الامم يعتريها الوجود والفناء، والتاريخ يحدثنا عن أعمار الأمم، فمنها من بقي عشرات السنين ثم اندثر وباد، فمثلا اليونان امتد عمرها قرابة 500 عام ثم فقدت وجودها الثقافي فابتلعتها ثقافات أخرى، أما الثقافة الإسلامية فقد مضى عليها قرابة 15 قرناً وما زالت قائمة شامخة، وهي التحدي الوحيد لزعماء الغرب، فهي كالشجرة الطيبة أصلها ثابت وجذورها ضاربة في أعماق الأرض، إن الشعوب لا تُفنى جسديا ومادياً ولكنها تفنى ثقافياً.
A lot of the nonsense was the innocent result of playfulness on the part of the founding fathers of the nation of Dwayne Hoover and Kilgore Trout. The founders were aristocrats, and they wished to show off their useless eduction, which consisted of the study of hocus-pocus from ancient times. They were bum poets as well. But some of the nonsense was evil, since it concealed great crime. For example, teachers of children in the United States of America wrote this date on blackboards again and again, and asked the children to memorize it with pride and joy:1492The teachers told the children that this was when their continent was discovered by human beings. Actually, millions of human beings were already living full and imaginative lives on the continent in 1492. That was simply the year in which sea pirates began to cheat and rob and kill them.Here was another piece of nonsense which children were taught: that the sea pirates eventually created a government which became a beacon of freedom of human beings everywhere else. There were pictures and statues of this supposed imaginary beacon for children to see. It was sort of ice-cream cone on fire. It looked like this:[image]Actually, the sea pirates who had the most to do with the creation of the new government owned human slaves. They used human beings for machinery, and, even after slavery was eliminated, because it was so embarrassing, they and their descendants continued to think of ordinary human beings as machines.The sea pirates were white. The people who were already on the continent when the pirates arrived were copper-colored. When slavery was introduced onto the continent, the slaves were black.Color was everything.Here is how the pirates were able to take whatever they wanted from anybody else: they had the best boats in the world, and they were meaner than anybody else, and they had gunpowder, which is a mixture of potassium nitrate, charcoal, and sulphur. They touched the seemingly listless powder with fire, and it turned violently into gas. This gas blew projectiles out of metal tubes at terrific velocities. The projectiles cut through meat and bone very easily; so the pirates could wreck the wiring or the bellows or the plumbing of a stubborn human being, even when he was far, far away.The chief weapon of the sea pirates, however, was their capacity to astonish. Nobody else could believe, until it was much too late, how heartless and greedy they were.
In the Christian tradition, there is a very decisive problem in distinguishing between the senses of the terms "Jesus" and "Christ." "Jesus" refers to a historical character; "Christ" refers to an eternal principle, the Son of God: the second person of the blessed Trinity, which exists before and after all the ages and is, therefore, not historical. The sense of our tradition is that the historical character Jesus is or was the Incarnation on earth of that second person of the blessed Trinity.Now, the main point that would distinguish our tradition in this respect from (let us say) Hinduism or Buddhism is that we would say that this Incarnation was unique. That has had a special force in our tradition. Yet the main point of the Christian religion is not, certainly, that the Incarnation was unique in the case of Jesus Christ, but rather that this miracle---the eternal principle of Christ's birth, life, and death---should have some effect on the individual human spirit. There is a wonderful line from the German mystic Angelus Silesius: "Of what use, Gabriel, your message to Marie / Unless you can now bring the same message to me?"19 Likewise, the great mystic Meister Eckhart states, "It is of more worth to God that Christ should be born in the virgin soul than that Jesus should have been born in Bethlehem."20This point is tremendously important. Many of the images---which in our religion are dogmatically affirmed as having had historical reality---are very difficult today to interpret in historical terms. For example, the Assumption of the Virgin or the ascension of Jesus to heaven both lead us to a problem: where is heaven? Somewhere up in the sky? Our contemporary cosmology does not permit us to entertain that thought very seriously. We have a collision between these articles of faith and the historical and physical sciences, which we have to admit are ruling our lives, giving us everything that we live by from day to day. This collision has destroyed people's belief in these symbolic forms; they are rejected as untrue.21Now, since the primary truth is not the historical but the spiritual reference of these symbols, the fact that historical evidence refuts these myths on the level of objective reality should not relieve us of the symbols. These symbols stem from the psyche; they speak from and to the spirit. And they are in fact the vehicles of communication between the deeper depths of our spiritual life and this relatively thin layer of consciousness by which we govern our daylight existences.
