Political Information Corruption Science

Briefs

3 - October 24, 2003

| One day someone told me, "Every reasonable man..." | I replied, "I'm not a man, I'm a bird," | and flew off to the highest branch of a tree. | Andréas

I read Eva Joly's book, in which she spent eight years investigating the Elf affair. A billion francs worth of embezzled money. After reading it, one comes away 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 mock "litigants." They themselves are not subject to justice. 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 has left them alone and is listening in. Dialogue:

• "But are there still journalists who support the 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 clearly reigns in the highest levels of government, 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 after the recent developments in 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 more or less it. In trendy shows, they tackle "hot topics," "at the heart of current events."

• "In your opinion, where could Bin Laden be hiding?"

The viewer feels like they're living events "day by day." Yet 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 carried out there over the past ten years: "No point alarming the public 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 isn't information. Information is organized deception.

I'm going to start a new book, in serialized form. It will deal with 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 USA? 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 to me, I'd be grateful.

I think this will be the subject I'll focus on in the coming months, after the Kursk incident. Time has passed. I've reflected, reread my notes. In the case of the Pentagon attack, I find it impossible that it could have been caused by a plane 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 have trouble believing it. It's like being told the Pope has always been part of the mafia. But I believe we live the monstrous every day. Perhaps it has always been this way. I think it was Stalin who said, "A single death moves me; a million deaths are 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 put it—amusingly, when he told José Bové, "Aren't you doing everything to get on television?"

Testard, a geneticist, wrote in "Des Hommes Probables" (Seuil) that if a child's genome carried a certain gene, they would develop glaucoma, but if this sequence appeared twice, they 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 in front of each word of 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—tested in Zaire by Americans 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 someday 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 genetic catastrophe is inevitable in the coming decades. In the past, the risk was nuclear. But compared to genetic risk, it's almost negligible. 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 sums up exactly what I truly believe. The idea that Meyssan is banned from media, that certain topics are taboo, is ultimately staggering, given the subjects involved. I'm going to take this on too. Will the people (because there's no other word) ever rise up... against their media? On one side, terrible things are happening; on the other, our media cover them up or outright lie.

Dear Mr. Petit,

I've just read your briefs and would like to respond.

Regarding the dogmatism of our media concerning the 9/11 attacks, I was watching ARTE last night, which dedicated the evening to a theme on Chechnya and the infamous hostage-taking by "terrorists" at a Moscow theater, which ended tragically a year ago...