[CTRL] Chomsky

2001-03-10 Thread John Taylor



http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/ni/ni-overview.html


[CTRL] Hollywood vs. Selected Religions

2000-12-16 Thread John Taylor

-Caveat Lector-


 Hollywood vs. Selected Religions
 by Gary North

 Let's run a quick test. Say that you have been looking through reviews of
 recent Hollywood movies. You are reading along, trying to get a sense of
 what a movie is all about, when you see the word "Palestinian." The next
 word is:

 A. businessman
 B. scientist
 C. student
 D. terrorist

 You now read reviews of movies released after 1960. You read the word
 "fundamentalist." The word preceding it is:

 A. lovable
 B. educated
 C. principled
 D. bigoted

 Back in 1994, Michael Medved, the orthodox Jew who had attacked Hollywood
in
 his book, Hollywood vs. America: Popular Culture and the War on
Traditional
 Values (1992), followed up with a PBS documentary, Hollywood vs. Religion.
 Medved in those days reviewed movies for PBS. I never saw his documentary
on
 PBS, but I own a copy of the videotape, now unfortunately out of print.

 Medved makes an important point: openly anti-religious movies consistently
 lose money - lots of money. The classic example is "The Last Temptation of
 Christ" (1988), whose presentation of a confused, self-doubting Jesus
 outraged Christians. It lost at least $13 million. Medved says that
 producing these movies is ideologically motivated. They represent a
 statement of faith by the liberal community that dominates Hollywood.
These
 people are rich, and they are willing to pour big money down predictable
 sinkholes "for the good of the cause."

 He provides a revealing chronology. In 1959, the biggest Hollywood
 blockbuster was "Ben-Hur," which won a record 11 Academy Awards. The next
 year brought the break in Hollywood's tradition: "Inherit the Wind," a
movie
 version of a highly inaccurate 1955 play about the 1925 Scopes' trial,
 although it presented the story as fiction. (Elsewhere, I have presented
the
 story of that trial in its historical context, a still-continuing battle
for
 control over the content of public school education: taxpayers vs. a
 self-certified academic cartel.) From that point on, says Medved, the
 industry's self-imposed restrictions on anti-religious movies steadily
broke
 down.

 In 1961, the Motion Picture Academy awarded the Oscar for best actor to
Burt
 Lancaster for "Elmer Gantry," the movie version of Sinclair Lewis's 1927
 novel about a morally corrupt evangelist. It had taken over three decades
to
 get that book onto the silver screen. The best thing I can say for the
movie
 is that Lewis's Gantry was worse. (Rent it. It does not hold up
 artistically. "Ben-Hur" does.)

 Medved says that the old Hollywood's Jewish moguls knew that their
customers
 were Americans, and Americans are religious. The Jews who created the film
 industry, in author Jack Wikoff's phrase, as "an empire of their own,"
were
 wise enough and profit-motivated enough not to launch a direct assault on
 the religious mores of the country. They wanted in on the American dream,
 not to undermine it.

 The movies were favorable to American religious and moral values most of
the
 time. Gangsters and adulteresses either died or repented before the movie
 was over. One exception, from "Gone With the Wind" to "Pretty Woman," has
 been the familiar theme of "the prostitute with a heart of gold." Belle
 Watling, the madam in "Gone With the Wind," did not die in the end, nor
did
 she repent, and she was pictured as "basically decent, except for that."
 This culminated with "Pretty Woman," where the lead character, a
prostitute,
 marries the rich hero and gets social revenge on the Beverly Hills
 saleswomen who had scorned her. (I was rooting for the saleswomen.)

 Hollywood has long toyed with the theme of "the prostitute with a heart of
 gold," which culminated in "Pretty Woman." The character in "Gone With the
 Wind" did not die in the end, nor did she repent, making her unique in
that
 era. The character in "Pretty Woman" married the rich hero and got revenge
 on the Beverly Hills saleswomen who had scorned her. (I was rooting for
the
 saleswomen.)

 When "Chariots of Fire" won the 1981 Oscar for best picture, this
blindsided
 Hollywood. The picture had been produced in England. It, too, holds up.
 (What does seem strange is that a Catholic actor played the Jew, Abrahams,
 and a homosexual actor played the Christian, Liddell. But the casting
 worked. The homosexual's only other memorable role before he died of AIDS
 was in "Gandhi," where he played a minister - a liberal, fortunately.)


 Selective Demonization

 On December 11, I watched a rented video, "Escape from L.A." (1996),
 starring Kurt Russell. The basic theme has long appealed to me: how to get
 out of Los Angeles and stay out. This movie was a sequel to "Escape from
New
 York" (1981), which ignited the adult phase of the career of Disney child
 star Russell - one of the few child stars ever to make the transition.
(His
 1980 comedy, "Used Cars," was a riot, at least for those of us who were
 tired of Jimmy Carter's inflation, but it failed at the box 

[CTRL] Ten More Things

2000-11-19 Thread John Taylor

-Caveat Lector-

http://www.nationalreview.com/nr_comment/nr_comment103100a.shtml


Ten More Things
Inspired by Larry Edler.

By John Derbyshire, NR contributing editor


alk show host Larry Elder has got himself a modest best-seller with his book
The Ten Things You Can't Say in America. I don't think I am violating any
laws or honor codes if I list Mr. Elder's ten chapter headings right here:


Blacks are more racist than whites.
White condescension is as bad as black racism.
The media bias - it's real, it's widespread, it's destructive.
The glass ceiling - full of holes.
America's greatest problem: not crime, racism or bad schools - it's
illegitimacy.
There is no health-care "crisis."
America's welfare state: the tyranny of the status quo.
Republicans versus Democrats - maybe a dime's worth of difference.
The war against drugs is Vietnam II: we're losing this one, too.
Gun control advocates - good guys with blood on their hands.
I applaud Larry Elder's efforts to open a crack of honesty in the wall of
lies and self-deceptions that forms our public discourse. Now I am going to
hammer my own wedge into the crack, in the hope of widening it just a
little.

11. American society is increasingly a conspiracy of the smart against the
dumb. Who, exactly, do you think benefits from having a 70,000-page tax
code? The low-IQ guy trying to run a small business? Or the accountant he
has to pay to interpret the code for him? And who benefits from an "open
borders" immigration policy? The $350-an-hour lawyer who needs his lawn
trimmed and his pool cleaned? Or the low-IQ citizen who'd be glad to do the
work . if there weren't 100 Mexican illegals on line ahead of him, willing
to do it for half the price? But hey, low-IQ types don't vote much. And they
can easily be bamboozled with some scare talk about "racism" or "the rich".
True, they have guns and that might turn nasty; but the smart people have a
plan to get their guns off them, so things will work out OK. This system is
called "meritocracy."

12. Ninety-nine per cent of the stuff exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art
is esthetically worthless and will be utterly forgotten 100 years from now.
Some similar proportion of the items published in poetry magazines are
likewise without any redeeming value and will likewise be forgotten. The
last decent opera anybody wrote was Turandot (1926). The last decent
symphony was Vaughan Williams Ninth (1958). The human race can no longer
paint great pictures, write great poems, or compose great music. We have
forgotten how to do these things. Culturally, the present age is a vast
stony desert. We are living on the glories of the past.

