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Bush ...,
Alfred Nobel and the Real Prize – Peace ...,
The Real Power of Bullshit ...,
The Ingenious Maneuver of Julius Caesar ...,
Kosovo ...
The only difference between Bush and his predecessors is that Bush never attacked serious adversaries. He initiated a veeery smart hunt for phantoms in his quest for oil. The tragedy of 9/11 is a single event. It doesn’t deserve a world hunt for phantoms if all that is needed to establish peace on earth would be to leave the West Bank and get the hell out of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Bush can be compared to Hitler when it comes to poor leadership in disasters: Hitler on the Eastern front, and Bush from Katrina to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But inept or not, Bush has an unequalled power, and the oil is the name of the game.. WM
“I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him. I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsom and jetsom in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.”
(Martin Luther King – acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize – December 10, 1964)
As the inventor of dynamite, who amassed a fortune, Alfred Nobel thought that the destructive power of his invention would serve to bring an end to all wars. The modern day equivalent of Nobel’s thinking would be the concept of nuclear deterrence. Destructive power so overwhelming should make war inconceivable.
A French newspaper had misread Nobel’s brother’s death as that of Alfred. It published a less that admiring obituary terming Alfred Nobel, the “ merchant of death.” To avoid the posthumous reputation indicated by the premature announcement of his death, Nobel took the course of establishing via his will the Nobel Prize.
The purpose of the prize and the idea of peace
Alfred Nobel’s will bequeathed the prize:-
“…to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses."
Two men – two concepts and the idea of peace
If Martin Luther King as a humane, albeit flawed ( as we all are) recipient of the Nobel Prize can be deemed a martyr for peace, no more significant contrast with a fellow Nobel laureate can be found than in the personage of Henry Alfred Kissinger.
continued
(Courtenay Barnett)
In 1044, a Chinese alchemist was working on the Universal Panaceum.
It was supposed to be panaceum of Panaceums.
The medication for absolutely everything.
And indeed it was.
The inventor was blown to 1000 pieces.
He did not even have time to feel the pain.
And so Gunpowder was born.
The Chinese military really did not take full advantage of the invention.
They focused their energy not so much on guns as on bombs.
The Chinese being the Chinese gave them all kinds of fantastic names:
"The fire of skies ", " The bombs from Gods", " Heavenly hand "
etc.etc.
The gun technology did not really take off until around the year 1287 in Europe.
Europeans immediately recognized what kind of treasure they had on their hands.
Historians just recently found the answer to why the Europeans and not the Chinese won the arms race.
The most effective gun powder is made from saltpeter mixed with charcoal and sulfur.
And the most common source for saltpeter was animal dung.
And the best and strongest was the dung of bulls.
So dung became the most critical ingredient for gunpowder.
Europeans were much more advanced in breeding and farming bulls and cows than the Chinese.
Their gunpowder was much, much stronger.
This paved the way for much more powerful and effective weapons.
Of course every monarch and prince wanted to have cannons.
Cannons were very expensive.
Cash shortage!!
At the same time silver was discovered in the mountains of Bohemia.
Millions of coins minted there were called "thalers "
which very shortly became known as dollars.
The new thalers - dollars helped the industry to grow.
Bullshit was in great demand
And under many different meanings it became the power in the world it is still today
Even the Almighty Dollar -- indirectly comes from bullshit.
So, I think we can safely say that Bullshit is the biggest power in the World, especially if we apply a little more sophisticated version of this magnificent expression to our political establishment.
Gaul.(Today's France).52 BC
The invincible Legions of Gaius Julius Caesar are in mortal danger.
The political situation in the country had rapidly changed.
The rival tribes of Gaul unite at last.
The Roman army is thousands of miles from the Eternal City.
They are experiencing food shortages.
There is no hope for reinforcement.
Such is the scenario of one of the most boldly conceived battles in history.
The Roman army is besieging the fortified city of Alasia with the an 80 thousand man garrison behind the walls.
Caesar orders the construction of siege wall encircling the city.
The wall is tight.
There is no way out for inhabitants.
In the meantime Roman intelligence learns that another army of 200 thousands Gauls is coming to the rescue.
Trap !!!!!
What to do?
Caesar's solution is daring and innovative.
He orders his legions to build the second set of fortification around the city.
The first wall faced inward the second faced outward protecting his army from the outside.
At the same time the Romans are locked between two walls.
The war is on two fronts now.
Caesar clearly understands the situation.
It is win or die.
History never saw anything like this.
Caesar had surrounded an army larger than his own and is also surrounded by an army much, much larger than his own.
Military supremacy of the Gaul's is 6 to 1.
The situation seems hopeless.
Not for Caesar.
He personally takes command over reserve legions.
In a desperate daring move he attacks the 200 thousand man army surrounding him, Gauls.
Miraculously the Gaul army is defeated.
The garrison of Alesia surrenders.
The inhabitants become personal slaves of legionnaires.
In a sense they are lucky.
The arms of the men of the defeated army are being cut off.
The eight years of Caesar's campaign in Gaul is over.
Julius Caesar is absolute master of the country.
This victory makes him the most famous and most powerful man in the Empire.
For the first time in the history of the Republic one man is given the title " Dictator for life".
At the same token it is the first noted Holocaust in history.
The Romans mercilessly butchered over one million men women and children.
Another million and a half were enslaved.
800 cities were completely destroyed as well as countless villages and settlements.
What was the reason for all these massacres??
The personal ambition of one power hungry man!!!
Very bitter are the results of such ambitions
These days are unbearable for those who understand what is happening to the Serbs in Kosovo. They are being driven from their own land with the approval and participation of those NATO countries that bombed them under false pretenses in 1999. In 1989, BEFORE the wars in Yugoslavia began, the New York Times wrote about it and even then the dispossession had been going on for decades. Anybody who really cares can learn about it but today most prefer to think that the Serbs are evil and don’t deserve their land. Anybody who doubts their moral and historical rights can just look up the name ‘Kosovo.’ It is a Serbian name meaning ‘field of blackbirds.’ The land of Kosovo is filled with great mediaeval churches and monasteries that survived even 500 years of Ottoman rule and, since the international forces moved in to “protect” the peace and promote “multiculturalism” in 1999 more than 150 of those holy irreplaceable treasures have been blown up and desecrated. Now, after all this devastation and while the non Albanian population of Kosovo lives in ghettos and must be accompanied by military guard even to visit a cemetery or buy groceries, the “international community” is in the process of rewarding the ethnic Albanian inhabitants for their destruction! Look it up. The Serbs have been told that they’d better toe the line and give up their land or else.
With this on my mind I happened to pick up a book by Howard Zinn and opened it to the chapter on Indian Removal in the U.S. The despair of a righteous people driven from their land is so painfully resonant of what is happening now to the Serbs of Kosovo.
In the 1830s Andrew Jackson ordered that the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Creek and Seminole Indians, known as “The Five Civilized Tribes” be driven from their territory in the south to the Western United States. Sixteen thousand men, women and children were driven on a long march and four thousand of them died along the way. The Indians call this march the “Trail of Tears.” Here is what the Cherokee Tribe said to the government of the United States. continued
(nikole@idirect.ca)
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William Markiewicz