Various bits of flotsam that washed up on our computers, before we moved to a better blog system in November 2004. Now a repository for YouTube videos and testing new tools. Go to http://www.b12partners.net/wp/ for more recent content.

Tuesday, November 02, 2004

Zabernism

From Word of the Day
zabernism (ZAB-uhr-niz-uhm) noun

The misuse of military power; aggression; bullying.

[After Zabern, German name for Saverne, a village in Alsace, France.
In 1912, in this village, a German military officer killed a lame
cobbler who smiled at him.]

"Both countries have been slaves to Kruppism and Zabernism--because they
were sovereign and free! So it will always be. So long as patriotic cant
can keep the common man jealous of international controls over his
belligerent possibilities, so long will he be the helpless slave of the
foreign threat, and 'Peace' remain a mere name for the resting phase
between wars."
H.G. Wells; In The Fourth Year: Anticipations of a World Peace; 1918.

And what is Kruppism? It's an eponym, coined after Alfred Krupp (1812-1887),
German industrialist and armament manufacturer. It implies indiscriminate
trade in arms and war profiteering.

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