13. Race is real. Nope, it's not just a "social construct" or a fig newton
of your imagination. Races really exist; and they differ from each other in
numerous ways, most of which are not visible to the eye. Watch the finals of
the Olympic mens' 100-meter dash. Then watch the Asian-American kids pouring
into Yale, Harvard, MIT. Oh, and by the way: The Jews are a race. They are,
on average, much smarter than the rest of us. They got that way by
practicing eugenics for 2,000 years. And it is not anti-Semitic to point any
of this out.

14. Public education is a failure. Yes, I know, it's heartbreaking. "Our
wonderful public-school system" - the one that Americanized all those
immigrants back in Ellis Island days, the one that gave even the poorest
kids a flying start in life - is broken beyond all hope of repair. Forget
hiring 100,000 new teachers; that would just swell the ranks of the teacher
unions, the most reactionary and destructive force in American public life.
Forget vouchers; that will just give federal bureaucrats and social
engineers a foot in the door of every private and parochial school, so they
can wreck them with their asinine schemes. (Remember VMI?) Privatize the
whole damn thing. You want your kids educated? We take MasterCard. Can't
afford it? Sell your third car, or get married before you have kids, or
something.

15. The main thing that male homosexuals like to do with each other is
unhygienic, spreads disease, and pushes important body parts past their
design limits. Outlaw it? No, it's private; the police have no business in
anybody's bedroom. But we should discourage it for all we're worth. Gay is
not just as good as straight. It's against nature, unhealthy and antisocial.
"Gay marriages" will fail at rates hugely greater than straight marriages,
because gay relationships are, statistically speaking, unstable - way
unstable. "Homosexuals don't want marriages, they just want weddings" -
Steve Sailer. And allowing homosexuals to adopt children is an awful idea.
It's like saying: Let's identify the most promiscuous, most unstable subset
of heterosexuals, and allow them to adopt.

16. Racial profiling is common sense, and good, fair police practice. A
young white guy cruising slowly round in a black neighborhood is looking to
buy drugs. Two young black guys cruising around 

[CTRL] A Gay Man Decries “Gay Rights”

2000-10-25 Thread John Taylor

-Caveat Lector-

A Gay Man Decries “Gay Rights”
By Justin Raimondo

The gay activists of yesteryear asked government to leave them alone. Their
political program centered on decriminalizing homosexual relations between
consenting adults. But today, as tolerance of homosexuality grows, gay
activists are increasingly turning to government to impose their agenda on
society. Though state power has been used as a bludgeon against gay people
since at least the Middle Ages, suddenly today’s gay leaders seem to be
picking up the club themselves, saying, “Now it’s our turn.” This is a great
irony—and a potential cause of trouble for homosexuals and turmoil for
America.
The birth of the gay liberation movement in America can be dated to the
evening of June 27, 1969, when patrons of the Stonewall Inn, a homosexual
bar in Manhattan, resisted a police attempt to close the place down. For
three days a neighborhood rebellion effectively kept the police from
carrying on the ancient tradition of shaking down gay bars and busting the
ones that didn’t pay up. In the official complaint, the operators of the
Stonewall were cited for not having a liquor license. But even if they had
applied, it is doubtful their request would have been granted: the state
licensing bureau was notoriously hostile to gay establishments. The first
modern gay protesters, then, were rebelling against regulation. Indeed,
liberation from government generally was a central idea of gay liberation.
But something happened to divert the gay movement from this original goal.
Today, the so-called gay rights movement sees government as the agency, not
the enemy, of liberty. From socialized medicine to anti-discrimination
legislation to mandatory “tolerance” lessons in the schools, there is no
scheme to increase the power of government these alleged freedom fighters do
not endorse.
As long as homosexual acts between consenting adults are illegal in some
states, I believe organizations dedicated to their repeal have a legitimate
place in the constellation of human rights causes. Beyond this strictly
limited goal, however, a political movement based on sexual orientation is a
grotesque aberration. The fact that the gay rights movement has taken on an
increasingly authoritarian style is the inevitable result of basing
political allegiances on clan loyalties instead of philosophical principles.
In a free society there are no gay rights, only individual rights. For
homosexuals and heterosexuals alike, these rights boil down to a single
principle: the right to be let alone. Politically, the gay rights movement
must return to its early libertarian roots. This would begin the vital
process of depoliticizing homosexuality and defusing a dangerous culture war
the gay minority can never win.
Even the state “neutrality” that gay “centrists” like Andrew Sullivan
advocate would force government treatment of homosexuality as on a par with
heterosexuality, as seen in Sullivan’s demands for gay pseudo-“marriage” and
open gays in the military. True neutrality, however, would involve not
recognition but indifference, inattention, inaction. A neutral state would
neither penalize nor reward homosexual behavior. It would neither forbid nor
would it grant legal status to homosexual marriage. In a military setting, a
neutral state would subject all sexuality to the same rigorous regulation.
Gays must reject the nonsensical idea that they’re oppressed by
“heterosexism,” a vile ideology that subordinates and denigrates homosexuals
by insisting on the centrality of heterosexuality in human culture. There is
no escaping human biology, however much such a project entrances cloistered
academics who imagine that human sexuality is a “social construction” to be
altered at will. Homosexuals are and always will be a rarity, a tiny
minority necessarily outside of the traditional family. The heterosexual
“bias” of social institutions is not something that needs to be imposed on a
reluctant society by an oppressive state, but a predilection that comes
quite naturally and inevitably. If this is “homophobia,” then nature is a
bigot. If gays use the power of the state to correct this historic
“injustice,” they are engaged in an act of belligerence which will rightly
be seen as a challenge to the primacy of the traditional family.
Even many gay liberals recognize that the gay rights model has outlived
whatever usefulness it may once have had. The idea of gay people,
particularly gay men, as a victim group is so contrary to reality it is no
longer sustainable. In economic, political, and cultural clout, gays wield
influence way out of proportion to their numbers, a fact which has spawned
numerous conspiracy theories. From the medieval Knights of Malta to the
mysterious “Homintern” of more modern times, the idea of a powerful
homosexual cabal is a persistent theme in conspiracy literature, one that
mimics the form and style of anti-Semitic lore.
Overlaid with the victim propaganda of the past 20 

[CTRL] Israeli columnist asks for journalists not to use material from attacks onJews in media

2000-10-25 Thread John Taylor

-Caveat Lector-

Israeli columnist asks for journalists not to use material from attacks on
Jews staged for the media


Jerusalem, October 22, 2000

The following letter was written by Hanni Luz, a columnist for "Hatzofe" (a
Hebrew daily newspaper), to her fellow journalists.
*
Dear Sir,

A new game is being played on account of human lives. It's called: "Shoot
the Jew". The stage managers come from two parties. The first are armed and
usually masked gunman. The second are troops of cameramen. Both are looking
for the daily take.

The first party coordinates the time and place. The second party tails
behind, striving for headlines, aiding the stage managers with technology's
best lenses. Both the parties aim. The first takes careful aim at a Jewish
home, a Jewish bus or a Jewish soldier. The second aims carefully at the
daily hit, shooting it from the gunmen's point of view. Together the shoot.

The actors come on stage, ignorant of the two hungry parties waiting behind
the corner.

Bus number 160, on it's way home from Jerusalem thru the Ezion tunnels, was
shot at on Wednesday evening. At  the exit of the tunnel, a CNN camera crew
was waiting patiently for the best shot. This incidence was not unique. The
same method is being played day after day near the Jewish town of Psagot,
and behind the Jewish houses in Hebron.

