intellectuals", and sentenced to thirteen years of forced labor, in gulag-like prisons. He would serve his penalty at Jilava, Gherla, Aiud and other communist jails.

While in prison, he was baptized Orthodox Christian, on March 15, 1960, by fellow convict Mina Dobzeu, a well known Bessarabian hermit, having as godfather Emanuel Vidraşcu, a former chief of staff and adjutant of Antonescu. Witnesses to the event were also Alexandru Paleologu, two Roman Catholic priests, two Greek-Catholic priests and a Protestant priest. He would later state that his baptism had had an "ecumenic character". This episode would be the base for his best-known and most celebrated work, the Happiness Diary.

Later years

After his release in 1964, he has a successful and notable activity as translator and publisher. His first celebrated literary works, Între viaţă şi cărţi ("Between Life and Books"), and Incertitudini literare ("Literary Uncertainties") were published in 1976 and 1980, respectively.

A new chapter in Steinhardt's life began in 1980, after being accepted in Rohia Monastery. He worked as the monastery’s librarian, while at the same time dedicating himself to writing. During this time, his fame as a counselor and father-confessor had grown, attracting tens of visitors weekly to Rohia.

He died at Baia Mare city hospital. His funeral, under surveillance by the Securitate, was attended by many of his close friends and admirers.

[edit] The Happiness Diary

The first edition was confiscated by the Securitate in 1972, and restituted in 1975, after censorship intervention. Meanwhile, he had finished writing a second version of the book, which is in its turn confiscated in 1984. In the end, Steinhardt edited several versions, one of which had reached Monica Lovinescu and Virgil Ierunca in Paris; Monica Lovinescu would later broadcast the book in a series of episodes, via Radio Free Europe.

The book is now considered as part of the list of standard writings to be read in Romanian literature.

Works

Due to political reasons, most of his work has been published post-mortem in its uncensored version (after the 1989 Romanian Revolution).

* În genul ... tinerilor ("In the Manner of... Youths") published 1934;
* Între viaţă şi cărţi ("Between Life and Books") – published 1976;
* Incertitudini literare ("Literary Uncertainties") - published 1980;
* Geo Bogza - Un poet al Efectelor, Exaltării, Grandiosului, Solemnităţii, Exuberanţei şi Patetismului ("Geo Bogza – A Poet of Effects, Exaltations, Solemnity, Exuberance and Pathetism") – published 1982;
* Critică la persoana întâi ("First-Person Critique") – published 1983;
* Escale în timp şi spaţiu ("Adjourns in Time and Space") – published 1987;
* Prin alţii spre sine ("Towards Oneself through Others") – published 1988;

Post-mortem

* Jurnalul fericirii ("Happiness Diary") – published 1991;
* Monologul polifonic ("The Polyphonic Monologue") – published 1991;
* Dăruind vei dobândi ("Through Giving You Shall Receive") – published 1992;
* Primejdia mărturisirii ("The Danger of Confessing") – published 1993;
* Drumul către iubire ("The Road to Love") – published 1999;
* Taina împărtăşirii;
* Călătoria unui fiu risipitor;
* Primejdia mărturisirii;
* Drumul către isihie;
* Ispita lecturii;
* N. Steinhardt răspunde la 365 de întrebări adresate de Zaharia Sângeorzan;
* Între lumi;
* Dumnezeu în care spui că nu crezi... (Scrisori către Virgil Ierunca);
* Eu însumi şi alţi cîţiva;
* Eseu romanţat asupra unei neizbînzi;
* Timpul Smochinelor

I, personally, sent back the present.

Why? Well, for a simple reason: accepting to be spoiled by a person who used to fancy you -actually who felt much more for you - while your heart and mind are being conquered by another, is a form of dishonesty, betrayal and lie. If you do keep such a present, it means that you are still sensitive to this other person's affection and that you welcome his/her attentions, while indirectly encouraging him/her to not let go on you.

For deciding to have a transparent and upright conduct, my gesture has been interpreted as insulting, tactless and out of manners. I tell you what: better this, than being an hypocrite and a profiteer. At least, I can look at myself in the mirror with a clear conscious.

Of course that manners teach you that it is rude to give back a gift. But I believe that in some circumstances, integrity beats politeness.