There was no Disney World then, just rows of orange trees. Millions of them. Stretching for miles And somewhere near the middle was the Citrus Tower, which the tourists climbed to see even more orange trees. Every month an eighty-year-old couple became lost in the groves, driving up and down identical rows for days until they were spotted by helicopter or another tourist on top of the Citrus Tower. They had lived on nothing but oranges and come out of the trees drilled on vitamin C and checked into the honeymoon suite at the nearest bed-and-breakfast."The Miami Seaquarium put in a monorail and rockets started going off at Cape Canaveral, making us feel like we were on the frontier of the future. Disney bought up everything north of Lake Okeechobee, preparing to shove the future down our throats sideways."Things evolved rapidly! Missile silos in Cuba. Bales on the beach. Alligators are almost extinct and then they aren't. Juntas hanging shingles in Boca Raton. Richard Nixon and Bebe Rebozo skinny-dipping off Key Biscayne. We atone for atrocities against the INdians by playing Bingo. Shark fetuses in formaldehyde jars, roadside gecko farms, tourists waddling around waffle houses like flocks of flightless birds. And before we know it, we have The New Florida, underplanned, overbuilt and ripe for a killer hurricane that'll knock that giant geodesic dome at Epcot down the trunpike like a golf ball, a solid one-wood by Buckminster Fuller."I am the native and this is my home. Faded pastels, and Spanish tiles constantly slipping off roofs, shattering on the sidewalk. Dogs with mange and skateboard punks with mange roaming through yards, knocking over garbage cans. Lunatics wandering the streets at night, talking about spaceships. Bail bondsmen wake me up at three A.M. looking for the last tenant. Next door, a mail-order bride is clubbed by a smelly ma in a mechanic's shirt. Cats violently mate under my windows and rats break-dance in the drop ceiling. And I'm lying in bed with a broken air conditioner, sweating and sipping lemonade through a straw. And I'm thinking, geez, this used to be a great state."You wanna come to Florida? You get a discount on theme-park tickets and find out you just bough a time share. Or maybe you end up at Cape Canaveral, sitting in a field for a week as a space shuttle launch is canceled six times. And suddenly vacation is over, you have to catch a plane, and you see the shuttle take off on TV at the airport. But you keep coming back, year after year, and one day you find you're eighty years old driving through an orange grove.
As Mollie said to Dailey in the 1890s: "I am told that there are five other Mollie Fanchers, who together, make the whole of the one Mollie Fancher, known to the world; who they are and what they are I cannot tell or explain, I can only conjecture." Dailey described five distinct Mollies, each with a different name, each of whom he met (as did Aunt Susan and a family friend, George Sargent). According to Susan Crosby, the first additional personality appeared some three years after the after the nine-year trance, or around 1878. The dominant Mollie, the one who functioned most of the time and was known to everyone as Mollie Fancher, was designated Sunbeam (the names were devised by Sargent, as he met each of the personalities). The four other personalities came out only at night, after eleven, when Mollie would have her usual spasm and trance. The first to appear was always Idol, who shared Sunbeam's memories of childhood and adolescence but had no memory of the horsecar accident. Idol was very jealous of Sunbeam's accomplishments, and would sometimes unravel her embroidery or hide her work. Idol and Sunbeam wrote with different handwriting, and at times penned letters to each other.The next personality Sargent named Rosebud: "It was the sweetest little child's face," he described, "the voice and accent that of a little child." Rosebud said she was seven years old, and had Mollie's memories of early childhood: her first teacher's name, the streets on which she had lived, children's songs. She wrote with a child's handwriting, upper- and lowercase letters mixed. When Dailey questioned Rosebud about her mother, she answered that she was sick and had gone away, and that she did not know when she would be coming back. As to where she lived, she answered "Fulton Street," where the Fanchers had lived before moving to Gates Avenue.Pearl, the fourth personality, was evidently in her late teens. Sargent described her as very spiritual, sweet in expression, cultured and agreeable: "She remembers Professor West [principal of Brooklyn Heights Seminary], and her school days and friends up to about the sixteenth year in the life of Mollie Fancher. She pronounces her words with an accent peculiar to young ladies of about 1865." Ruby, the last Mollie, was vivacious, humorous, bright, witty. "She does everything with a dash," said Sargent. "What mystifies me about 'Ruby,' and distinguishes her from the others, is that she does not, in her conversations with me, go much into the life of Mollie Fancher. She has the air of knowing a good deal more than she tells.