The grotesque truth behind "the picture tells it all" is that democratic
media teams are collaberating with killers, and therefore playing an
active, if not major, part in pre-planned murder. These are not press
reporters. They are terror-pushers, accountable for the worst of immoral
war crimes. This ugly phenomenon has to be stopped, if democratic society
wants to continue believing in humanistic values.

I beg you to boycott pictures from CNN, AP, Reuturs and other agencies,
that were abtained by trampling the most basic of human rights -- the right
to live. Even a Jew has the right not to be shot at.

Hanni Luz

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[CTRL] Nationhood and Jerusalem

2000-10-25 Thread John Taylor

-Caveat Lector-

-Original Message-
From: yair davidi [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 24 October 2001 10:11
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: A short background to the conflict


At 10:44 AM 10/24/00 +0200, you wrote:




Nationhood and Jerusalem

* Israel became a nation in 1312 B.C.E., two thousand years before

the rise of Islam.

* Arab refugees in Israel began identifying themselves as part of

a Palestinian people in 1967, two decades after the establishment of the

modern State of Israel.

* Since the Jewish conquest in 1272 B.C.E. the Jews have had

dominion over the land for one thousand years with a continuous presence in
the

land for the past 3,300 years. The only Arab dominion since the conquest in

635 C.E. lasted no more than 22 years.

* For over 3,300 years, Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital

Jerusalem has never been the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity. Even

when the Jordanians occupied Jerusalem, they never sought to make it

their capital, and Arab leaders did not come to visit.

* Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in Tanach, the Jewish Holy

Scriptures. Jerusalem is not mentioned once in the Koran.

* King David founded the city of Jerusalem. Mohammed never came

to Jerusalem.

* Jews pray facing Jerusalem. Muslims pray with their backs

toward Jerusalem

Arab and Jewish Refugees

* In 1948 the Arab refugees were encouraged to leave Israel by

Arab leaders promising to purge the land of Jews. Sixty-eight percent left

without ever seeing an Israeli soldier. The Jewish refugees were forced

to flee from Arab lands due to Arab brutality, persecution and pogroms.

* The number of Arab refugees who left Israel in 1948 is estimated

to be around 630,000. The number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands is

estimated to be the same.

* Arab refugees were intentionally not absorbed or integrated into

the Arab lands to which they fled, despite the vast Arab territory. Out of

the 100,000,000 refugees since World War II, theirs is the only refugee

group in the world that has never been absorbed or integrated into their own

peoples' lands. Jewish refugees were completely absorbed into

Israel, a country no larger than the state of New Jersey.

The Arab - Israeli Conflict

* The Arabs are represented by eight separate nations, not

including the Palestinians.There is only one Jewish nation.

* The Arab nations initiated all five wars and lost.Israel

defended itself each time and won.

* The P.L.O.'s Charter still calls for the destruction of the

State of Israel. Israel has given the Palestinians most of the West Bank
land,

autonomy under the Palestinian Authority, and has supplied them with

weapons.

* Under Jordanian rule, Jewish holy sites were desecrated and the

Jews were denied access to places of worship.

* Under Israeli rule, all Muslim and Christian sites have been

preserved and made accessible to people of all faiths.



The U.N. Record on Israel and the Arabs

* Of the 175 Security Council resolutions passed before 1990, 97

were directed against Israel.

* Of the 690 General Assembly resolutions voted on before 1990,

429 were directed against Israel.

* The U.N was silent while 58 Jerusalem Synagogues were destroyed

by the Jordanians.

* The U.N. was silent while the Jordanians systematically

desecrated the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives.

* The U.N. was silent while the Jordanians enforced an

apartheid-like policy of preventing Jews from visiting the Temple Mount and
the Western

Wall.





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sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with
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That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
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[CTRL] Ig Nobel Prizes Awarded for Feats That 'Cannot or Should NotBe Reproduced'

2000-10-17 Thread John Taylor

-Caveat Lector-

  Academe Today [Daily report from the Chronicle of Higher Education,
  http://chronicle.com]
  Friday, October 6, 2000

  Ig Nobel Prizes Awarded for Feats That 'Cannot or Should Not
  Be Reproduced'

  By TIM SWARTZENDRUBER

  Harvard University's science-humor magazine, the Annals of
  Improbable Research, awarded its annual Ig Nobel Prizes on
  Thursday to winners in literature, physics, public health, and
  seven other categories.

  The awards, which spoof the Nobel Prizes, celebrate
  achievements that "cannot or should not be reproduced."
  Genuine Nobel laureates were scheduled to participate in the
  ceremony, which was to feature the annual "Win a Date With a
  Nobel Laureate" contest.

  Following is a list of the winners:


  David Dunning, of Cornell University, and Justin Kruger, of
  the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, received the
  psychology award for their report "Unskilled and Unaware of
  It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence
  Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments."


  Jasmuheen (formerly known as Ellen Greve), of Brisbane,
  Australia, received the literature award for her book Living
  on Light (Koha Publishing, 1998), which explains that although
  some people do eat food, they don't ever really need to.


  Richard Wassersug, of Dalhousie University, in Halifax, Nova
  Scotia, received the biology award for his report "On the
  Comparative Palatability of Some Dry-Season Tadpoles From
  Costa Rica."


  Andre Geim, of the University of Nijmegen, in the Netherlands,
  and Sir Michael Berry, of the University of Bristol, in
  Britain, received the physics award for using magnets to
  levitate a frog and a sumo wrestler.


  Donatella Marazziti, Alessandra Rossi, and Giovanni B.
  Cassano, of the University of Pisa, in Italy, and Hagop S.
  Akiskal, of the University of California at San Diego,
  received the chemistry award for their discovery that,
  biochemically, romantic love may be indistinguishable from
  severe obsessive-compulsive disorder.


  The Rev. Sun Myung Moon received the economics award for
  bringing efficiency and steady growth to the mass-marriage
  industry, with, according to his reports, a 36-couple wedding
  in 1960, a 430-couple wedding in 1968, an 1,800-couple wedding
  in 1975, a 6,000-couple wedding in 1982, a 30,000-couple
  wedding in 1992, a 360,000-couple wedding in 1995, and a
  36-million-couple wedding in 1997.


  Willibrord Weijmar Schultz, Pek van Andel, and Eduard
  Mooyaart, of Groningen, the Netherlands, and Ida Sabelis, of
  Amsterdam, received the medicine award for their
  "illuminating" report, "Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Male and
  Female Genitals During Coitus and Female Sexual Arousal."


  Chris Niswander, of Tucson, received the computer-science
  award for inventing PawSense, software that detects when a cat
  is walking across a computer keyboard and ignores the
  resulting keystrokes.


  The British Royal Navy received the peace award for ordering
  its sailors to stop using live cannon shells, and to instead
  just shout, "Bang!"


  Jonathan Wyatt, Gordon McNaughton, and William Tullet, of
  Glasgow, received the public-health award for their "alarming"
  report, "The Collapse of Toilets in Glasgow."


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==
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sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.

Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.

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[CTRL] Why Is The Nanny State Descending On Us Like A Sack Of Bean Curd?

2000-10-04 Thread John Taylor

-Caveat Lector-

Why Is The Nanny State Descending On Us Like A Sack Of Bean Curd?
Random Reflections On The New America








(1) Easy. We are getting the Nanny State because we want it. Most people
want to be taken care of. If asked, they might genuflect to residual
self-respect, to the largely imaginary American virtues embodied by Davy
Crockett, and say they favored self-reliance, initiative, and independence.
They don't. They want nurturing, want to shed the burden of personal
responsibility. The mothering can be accomplished through welfare, social
security, nationalized medicine, maids, union contracts, immigrant
grounds-keepers, police, or workman's comp, but they want it. Most people
who don't want to be taken care of by the state are rich enough not to need
it.
The increase in wealth occasioned by technology makes the Nanny State
affordable. Since we want it, and we can pay for it, we will have it.