To conclude, indeed, someone in the story has been insulted. But it is nor me nor the person granting me the present. It's this poor girl who believes that her boyfriend has only eyes for her.

Article à paraître dans le Socialist standard de septembre 2008.

No permanent government has emerged from the elections held in June last year. Does this matter to the working class there?

Belgium is a patently artificial state inhabited by people speaking two different languages. It survived for many years with one of them (French) as the dominant language because it was the language of the ruling class. Now that this has ceased to be the case, and Dutch (Flemish) has also become a language of a part of the capitalist class as well as of the state, Belgium is beginning to show signs of coming apart at the seams. Revision of the constitution — How much autonomy should the regions be given? Should or should not Belgium become a federal state? How far out should the limits of Brussels (basically a French-speaking city surrounded by Dutch-speaking communes) go? — has become an issue preventing other issues being dealt with.

Belgium is a state which the then Great Powers allowed to be set up in 1830. Before that the territory that is now Belgium had formed part, first, of the territories of the King of Spain, then of those of the Emperor of Austria. After the French Revolution Belgium became, in 1792, part of France and remained so until after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815. While part of France the Napoleonic code of law, which swept away feudal remnants, was introduced and manufacturing industry began to develop in the South. This, together with strategic considerations, was one of the main reasons why in 1815 Belgium was detached from France: not only were the frontiers of France to be moved further back from the Rhine, but France was also to be deprived of a nascent industrial base. Belgium became part of a kind of Belgian-Dutch federation under King William of Holland.

In 1830, in what Belgian history books refer to as a "national revolution", the wealthy classes of Belgium broke away from those of Holland and set up an independent State. Though Holland protested, the Great Powers let this change happen as it still left the territory of Belgium detached from France.

The circumstances which led to the establishment of Belgium are worth recalling in that they have shaped the Belgian political scene to this day. Holland was essentially a trading and agricultural country and as such its ruling groups tended to favour free trade. The nascent industrial capitalist class in the south of Belgium, however, wanted tariff walls as a protection against British competition. The Dutch government did make some moves to accommodate them but not enough. In the end the Belgian capitalists decided to break away. This was not too difficult in view of the loose, almost federal character of the Belgian-Dutch State; in addition, the population of Belgium was greater than that of Holland. But the nascent Belgian capitalist class in the South needed support in the Dutch-speaking Northern part of the territory. This they managed to do, despite being French-speaking and anti-clerical in the tradition of the French Revolution, by an opportunist alliance with the Catholic Church over the schools issue. The Dutch government wanted to introduce a system of universal state education. The Catholic Church, (the majority religion in Belgium, unlike Holland which was a Protestant State),vehemently opposed this, insisting on its exclusive right to "educate" Catholic children.

The capitalists got their state. The Belgian constitution of 1831 was a model of bourgeois-liberal government. Power was in the hands of a parliament elected only by wealthy property-owners; the king (a minor German princeling imported specially to fill the post) was a mere figurehead. Their language, French, became the official language of the new State, despite the fact that a majority of people in its territory spoke Dutch.

But there was a price to pay: the power of the Catholic Church, and its control of its own schools, had to be respected. From a short-term point of view, the lack of a modern education system had certain advantages for the Belgian capitalists: they were able to extract very long hours of work for very low rates of pay, to such an extent that Marx once described Belgium as “a capitalists' paradise”.

The industrialisation of Belgium, apart from Antwerp and Ghent in the Dutch-speaking North, almost exclusively in Wallonia, the French-speaking Southern part, brought into existence an industrial working class and, inevitably, working class attempts at political and industrial organisation. A Belgian Labour Party (Parti Ouvrier Belge) was set up in 1885, along the same lines as was later the British Labour Party except that the co-operatives rather than the trade unions provided the bulk of the members and funds. A deliberate decision was taken not to call it the “Belgian Socialist Party" on the grounds that the word "socialist" was unacceptable to many workers. With a start like this, the POB was destined for a pitiful career of gradualism and reformism. The POB was never really even a social-democratic party in the sense that the German SPD was; it never accepted Marxism as its ideology; in fact it had a contempt for theory altogether, concentrating on trying to get piecemeal social reforms for the working class; it was in short a simple "Labour" party.

