OPEN BOUQUET (January-February)

By William Markiewicz

(As other short items may follow, I've decided to group them together.)

"We know the invasion has a double aim: to grab our riches and to reduce our nation to rubble. Once they take us in their grip, they'll destroy the infrastructure that makes us one of the civilised nations. They will act to eliminate our education and technology. They will confine our women in house-prisons. Their quislings will act in our country like the Taliban did in Afghanistan but this time it will be a pro-American 'Taliban.' Let's not allow them to turn our women and children into donkeys. Let our households remain our fortresses; they can close our schools, universities and factories but they cannot burn all our books. They want to push our advanced society back to a tribal stage -- let's show the world that we can resist."

The Turks are ready to join the Nato invasion of Iraq for money and a piece of Iraqi-Kurdish northern Iraq. The US has apparently agreed; freedom of others is a commodity easily taken and given away.

The Kurds will lose the autonomy that they now enjoy -- perhaps for the first time in their history. The list of NWO victims grows longer: After the Serbs and the Pashtuns it's the turn of the Kurds and Iraqis. The Palestinians don't entirely fit the list because they share responsibility for their misery as Arafat broke promising peace negotiations by posing impossible conditions for Barak.

Found at Antiwar.com (excerpts)

Future of Post-war Iraq Divides Bush Administration
By Jim Lobe
February 18, 2003

Editor: John Gershman, Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC)

 <...> While finishing touches are being put on war plans that
could involve as many as 250,000 U.S. troops, neoconservatives
and realists within the administration are battling over the
future of a post-invasion Iraq.
<.....>
"They have come to the arrogant conclusion: 'Why piss around
with the opposition? Why not do this in a way the Arab regimes
will be much happier with?'" Makiya told Canada's Globe and Mail
after the meeting.
<...>

Will mass demonstrations save Iraq? Bush dismisses the demonstrators. Nietsche said: "The last Christian died on the cross." We can draw a parallel: "Democracy died in Athens."

In a democracy the court has to prove that the accused is guilty. In totalitarianism the accused has to convince the court that he is innocent. Today Iraq has to prove its innocence or face destruction. In such a situation wouldn't we all confess to anything that could save us? It is a sinister bouffonade that they have to confess and prove not what they have done but what they can and want to do.

In a democratic system the Germans elected Nazism; today the whole world passively accepts a landslide of totalitarianism. This passivity is the equivalent of voting "yes" because silent disagreement won't prevent unleashing of the monster. We become mentally blocked as in the time of McCarthy and ready to passively accept the exterminating bombs in foreign skies -- a catastrophe for moral judgement and our sense of freedom.

In Polish it is called sharing the skin of a living bear; all this in the name of self-defence against Iraq. It reminds me of a report I read awhile ago about cops who attacked a man in a wheel chair and later claimed in court that they acted in self-defence.

Safety Measures -- Proportional to Costs or to Danger? (2/04)

Safety criteria from the bike to the shuttle should be the same. It's absurd logic that for more dangerous situations more risk should be acceptable. Safety standards should not be proportional to the costs involved but to the danger involved. As long as this simple truth isn't understood and applied innocent victims from guinea pigs to low ranking Homo Sapiens will be sacrificed.

PS The "lower ranked": those who carry the burden of risk.

Vicious Volleyball (2/01)

Parts of an interview quoted in the Jurist Forum

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: What about press reports this weekend
about the massacres in Srebrenica? We've all known about those 
massacres, but now, the window has been opened even wider on 
some of the atrocities there. 
<...>
SEC. HOLBROOKE: Well, as you, yourself, just said, we've known
for a long time that a war atrocity of historic proportions
took place in Srebrenica in July. We've known this. We've 
taken action on it. We cooperated with the journalists who
wrote these brilliant reconstructions. They've added detail
to what we already knew. <...>

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: But can you-- 

SEC. HOLBROOKE: --finding out what happened. And we are
going to continue to push on this.

"They" get information from journalists, and where do the journalists get their information? From the Ministry of Propaganda! It is a vicious circle of pseudo- information that passes like volleyball from politicians to journalists and back again. All this mishmash of facts and opinions is thrown to the public and it's only good for PR agencies. The victims of the trinity of politicians, journalists, and public opinion must dream of vengeance. I wouldn't care what happened to the planet if I were a Serb or Pashtun condemned by the rest of the world to remain a victim.

Bush and Blair constantly trumpet throughout the world that Saddam Hussein doesn't want to disarm -- which boils down to saying that he wants to die and turn his country into rubble. Everybody knows well that he could not resist an invasion. So why? Why would he want to die and turn his country into rubble? Nobody throws this obvious absurdity up to Bush and Blair. The present anti-war movement is a pale shadow compared to those in the past. Why? There is only one answer possible: because public opinion doesn't believe that doom would reach us. The vast majority in the West subconsciously believes that a neo-colonialised world would be a paradise for them. Fifty years after the defeat of Nazism, Nazi ideas emerge from their hibernation.

PS. Saddam Hussein mad? Iraqi nation mad? It's more probable that the zillions who may believe so are converting our planet into a madhouse.

I was one of many who received this email apparently written by Yashiko Sagamori, November 6, 2002. I'm not sure who was the first recipient. From the 15 points denying Palestine and Palestinians the right to exist, I selected six of them as sufficient to present the author's argument. My answer is below Yashiko Sagamori's letter.

A Japanese View of the Palestinians (excerpt)
When was it founded and by whom?
What were its borders?
What was its capital?
What was its form of government?
Can you name at least one Palestinian leader before Arafat?
Was Palestine ever recognized by a country whose existence,
at that time or now, leaves no room for interpretation?

What was the name of its currency? Choose any date in history
and tell what was the approximate exchange rate of the
Palestinian monetary unit against the US dollar, German mark,
GB pound, Japanese yen, or Chinese yuan on that date.

And, finally, since there is no such country today, what caused
its demise and when did it occur? You are lamenting the "low
sinking" of "once proud" nation. Please tell me, when exactly
was that "nation" proud and what was it so proud of?
<....>
The fact is, Arabs populating Gaza, Judea, and Samaria have
much less claim to nationhood than that Indian tribe that
successfully emerged in Connecticut with the purpose of
starting a tax-exempt casino: at least that tribe had a
constructive goal that motivated them. The so-called
"Palestinians" have only one motivation: the destruction of
Israel, and in my book that is not sufficient to consider
them a  nation" -- or anything else except what they really
are: a terrorist organization that will one day be dismantled.

The author claims that Palestine shouldn't exist because it doesn't have a historical past. Neither does Papua or most of today's African states. Following the author's logic, they shouldn't be independent! Canada isn't very old either and nobody refuses Canada's right to exist. May I remind everyone that the neighbours' duty is to live in peace among themselves and not to bargain about vintages.

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William Markiewicz