(2) The upcoming election is of little importance. Either candidate will
move the country in the same direction, toward the Nanny State, toward
extension of entitlements, and with it increased governmental intrusion into
the lives of the citizenry, and the dissolution of conventional morality,
which gives people fun things to do while being taken care of. Al Gore would
promote these things a bit faster than George W. Gore.


(3) We do not have candidates, neither Al nor George. They are illusions.
Each is in reality the aggregate of two speechwriters, a gestures coach,
three pollsters, an ad agency, a make-up man, a holder of focus-groups, and
several political technicians. They test one position -- Al is going to be a
centrist -- and take a poll. If the polls drop, they take a new position --
now Al will be a left-liberal and compassionate, or conservative and manly.
In fact, Al doesn't exist.


(4) People do not want the things they say they want. Most, for example, do
not want freedom. They want security, prosperity, bowling, television, and
vacations. Having these things, they will accept without demur, without
really noticing, the tightening control over the press, the narrowing of
political choice, the diminution of influence over schools, the reduction in
independence. The trick is to bring these about gradually, by imperceptible
steps, in the name of compassion or some similarly marketable virtue. It's
working.


(5) People care no more about education than they do about freedom. The
deepest human drives other than sex are, first, to obtain prosperity;
second, to avoid work; and, third, to escape their sense of inferiority.
Schooling both requires work and produces invidious distinctions between
those who have it and those who don't. Consequently, most people are happy
with schools that provide the forms of education without requiring the
substance. Thus the resentment of standardized tests, and the inflation
everywhere of grades. Soon everybody will go to college, nobody will have to
learn anything, and everybody will get a diploma.


(6) People are not opposed to welfare, but to welfare for others. Whites
object to welfare for blacks, imagining that they themselves embody the
ideals of hard work and self-support. Actually most whites don't like work
any more than blacks do. A chief aim of civilization has been the avoidance
thereof. If whites could continue to receive their salaries without again
going to the office, they would spend their lives fishing. Which would be
sensible.


(7) There will be no election in November. To elect is to choose, but we
barely have a choice. We do not have two political parties, but rather one
party with two divisions. The principle of American politics is to allow the
electorate to decide between Candidate A and Candidate A, which encourages
them to believe that they have determined who is to be President. It is a
system that keeps the incumbents in power, though they take turns being in
the minority. Your choices are to vote for either of two largely identical
candidates, to throw your vote to a fringe candidate in a gesture of
romantic futility, or to preserve your dignity by staying home.


(8) The genius of our system lies in maintaining the appearance of
representative government without actually having it. One technique for
doing this is the election-without-a-choice. Another is the concentration of
power in distant bureaucracies that in principle are subject to democratic
influence, but in practice are not. If, for example, fundamental educational
decisions were made at the local level, parents would wield influence. But
if policy is made far away, in the state capital and in Washington, parents
will have no influence at all. The effect is to keep power in the hands of
unions and the ruling elites. They understand this perfectly.


(9) We do not have a free press. We maintain the illusion, because the
government does not control the press. The trick is that the press and the
government are in the hands of the same people -- or, if you will, the 

[CTRL] religion and politics

2000-06-26 Thread John Taylor

http://www.trincoll.edu/depts/csrpl/religame.pdf




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[CTRL] Drugs watch on web users

2000-06-26 Thread John Taylor

 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

Electronic telegrapgh

ISSUE 1855 Friday 23 June 2000





  Drugs watch on web users
By Toby Harnden in Washington






 News and public affairs - Office of National Drug Control Policy


 What's new - Drug Enforcement Administration



  THE White House has been secretly tracking the internet activities of
people who have been surfing the net for drugs-related topics.
The Office of National Drug Control Policy has inserted a trace known as a
"cookie" into computers that have visited its anti-drugs websites while
searching for topics such as "cannabis" or "grow pot". The cookies are able
to monitor internet activities and match them with other online information
to identify the user.

Joe Lockhart, a spokesman for President Clinton, admitted that the cookies
could gather "information about consumers and their internet use". He said:
"We will take all steps necessary to halt these practices now." Richard
Smith, who discovered cookies on his computer while conducting research for
pharmaceutical companies, said: "It's really creepy and Big Brotherish."


20 June 2000: China and US may link up in drug war
23 March 2000: Drugs 'kill 44 Americans a day'









 Sausage firm boss kills inspectors

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[CTRL] Robofish

2000-06-22 Thread John Taylor

---
The Telegraph
6/8/2000

Lamprey is brains behind 'robofish'
By David Derbyshire, Science Correspondent

IT may bear little resemblance to Arnold Schwarzenegger's Terminator
but, according to its inventors, a newly created part-fish, part-machine
is one of the world's most advanced cyborgs.

The creature has a mechanical body fitted with wheels, motors, circuit
boards and light sensors but is controlled by the brain of a sea
lamprey. Although the robot contains only a few nerve cells from the
eel-like fish, it has learned to follow or avoid lights. Robotics
experts are convinced that it marks an important step towards a new type
of biological robot.

The research could pave the way for artificial limbs or other body parts
connected to the user's brain. The fish-robot is the creation of a team
led by Dr Ferdinando Mussa-Ivaldi, from Northwestern University in
Chicago. They removed the brain stem and part of the spinal cord from a
primitive salt water fish under general anaesthetic and kept it alive in
a cold, salty solution, New Scientist reports today.

The team then isolated a group of large nerve cells called Muller cells.
These help lampreys to orientate themselves in water. Electrodes
attached to the neurons allowed them to be stimulated with frequencies
they would normally receive in the fish's body.

When lights were flashed at the robot, the lamprey brain cells learned
how to control the motors. The cyborg was able to follow and dodge a
moving light source and move in a circle.

Researchers were confident that there could be medical benefits. Dr
Mussa-Ivaldi said: "We will be able to build better prosthetic limbs for
disabled people." Until now, the fish's biggest claim to fame was Henry
I who was killed by a surfeit of lampreys in 1135.

--

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[CTRL] soon it will be a crime to look

2000-06-22 Thread John Taylor

The government can now dictate morality.
Thou shalt not covet was a religius law...now it is a state defined law of
existence.

John

FYI one sex based difference is that women have wider peripheral vision than
me and hence can evaluate possibilities without the stare.

The Telegraph
6/8/2000

EC plans equality law that puts women first
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Brussels

UK News: Men 'skive off' the most, say working women

THE European Commission yesterday proposed a gender equality law
allowing "positive action" to promote women ahead of men at work.

The new code, which amends the EU's equal treatment directive, says
women should have "automatic priority" in jobs where they are
"under-represented", except in cases such as the Royal Marines, where
male predominance is justified.

The law will also make it easier for women to win sexual harassment
cases in court by reversing the burden of proof. The onus will be on men
to prove their innocence when accused of "unwelcome physical, verbal or
non-verbal conduct".

The definition of sexual harassment covers anything that affects the
"dignity of women" and includes staring lasciviously, making sexist
comments and talking about a woman's figure.