Aku sering menghabiskan waktuku sebelum tidur untuk memikirkan masa depan, tapi dengan usia setua ini, pikiranku sering terbang ke masa lalu. Dan aku memikirkan semua yang telah kami capai. Dengan gembira aku melayangkan pikiran pada kenyataan-kenyataan yang memuaskan, seperti harapan hidup orang Indonesia. Sekarang angka itu 55 tahun. Di zaman Belanda 35 tahun. Pada waktu sekarang jumlah dokter sudah mencapai angka 5000, ahli farmasi 500. Dan terdapat 4000 buah balai kesejahteraan ibu dan anak, yang sebelum ini tidak ada sama sekali. Sekarang 70 juta rakyat Indonesia bebas dari penyakit malaria, sedangkan dulu tiap tahunnya 30 juta harus menderita. Kami sekarang menghasilkan kina sebanyak 90 persen dari produksi dunia, yang berarti 20 persen melebihi produksi tahun 1950; semen, minyak kelapa sawit, pupuk, karet, dan minyak bumi, semua ini pun menunjukkan peningkatan sejak kemerdekaan. Produksi makanan bertambah dua kali lipat dan kami telah menghentikan impor ikan, dan ada keuntungan yang tetap dalam ekspor kayu dan hasil hutan. Tambahan lagi, seluruh kemajuan kami dalam ketrampilan kerja nampak luar biasa. Di zaman kolonial, seluruh perusahaan antar-pulau dikuasai Belanda. Sekarang kami mengembangkan armada dagang sendiri. Semua perkebunan seperti tembakau, teh, dan tebu ditambah lagi dengan perusahaan-perusahaan kopra dan bahan-bahan rempah yang dulunya 100 persen dikuasai Belanda, sekarang dijalankan sendiri oleh bangsa Indonesia.Di bidang militer, angkatan bersenjata kami adalah yang terbesaru di Asia Tenggara. Kemajuan di bidang pendidikan kami menduduki nomor satu. Perhatikan sekolah-sekolah menengah kami. Pada awalnya kami cuma memiliki 32 buah. Tapi kini berjumlah 2000. Ini menunjukkan kemajuan yang 60 kali lipat. Program kami sedemikian maju, sehingga menjadi contoh bagi negara-negara Asia lainnya. Di bidang sosial kamipun telah melangkah dengan pesat. Dengan emansipasi kaum perempuan, kami tidak hanya membanggakan tampilnya para menteri perempuan, melainkan juga lebih dari 100 hakim perempuan. Di samping itu ada juga program mendidik dari rumah ke rumah jutaan rakyat kampung mengenai cara membuat tungku sehingga asapnya keluar dan tidak mengumpul di dalam rumah yang menyebabkan kerusakan mata; bagaimana cara membuat kakus sehingga rakyat kampung yang sederhana pun belajar mengenai sanitasi; dan bagaimana membuat pondok bambu pakai jendela sehingga cahaya dan udara bersih dan kesehatan mengaliri hidup masyarakat. Tapi yang lebih membanggakan adalah kenyataan ketika India sekarang sedang berjuang untuk satu bahasa persatuan dan Tiongkok belum memiliki bahasa persatuan, rakyat Indonesia yang tersebar di 10.000 pulau, semua berbicara dalam bahasa Indonesia.