In its early years the POB was at least militant on one issue of importance to the working class: the right to vote. The general strike of l893, which forced the Belgian parliament to extend a vote to adult males, was a magnificent episode in the history of the Belgian working class. The strike did not achieve "one man, one vote", since the rich and educated were given more than one vote, but it did force the members of the Belgian parliament, in which there was not a single POB representative, to do what most of them were opposed to: grant a vote to adult (male) workers. Later strikes to try to get plural voting abolished were less successful, but by then the POB had its own members of parliament and had begun to get involved in parliamentary manoeuvres with its new-found allies, the radical bourgeois Liberals.

In fact the Belgian Labourites tended to be, at this time the tail-end or left-wing of the Liberal party. After more than twenty years of Catholic party rule, the Belgian Liberals were feeling left out in the cold, but they realised they were unlikely to get power again without support from the POB. Accordingly, in preparation for the 1910 election they launched a great anti-clerical campaign and attempted to get the leaders of the POB involved. This was easy, as the POB leaders were anticlerical themselves (and indeed many were freemasons). It is quite clear that had the occasion arose (which it didn't, because the Catholic party won the election) the POB would have supported a Liberal administration and would probably have gone so far as to have formed an anti-clerical coalition with them. This no doubt would have caused a stir in the Second International, to which the POB was affiliated along with other Labour and Social-Democratic parties. After the First World War, of course, all the Social-Democratic parties were prepared to take power within capitalism and accept responsibility for running it, but it is a measure of the depth of the reformism of the POB that they would have been prepared to do this in 1910 when their fellow reformists still had some doubts.

The Belgian Liberals were, by and large, French-speaking and anticlerical. As in practice their leftwing, the POB shared these characteristics, with unfortunate results for the development of the Belgian trade union movement, which took place mainly after the founding of the POB and partly under its auspices. As the industrial centre of Belgium was in the French-speaking South it was natural that the trade union movement should be strongest there, but it was by no means inevitable that this movement should have been dominated by an anti-clerical political party, thus cutting itself off from workers of catholic origin.

It would be wrong to put the entire blame on the POB for the present split in the Belgian trade union movement into two main groups, each with about a million members: the Labourite Fédération Générale du Travail de Belgique and the self-explanatory Confédération des Syndicats Chrétiens (which is in fact the larger). The Catholic Church shares an equal blame; they combatted the POB before the first world war by organising rival co-operatives, sick clubs — and trade unions. Their trade unions didn't have much success before the first world war, but grew rapidly between the wars as industrialization spread to the Northern part of Belgium. Employers preferred to deal with the less militant Catholic unions than with the “socialist” unions and their talk of the class struggle. But the Catholic unions also took up a very real grievance which the Labourite unions tended to neglect: the position of the Dutch language, spoken by workers in the North of Belgium.

French was the official language of Belgium after 1830. It was the language of the State and, even in the Dutch-speaking area, the language of the bourgeoisie. Thus in Northern Belgium a Dutch-speaking working class faced a French-speaking capitalist class. The Labourite unions, perhaps for the very good reason of not wishing to split the working class on linguistic lines, did not chose to exploit this situation, but it was taken up to some extent by the Catholic unions.

Today there is virtually no difference except in ideology — the FGTB is, on paper, committed to "the disappearance of the wages system”, while the CSC denounces the class struggle— between the two rival trade union groups. In practice both act as pure-and-simple, bread-and-butter unions negotiating over wages and conditions of work; on the political field their leaders are reformists, being supporters either of the Belgian Socialist Party (as, unfortunately for us genuine socialists, the POB has been called since 1945) or of the catholic political party.

The other great division in the Belgian working class besides the catholic/anti-clerical one is of course language. As stated, despite being the minority language, French was made the official language of the Belgian State set up in 1830. Dutch in fact has only been given completely equal status with French since 1932. Since the last world war the centre of economic gravity in Belgium has tended to shift from Wallonia, the French-speaking South, to Flanders, the Dutch-speaking North, and the numerical superiority of Dutch-speakers has began to make itself felt on the political scene.