Anna Diamantopoulou, the Greek social affairs commissioner, said that a
man accused of such misconduct "would have to prove that he was not
guilty", but she stressed that the plaintiff would have to produce
"clear-cut proof" to begin the complaint in the first place.

A commission study found that a fifth of British women claimed to have
been subjected to "unsolicited physical contact", and 30 per cent
complained of being "looked up and down obviously".


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[CTRL] feminism---will men be able to sue

2000-06-22 Thread John Taylor

Sunday Times--London
June 11 2000 FOCUS




Quick, discreet DNA tests to establish paternity have become a boom
industry. A swab inside the cheek can resolve doubts that have lingered for
years. All too often, however, the results bring heartbreaking news. Lois
Rogers reports





Who's your Daddy?




 The news that his little blond son Rauli had cystic fibrosis came as a
devastating blow to Morgan Wise, a Texan railway engineer. He was eager to
help when doctors asked him to undergo a genetic test to determine the
origins of the boy's illness.

Wise's results, however, came back negative. Both parents must have the gene
for a child to contract the disease, and tests showed Wise was not a carrier
of cystic fibrosis. To his astonishment, Wise was told this meant it was
highly unlikely he was Rauli's biological father.

Already separated from the mother of his four children, Wise, tempted by the
paternity testing clinic offer of a cut-price DNA test deal, underwent
genetic analysis to establish whether he was the father of Rawli and his
other three children. It was a decision that would change his life.

The results revealed that only his daughter, the eldest child conceived
during his 13-year marriage, was fathered by him. The three boys were not
his sons.

"I can't begin to describe how I felt," said Wise, 38. "It was like
experiencing a sudden death. I could not believe she had deceived me so
completely, and for so long. I just fell apart.

"How a mother can do this to her marriage, her husband, her children, and
live a lie, I don't understand."

Wise, who says he still regards himself as the boys' father, is now locked
in a destructive legal battle with his former wife. He is arguing he will
help support the children, but not through her. Three weeks ago, Texan
courts ruled he should have no access to the children until the maintenance
dispute is settled.

The boys he believed to be his sons are among thousands of innocent victims
of the growth in the DNA testing industry. In both Britain and America,
suspicious men can now take advantage of laboratories offering quick and
easy proof of paternity.

Genetic relationships can be established using a home testing kit available
over the internet. All it requires is a swab sample of cells from the inside
of the cheek of both father and child, which can then be posted off to a
laboratory. The results are delivered within five days, no questions asked.

More than 250,000 tests a year are now conducted in America, and about
15,000 in Britain. Some of the testing is done to settle legal disputes
about child maintenance between unmarried couples, or to answer questions on
rights to inheritance.

Many of the customers, however, are married men who are suspicious. All too
often, the results bring shocking and unwelcome news: roughly 30% of men
taking the tests discover that they are not the fathers of the children they
regarded as their own. In the wider community, social scientists say up to 1
in 20 children are not the offspring of the man who believes himself to be
their father.

Caroline Caskey's Houston-based company Identigene, which offers DNA test
kits, processes 250 cases a week, and averages one a month from British
clients who have contacted the firm over the internet. "These secrets don't
keep," said Caskey.

Allan Gelb, who describes himself as an immuno-haematologist, though not a
doctor, runs a bustling genetic testing service from his office in New York
City. "I am doing a great deal of business with the UK," he said. "I should
think we have had 40 to 50 people in the past two years."

DNA tests have made Gelb into something of a television celebrity. Bearded
and bespectacled, he makes regular television appearances on talk shows
giving people their test results. The more devastating the news, the better
the ratings. One show recently featured a married couple who were told by
Gelb, live on air, that their tests revealed they were brother and sister.



Family split: Wise found he was not the father of his 'sons'

IN BRITAIN, on-air DNA test results may not yet be the stuff of Kilroy, but
scientists have been swift to capitalise on the paternity-testing business.
There are seven government-approved laboratories offering the service. About
70% of the business currently comes through the courts from the Child
Support Agency (CSA) trying to track errant fathers to pay maintenance for
their children.

However, private demand is growing as more people become aware of the
service. People who have lived their lives with a nagging doubt, agonising
over their parentage or their progeny, are opting to take the plunge.

Customers receive full counselling - they are asked how they will react if
the result is not what they had hoped for, and warned they cannot "unknow"
it.

John Burn, professor of clinical genetics at Newcastle University, set up
North Gene to provide private paternity testing at £450 per family. Profits
are ploughed back into the university. 

[CTRL] Rabin assasination

2000-06-22 Thread John Taylor

Rabin Assassination/Commentary:  YOUR BROTHER’S BLOOD—THE FIFTH HONEST
RABIN ASSASSINATION BOOK

by Barry Chamish [[EMAIL PROTECTED]]


MODIIN, Yom Rishon (Day One—“Sunday”), 15 Sivan, 5760 (Gregorian Date:
June 18, 2000) (Hijri Date:  15 Rabi Awal, 1421), Root  Branch:  Just a
year ago, there was only one truthful book about the Rabin assassination,
mine, entitled, “Who Murdered Yitzhak Rabin”.  Now there are five, listed at
the end of this review.
Michael Raz Steinkrycer, better known as just Michael Raz, is a former
police investigator, whose book “Your Brother’s Blood” traces the Rabin
assassination back to 1924, when a religious leader named Dahan was murdered
by the socialist Haganah for arranging a peace track with Arab religious
leaders.  Since then, anyone who challenged the authority of the Bolshevist
founders became a candidate for murder by the enforcement arm of the Labor
Zionists, the Shabak.
Raz’s book has precisely the same theme as David Morrison’s “Lies:  The
Rabin Assassination and the Israeli Secret Service” and covers some of the
same ground; i.e. Bus 300, the false arrests of 17 soldiers in 1994 for
allegedly stealing army weapons to be used by a non-existent right wing
underground.  However, “Your Brother’s Blood” enters realms where Morrison
feared to tread, such as the wrongful imprisonment of Amos Baranes to cover
up for a Shabak officer’s murder of the soldier Rachel Heller, the corrupt
dominance of Yossi Ginosar and his perjury which led to the long
incarceration of a Druze army officer Izat Nafso, and the ugly suppression
of Rabbi Uzi Meshulum and his congregation who dared to expose the
kidnappings of thousands of, mostly Yemenite, infants in the early days of
the state.
Raz’s approach is invaluable to understanding how the mechanism of the Rabin
murder coverup works.  Take the Baranes case.  Though it was obvious that
Rachel Heller’s boyfriend, a Shabak agent named Bichovsky, was the murderer,
a stooge was set up to take the fall.  None of this could have happened
without the approval and authorization of State Attorney General Meir
Shamgar, who was later called on by the Shabak to cover up, first the truth
of the Hebron massacre and turn Baruch Goldstein into the fall guy and then
the Rabin assassination, this time making Yigal Amir the victim for another
Shabak murder.
Like Morrison, Raz relies heavily on documentation supplied to him by me and
Natan Gefen but comes up with some powerful new evidence as well.  Here are
a few examples of how each Rabin book injects vital new information into the
investigation.
First, Raz finally sheds light on the mystery man of the murder operation,
Yekhezkiel “Khezi” Kalo.  While it is universally known that Shabak
provocateurs Avishai Raviv and Yigal Amir were employed by the Jewish
Department based in Hebron, the chain of command is still fuzzy.
Their immediate superior was Eli Barak, head of this department, and we know
lots about him.  He is a wife swapper, stalker, drunk driver, wife beater
and liar.  In his most publicized act of debauchery, he stalked the reporter
Carmela Menashe.  One of his group of wife swappers in the suburban town of
Kochav Yair was murdered in New York at the same time Barak was visiting
there.  After smashing his car while drunk, Barak lied to the police and
testified that his passenger was behind the wheel.  All in all, we have a
picture of a violent misfit, just the type of personality who would murder
for “peace”.
But, of Kalo, we knew next to nothing until the publication of the Raz book.
We knew he was head of the Non-Arab Anti-Subversive Department of the Shabak
and that he was Eli Barak’s superior officer.  How this department differs
from Barak’s is still covered in mystery.  A year and a half ago, a
terrified Kalo went public and in radio interviews and an infamous newspaper
article, claimed he didn’t know Avishai Raviv and was separated from him by
eight officers in the Shabak’s chain of command.
Being kind, the approach didn’t wash.  No matter how many underlings dealt
with Raviv on a continuing basis, he was their commander.
Now look what Raz reveals about Eli Barak.  He is not merely “religious”,
but a graduate of a Bnei Akiva yeshivah, the very organization which
supplies Judea and Samaria with many, if not most, of its Jewish residents.
In fact, the principal of Kalo’s yeshivah was the fiery Knesset member,
Rabbi Ba-Gad.
So far, Kalo is merely a betrayer of his community.  But let the following
fact sink in deep.  While Yigal Amir was in Riga, Latvia receiving Shabak
training in 1992, Kalo was the Shabak officer in charge of security for the
region!!!  It sure looks like he was in on the Amir recruitment and
subsequent exploitation from the very first day.
Then there is the dilemma of Health Minister Dr. Ephraim Sneh.  In one of
the most damning incidents of the murder, Sneh, then Health Minister,
announced Rabin’s murder on television truthfully, saying, “He was shot
three times; in the 