...Quando Isabelle alzò lo sguardo ebbe l’impressione che il cuore le si fermasse. Stava risalendo insieme a Jeanne la scalinata che dall’Orangerie riportava al castello dopo avere verificato che per loro quella poteva essere la via di fuga perfetta la sera dello spettacolo. Era emozionata e non vedeva l’ora di fare ritorno alla locanda per potere parlare liberamente dei dettagli del piano che aveva in mente con l’amica, quando all’improvviso si era trovata a guardare un uomo il cui sguardo avrebbe riconosciuto in mezzo a mille. Jacques. Lui era lì a pochi passi da lei e quell’incontro non aveva senso. Perché mai Jacques si trovava lì a Corte,a Versailles e per giunta vestito da aristocratico?No, c’era qualcosa di sbagliato. L’uomo che aveva amato e che ancora non riusciva a dimenticare non era un semplice borghese che rientrava da un viaggio all’estero? Forse però quella era semplicemente l’idea che lei si era fatta di lui, dopotutto Jacques non le aveva mai detto chi fosse realmente.«Cosa c’è?» domandò Jeanne vedendo l’amica ancora immobile e visibilmente sconvolta. Poi alzò lo sguardo anche lei e vide quel giovane bellissimo e riccamente vestito che fissava l’amica. Se però a lei quel volto non diceva nulla, diversamente fu quando il suo sguardo si spostò sull’altro uomo che intanto aveva raggiunto Jacques e si era fermato accanto a lui. «Oh mio Dio» mormorò Jeanne.La situazione che si era creata aveva qualcosa di surreale. Isabelle, Jacques, Jeanne e Nicolas che si fissavano l’un l’altro lì, immobili su quella scalinata e con le prime fredde gocce di pioggia che cominciavano a cadere sui loro visi. Il rombo del tuono annunciò che il temporale era ormai arrivato. Sembrava che il tempo fosse congelato. Nessuno osava fare un gesto o pronunciare una parola.Infine fu Isabelle a parlare per prima.«Tu...qui?» riuscì a dire.Gli occhi azzurri di Jacques puntati in quelli verde smeraldo di lei. “Dio quanto è bella” pensò l’uomo avvicinandosi alla giovane che aveva lasciato due mesi prima. Vedere quegli occhi, quei lunghi capelli corvini legati in una treccia come ricordava di averli visti quella prima sera insieme alla locanda… e poi quel semplice vestito bordeaux che metteva in risalto il colore ambrato della sua pelle nonché le sue forme che ancora ricordava così bene. Il ricordo di loro due insieme era ancora troppo forte, troppo vivo in lui e quell’incontro non aveva fatto altro che riaccendere i suoi sentimenti e il suo desiderio.«Isabelle» fu tutto quello che l’uomo riuscì a dire. Aveva sceso gli ultimi gradini della lunga scalinata che ancora lo separavano da lei e se avesse allungato un braccio avrebbe potuto sfiorarle il viso con la mano...
Exoneration of Jesus Christ If Christ was in fact God, he knew all the future.Before Him like a panorama moved the history yet to be. He knew how his words would be interpreted.He knew what crimes, what horrors, what infamies, would be committed in his name. He knew that the hungry flames of persecution would climb around the limbs of countless martyrs. He knew that thousands and thousands of brave men and women would languish in dungeons in darkness, filled with pain.He knew that his church would invent and use instruments of torture; that his followers would appeal to whip and fagot, to chain and rack. He saw the horizon of the future lurid with the flames of the auto da fe.He knew what creeds would spring like poisonous fungi from every text. He saw the ignorant sects waging war against each other.He saw thousands of men, under the orders of priests, building prisons for their fellow-men. He saw thousands of scaffolds dripping with the best and bravest blood. He saw his followers using the instruments of pain. He heard the groans—saw the faces white with agony.He heard the shrieks and sobs and cries of all the moaning, martyred multitudes. He knew that commentaries would be written on his words with swords, to be read by the light of fagots. He knew that the Inquisition would be born of the teachings attributed to him. He saw the interpolations and falsehoods that hypocrisy would write and tell. He saw all wars that would be waged, and-he knew that above these fields of death, these dungeons, these rackings, these burnings, these executions, for a thousand years would float the dripping banner of the cross.He knew that hypocrisy would be robed and crowned—that cruelty and credulity would rule the world; knew that liberty would perish from the earth; knew that popes and kings in his name would enslave the souls and bodies of men; knew that they would persecute and destroy the discoverers, thinkers and inventors; knew that his church would extinguish reason’s holy light and leave the world without a star.He saw his disciples extinguishing the eyes of men, flaying them alive, cutting out their tongues, searching for all the nerves of pain.He knew that in his name his followers would trade in human flesh; that cradles would be robbed and women’s breasts unbabed for gold.And yet he died with voiceless lips.Why did he fail to speak? Why did he not tell his disciples, and through them the world: “You shall not burn, imprison and torture in my name. You shall not persecute your fellow-men.”Why did he not plainly say: “I am the Son of God,” or, “I am God”? Why did he not explain the Trinity? Why did he not tell the mode of baptism that was pleasing to him? Why did he not write a creed? Why did he not break the chains of slaves? Why did he not say that the Old Testament was or was not the inspired word of God? Why did he not write the New Testament himself?Why did he leave his words to ignorance, hypocrisy and chance? Why did he not say something positive, definite and satisfactory about another world? Why did he not turn the tear-stained hope of heaven into the glad knowledge of another life? Why did he not tell us something of the rights of man, of the liberty of hand and brain?Why did he go dumbly to his death, leaving the world to misery and to doubt?I will tell you why. He was a man, and did not know.