The man who must share a great responsibility for side-tracking the French-speaking part of the Belgian working class on the language issue was a militant trade union leader in the Liège engineering industry, André Renard, who died in 1962 and who is still something of a myth for many militant trade unionists in Belgium, Towards the end of the grande grève, the general strike of 1960-1 over the government's attempt to cut workers’ living standards, Renard suddenly introduced the quite unrelated political issue of "federalism". Claiming that the workers in the French-speaking south, where the strike was virtually solid, had been betrayed by the Dutch-speakers in the North (where the Catholic unions, following a lead given by Cardinal Van Roey in his Christmas message, urged their members to stay at work), Renard argued that if Wallonia had the power to pass its own laws on economic matters it would be able to carry out various "anti-capitalist structural reforms". He called for Belgium to be converted into a loose federation which would give Wallonia this power, virtually a demand for independence of course. This demand, and the reformist strategy behind it was supported by both the so-called Communist Party (which, under proportional representation, had a handful of members of parliament) and the Trotskyists (including, conspicuously, their international leader, Ernest Mandel, who was from Belgium).

The effect of this appeal was to heighten language-consciousness amongst French-speakers. In the years that followed French-speaking federalist groups increased their representation in parliament. So, on the other side, did the Dutch-speaking federalists, organised in a series far right parties. Today, it is the Flemish federalists and separatists who have been making the running, reflecting the fact that Flemish capitalists don’ t want to continue to pay for the state benefits received by workers in Wallonia where heavy industry (coal, steel, engineering) has been considerably run down since Renard’s day.

That the working class in Belgium should be divided on linguistic lines is, from a socialist point of view a matter for regret, but it also confirms the correctness of our opposition to ''leftwing” groups in that they should be partly responsible for it.

Whether Belgium will eventually split up, or at least become a federal State of some sort, remains to be seen, but one thing is clear: this constitutional issue is of no consequence whatsoever for the working class of the area. Whatever the constitution it will be that of a capitalist State and the working class will remain propertyless sellers of labour-power to the minority who own and control the means of production.

ADAM BUICK

Voir aussi:

• Notre dossier Belgique Belgium

It was a very fine afternoon yesterday in Muri. So me and my partner decided to walk the forrest nearby. Everything built very nicely here. There are small path in the forrest for biking, joging or walking. In some point they provide nice chair for you to take some rest with a great view infront of you. One of the view i like to share with you is this apple tree (first picture)..

Anyway, the above picture taken from the outer path of the forrest. The inside reminds me of the forrest in Harry Potter movies! I dont post the picture here since its not so much light and mostly the result is not quite satisfiying. Not enough light.

So, we were walking deep inside the forest and actually grab our small dinner while sitting on one of the chair there. Birds singing, cricket cricketting (haha, dont know how to say that!)... well, it so very natural. We enjoy it much and again fail to realize that time running so fast! Its getting dark, and we got no clue how to get out haha. I think kissing all the way in the forrest is one thing you should do. Keep focus! hihi. So we continue walking and avoid any dark spot. Luckily we find the way and get out of the forrest safely hihi. Well, its not because theres no sign or anything. Its because we just forget which direction to go! You know, the path its not like a one way directuon. It has so many crosses!.

And its just in time! I mean, we get out when the sky in the west getting so red and the trail of the airplane flew above us leaves a very nice trail. It so so amazing view.

In this second picture, can you spot the plane with it trails? It looks like a commet! If you see it carefull enough, there are 3 planes there... hehe. Well, its very clear in larger size, but i think this will show the point hehe...

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Canicula :: It was end up with a very nice evening "session"! Yay! Hahaha. What could i ask more..

Signalons la publication sur MIA d'un nouvel article () d'Edgar Hardcastle dans le Socialist standard de mars 1937, qui, prévoyant qu'il y aura encore d'autre procès, explique que "Les socialistes sont loin d'être surpris par cette évolution".

What is Wrong with Russia?

The Mystery of the Trials

Although the trials and executions of midsummer, 1936, and January, 1937, have had exceptional publicity they are only two of a long series. Others occurred in 1928, 1930, 1931 and 1933, and according to the latest reports from Russia more are to come. But whereas the earlier trials were of avowed political opponents of the Bolsheviks, the last two have been trials of Communists, many of whom, in spite of belated attempts to prove otherwise, were Lenin’s close and trusted associates up to the time of his death. If latter-day British Communists do not know of this close association that is only because of the systematic revision and falsification by the Bolsheviks of what were once histories of their movement.

