Indy Media Watch

An (ahem, ahem, cough...splutter) interesting idea has been raised on Melbourne (Australia) Indymedia.

I was thinking about the little laminated cards people can put in their wallets
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"ORGAN DONOR"
"DIABETIC"
"EPILEPTIC"
"HIV POSITIVE"
"BLOOD TYPE: O" (tough luck mate, there's none left)
"DO NOT RECUSITATE"...
For when you're in an accident or something like that, and you're unconscious or dead or your jaw has been ripped off and you can't tell anybody your particulars

Then I got to thinking about terrorists. Possibly I was watching the news. Or just saw the title of a newspaper, and remembered that that's all they fucking talk about.
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You know the drill: The eleventh of September. Bali. The recent London bombings. The other places that had explosions in them but we can't remember where because the people who died there probably weren't white. [Or because you are an idiot? - ed] I think it might have been Madrid. Anyway, thousands dead.

Then I began thinking about how these people have been turned in to martyrs.
...
But I wonder how many of them would have been comfortable with their sanctification? Probably only a few, unless they were the football players in Bali, with sport being (it would seem) Australia's religion. How many of them would have been comfortable with the idea that their deaths have resulted in an illegal war?
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How many of them would be comfortable knowing that their horrible, sometimes prolonged deaths have resulted in censorship, ignorance, violence, suppression, hypocrisy, obedience and stupidity on a scale not seen since the Inquisition?

Hopefully, none (but then again, the Wall Street factor, with their families demanding compensation, for money heals all wounds).

My point is: none of them really expected something like that to happen, and even if they did, they most likely wouldn't have given much thought to what they would wish for if ever they were caught in the middle of such an event.

So the big idea:

I think a new wallet card would be appropriate:

"DO NOT MARTYR In the unlikely event of my premature murder at the hands of batshit crazy religious fundamentalists, I hereby request that my death be looked upon as though I had died peacefully in my sleep. In other words, meaningless and unheroic. My death should not be used as further ammunition for the illegalities and immoralities that are being carried out throughout the world by Western governments in the name of "freedom" and "democracy", words that have lost all import under the present tenure. I further request that I not be included in any publicly-circulated headcount, and that my name and particulars not be released to the media for the consumption of our frenzied, idiot hordes. To the finder of this card: put that fucking twenty back."

I don't agree with much of the above, and think the war on terror has nothing to do with the dead and everything about preventing more people prematurely achieving such a state. I am not a fan of those who purport to speak on behalf of the dead. I wonder if soldiers in Iraq should carry a similar card in case of Cindy Sheehan Syndrome?

I am thinking of getting these cards properly made up, for reals, and wanted to see if anybody was interested. Further, anybody with better graphical design skills than I is encouraged to submit their designs for consideration. Otherwise it will be pretty ordinary-looking, and probably won't be taken seriously.

Like Indymedia?

As the card design is a 'work in progress', I'm sure readers could come up with other ideas for what they would have written inside their wallets. To celebrate reopening of comments, let's hear them!