[CTRL] Mighty Cyberengines Spew Health Myths

2000-06-22 Thread John Taylor

prefer to use the term fallacies myself rather than myth.

John



Mighty Cyberengines Spew Health Myths
By JANE E. BRODY
NYT, 0.5.30

 When my sons were in the first grade, a rumor circulated through
 New York City elementary schools that cockroaches often
 contaminated canned tuna. Though the boys liked other fish,
 including sardines, they refused to eat canned tuna in any form and
 still avoid it more than 20 years later.

 Like alligators living in the sewer, many urban myths assume a life
 of their own despite a total lack of supporting evidence. The
 alligator myth is more a source of amusement than a problem for
 anyone, since very few of us venture into sewers. But when myths
 involve health issues, they can result in needless anxiety,
 avoidance behavior and inconvenience.

 In years past, these unsubstantiated rumors about health hazards
 lurking in our midst spread relatively slowly from person to person
 by word of mouth, unless some radio or television program happened
 to give them national airing. Now there is a new rapid-fire means
 of transmitting misinformation nationwide, even worldwide, via
 e-mail and the Internet. And since these communications appear in
 writing, rumors about health hazards floating around cyberspace
 seem to acquire an undeserved validity that makes them more likely
 to be believed than any oral warning.

 Of course, not everyone is equally gullible. Still, some people
 react with fear, even panic, when a cybermyth about health appears
 on their computer screens. Several of these "urban health myths"
 are exposed for what little they are worth in the May issue of Mayo
 Clinic Women's HealthSource, a newsletter published by the Mayo
 Clinic in Rochester, Minn. I have added one of my own, on aluminum,
 that predates cyberspace but refuses to die.

 MYTH: Cooking in aluminum pots causes Alzheimer's disease. The sick
 brain cells of people with Alzheimer's disease have been found to
 contain high amounts of aluminum. This prompted people to point a
 guilty finger at aluminum pots and pans as a source of this element
 that they believe damage brain cells, resulting in senility.
 Countless people tossed out all their aluminum cookware, replacing
 it with stainless steel and enameled cast iron.

 But what those who panicked failed to realize is that sick cells
 tend to accumulate toxic metals because they are unable to
 eliminate them. Despite numerous investigations, there is no
 scientifically reliable evidence that aluminum is the cause, rather
 than the result, of a diseased brain.

 MYTH: Antiperspirants cause breast cancer. A persistent Internet
 myth is that since antiperspirants block sweat glands, those in the
 underarm are unable to eliminate toxic substances, sending them
 instead into nearby lymph nodes, where they cause genetic mutations
 that result in cancer.

 First, sweat glands do not eliminate toxins and are not connected
 to the lymph system. Rather, toxins are processed through the liver
 and kidneys. Second, breast cancer does not arise in lymph nodes.
 It may spread to underarm nodes, but it starts within the breast
 tissue, usually in milk ducts. Third, there is no evidence linking
 breast cancer to not sweating. Fourth, no ingredient in
 antiperspirants is known to cause cancer. Finally, among countless
 studies of risk factors associated with breast cancer, not one has
 pointed to antiperspirants as a remotely possible cause.

 MYTH: Costa Rican bananas carry flesh-eating bacteria. Whenever a
 frightening, mysterious illness gains widespread attention, myths
 tend to abound as to its source. Hence the myth that touching the
 skin of bananas grown in Costa Rica can expose a person to the
 bacteria that cause necrotizing fasciitis, a potentially deadly
 disease caused by bacteria that attack the flesh in science-fiction
 fashion.

 Necrotizing fasciitis is caused by various bacteria, including
 Group A streptococcus that is found on people's skin and in their
 throats. It is transmitted from through saliva or mucus or through
 sores on the skin to another person who broken skin. The bacteria
 cannot infect intact skin. Nor are they carried on bananas.

 MYTH: Aspartame causes . . . you-name-it. According to the Mayo
 Clinic, one woman is the source of the belief that the artificial
 sweetener aspartame causes everything from obesity to manic
 depression to multiple sclerosis. The woman maintains that the Food
 and Drug Administration, in cahoots with commercial interests, has
 suppressed evidence of aspartame's risks and that all the studies
 indicating its safety are tainted because they have been financed
 by the company that produces it.

 One study 

[CTRL] Music on the Brain

2000-06-22 Thread John Taylor

I used to have voices in my head telling me I was the reincarnation of
Napoleonbut I changed psychiatrist and now I hear 1812 overture instead.

John


Music on the Brain
TIME, 0.6.5

Experts still don't know how and why tunes tickle our fancy--but
new research offers intriguing clues

BY MICHAEL D. LEMONICK

It's hard to exaggerate the effect music can have on the human
brain. A mere snippet of song from the past can trigger memories
as vivid as anything Proust experienced from the aroma of his
petite madeleine. A tune can induce emotions ranging from
unabashed joy to deep sorrow and can drive listeners into states
of patriotic fervor or religious frenzy--to say nothing of its
legendary ability to soothe the savage beast.

Yet in spite of music's remarkable influence on the human psyche,
scientists have spent little time attempting to understand why it
possesses such potency. "We tend to think of music as an art or a
cultural attribute," notes Robert Zatorre, a neuroscientist at
McGill University in Montreal, "but it is a complex human behavior
that is as worthy of scientific study as any other."

That's why Zatorre helped organize a conference, "The Biological
Foundations of Music," sponsored last week by the New York Academy
of Sciences, at which experts in disciplines ranging from
neuroscience and neurology to brain imaging and psychology met to
exchange notes about what's known--and, more important, what
remains to be learned--in this small but growing field.