Broadly speaking, there can only be one explanation of the trials, i.e., discontent with the policy or composition of Stalin’s Government and the trend of events in Russia. How extensive that discontent may be is another matter. It is likely to range all the way from the personal ambitions of a narrow circle of leaders to the resentment of sincere Communist Party members at what they regard as an anti-Socialist policy, and to the vague discontent of non-Socialist workers and peasants with conditions that are admittedly hard in many respects. How much there is of each of these it is impossible to know: impossible because of the dictatorship, the prohibition of opposition parties, and the rigid censorship clamped down over all the things the Russian Government wants to keep secret.

Socialists are far from being surprised at these developments. On the contrary, it was obvious from the outset that the dictatorship of a small party over a largely apathetic or hostile population was bound eventually to degenerate in just the way that it has. The terrorism glorified as an instrument of policy by Lenin and Trotsky has been turned by Stalin against most of his former associates and potential rivals. Short of abandoning the party-dictatorship what else could have happened?

A Dilemma for the Communists

But the Communists will not have this. If anything has gone wrong in Russia it is not, they assert, because the party-dictatorship was foredoomed to failure. They are satisfied with the version given in court by the prosecutor, that all would have been well but for the wanton treachery of so many of the old stalwarts of Bolshevism who betrayed their own cause in order to gain personal power, or out of hatred of Stalin, or for love of capitalism.

What the Communists do not see is that they are on the horns of a dilemma either way. If the Stalin Government staged a colossal frame-up on distorted or non-existent evidence of plots and sabotage for the purpose of destroying the Bolshevik movement, and thus removing rivals from the scene, then the dictatorship system plainly stands exposed and condemned. If, on the other hand, the plots and terroristic acts by the convicted men really did take place, as charged, then the dictatorship equally stands condemned, for we are left to believe that out of any ten prominent Communists at any given time some eight or nine will turn out within a few years to be the agents of the Nazis, or of the rulers of Japan, or some group of foreign capitalists.

What Price “Confessions”?

The Communists have an answer to all criticisms, the “confessions.” As the prisoners confessed in open court to all sorts of crimes what more need be said? Unfortunately for this apparently clinching argument time after time prisoners in Russian courts have confessed to things which could not have happened. So that either the prisoners invented imaginary happenings themselves or else the authorities did so for them. This, of course, is tantamount to charging the Russian authorities with deliberate lying if they invented the confessions; and with proceeding with charges on what they knew to be false confessions if the prisoners invented the confessions themselves. The British Communists are highly indignant that anyone should suggest the possibility that Bolsheviks can be guilty of such conduct. They have short memories. Have they forgotten that Lenin and his associates and apologists–including Trotsky–used to advocate lying and double-dealing as a normal part of Communist activity?–and that, not merely against the capitalist class but inside the organised working-class movement, as a means, for example, of gaining control of the trade unions? Why then the indignation?

However, the important point is that essential parts of past confessions are known to have been false, so that the whole of them, along with the methods by which they are obtained, are under suspicion.

In the last trial, Piatakoff confessed that he travelled from Berlin to Oslo by aeroplane in December, 1935, in order to meet Trotsky there, and landed in an aerodrome near Oslo. Trotsky denies that the meeting ever took place, as also does the family with whom and in whose house it is alleged to have occurred. What is more, the Director of the aerodrome informed the Norwegian Labour Party journal, Arbeiderblatt (January 29th, 1937), that no foreign aeroplane whatever landed there between September, 1935, and May, 1936. In December, 1935, one Norwegian aeroplane landed there, but not from Germany, and it had no passengers at all. The Director says:–

“It is out of the question that any aeroplane could have landed unobserved. Throughout the night the aerodrome is guarded by a military patrol.”

(The full story is told in a letter to the Manchester Guardian, February 17th, 1937.)

