Communication

Contributions from readers who agreed to have their email published in Vagabond Pages.

Poland..., Nursing..., Quebec... , Bosnia..., Cinderella Nations..., Other...,

Call for entry ... You are invited to email an essay on any subject discussed in any issue of Vagabond Pages. 400 - 500 words. Those chosen to be published on the Communication Page will receive "Extracts of Existence" as a gift. Send all entries to:
vagabond@idirect.com

Re: Poland (December issue)

Very interesting! I will list you shortly in Polish World internet catalogue at http://www.polishworld.com
BTW, you will also find there POLe Magazine which I publish.

cheers,
martin miszczak
editor
miszczak@ids2.idsonline.com

Re: Nursing (September issue)

William
I was very moved by the article "The Pity and the Horror" and would like to make it a reading assignment for my nursing students.
I am requesting your permission to reprint this article (with full credits, of course) for the use of my students

Kathie Nettleton
Professor, Nursing
St. Clair College, Thames Campus
Chatham, ON

I am honoured that my article will serve you. Please go ahead. WM

Re: Quebec (March issue)

Le ton de cynique et de vengeance que dégage ce site, ne mérite pas tout le battage "publicitaire"... et l`enthousiasme des lecteurs de ce forum d`échanges.

Vous ne faites qu`amplifier l`importance d`un groupuscule qui souhaite le chaos. Votre attitude est excusable étant donné le laxisme du parti libéral fédéral à la promotion du fameux plan "A".

Votre lit est faite, le plan "B" dont vous faites la promotion ouverte aujourd`hui, démontre à quel point la majorité francophone du Québec a toujours prit son trou. Depuis que les canadiens français sont devenus Québécois dans l`âme, il est plus difficile de faire accepter n`importe quoi à un peuple en éveil. Non ! Monsieur... vous ne pouvez pas vous accaparez de ce qui ne vous appartient pas ! Avant, pendant ou après la proclamation de l`Indépendance. Si vous croyez, sincèrement nous prendres de court, vous vous trompez ! Notre plan "S", pour souveraineté est très près de se réaliser. L`erreur historique sera réparer et finalement, l`harmonie entre les individus reviendra. Une relation normale entre deux peuples sur deux territoires.

salutations,

Luc Richard
lranjou@login.net

des hauts et
des bas...débattons...débattez...! ;-)

Re: Bosnia (March issue)

Dear William

Did you ever notice how little most people know about the personalities of Izetbegovic & Co. but how the civilian victims, preferably women and children, are portrayed? This not only means a simple equation in the viewer's mind that those who inflicted the pain on the victims, i.e. the Serbs, must therefore be the guilty party in this conflict but also comfortably shelters the muslim leadership from view and therefore criticism.

You see, I was partly educated under the "old system", my dad was a jet pilot and therefore a member of the Party, my grand-father was a factory manager in Novi Sad and my uncle the mayor of Vrsac. The latter two were fighting in Spain during the civil-war and joined, when liberated in 1944 from a German "punishment camp", a.k.a. StALag,

So I did learn a few things about East Block - style propaganda and I feel very "at home" when I'm watching Silajdzic telling his stories on TV.

Yours sincerely

Slobodan
KRUCICAN@zmk.unibe.ch

1. First a certain number of Serbs and Croats were converted to Islam as well as Bogomils, representative of one religion which was came to life centuries ago among the Southern Slavs.
2. The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia asked each citizen to declare himself Serb, Croat, Macedonian, etc. For the Muslim Slavs there was a problem: should they consider themselves Serb or Croats? Some decided to declare as Croats because they knew that their ancestors were converted. Others, for the same reason, decided to declare as Serbs. Still others, Yugoslavs, thus Yugoslav citizens of Yugoslav nationality. Others, finally, opted for Yugoslav citizens of Muslim nationality which didn't necessarily mean they practiced the Muslim religion. In sum, the inhabitants of Bosnia considered themselves Bosnian because they inhabited the republic of Bosnia Hercegovina. But there was not, at that time, a "Bosnian people," Bosnia was a region inhabited by different peoples. The sentiment of Bosnian identity did exist though it was generally weaker than the sentiment of belonging to Serb or Croatian people.
3. The war exploded the Yugoslav Federation, Bosnia proclaimed independence, those who voted in favour of independence did it in hopes perhaps that they would escape the worst. The Serb leaders of Bosnia also proclaimed their independence in this new independent republic. Certain Serbs still decided to join the Bosnian army because they recognized themselves more in the project of a multicultural Bosnia than in the Republika Srpska, ethnically pure.
4. The war and its horror certainly reinforced the sentiment of Bosnian identity. Now the Bosnian people exists. Like the Serbian people, it has its martyrs.