What seems clear is that the ability to experience and react to
music is deeply embedded in the biology of the nervous system.
While music tends to be processed mostly in the right hemisphere
of the brain, no single set of cells is devoted to the task.
Different networks of neurons are activated, depending on whether
a person is listening to music or playing an instrument, and
whether or not the music involves lyrics.

Specific brain disorders can affect the perception of music in
very specific ways. Experiments done on epileptics decades ago
showed that stimulating certain areas of the temporal lobe on both
sides of the brain awakened "musical memories"--vivid re-creations
of melodies that the patients had heard years earlier. Lesions in
the temporal lobe can result in so-called musicogenic epilepsy, an
extremely rare form of the disorder in which seizures are
triggered by the sound of music. Autism offers an even greater
puzzle. People with this condition are mentally deficient, yet
most are proficient musicians; some are "musical savants"
possessed of extraordinary talent.

The opposite is true of the less than 1% of the population who
suffer from amusia, or true tone deafness. They literally cannot
recognize a melody, let alone tell two of them apart, and they are
incapable of repeating a song (although they think they are doing
it correctly). Even simple, familiar tunes such as Frere Jacques
and Happy Birthday are mystifying to amusics, but when the lyrics
are spoken rather than sung, amusics are able to recognize the
song immediately.

"This goes way beyond an inability to carry a tune," observes
psychologist Isabelle Peretz of the University of Montreal. "They
can't dance, and they can't tell the difference between consonance
[harmony] and dissonance either. They all appear to have been born
without the wiring necessary to process music." Intriguingly,
people with amusia show no overt signs of brain damage or
short-term-memory impairment, and magnetic-resonance-imaging scans
of their brains look normal.

There is evidently no way to help these unfortunate folks (though,
admittedly, they don't know what they're missing). But for
instrumentalists, at least, music can evidently trigger physical
changes in the brain's wiring. By measuring faint magnetic fields
emitted by the brains of professional musicians, a team led by
Christo Pantev of the University of Muenster's Institute of
Experimental Audiology in Germany has shown that intensive
practice of an instrument leads to discernible enlargement of
parts of the cerebral cortex, the layer of gray matter most
closely associated with higher brain function.

As for music's emotional impact, there is some indication that
music can affect levels of various hormones, including cortisol
(involved in arousal and stress), testosterone (aggression and
arousal) and oxytocin (nurturing behavior) as well as trigger
release of the natural opiates known as endorphins. Using PET
scanners, Zatorre has shown that the parts of the brain involved
in processing emotion seem to light up with activity when a
subject hears music.

As tantalizing as these bits of research are, they barely begin to
address the mysteries of music and the brain, including the
deepest question of all: Why do we appreciate music? Did our
musical ancestors have an evolutionary edge over their tin-eared
fellows? Or is music, as M.I.T. neuroscientist Steven Pinker
asserts, just "auditory cheesecake," with no biological value?
Given 

[CTRL] Fw: pharmacogenomics

2000-06-22 Thread John Taylor

As a means of control(plus potential testing of IQ, personality bias, cancer
tendenies, mental illness)
the potential is enormous.

John




Jun 6, 2000 - 06:33 AM


HEALTHBEAT: New Science to Help Patients Get Safest Drugs for Their Genes
By Lauran Neergaard
The Associated Press



WASHINGTON (AP) - Doctors accused her of being a hypochondriac: The woman
suffered dizziness and a racing heartbeat from each antidepressant she
tried, even though she was taking doses normally far too low to cause side
effects.
The desperate woman finally saw Dr. Raymond Woosley, who scanned her DNA
with a special "gene chip" and discovered she actually has a genetic quirk
that makes her super-sensitive to certain medicines.

She's lucky: Some people die while taking some of the world's most popular
drugs - from antibiotics to heartburn remedies - all because no one knew
their genes made them uniquely susceptible to devastating side effects.

That's about to change. A new science called "pharmacogenomics" aims to curb
the problem by replacing today's one-dose-fits-all culture with simple tests
to help doctors customize prescriptions, picking the safest, most effective
drug for each patient's DNA.

Already, Woosley and colleagues are testing the new technology at Georgetown
University Medical Center. Just swab the inside of a patient's cheek for a
DNA sample, and run it over a tiny glass gene chip the size of a postage
stamp. The chip detects an errant enzyme system called p450 that affects how
safely people metabolize dozens of popular medicines.

P450 testing is so successful that Woosley just launched an international
registry, closely watched by the Food and Drug Administration, to
investigate other gene variations that make some people collapse with a
lethal irregular heartbeat after taking any of 50 common drugs.

And some companies are poised to begin offering, possibly within the next
year, the first direct-to-consumer pharmacogenomic testing. The idea:
Instead of waiting for gene chips to reach your doctor's office, just send a
cheek swab to a gene-testing laboratory to see if you're at risk from
certain drugs, explains Josh Baker, president of PPGx Inc., one company
hoping to offer consumer testing. Then give the test results to your doctor.

"It's very clear this concept works," says Woosley, a clinical
pharmacologist and heart specialist. New research to pinpoint who's at risk
"is some of the most exciting stuff I've ever seen."

Even the best medicines don't help everyone. Drugs are sold after they prove
an effect on the average disease sufferer, not every individual. So there's
little way to know who's wasting time on treatment that will fail, and who
will suffer side effects. Some 2 million Americans are hospitalized annually
for side effects, and 100,000 die.

Pharmacogenomics aims to improve that.

This is not your standard gene test. It doesn't reveal disease-causing gene
mutations. Instead, tests hunt subtle genetic variations called
polymorphisms that can determine reactions to medications.

Take p450, the best-known family of drug-processing enzymes. An estimated 7
percent of Americans lack certain p450 enzymes, allowing some drugs to climb
to toxic levels in their bodies. Other people's p450 enzymes work too fast,
clearing a drug out of the bloodstream too fast for it to fight disease.

P450 isn't the only concern. Leukemia specialists are starting to test
patients for another enzyme deficiency that makes the standard dose of a
children's leukemia therapy called mercaptopurine far too high for their
bodies.

Also, 50 common drugs occasionally cause a lethal irregular heartbeat.
Patients' hearts first exhibit a rhythm change called "long QT interval"
before going into the arrhythmia with the unwieldy name "torsades de
points." Some genes can spur this problem by making drugs 10 times more
potent at blocking heart relaxation channels, Woosley said.

His lab just launched an international effort to research survivors and
create gene chips to test patients for the risk before they take a new drug.
Doctors, or torsades survivors, can check http://www.qtdrugs.org to
participate.

Gene chips will take several more years to hit the market. But PPGx and
other labs today can find gene-drug interactions through standard, cheap
gene-test methods - they already provide p450 and other enzyme tests for
drug manufacturers. Consumers very soon will demand such tests, too, Baker
predicts.

"If they shouldn't take a drug, they should know. I know I would want to
know."

-

EDITOR'S NOTE - Lauran Neergaard covers health and medical issues for The
Associated Press in Washington.

AP-ES-06-06-00 0612EDT

© Copyright 2000 Associated Press.

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sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many 

Re: [CTRL] THE AGE OF DISCOVERY DISPELLING MYTHS [Monsanto/Cow's Milk]

2000-06-08 Thread John Taylor

You have fallen for a fallacy . At the time of columbus scholars new that
the world was a globe and knew how big it was. which is why they oppose
columbus as they said the gap between india and europe was too big to reach.
The fallacy that people thought the world was flat was put out at the end of
the last century in order to discredit the church and show that the church
was holding everyone in the dark age. Since the intellectual elite were
antichristian, this became the accepted view.