Again prisoners confessed to meeting Trotsky in Paris in July, 1933. It is claimed by Trotsky’s son in a letter to the Manchester Guardian (February 12th, 1937), that it can be proved beyond question that Trotsky, who landed in France on July 24th, 1933, was never at any time within 300 miles of Paris until October, 1933.

These and several other material points confessed to by prisoners are challenged by persons who are in a position to know what happened. Perhaps they are lying? But why in that event will not the Russian Government and its apologists accept the challenge to have an independent inquiry to ascertain the truth? Mr. Pritt and others held such an inquiry after the German Reichstag fire trial but are silent concerning the weighty challenge to the Russian trials.

Some of the confessions in previous trials have been farcical in respect of important facts. F. Adler, Leon Blum and others whom the Communists now support, describe some of these events in a pamphlet called The Moscow Trial, published by the British Labour Party in 1931 (price 6d., post free). There a prisoner confessed that he had meetings with Abramovitch in Moscow at the very time when Abramovitch was attending a Conference of the Labour and Socialist International at Brussels. Not only was this sworn to by numerous eye-witnesses, but was demonstrated by a group-photograph of delegates taken at the Conference. Abramovitch states on oath, and has the statement confirmed on oath by numerous witnesses, that he never set foot in Russia at all after 1920.

In that trial, instead of a Trotsky plot to divide up Russia with Germany and Japan, the charge was that the prisoners were plotting the invasion and partition of Russia on behalf of French imperialism. One of the men supposed to be acting in the plot as an agent of French imperialism was Leon Blum, now Premier of France, in which position he receives the active support and votes of Communist members of the French Parliament. If the “confessions” proved Blum’s guilt, why are the Communists now supporting him? If it was all imaginary, what is the value of “confessions”?

At a still earlier trial, in 1930, Professor Ramzin “confessed” that he had negotiated in Paris in 1928 with Riabushinsky. It turned out however, that the latter had in fact been dead for several years.

Mr. Pritt Confesses

So much for confessions. What of the method of getting them and the method of conducting political trials in Russia? Mr. Pritt, K.C., who has constituted himself chief apologist for the acts of the Russian dictatorship, gave away his whole case in a letter to the Manchester Guardian on February 12th, 1937. He wrote: –

“Mr. Clifford Haworth . . . raises first the point as to how the confessions were obtained and the amount of latitude allowed to police when examining suspected persons. This is a point which interests all of us, and no one can throw very much light on it in any country.”

Now why cannot Mr. Pritt or anyone else throw very much light on the way the confessions, some of which are demonstrably false, are obtained? The answer is that the investigation is conducted in secrecy. Outsiders are not allowed to know what is going on during the weeks or months before the public appearance of the prisoners in court, while they are being examined in the isolation of a prison. Why cannot the prisoner’s friends and independent lawyers on his behalf be present, hear the investigation and see the documents on which it is based? The Russian authorities say always that the prisoners confess owing to the weight of evidence. Why cannot outsiders be allowed to watch the proceedings and know what this evidence is at the time? Mr. Pritt replies that this Russian method, though unlike the English court proceedings, is the same as in virtually every European country. This is denied by many legal authorities, but what if it were true? Since when have those who claim to be Socialists had to copy the worst methods of the capitalist courts?

It is striking, too, that although Mr. Pritt demanded foreign lawyers, access to the prisoners in prison and other safeguards in the case of the prisoners in the German fire trial, these safeguards were expressly denied by the Russian Government without any protest from Mr. Pritt.

In short, notwithstanding the confessions, and although there is no reason to doubt that the dictatorship provokes underground opposition because it will not allow legal opposition parties, the only attitude that can be adopted towards the trials is to challenge the bona fides of the prosecution because a genuine trial is impossible under dictatorship conditions. The fact that, while the Russian Press reports Mr. Pritt’s statements it completely withholds from its readers the criticisms of his statements (see letter to Manchester Guardian, February 17th, 1937), is an indication of the very unhealthy conditions under which Russian trials and political controversies are carried on.

In conclusion, we can only repeat what we have always urged, that party-dictatorship cannot impose Socialism, nor can it produce the atmosphere of free discussion and independent criticism necessary for the growth of the Socialist movement.