Here we introduce the nation's first great communications monopolist, whose reign provides history's first lesson in the power and peril of concentrated control over the flow of information. Western Union's man was one Rutherford B. Hates, an obscure Ohio politician described by a contemporary journalist as "a third rate nonentity." But the firm and its partner newswire, the Associated Press, wanted Hayes in office, for several reasons. Hayes was a close friend of William Henry Smith, a former politician who was now the key political operator at the Associated Press. More generally, since the Civil War, the Republican Party and the telegraph industry had enjoyed a special relationship, in part because much of what were eventually Western Union's lines were built by the Union Army.So making Hayes president was the goal, but how was the telegram in Reid's hand key to achieving it?The media and communications industries are regularly accused of trying to influence politics, but what went on in the 1870s was of a wholly different order from anything we could imagine today. At the time, Western Union was the exclusive owner of the nationwide telegraph network, and the sizable Associated Press was the unique source for "instant" national or European news. (It's later competitor, the United Press, which would be founded on the U.S. Post Office's new telegraph lines, did not yet exist.) The Associated Press took advantage of its economies of scale to produce millions of lines of copy a year and, apart from local news, its product was the mainstay of many American newspapers.With the common law notion of "common carriage" deemed inapplicable, and the latter day concept of "net neutrality" not yet imagined, Western Union carried Associated Press reports exclusively. Working closely with the Republican Party and avowedly Republican papers like The New York Times (the ideal of an unbiased press would not be established for some time, and the minting of the Time's liberal bona fides would take longer still), they did what they could to throw the election to Hayes. It was easy: the AP ran story after story about what an honest man Hayes was, what a good governor he had been, or just whatever he happened to be doing that day. It omitted any scandals related to Hayes, and it declined to run positive stories about his rivals (James Blaine in the primary, Samuel Tilden in the general). But beyond routine favoritism, late that Election Day Western Union offered the Hayes campaign a secret weapon that would come to light only much later.Hayes, far from being the front-runner, had gained the Republican nomination only on the seventh ballot. But as the polls closed his persistence appeared a waste of time, for Tilden, the Democrat, held a clear advantage in the popular vote (by a margin of over 250,000) and seemed headed for victory according to most early returns; by some accounts Hayes privately conceded defeat. But late that night, Reid, the New York Times editor, alerted the Republican Party that the Democrats, despite extensive intimidation of Republican supporters, remained unsure of their victory in the South. The GOP sent some telegrams of its own to the Republican governors in the South with special instructions for manipulating state electoral commissions. As a result the Hayes campaign abruptly claimed victory, resulting in an electoral dispute that would make Bush v. Gore seem a garden party. After a few brutal months, the Democrats relented, allowing Hayes the presidency — in exchange, most historians believe, for the removal of federal troops from the South, effectively ending Reconstruction.The full history of the 1876 election is complex, and the power of th
