Tuesday, April 17, 2007

The Lives of 'Others'

More on Einstein, from New Scientist Magazine:

The day after Einstein spoke out on national TV, in 1950, about the dangers of US militarism, the director of the FBI "sent a top-secret memo to every FBI office in the country requesting any and all 'derogatory information' they had on Einstein...
When the FBI file was closed after his death in 1955, it contained more than 1800 pages of public statements by him and unsubstantiated allegations against him. The investigation remained secret until the 1990s. Even now, after the publication of Fred Jerome's eye-opening The Einstein File in 2002, this aspect of Einstein's extraordinary life often provokes surprise and discomfort."

Recently saw the excellent German film "The Lives of Others" (Das Leben der Anderen) about the destruction of creative lives by the corrupt and morally bankrupt Stasi in East Germany of the early eighties. The 1950's FBI didn't arrest Einstein, but their moral bankruptcy was obviously on a par with the Stasi.
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