Voir aussi:

• Les procès de Moscou (08-1936)
• Lettre à la génération future (Boukharine, 02-1937)
• La question de l’URSS (GIC, 04-1937)
• Two “secrets” of Moscow Trials (Yvon, 1936, publ. 04-1937)
• Cauchemar en URSS (Souvarine, 07-1937) pdf
• Interview autour du Procès de Moscou (Rosmer,03-1938)

After the wonders of The Dark Knight, Hellboy II: the Golden Army feels like we're back to a normal and dull Hollywoodland: Ron Perlman returns as Hellboy to fight a bad Prince from a far far away country who wants to take the earth back from the humans who stole it from his people after blablabla.

This pretty conventional story gives birth to a few interesting scenes like a troll market under NY or the beautiful CGI intro tale, when we see the war between humans and elves through the eyes of Hellboy as a child. Apart from these two scenes and a few nice ideas, the rest... we know too well.

No one can say that director Guillermo Del Toro is lazy, or is not a virtuoso. As Expected the Hellboy sequel tastes like a sophisticated eye candy. All monsters and creatures are particularly beautiful and Del Toro uses special effects with a clever restraint. The Golden Army itself is visually fantastic as all costumes and sets. Pan's Labyrinth and even the Blade franchise were no lucky break: Guillermo Del Toro stands as of the most interesting film makers of the last years and the movie definitely deserves to be seen for the pleasure of the eyes.

This said Hellboy II's main problem lies within the story and moreover the characters: Hellboy and his mates have some funny lines but lack the three-dimension that made the DK unforgettable. Hellboy has a pregnant girlfriend, his fishman friend loves the cute princess, but nobody seems to believe in it and in spite of a funny scene when the two monster buddies sing cheesy love songs while emptying beers, you can't forget that it's just a bunch of guys wearing costumes in front of a camera. One scene when the hero is wondering if he should kill or not a monster that is the last of his kind could have started an interesting questioning on whether the humans deserve Hellboy's and other mutants' help. Could have.

Now that the ultimate super hero movie has been done, maybe it's time for Hollywood to move on and have some talented people writing and directing something really new.

blomsterknoppers stille bøn
ringler klart med forårs brise
hvisken fra en ønskebrønd
stemmer alt i sommers vise
efterårets regn og vind
buer over byens porte
rammer selve håbet ind
lyser gennem vinters sorte

This afternoon me and my partner were hiking around the Flachsee in kanton Aargau. Eventhough they call it a lake, its actually just a river with some getting wider than the other. There is a nice tracking/hiking road around this small lake. This time, unlike hiking in Davos which is going up about 2600 m asl, the track is flat, so i have no issue on "dengkul lemah" hihihi.. (Its actually the issue when you feel your knee start to tremble and its getting hard to breath, and you just want to lay down there hihi). Beside, i was walking with the hiking stick!

Anyway, this approximatelly 10 Km long path are very awesome! The view are just incredibly nice.

Can you spot a big baloon in the first picture? Hehe. Yes, thats about above the local small "airport" i've told you in the previous post. Beside, from this spot, you can see any plane which fly in and out Zurich airport. This afternoon, the sky was so blue, no clouds up there and the planes leaves a long trail of condensed air. I saw at least 10 planes in the sky at the same time going in many directions. Was so very very very NICE! Anyway, the thing is, i couldnt make many pictures since i forgot to charge the battery for the camera. But luckily some of the pictures i took were quite nice and i want to share it with you guys... my dearest readers.

Oh, on the way, we made a break though and make a little picnic of our own. Hehe. At first, we were busy gathering dry woods and then make some fire. Its like learning how to survive in the wild nature hahaha... (lighter surely is one out of ten things you have to choose if there are options to take things when you are castaway in unknown place! haha).

So we drink some beer, and grilled some sausage! (Though i dont really like sausage) Hihihi. Ate it with cheese, fresh tomato and fresh cucumber. Oh it was yummy! Anyway, you guys wont believe how stupid my face look like when my partner told that the sausage are made entirely with vegetables! It was the first time i heard a vegetable sausage.... Haaaaaa!, and i always though sausages are made form cows, chickens, pics or other possible animals to make sausage with! Hihihi... How innoceeent meeee... (plak!). Now i know what my favourite sausage is! Ehm... of course beside that special "sausage" hihihi.

