** Saturday,
January 20, 2001
Of Pretentious Presidents and Unpretentious Buttercups
The reason why you are getting so many Iraq-unrelated news about
presidents is this lovely quote from the enclosed Arroyo news:
>By coincidence, Arroyo was sworn in as the 14th president
of the
>Philippines only hours before George W. Bush was to take
the oath in
>Washington -- and both are children of former presidents.
Lovely, isn't it? She is the daughter of a former president,
and also Mr Lul'li is the son of another former president.,
and elsewhere, few other children are preparing to replace their
fathers as presidents, and the other guy, Joseph (from the land
of copper and diamonds), didn't want to be president had it
not been for that silly guard who shot his daddy. In another
news (we didn't post it fearing it might abuse your patience),
a son of yet another president went to visit a neighbouring
country to strengthen alliance. Reporters say, the visit is
meant to be a message to president Lul'li, that he should think
twice before meddling in the affairs of HIS country.
Any other presidents and sons I have forgotten? Don't tell me
that all this is not high-quality fun amidst all the gloomy,
finster (not fenster, which is "window " in German) and sinister
events in our habitat (DU, death in El Salvador, AIDS, warlords
everywhere, the dawn of cows' history and their paradise on
earth after being declared mad, useless creatures, and unworthy
of slaughtering, Sharonov, the other BIBI", preparing for the
role of the black knight of the Middle East, and what you have.)
Yes, and old inventors of the republic waking up to the triumph
of monarchy, and the wind cries... no, the wind doesn't, couldn't,
wouldn't, and didn't cry at all, it only blew away the flag
from Kabila's coffin as they where carrying the poor dead man
into the plane. A guard tried to remedy the injury caused to
protocol by attempting to fix the flag, but the other guys kept
moving. So he decided to remove the flag, folded it nicely and
handed it over to Kabila Jr. Those silly guards, capable of
killing presidents but incapable of fixing a flag on the coffin
of a poor dead man.
And what's it all about, you may ask? It is about the wind that
blows and blows...and then settles on the grass and on Buttercups
(I don't mean butter cups, not a butter cup, toast and tea on
the clean table of a well-illuminated café at Hendersenville.
I mean Buttercups, ancient, tiny, and furious yellow flowers.)
You know, the other weekend, when my wife and I fled from the
city to the mountains - in an attempt to recover the taste of
past secret trips - we went to La Condesa (a hotel chain, whose
remote founder was a certain countess Maria Luisa Cathalina
de Thassis Pimentel, Condesa de Villamediana - 1690-1736.) Late
in the afternoon, we climbed another one or two hundred meters,
up to some 2000m, to another Hotel, Tirol Lodge or something,
for coffee and cakes. A funny contrast, an imitation of Swiss
or Bavarian or Italian architecture in midst of high altitude
tropical forest, among giant pines. It was a bit dark. The rain
was soft. It was cold, and the people came from their cabins
running into the warm restaurant. A pure European autumn afternoon!
When we later drove back to La Condesa it was already dark.
My wife thought we had lost our way. It was too dark (that deep
inky and silent darkness of tropical nights). We finally and
happily came up at the main road.
The next days, after breakfast, we went for a walk outside the
hotel. The sun illuminated everything. Life was pulsating, insects
flying, birds twittering, chirping (chirking and chirting),
chirruping and even chirring; tropical day, the opposite of
tropical night. Flowers were everywhere, tropical diversity,
along the road and in the small fields of the mountainous landscape,
both planted and wild. As we walked, my wife, who during the
past decade has become an expert on tropical flora, commented
on almost every flower we passed by. Then she pointed to some
little tiny yellow flowers that popped up all over the place.
"I love those flowers.", she said. They were Buttercups of the
ranunculus genus. I told her that I mentioned them in one of
my poems, "Serendipity", that they were older than us and most
creatures on earth, stubborn and unpretentious, with profuse
vitality, adaptable to all conditions. That's why they can be
found in almost all regions of the world. Everyone loves them
for their beauty and availability. They are, like grass, our
common flora.
*
Pretentious presidents and their sons and daughters - unpretentious
Buttercups.
Anwar Al-Ghassani
-------------------------------------
(Published in Sindbad Communications'
info and discussion lists)
Saturday January 20 8:05 AM ET Arroyo New Philippines President,
Estrada Ousted
By Raju Gopalakrishnan
MANILA (Reuters) - Vice-President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo took
over as the new Philippine president on Saturday after mass
street protests that she and her supporters dubbed a re-run
of the country's 1986 ``people power'' revolution.
The Supreme Court stripped incumbent Joseph Estrada of his title
after the military's entire senior command, the police and most
of the cabinet defected amid street protests by hundreds of
thousands of people outraged by the collapse of his impeachment
trial on charges of corruption.
Arroyo choked back tears as she took her oath of office before
cheering supporters at the Edsa shrine in Manila, the stage
of the 1986 ``people power'' revolt that toppled dictator Ferdinand
Marcos.
(...)
By coincidence, Arroyo was sworn in as the 14th president of
the Philippines only hours before George W. Bush was to take
the oath in Washington -- and both are children of former presidents.
**
Sunday, February 11, 2001
The US Submarine and Japanese Ship Accident, Nine Missing.
They are spoiling our oceans and the peace of marine creatures.
I understand what a civilian ship is good for. But here I
would ask as an idiot or a child: What for are submarines
good for? Toys to play with? That would be nice, but apparently
they are not toys for they are capable of killing people.
If so, why having them around?
Genome Mapping Complete (but, hey, there is always a limit
for everything)
Today, they announced that the genome mapping is complete.
Now it is time to put some control on this before it is too
late.
Three laws:
1. Stop genome research if possible. If curiosity is too strong
and research should continue, then this should have the sole
purpose of satisfying curiosity.
2. Genetic information should never be used against living
creatures. Privacy of all species is sacred.
3. Genetic information may be used to conduct slight modification
of the human genome (to prevent or alleviate potential or
existing pain) but never to eliminate diseases completely.
Prolonging the span of human life should never be attempted
as an absolute task. Only relative prolonging is reasonable
and possible, but this has to be tied to the principle of
not intervening in the general life and death balance in nature.
Otherwise, we may run the risk of producing unknown factors
that could endanger all species. AIDS and mad cow disease
are only too examples of what human artificial intervention
in nature could produce. Nothing can be absolute or constant
in nature and human life except change, decay and rebirth.
Scoring "victories" over nature is the most stupid religious
idea humans have developed because it means nothing less than
defeating ourselves for we can never be out of nature's limitations.
we are part of it, so are all other creatures and elements,
including all disease agents (natural gents. Agents, engineered
by humans are not part of the natural system. They were added
to it artificially, per se a crime.)
Internet - The End of the Wild West Era
All recent developments related to Internet indicate that
the era of Wild West at Internet is coming to an end. Too
bad, for it seems that big brothers (the governments) and
big sisters (multinational corporations) are taking over.
This means the end of the lovely chaos, putting chains on
Internet, less freedom and the dominance of conventional mind
on an unconventional medium.
Anwar Al-Ghassani
-------------------------------------
(Published in Sindbad Communications'
info and discussion lists) |