-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.aci.net/kalliste/ <A HREF="http://www.aci.net/kalliste/">The Home Page of J. Orlin Grabbe</A> ----- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Today's Lesson From The Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler The outcome of this way of thinking is that the old possession, bound up with life and the soil, gives way to the fortune, which is essentially mobile and qualitatively undefined: it does not consist in goods, but it is laid out in them. Considered by itself, it is a purely numerical quantum of money-value. As the seat of this thinking, the city becomes the money-market, the centre of values, and a stream of money-values begins to infuse, intellectualize, and command the system of goods. And with this the trader, from being an organ of economic life, becomes its master. Thinking in money is always, in one way or another, trade or business thinking. It presupposes the productive economy of the land, and, therefore, is always primarily acquisitive, for there is no third course. The very words "acquisition," "gain," "speculation," point to a profit tricked off from the goods en route to the customer--an intellecutal plunder--and for that reason are inapplicable to the early peasantry. . . . He who commands this mode of thinking is the master of money. In all the Cultures evolution takes this road. Lysias informs us in his oration against the corn-merchants that the speculators at the Piraeus frequently spread reports of the wreck of a grain-fleet or of the outbreak of war, in order to produce a panic. In Hellenistic-Roman times it was a widespread practice to arrange for land to go out of cultivation, or for imports to be held in bond, in order to force up prices. In the Egyptian New Empire wheat-corners in the American style were made possible by a bill-discounting that is fully comparable with the banking operations of the West. Cleomenes, Alexander the Great's administrator for Egypt, was able by book transactions to get the whole corn-supply into his own hands, thereby producing a famine far and wide in Greece and raking in immense gains for himself. ===== The Religion Business Bank of Scotland to Pay Pat Robertson £30m Hey. I called Scotland a bunch of wankers. How much do I get? THE Bank of Scotland has agreed to pay up to £30 million in compensation to Pat Robertson, the American evangelist, after being made to abandon a telephone banking joint venture with him yesterday. The decision followed a meeting late on Friday night in Boston between Robertson and Peter Burt, the bank's chief executive. In a statement the bank said: "Pat Robertson and Peter Burt agreed that the changed circumstances made the proposed joint venture between Robertson Financial Services and Bank of Scotland unfeasible." Robertson Financial Services is thought to have paid £30m for a 25 per cent stake in the venture - a phone banking company modelled on Sainsbury's Bank, a joint venture between the supermarket chain and Bank of Scotland which has 800,000 customers. Burt will be under pressure from shareholders this week to explain why the conservative Bank of Scotland entered into an alliance with Robertson, a right-wing television evangelist known for his outspoken views and fervent opposition to homosexuality. The bank has been under intense pressure in the past week to cut its links with Robertson after it emerged that he had made an outspoken attack on Scotland on his popular 700 Club television show. West Lothian Council threatened last week to close its £250m account with the bank. It was joined by a series of charities including Action Aid. Since the telephone bank was announced in March between 400 and 500 people have closed their accounts. Affinity credit card deals with the Trades Union Congress and a series of charities are also under threat. This week, the bank will start seraching for a new partner to save its £30m expansion into America. The London Telegraph, June 6, 1999 Russian Follies White Nights Red with Killings in St. Petersburg If only Russia had gun control. That would solve the problem. Sure. CONTRACT killings along one of St Petersburg's most elegant canals has earned it the nickname "the shooting range". The bodycount on the Griboyedov Canal, which winds through the city centre, reads like a local Who's Who. All the attacks have been on top figures, one of them a leading politician whose murder caused international outrage. Since last autumn there have been four assassination attempts on people who live or work on the canal, three of them fatal, one seriously wounding the target. Even the presence of a base housing St Petersburg's Omon police, an elite paramilitary unit used against dangerous criminals and threats to public order, has failed to stop the slaughter. None of the murders has been solved and, judging by the performance of Russia's law enforcement bodies, it seems unlikely that justice will be done. In the most recent attack a fortnight ago, the commercial director of the Evropa advertising firm, Lev Topper, 53, was killed by gunshot wounds to the head at the entrance to his flat at Number 152. Of all the victims, Mr Topper was the least well-known and the only one