Bila satu negara baru lahir dan orang-orang yang sebelumnya tidak pernah punya apa-apa itu ditempatkan pada jabatan yang "basah", terdapatlah salah urus dan korupsi, bahkan pada kalangan atas. Baru-baru ini aku mengeluarkan ancaman hukuman mati untuk pengacau ekonomi. Seorang pemilik penggilingan padi membuat harga beras membumbung tinggi dengan menimbun enam ribu ton. Bila dia nanti ternyata bersalah, aku sendiri yang akan menandatangani perintah hukuman mati terhadapnya.Banyak dari para pengusaha kami menyimpan hartanya di bank luar negeri. Aku tahu hal itu. Tetapi selagi mereka bekerja membantu kami, bukan menentang kami, hak milik perorangan tidak akan dihapus sebagaimana di sejumlah negara sosialis lain. Sukarno dengan gembira membolehkan warga negaranya kaya. Beberapa orang kawanku sendiri adalah kapitalis-sosialis. Tetapi hal itu harus dibatasi. Mereka yang menghisap kekayaan negara dan menjadi patriot apabila sakunya berisi, akan ditembak mati. Undang-undang kami sekarang harus tegas, atau ekonomi kami tidak pernah beres.Di negara Barat kehidupan sangat menyenangkan. Orang bisa membeli gula, dasi bagus, barang-barang mewah seperti lipstik dan krim wajah. Di Timur terjadi kekurangan yang serius. Di negara-negara kapitalis orang dapat bergerak bebas. Di negara-negara sosialis apa yang disebut kebebasan tidak ada. Bahkan kelaparan masih sering terjadi. Ada pembatasan di setiap bidang, ini bukan karena sistem kami yang salah, melainkan karena kami masih dalam proses mewujudkan cita-cita.Menderita akan membuat kuat. Aku tidak menghendaki rakyatku menderita, tetapi kalau semua diperoleh dengan mudah, mereka pikir Bung Karno adalah Sinterklas. Mereka akan duduk saja menunggu Sukarno mengerjakan semua untuk mereka. Mungkin kalau aku memiliki kemampuan untuk memberikan kesenangan, aku tidak akan menjadi pemimpin yang baik. Aku harus memberi rakyatku makanan untuk jiwanya bukan hanya untuk perutnya. Seandainya aku memakai semua uang untuk membeli beras, mungkin aku akan dapat mengatasi kelaparan mereka. Tapi bila aku memiliki uang 5 dollar, aku akan mengeluarkan 2.50 dollar untuk membuat mereka kuat. Membesarkan suatu bangsa merupakan pekerjaan kompleks.Semangat suatu bangsa yang pernah tertindas tidak boleh disia-siakan. Di Kalimantan Barat sungainya tidak dapat di lewati, perhubungan tidak mungkin diadakan. Sebagian besar bahan makanannya diimpor. Ketika aku pertamakali berkunjung ke sana, tahukah engkau apa yang sangat mereka inginkan? Bukan bantuan teknis. Bukan pembangunan pertanian. Tapi sebuah fakultas hukum! Dan begitulah sekarang telah berdiri sebuah universitas di tengah-tengah rimb raya Kalimantan.Manusia tidak hanya hidup untuk makan. Meski gang-gang di Jakarta penuh lumpur dan jalanan masih kurang, aku memutuskan membangun gedung-gedung bertingkat, jembatan berbentuk daun semanggu, dan sebuah jalan raya "superhighway", Jakarta Bypass. Aku juga menamai kembali jalan-jalan dengan nama para pahlawan kami. Jalan Diponegoro, Jalan Thamrin, Jalan Cokroaminoto. Aku menganggao pengeluaran uang untuk simbol-simbol penting seperti itu tidak akan sia-sia. Aku harus membuat bangsa Indonesia bangga terhadap diri mereka. Mereka sudah terlalu lama kehilangan harga diri.Banyak orang memiliki wawasan picik dengan mentalitas warung kelontong menghitung-hitung pengeluaran itu dan menuduhku menghambur-hamburkan uang rakyat. Ini semua bukankah untuk keagunganku, tapi agar seluruh bangsaku dihargai seluruh dunia. Seluruh negeriku membeku ketia Asian Games 1962 akan diselenggarakan di ibukotanya. Kami lalu mendirikan stadion dengan atap melingkar yang tak ada duanya di dunia. Kota-kota di mancanegara memiliki stadion yang lebih besar, tetapi tak ada yang memiliki atap melingkar. Ya, memberantas kelaparan memang penting, tetapi memberi jiwa mereka yang telah tertindas dengan sesuatu yang dapat membangkitkan kebanggaan ini juga penting.
