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Bush Job Ratings plummeting -Look out! ...,
Mondialisation", ou "Lauaukapiouat"? ...,
How Many Jews ...(2) ...,
Musing on Poetry ...,
We received this June 5th. Though the situation has changed many points remain of interest. WM
The too possible scenario is that one of the violent groups like Hamas will get pissed when it is apparent that Sharon has no real intention of going through with the "road map" and attack again or the Israelis themselves will fake an attack as they have in the past. Bush will then order Syria to shut down Hamas which they will either refuse or deny exists. Then Bush will invade Syria, the easy target, and ride a wave of patriotism into office. Iran is a most difficult target for several reasons. First is geography. There will be no tank races to Tehran, which is in the mountains. The whole country undulates with mountains and valleys. Second, the Iranian army is fighting for God, not Saddam. Third, they may have nukes or other WMDs. Fourth, it will be a much longer battle and he wants a victory before the election.
As for N Korea, everyone in the region is against it and they definitely have nukes that would devastate Japan and S Korea. The real danger there is that Rumsfeld is taking about a pre-emptive strike against their capital to wipe out the leadership. If that doesn't make their paranoid leadership strike first, what will? That, of course, is what they want so that their excuse to invade is totally accepted.
"Jimmy Walter" jimmy@jimmywalter.com
"Je crois que tu n'as pas tout à fait compris ce que veut dire 'Lauaukapiouat'", me dit Miaou.
Miaou est à la fois mon élève et ma prof: je lui enseigne l'anglais, elle m'apprend le Thaï. Elle a 21 ans et étudie pour devenir guide touristique. Nous nous voyons tous les jours quand c'est possible, et nous épatons mutuellement. Elle apprend vite. Elle s'intéresse à une foule de choses, on peut parler de tout avec elle. Elle admire le simple fait que je parle thaï, même si ça reste très limité. Nous essayons chacun de comprendre la langue et la manière de penser de l'autre.
Je viens de lui lire, en Thaï, un texte contenant un mot d'apparition récente: "Lauaukapiouat", qui semble être la traduction du terme français "mondialisation", ou "globalisation" en anglais. "Lauauk" veut dire "Monde" en Thaï...
Je lui explique qu'il y a en Europe et dans les Amériques des gens qui s'opposent à la mondialisation de l'économie parce qu'ils craignent que les délocations industrielles mettent les ouvriers des pays riches aux chômage.
Je sais que les "altermondialistes" trouvent encore d'autres raisons pour s'opposer à la libéralisation des marchés, mais ces autres raisons relèvent de la religion plus que de l'économie et de la politique, et entrer dans de telles considérations serait trop compliqué.
Miaou, elle, me dit que la "Lauaukapiouat" a du mauvais et du bon... Il est possible que certaines traditions, certains artisanats, se soient perdus en Thaïlande, m'explique-t-elle. Mais les femmes ont beaucoup plus de libertés que par le passé. Les voitures et les téléphones, c'est bien utile. La TV et l'internet permettent d'apprendre beaucoup de choses...
Je réalise que pour Miaou, "Lauaukapiouat" veut dire "progrès technologique", la question de savoir si la "Lauaukapiouat" est souhaitable ou non se ramenant donc à une vieille discussion européenne: le progrès est-il une bonne chose ou non?
En Europe, toute personne honnête considère le progrès comme souhaitable par définition. En Thaïlande aussi, certainement... Je ne doute pas du fait que c'est également le point de vue de Miaou.
Même si l'on peut traduire un terme comme "mondialisation" par "Lauaukapiouat" en thaï, on ne parle pas tout à fait de la même chose.
La secte des "altermondialistes" européens trouvera certainement des Thaïs pour se joindre à eux lors de grands rassemblements. Il y aura toujours des gens pour croire que leur malheurs, quels qu'ils soient, peuvent être ramenés à la "Lauaukapiouat". En Thaïlande comme ailleurs... Mais "mondialisation" et "Lauaukapiouat" n'ont pas tout à fait la même signification.
J'ai lu dans la presse que le dernier sommet du G8 avait provoqué des rassemblements gigantesques en ville de Genève. Entre 50.000 et 200.000 manifestants selon les sources, et des dégâts dans le centre-ville. Je ne crois pas que le thème de la "Lauaukapiouat" puisse jamais susciter ici de passions similaires...