While eating there are some people fishing near us. Since they are so concentrated on what they doing, they didn't see us made out haha..

Well, sometimes you enjoy time so much that you don't realize how fast it runs!

Luckily we arrive at where our favorite ducks and swans gathered waiting for people to feed them. So i took the bread which is generously provided almost everyday by a friend. He he. I always cut it in the afternoon and save it for feeding animals somewhere. And this afternoon, the lucky hungry winner are the Flachsee inhabitans. Yay! (I still feel very happy though the swans bites my hand... ouch!).

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Canicula :: Wah... what a nice afternoon...

In that spirit, i've done my "to do" list, which for today it looks like this (in no particular order):

1. Bringing my new pants to the tailor
2. Having my driving license updated
3. Learning Lebanese
4. Learning to cook (Lebanese dishes included)
5. Updating my resume
6. Understanding/searching for what could be my next job
7. Sending my stories to an editor
8. Scrapbooking
9. Collecting photos and having printed a book for my mum
10. Traveling to Lebanon (the utmost would be before the end of the year)
11. Traveling to Istanbul
12. Traveling to Italy and particularly to: Florence (again!), Sienna, Verona, Milan (again!), Venice
13. Reading "1984" by George Orwell
14. Watching "The Godfather"
15. Selecting one charitable/not-for-profit activity by which I'll be giving of my person, be useful to the community/someone/something and give back all the goodness I've/am received/ing
16. Starting again working out
17. Buying a new laptop: MAC or PC?

(tbc)

Oh, it also says that you can reach inner peace by: swimming, laughing, massaging your feet, having your fingers busy, singing, making love, laughing...

There are four foreigners in this KIDS group, three from Japan, and one from Mexico. One of the "three musketeers from Japan" is a professor, and the others are the students, including the mexican. The students' name are Shinnosuke Choujin, Tsutsumiuchi Takahiro (his nickname is Cuci...weird for us, eh?), and Nelson Hernandez, the Mexican. Okay, I can recognize what Nelson says because he speaks clearly. Maybe it's because he's from Mexico?

At first, I know that it would be difficult to talk with japanese (I know it from my experience watching the japan's anime, their english articulation is a mess...). Yeah, honestly I don't want to talk in english with japanese people because it's quite difficult to recognize their pronunciation, their articulation. So, I'd like to talk with them with Japanese language. Unfortunatelty I can't speak japanese, so I had to speak with them in english. Then, when I hear Cuci speaks english...(the Indonesian response, originally from Surabaya)... "Damn! This is a disaster for me! I can't recognize even just one word from him! Heeeelp!!" ......... That's my first experience in direct conversation with Japanese.... Not good....

It's Cuci, not Choujin. Choujin speaks english better than Cuci. He's more fluent and quite clear in pronunciation. Although he's better than Cuci, doesn't mean I can speak with him fluently. There are still problem with his articulation, difficult to recognize what he said, and my vocabulary sucks, I can't speak too much.... So we stuck in conversation...... "Damn.... is this my first experience in conversation with Japanese?" I said.

Anyway, it is still easier to talk with Japanese, compared with my experience in Singapore. There, they speak english compacted with their own accent, become "sing-lish", singapore-english.

When I was in a gamestore…
Me: “Excuse me, can u tell me what kind of game is this?”
Merchant: “Aaaaa… dat is BLA BLA BLA…. Yu can CANG CING CONG with that… Yu want to buy it?”
Me: “What the…. what did he say before???”

See? It’s like they speak ENGLISH with their own language, but mixed with their own accent!

Haaaaa...... I thank God I'm an Indonesian... because I think we, Indonesian, can speak foreign languages clearly, although we still brought some dialect from our birthplace... Like my friend, he's from Yogyakarta. He speaks english fluently, but with full-"medhok" dialect. It's funny, but still he speaks clearly and I do understand what he said. Not just english I think, Japanase, Mandarin, Italian, French and German too. So, Indonesian people has many adventages in foreign language. We just don't waste this adventage, right?

Nb: I thought that the professor speaks english fluently.... but the reality is... Choujin's english is better then the professor.... really... this is really happened... why did this happen?