This collection of extracts was born from a "chance" meeting in war-torn Bosnia, during their civil war, aggravated by foreign powers (Germany, the United States, Al Qaeda jihadis). On the road to Mostar, Jenny Hales, from Sheffield, England, a peace activist in her mid-seventies, had this copy of The Words of Martin Luther King in her purse, she kept it with her everywhere she went. She had been to Iraq, on the border with Kuwait, before the American devastating campaign, in 1991, with a hundred others like her. They were all peace-loving men and women, who thought their presence on the border would stop the Americans from invading Iraq - that was the Gulf War.

This sort of activism could work. When we tried it in the summer of 1993, in Sarajevo, it did prevent the U.S. from bombing the outskirts of Sarajevo (held by what was left of the Jugoslovenska Narodna Armija, the Yugoslav People's Army, after the Croats had deserted it).

This time around, the Baghdad authorities anticipated a carnage, and decided to repatriate the activists to their capital, by bus. Soon after, the big bombers went into action, and it all went up in smoke, the oil wells, and so many strategical assets in Baghdad. The rest-is-history. Including the birth of the Islamic State in the American camps of prisoners of war.

Jenny also went to parts of the world where landmines had been buried. She was that sort of woman. We later met, and organized a humanitarian convoy (Humanitarna Pomoc) together. When she realized my interest in her little MLK book, she parted from it, and gave it to me. It has stayed with me ever since. And the thought grew, that it could be done again, differently, with a selection of extracts by teenagers, and it should be printed in both Arabic and Hebrew.

This was done in 2003 by a dozen high-school students from some ten countries, in France (Algeria, Cameroon, China, India, Mali, Nicaragua, Portugal, Serbia...), with the help of a few teachers, and of the municipality of the town they lived in, where the first edition (French-English) was printed. 330 little books were sold for three euros each. With the thousand euros, we had two thousand books printed in English-Arabic, and two thousand more in English-Hebrew, in Bethlehem, of a perfect quality. 10 by 15 cm.

So hail to thee, Jenny in Sheffield, wherever you may be now, in some other world... The spirit lives on.

 

Here is a first extract. We have chosen the 7th one, about the mammoth facilities with computer minds, the gigantic industry and government, woven into intricate computerized mechanisms, for reasons that seem too obvious. Dr King wrote these premonitory thoughts in the sixties, some sixty years ago.

You could repeat his words endlessly : the human being becomes smaller as his works become bigger...

What we sometimes call "the system" leaves the person outside.
The sens of participation is lost, and the human being becomes separated and diminished.

When that happens, and individuals are no longer paticipants, no longer feel a sense of responsibility to the society they live in, the content of democracy is emptied, i.e. democracy is dying.

Inexorably, when the whole social system spreads vulgarity and substandards of education, society loses it soul, and people are pulled away from what they perceive as a soulless society, leading to their alienation. The most pervasive, insidious development around us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read in The Jerusalem Post, on April 19, 2024 : 

Israeli official security and governmental sources told The Jerusalem Post on Friday: "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Israel retaliated where they were attacked.”

What Dr King said, in 1958 :

Violence [...] is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert.

In the case of the confrontation Iran vs Israel, it seeks neither to annihilate nor to convert. It is rather a game, a contest, between economic entities :

AIO vs IAI/Boeing. Aerospace Industries Organization in Tehran vs Israel Aerospace Industries (Israel) / Boeing (US). AIO producing the Emad balistic missiles, IAI producing the anti-missiles Arrow 3, with help from Boeing. Boeing ranking n°4 worldwide among the MWM, Major Weapon Manufacturers, 44% of its revenue coming from weapon manufacturing and exporting.

Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_industry

If and when we re-edit this Little Red Book, we shall not start with this first passage as a warning : "You have not started living until..." You have no wish to rebuke people from the first line, do you. As if to say, "Look, fellow, your life has been nul and empty, so far, stuck as you've been in your individualistic concerns". This kind of thinking was surely welcome in Baptist churches in the Deep South, and that was some sixty-five years ago, but what of the rest of the world, today, what of us in the twenty-first century ?

Yet, he is making a point, although not too subtly, a point that was made before him by Immanuel Kant, it seems, as far back as 1784, in his manifesto about Aufklärung, Enlightenment.  Enlightenment being, in Kant's words, a human being's "emergence from one's self-imposed immaturity".

"Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! * “Have courage to use your own understanding!”--that is the motto of enlightenment."        * “Dare to Know!” (Horace)

For the eighteenth century philosopher, lack of courage, lack of resolve, are the chief causes of our misfortunes. He soon makes it clear : "Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a proportion of men, long after nature has released them from alien guidance nonetheless gladly remain in lifelong immaturity, and why it is so easy for others to establish themselves as their guardians. It is so easy to be immature."

What makes the matter a bit more tricky is Kant's refutation of "alien guidance" : " If I have a book to serve as my understanding, a pastor to serve as my conscience, a physician to determine my diet for me, and so on, I need not exert myself at all." No book, no pastor, no diet-prescriber, therefore. No imam, no rabbi, no holy man.

Hum. Is the point clear enou, but, agh, Think for yourself, use your own understanding, but don't confine yourself in some ivory tower, mute and aloof.

22/4/24. When you read this second passage, binary as its, Light vs Darkness, you may react to a judgemental, preachifying King ("This is the judgement"), but, again, this was the Sixties (sixty years ago), in "black" churches of the South, the deep South, and the man was a pastor, preaching to his congregation, his people.

His question remains, as valid in 2024 as in 1964 : what are we doing, what am I doing, now, for others ?

 Third passage : Dr King put service before and above all else. As opposed to self-service, and greed.

We may not agree with his praise of ignorance as a virtue - to make your subject and your verb agree is part of what enables people to understand each other - but "a heart full of grace", with the will to serve others, to help them, support them, is the key to mutual peace in his vision.

 Fourth passage : We all have our favorite parts, and this one certainly is candidate. The sort of thought you like to repeat, again and again : All individuals are interdependent. Come what may. Whether we realize or not, we're in debt. We owe rank strangers an awful lot. And may need to draw our own updated list of small concrete debts.

My towel was made in USA. My soap comes from Aleppo, Syria. I drink coffee harvested by Peruvians, tea collected by Indians. My Ovomaltine comes from Switzerland. The oranges were picked by Spaniards. The cane from which my sugar was made was grown by Brazilians. What a delightful way to start a day : with all these people, from the USA, from Syria, from Peru, from India, from Switzerland, Spain, Brazil, actually pouring their labour and smiles into my life...

As for my clothes, my cotton trousers, my t-shirt and shirt were made by Indians, my socks by the Irish, my Idaho jacket by the Chinese...