Ludwin
ludwin@redpin.com
Bangkok, le 3 juin 2003
Dear William,
Here I quote a few lines of yours:
1 From nonexistence I entered existence and what did I find? Bad weather.
2 Crime? Being born Serb.
3 And who will be next (to be attacked)? Mecca?
Those samples of Markiewicz's exaggerations are part of his sarcasm and dark humour which obviously escapes "steven" who, in his letter, attacked the statement: "all the plagues in history combined." His loss.
Nikole
nikole@idirect.ca
"steven's" letter is below. WM
Let us have a little more propaganda please. There is no way that the number of Jews killed is more than all the plagues in history combined. Let me give you some statistics of just a few important plagues and it will dwarf the number you have in this contorted view of yours:
Europe's population was half of what it had been in 1345.
http://english.ttu.edu/grad/Geiger/Summer98/Project2/Plague.html
Not one account nor one person could accurately describe the horrors of that time, of the lives twisted and forever damaged, and the untold millions who died in fear and pain.
http://www.godecookery.com/plague/plague09.htm
I should imagine that half of Europe's population in 1345 was a small bit more than the 6500000 Jews that is the commonly accepted number of deaths. That is just one plague. Now, perhaps, you would like me to reference your hideously inflated number of deaths which you put at 18000000. That would be my pleasure:
Smallpox:
One of Cortés's men was infected with smallpox, triggering an epidemic that ultimately killed an estimated 3 million Aztecs, one-third of the population.
Let us add another 3 million to half of Europe's population in 1345 (I am leaving that without a definite number just to preserve your eggshell china dreams for the moment)
In 1967 the World Health Organization (WHO) launched a worldwide vaccination campaign against smallpox. At the time, about 10 to 15 million cases of the disease occurred each year, with more than 2 million deaths.
And another 2 million...
In all, smallpox killed an estimated 300 million people in the 20th century.
Uh oh, that wouldn't look very good on your propaganda website would it? Nope, I didn't think so. I only needed one, count 'em, one plague to prove you ridiculously wrong. You don't agree with my definition of plague? Maybe we should check the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. It says: 1 a : a disastrous evil or affliction : CALAMITY
You have to watch out when you post things like that; you never know when some 14 year old will take all of 10 minutes and make you look like a fool.
"steven"
lvovl@bellsouth.net
Whatever the truth it doesn't validate your malignant satisfaction. Are you as angry at those who minimize the official number of victims? One correspondent to Vagabond noted that in antiquity the number of Jews and Chinese was the same. The Jews are the only preponderant ancient group that hasn't grown in number in history. As this seems improbable, we could assume that there was a parallel "shadow" Jewish population side by side which nobody bothered to count. This could also be the case of the Gypsies, however the Jews, like other settled populations, had greater chances of growing naturally. WM
Hi William
In the article "Musing on Poetry" you describe the mysterious ways of poetry. Also in your aphorisms you speak about indirect ways of poetry and quote the example the Polish poet Norwid gave: "The stars don't shine where we see them." May I add an example that I think fits the issue. In pre-war Warsaw and certainly everywhere in Poland where Jews lived, there were characters going from courtyard to courtyard who chanted, "Alte sache, kinder sache" (old clothes, children's clothes). They were collecting those used clothes from the inhabitants to sell later. I'm not sure if they paid a few pennies or if they were sort of beggars who got it for free. I was too young to know those details but this "Alte sache ..." was part of urban Jewish life, Jewish poverty, that I remember.
During the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, at least two songs were created and must be in the chronicles somewhere. I don't know if the authors are known or anonymous. I remember only the last verse of one in its Polish translation. Not being Jewish myself, I don't know the original Yiddish verse. It goes like this:
"With lead this song is written and with blood
It's not a bird singing its freedom
It's a nation among walls crushed into rubble
Carrying the song on its lips and nagans in its hands"
(Nagan is a kind of automatic gun)
What it has in common with our topic is that the song starts with the unexpected chanting refrain: "Alte sache, kinder sache, alte sache, kinder sache, ..." which obviously has nothing to do with the topic. We can see it as a haunting souvenir from the not so far away past. Why did the poet give such a beginning to the warrior song? He himself probably didn't know why. The true poet doesn't have to know all the sources of his inspiration.
St. Horowiec
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William Markiewicz