not actively involved in politics. Most of the hundreds of contract killings in Russia each year are linked to business disputes or organised crime. But only in St Petersburg, the old imperial capital, have they had such an impact on local politics. On the same day as Mr Topper's killing, a food and trade inspector was found stabbed to death outside her flat and a sniper opened fire on a senior police officer who specialised in organised crime, injuring him and his wife. The murder of Galina Starovoitova, a star of Russia's democratic reform movement and former adviser to President Yeltsin, outside her flat at Number 91 in November caused a huge outpouring of grief. At the time her death was interpreted as the start of a terrorist campaign against Russia's dwingling pro-Western liberals. But it now seems likely that she was silenced for knowing too much about the dubious funding of city politics. Possible links between organised crime and local politics appeared to be behind two other murder attempts in recent months. Gennady Tuganov, leader of the regional branch of Vladimir Zhirinovsky's ultra-nationalists, was gunned down outside the party's offices at Number 100 in April. The first victim - and so far the only one to survive - was Mikhail Osherov, an adviser to Gennady Seleznyev, the powerful speaker of Russia's lower house of parliament, the State Duma. A leading communist, Mr Seleznyev has long used St Petersburg as a power base. But such influence was of little help to his adviser, who was badly wounded in an ambush outside Number 54 in October. The blood spilt on the canal's banks has led to a host of ghoulish nicknames. Besides being called "the shooting range", it is also known as "the scaffold" and referred to in the papers as "a political murder zone". The cull of top officials is believed to be part of the continuing power struggle between mafia groups and their political contacts. Elsewhere in the country such battles were won or lost some time ago. But St Petersburg's reputation as "Russia's crime capital" is a huge embarrassment for its inhabitants, who are fiercely proud of its beauty and would prefer foreigners to hear about its cultural links with poets such as Pushkin, whose 200th birthday is being celebrated today, or the "White Nights" of summer when darkness barely falls over the city. For locals, St Petersburg will always be the "Venice of the North" even if the Griboyedov Canal is more like Naples or Palermo. The London Telegraph, June 6, 1999 The French Underground Tunnel Revelers Face a Dark Future Tolerance and cataphilia MEMBERS of France's ultimate sub-culture - pallid youths who spend their nights revelling in the maze of tunnels 100 feet below Paris - fear that police curbs will cut them off from their secret underworld. For years, the cataphiles - several hundred tunnel enthusiasts who take their nickname from the Parisian catacombs - have roamed the 200-mile network of quarry shafts almost every night. Although access is illegal, they have been tolerated by the police. Now, however, their strange way of life is under threat. The officer in charge of the tunnels for 30 years, Major Jean Claude Saratte, who describes the cataphiles as "harmless escapists", is about to retire. He has handed over responsibility for the tunnels to the less easy-going gendarmes, who have introduced a tougher regime. Christophe, an internet website designer-turned-cataphile, said: "It's not a warning if we are caught any more." They now face a suspended jail sentence and a £250 fine. "If that continues, it'll be a disaster. We can't pay that kind of money." Cataphiles, most of whom use pseudonyms such as the Black Spider, are not always perceived as harmless. They are reputed to dabble in drugs and black magic. In reality, their activities are somewhat tamer: they usually enter the maze through manholes before midnight and navigate several miles of watery tunnels to rendezvous with others, before leaving at dawn. They organise underground parties, which attract hundreds of people, and decorate the walls of the labyrinthine system with paintings and fantasy fiction tracts. Christophe has spent hundreds of nights underground, participating in events such as the "cata-sprint" - an annual race. He said: "It's the pleasure of discovering and living in a world which is hidden, secret and forbidden all at once." Major Saratte has a list of the tunnel entrances. "We could block them up," he said. "But if we take the tunnels from them, they won't know what to do. These are people with a problem." Many are young, white males who "fear life - they are looking for a cocoon - a refuge". Previously, Major Saratte's team has imposed a lenient £25 fine on those caught underground. His attitude has earned him the title "the ultimate cataphile", although he defends his interest as purely professional. He prefers the nickname cataflic (tunnel cop). He said: "What worries me sometimes is that the cataphiles genuinely seem to believe that the tunnels belong to them. Generously, we tolerate them. My successors may not be so tolerant." The London Telegraph, June 6, 1999 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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