Re: Cinderella Nations (August issue)

• The Hutus massacred by the Tutsis
• The Tutsis massacred by the Hutus
• The Germans of Russia often considered as foreigners in Germany as well as in Russia
• The Bushmen of Namibia, once used by the South Africans in the war against Angola
• The Karen, important Burmese minority, regularly under attack by the Government army
• The Ibos who, around twenty years ago endured a war of extermination in Nigeria
• Many others that I've forgotten or don't know

Re: Other

Visited your page. Nice. Impressive. Love your sketches.

This is an article from the Zychik Chronicle, a daily e-zine I publish Mon-Fri.

The Land of the Moderately Free:
In discussing the situation here in the US, a subscriber wrote in part:

"By the way Joe, Can you name for me one instance in history when a totalitarian system of government has been overthrown or even restored to reasonableness without bloodshed? Please don't say the Soviet Union. The jury is still out on them. I can't think of one. It would seem that revolution is ultimately the only thing a totalitarian understands."

Re: totalitarianism - violence is the best answer. Had the Russian people resorted to violent, continual revolution, they'd have been free long before the Reagan arms buildup economically busted the Soviet Empire. The more important question is whether or not the US is a totalitarian state. The answer: We, the people in the US, don't know how good we have it here. Some of us call the most free country on the planet totalitarian because we're used to more freedom than we've been getting. To put it another way: only by stretching the imagination far and wide can one call the US totalitarian.

Is the US characterized by injustice? Definitely.

Is the US on a path toward totalitarianism? Definitely not.

What is the difference between injustice and totalitarianism? Degree! Even when the US practiced slavery, which is really totalitarianism for a minority, overall, the US was more free than slave.

Aren't we slaves today? Hell no! While it is true the gov't takes about 40% of everyone's paycheck, don't forget the other 60%! Slaves don't get a paycheck! Is there something to be learned from all this? Yes, the power of good and the power of evil. The fact that the gov't owns 40% of a citizen's efforts, the fact the gov't regulates the color of a chocolate bar, who you can hire, who you work with, how you work, where you live, that it decrees what you can eat, where you can sleep, who you can sleep with, what you can put in your body, when you go to war, that it can attempt to lock you up whenever it feels like it, attempt to take all your property on the slightest excuse, deprive you of the right to defend yourself, shows us the power of evil. However, The Founding Fathers were well aware of the power of evil. To protect Americans from evil, the Founding Fathers developed a Constitution based on rational principles of morality and justice. Those principles also characterize American life.

Your right to own a gun is limited, not destroyed. Your right to keep what you earn is limited, not destroyed. Your right to put what you want in your body is almost destroyed, but far from dead. Your rights to privacy, to travel, to invest, to compete for a job, to open your own business, to marry, to have children, to teach your children your way are under attack. They still exist, though. Not as well as they should, but they exist. If this were a totalitarian system, they wouldn't exist.

Neither would the Zychik Chronicle - and all the other "subversive" literature I hope you subscribe to.

To take the subscriber's question one step further: A violent revolution is not the answer. What we need is a revolution of principles, of ideas, of morals. The Constitutional protections to implement that kind of revolution are still intact. You don't need to take out your guns and fire bullets to win this revolution. (Yes, I'm glad the option to kill the left-wing and right-wing oppressors is still there) Thanks to the blood that the Founding Fathers shed, what you, I, or anyone else serious about liberty needs to do is educate, persuade and use *civil* disobedience. That's all it will take.

Joe Zychik
jzychik@leonardo.net
Zychik Chronicle http://www.pacificnet.net/~jzychik/


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