Hans Walter Janitschek - USA

Born in Vienna, Austria, in 1934 as the son of a school-teacher and an opera singer he took an early interest in international affairs, caused mainly by the horrors of World War II and the occupation of Austria by the Four Powers (USA, Soviet Union, France and United Kingdom).

He became president of the school-club at 16 and won first prize in a United Nations speaking contest, which meant a two months study trip to Sweden.

After graduation from High School he took up Law at the University of
Vienna, but when he won a Fulbright scholarship in 1953 he studied for two years International Relations and Economics at the American Haverford College in Pennsylvania. After his return to Austria, while continuing his law studies, he joined the US-news agency United Press as a staff correspondent. He later became correspondent for the British Reuter's news agency and in 1958 was appointed deputy
editor of Austria's largest newspaper at the the time, the KURIER.

In 1964 Janitschek joined the Austrian foreign service and was stationed in New York for two years as Vice-Consul. In 1966 he became advisor to the new Chairman of the Austrian Socialist Party, Bruno Kreisky, and in 1967 he moved to London as Deputy Secretary General of the Socialist International. In 1969 he was unanimously elected as Secretary General and for the next seven worked closely
with leaders of the international labor movement, such as Willy Brandt
(Germany),Olof Palme (Sweden), Mario Soares (Portugal) Pietro Nenni
and Giuseppe Saragat (Italy) Francois Mitterrand (France), Sheik Mujibur Rahman (Bangladesh), George Fernandes (India) and B.P. Koirala (Nepal). He also expanded the organisation into Africa and Latin America by enlisting such outstanding leaders as Leopold Senghor of Senegal and Salvador Allende of Chile.

In 1977 he joined the United Nations as senior advisor to the Secretary General, spokesman for major conferences on subjects such
as Palestine and the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space as well as Secretary of the Information Committee of the General Assembly.

While in New York he also served as President of the United Nations Society of Writers, President of the Earth Society, Trustee of the Martin Luther King International Peace Award and Chairman of the Cast the Sleeping Elephant Trust. In that capacity and with substantial support from His Holiness the Lama Gangchen he placed a life size bronze sculpture of a living African elephant on United Nations grounds as a lasting symbol of nature's priority over all other of mankind's endeavous.

Hans Janitschek, who is presently serving as US-correspondent of Austria's largest daily newspaper, Kronenzeitung, has written four biographies about Mario Soares, former president of Portugal, Hans Dichand, the Austrian publisher, Nobel Prize Laureate Oscar Arias, who just became president of Costa Rica again, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. He owns SWAN BOOKS,  which has just published "Star of Hope", the history of Earth Day.

He is married to Elfriede, also from Austria. Their son Stefan lives as an artist in Maui, and their daughter Anji works as a translator and editor in Vienna.

The power and the spirit

Because man's conquest of space which now seems inevitable will eventually lead to the abandonment of the Earth our planet will become even less precious to those who have been working on its destruction for more than a hundred years now. And as millions and millions will emigrate into huge space stations and unto other planets to live without the glorious beauty, abundance and natural equilibrium of our present-day Earth they will have only contempt for the Old World, as they will undoubtedly call it, as compared to the New World they are creating.

Does that ring a bell in your minds? Oh yes. This was the same argument and same logic when millions set out to a New World in the l8th and l9th centuries, called America. They left the old Europe behind as a backward, repressive and and out-dated conglomerate of dying nations to start new lives on a continent of unlimited opportunity.

Their contempt for the ways of the Old World led them to destroy one empire after another, collect the remnants of their former colonies and subject the new democracies to the economic and military domination of what emerged as the greatest power in the history of the world: the United States of America.

If history should repeat itself, and it undoubtedly does, the future New World in Outer Space will eventually manipulate the old Earth at its whim, from the introduction of new beverages and and food stuffs to the establishment of a new moral order.

Absurd, impossible, never?

Well, if you know that America intends exploring the moon for natural resources and the building of settlement of thousands within the next ten years and that the first landing by man on Mars is scheduled for 2030, this may very well turn out to be the future.

It does not have to be, however. There is still time for a reversal of such materialistic, cynical and blasphemous plans. But it will take a spiritual revolution, an uprising of the minds of millions, who don't want to abandon our Earth, who want to preserve rather than vacate it and who are willing to make the sacrifices necessary to save their souls.

The spirit alone, as instilled and nurtured by visionaries and healers like His Holiness, the Lama Gangchen can save the Earth, as we know it.