Lynum had plenty of information to share. The FBI's files on Mario Savio, the brilliant philosophy student who was the spokesman for the Free Speech Movement, were especially detailed. Savio had a debilitating stutter when speaking to people in small groups, but when standing before a crowd and condemning his administration's latest injustice he spoke with divine fire. His words had inspired students to stage what was the largest campus protest in American history. Newspapers and magazines depicted him as the archetypal "angry young man," and it was true that he embodied a student movement fueled by anger at injustice, impatience for change, and a burning desire for personal freedom. Hoover ordered his agents to gather intelligence they could use to ruin his reputation or otherwise "neutralize" him, impatiently ordering them to expedite their efforts.Hoover's agents had also compiled a bulging dossier on the man Savio saw as his enemy: Clark Kerr. As campus dissent mounted, Hoover came to blame the university president more than anyone else for not putting an end to it. Kerr had led UC to new academic heights, and he had played a key role in establishing the system that guaranteed all Californians access to higher education, a model adopted nationally and internationally. But in Hoover's eyes, Kerr confused academic freedom with academic license, coddled Communist faculty members, and failed to crack down on "young punks" like Savio. Hoover directed his agents to undermine the esteemed educator in myriad ways. He wanted Kerr removed from his post as university president. As he bluntly put it in a memo to his top aides, Kerr was "no good."Reagan listened intently to Lynum's presentation, but he wanted more--much more. He asked for additional information on Kerr, for reports on liberal members of the Board of Regents who might oppose his policies, and for intelligence reports about any upcoming student protests. Just the week before, he had proposed charging tuition for the first time in the university's history, setting off a new wave of protests up and down the state. He told Lynum he feared subversives and liberals would attempt to misrepresent his efforts to establish fiscal responsibility, and that he hoped the FBI would share information about any upcoming demonstrations against him, whether on campus or at his press conferences. It was Reagan's fear, according to Lynum's subsequent report, "that some of his press conferences could be stacked with 'left wingers' who might make an attempt to embarrass him and the state government."Lynum said he understood his concerns, but following Hoover's instructions he made no promises. Then he and Harter wished the ailing governor a speedy recovery, departed the mansion, slipped into their dark four-door Ford, and drove back to the San Francisco field office, where Lynum sent an urgent report to the director.The bedside meeting was extraordinary, but so was the relationship between Reagan and Hoover. It had begun decades earlier, when the actor became an informer in the FBI's investigation of Hollywood Communists. When Reagan was elected president of the Screen Actors Guild, he secretly continued to help the FBI purge fellow actors from the union's rolls. Reagan's informing proved helpful to the House Un-American Activities Committee as well, since the bureau covertly passed along information that could help HUAC hold the hearings that wracked Hollywood and led to the blacklisting and ruin of many people in the film industry. Reagan took great satisfaction from his work with the FBI, which gave him a sense of security and mission during a period when his marriage to Jane Wyman was failing, his acting career faltering, and his faith in the Democratic Party of his father crumbling. In the following years, Reagan and FBI officials courted each other through a series of confidential contacts. (7-8)
Михаил Африканович Терентьев, участник Большой Игры, ставший ее первым, и на долгие годы главным летописцем, в своих очерках «Туркестан и туркестанцы» вспоминает интересную деталь. После нашего завоевания Средней Азии местные жители уверяли, что зимы в Туркестане после прихода русских стали гораздо суровее — русские, мол, принесли с собой холод. Занятно, как они объясняли этот факт. Аллах, утверждали они, любит русских, иначе не отдал бы нас им во владение. А поскольку русские любят холод, он и сделал климат попрохладнее — чтобы им легче здесь жилось.Когда я пересказал это своей жене — профессиональному историку, изучающему дореволюционный Дальний Восток, она ответила, что зазейские маньчжуры в Амурской области говорили то же самое — никогда, мол, у них не было таких холодных зим, как после прихода русских.
