Briefs
October 3–24, 2003
One day someone told me, "Every reasonable man..."
I replied, "I am not a man—I am a bird,"
and flew off toward the highest branch of a tree.
Andréas
Guest
I read Eva Joly’s book, in which she recounts eight years spent on the Elf affair. A billion francs—heavy with stolen money. After reading it, one emerges with a strange vision of France. Eva Joly repeats this again and again: there exists a caste of people who are above the law. Look at Alain Juppé showing up at the National Assembly while under investigation. Look at Chirac, protected by his presidential immunity. It’s enormous—but that’s how it is. These people laugh at “litigants.” They themselves are not. She also notes that voters calmly elect people who have served prison time.
At one point, Eva Joly overhears two political-mafia types talking in a room where she had left them alone and where she is now listening in. Dialogue:
—But are there still journalists who support judges?
—There was one. But don’t worry. We took care of him. He was fired and will never find work again.
And the author thinks: “If corruption reigns openly in the highest echelons of the state, why shouldn’t it be the same in the press?” She asks herself: “Who owns TF1?” Answer: the Bouygues group. And so on.
I remember a remark from a friend of mine, after the recent evolution of our affairs:
—Well, I’m going to start by watching TV for half an hour every evening. Then I’ll gradually increase the doses until I’m completely numb...
That’s pretty much it. In trendy shows, they tackle “hot topics,” “at the heart of current events.”
—What do you think, where could Bin Laden be hiding?
The viewer feels like they’re living events “day by day.” But no press outlet has paid the slightest attention to the sudden closure of the Gardanne mine and the strong suspicion that around a hundred underground nuclear tests were conducted there over the past ten years: “No point alarming public opinion with facts that aren’t proven.” Too late for proof: the flooding began in early May, without prefectural authorization. The contaminated zone will never be investigated—it’s already, irreversibly, two hundred meters underwater. Since February 2nd, the mine has been sealed off and guarded by the army. But everyone couldn’t care less. Information is not information. Information is organized lies.
I’m going to start a new book, in serialized form. I’ll be writing about science—the science “under investigation.” Why should people in the scientific world be more honest than elsewhere? In the epistemic sphere, dishonesty simply takes a different form.
Can you imagine that in France, a televised debate could be held to question the events of September 11 in the U.S.? In Germany, more and more people believe these “attacks” were manipulations. I had planned to put online a dossier on Pentagate, where the case is particularly glaring. But this summer, my hard drive died from overheating, and I lost those files. If anyone can resend them, I’d be grateful.
I think this will be the subject—after the Kursk incident—on which I’ll be focusing in the coming months. Time has passed. I’ve reflected, reread notes. In the case of the Pentagon attack, it seems impossible to me that it was caused by an airplane impact. I’d like to meet Thierry Meyssan and discuss this with him. His Voltaire network is already publishing striking documents. See:
http://www.reseauvoltaire.net/article8737.html
But it’s so enormous that many people struggle to believe it. It’s like being told the Pope has always belonged to the mafia. Yet I believe we live the monstrous every day. Maybe it always has been. I think it was Stalin who said, “One dead moves me, a million dead is just statistics.”
We are caught in a monstrous machine. For a time, an “ethics committee” froze research on GMOs. Precautionary principle. But time passed. GMOs proved profitable, and those reservations were swept aside “in the name of progress and the freedom to conduct research,” as the good apostle Bernard Kouchner once said—amusing me when he told José Bové, “Are you trying so hard to get on TV?”
Testard, a geneticist, wrote in Des Hommes Probables (Seuil) that if a child had a certain gene, he would develop glaucoma, but if that sequence were present twice, he would not. This means genetics isn’t science—it’s the tinkering of apprentice sorcerers. Announcing triumphantly the completion of reading the human genome is like placing an object next to every word in a book and declaring, “Now we can speak this language,” while knowing nothing of its syntax, grammar, or logic. There are military GMOs, and I’m among those who believe AIDS was nothing but that—experimented by Americans in Zaire on green monkeys. Military GMO research is extremely intensive everywhere, because it’s “the weapon of mass destruction for poor countries.” After Gorbachev lowered his guard, Russia—whose military arsenal was being dismantled—secretly developed large-scale biological weapons, only discovered a few years ago.
You think about terrorism? You’re wrong. There could be far worse. I fear that one day, a mad scientist working on military GMOs designed to attack an enemy’s vegetation (remember the defoliants in Vietnam) might accidentally create a chimera that escapes, capable of “crossing species barriers,” and contaminates the entire planetary plant kingdom, destroying its ability to perform chlorophyll assimilation and oxygen production. I believe a genetically caused catastrophe is inevitable in the coming decades. In the past, the risk was nuclear. But compared to genetic risk, it’s almost laughable. Genetics is the cat out of the bag, Pandora’s box. In genetics, the precautionary principle has been crushed by the lure of profit—nothing more.
Shortly after this message, I received a letter from a reader. I reproduce it here because it summarizes exactly what I truly believe.
The idea that Meyssan is banned from media, that certain topics are taboo, is ultimately dizzying, given the subjects involved. I’m going to join this effort too. Will the people (for there’s no other word) ever rise up… against their media? On one side, terrible things happen; on the other, our media cover them up or outright lie.
Good evening, Mr. Petit,
I’ve just read your briefs and would like to respond.
Regarding the dogmatism of our media on the subject of the 9/11 attacks, I was watching ARTE last night, which dedicated the evening to a theme on Chechnya and the famous hostage-taking by “terrorists” in a...