-

6) "I don't go so far as to think that the only good Indians are the
dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn't inquire
too closely into the case of the tenth."

Theodore Roosevelt, "The Winning of the West," 1896

Considerred racist today-the book gives an account of how the indians gave
as good as they got.
History has 3 sides...my side your side and the truth

-

7) "I do not consider Hitler to be as bad as he is depicted.  He is
showing an ability that is amazing and he seems to be gaining his
victories without much bloodshed."

Gandhi, 1940

Naziism contains much of Hinduism(including the swastica) and hence it is
quite natural  for ghandi to have been soft on Hitler. Also they had a
common enemy.

-

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[CTRL] BBC: New targets in Zimbabwe

2000-06-08 Thread John Taylor

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/africa/newsid_78/780172.stm

Tuesday, 6 June, 2000, 17:28 GMT 18:28 UK
Zimbabwe fear spreads

The "war veterans" have now turned their attention to teachers
Schoolteachers and judges in Zimbabwe fear they are becoming the latest
targets of President Robert Mugabe's government and party.

In the last fortnight, supporters of the ruling Zanu-PF party have
attacked schools, after a cabinet minister accused teachers of
"polluting the minds" of young people.

And the government has told white judges that they are not qualified to
preside over Zimbabwean courts - a comment which has prompted fears of
interference in judicial independence.

The Zimbabwe Teachers Association says at least 200 schools have been
disrupted by intimidation and attacks.

In the Eastern Highlands town of Chimanimani, the self-styled war
veterans who support President Mugabe moved into secondary and primary
schools, dragging the teachers from their classrooms.

Several teachers were beaten, some to the point of unconsciousness, and
needed hospital treatment.

Other teachers, accused of being opposition MDC supporters were stripped
naked in front of their students.

In previous Zimbabwe elections, schools have been used as polling
stations and teachers employed as polling officers.

Some commentators believe that teachers are perceived to be capable of
influencing the outcome of the election - which is why Zanu-PF
supporters are targeting them at a time when a crucial election is
approaching.

'Barbaric' attacks

A teacher at a Midlands school which was the target of an attack said
the only way to remain safe was to feign support for the ruling party.

"Our school head advised us to cover ourselves, so we all bought Zanu-PF
membership cards," he said.

The Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe blames the government for
what the union calls "unwarranted, barbaric and nefarious" attacks.

Recently Justice Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa accused teachers of
"polluting the minds" of young people.

Staff at health clinics have also been targeted, with opposition
supporters who have been injured in political violence being prevented
from entering clinics.

Judges under fire

The government used the state-owned media at the weekend to attack the
white judges who comprise a substantial proportion of Zimbabwe's still
independent judiciary.

The government's relationship with the courts has deteriorated over the
past year, to the point where it disregarded two court orders to act
against the illegal occupation of farmland by Zanu-PF supporters.

Government spokesman Jonathan Moyo said white judges who held foreign
citizenship were not qualified to preside over Zimbabwean courts.

"No sane Zimbabwean should expect the judiciary to be headed by a
foreigner - especially a British - 20 years after our independence, just
like it would be insane to have a foreign or British president or
speaker of parliament," he said in the state-owned Sunday Mail newspaper

Two of Zimbabwe's five supreme court judges are white, including Chief
Justice Anthony Gubbay. Four of the 20 high court judges are white.

Mr Moyo's remarks have prompted speculation that the government might
move to remove the white judges from their posts - an action which would
destroy the principle of an independent judiciary.


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misdirections
and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and
minor
effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said,
CTRL
gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers;
be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and
nazi's need not apply.

Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.

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[CTRL] hypnosis

2000-06-08 Thread John Taylor

http://www.btinternet.com/~neuronaut/webtwo_features_hypnosis.htm
The secret of hypnosis

Hypnosis can be explained as a form of self-induced sensory deprivation…well
perhaps.

(Copyright, John McCrone, March 1991)

Hypnotists with swinging fob watches are out. Far more effective ways of
putting people into a trance have been discovered which, with their
employment of confusion and word twisting, are not too far removed from
brainwashing techniques. Yet while the practice of hypnosis has made
considerable strides of late, science is still uncertain whether the
phenomenon even exists.

Hypnotism has been studied for over 200 years. For a long time, the only way
known of putting subjects into a trance was to get them to focus on a spot
on the ceiling or a monotonous pendulum while the hypnotist commanded them
to fall asleep. However, this "authoritarian" method has since widely been
replaced among hypnotherapists by an indirect technique pioneered by the US
therapist, Milton Erickson. Today, a hypnotist uses a careful manipulation
of the conversation they have with their clients to "lead" them into a
trance state.

As Stephen Brooks, director of the training group, British Hypnosis
Research, explains it, there is none of the traditional mumbo-jumbo that
used to be the hypnotist's stock in trade. Instead, the aim of modern
techniques is to drop hypnotic suggestions casually into the conversation.
The patient's attention is first directed inwards by asking them out of the
blue if their hands feel heavy or if they can remember some pleasant
holiday. This relaxes the subject and the hypnotist can then drop hints into
the conversation about the sort of experiences the patient should expect to
feel under hypnosis; sensations such as weightlessness and involuntary
behaviour.

Finally, when the patient has been led into a deeply relaxed state - one so
relaxed that the critical faculties have been dulled to a small point of
consciousness - the hypnotist starts confusing the patient with non
sequiturs and apparently pointless remarks. Confused, but too relaxed to
struggle for understanding, the patient's tendency is to seize hold of
almost anything the hypnotist then suggests as their new hypnotic reality.

The technique is much like brain washing in relying on confusion followed by
the planting of a new belief system. However Brooks stresses that brain
washing relies on much more brutal confusion techniques such as terror and
isolation, and is carried out with quite different aims in mind than those
of a therapist! That at least is the modern practice of hypnosis - and a
method highly successful at overcoming resistance as most patients never
realise that the therapist has switched from ordinary conversation to the
hypnotic induction. However, what about the science behind hypnosis?

There is a strong body of scientific opinion that would say the many people
experiencing Ericksonian hypnosis - or its more highly packaged derivative,
Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) - are merely feigning a trance state to
please the hypnotist. A combination of social pressure to perform and
everyday knowledge about the way hypnotised people are suppose to behave,
are enough for cooperative patients to fake the experience. Like being
drunk, even people who have never touched a drop usually can do a good job
of acting tipsy.

This hypothesis that hypnotic trance states are merely feigned was taken up
enthusiastically by researchers in the 1980s, particularly in Canada. Their
methodology was to take two groups of subjects, one whom believed themselves
hypnotised and one whom had been told to fake a trance, and then test them
for how similarly they behaved. Astonishingly, the fakers could even match
the hypnotised in demonstrations where they had to ignore pain - although it
is true the fakers were never tested with something like the tooth root
canal extractions which some hypnotised patients can withstand.

The non-state theorists - researchers such as Nicholas Spanos of Ottawa and
Graham Wagstaff of Liverpool University - did much to dispel many of the old
myths about hypnosis. It was found that apparently vivid memories recalled
under hypnosis were as liable to be imagined as real. Proof of this led to a
Home Office warning in 1988 against the use of evidence gained under
hypnosis. Other evidence, such as experiments showing that subjects with
induced deafness or amnesia could still respond normally in carefully
designed experimental tests, seemed to prove the non-state theorists' case
that no special trance state exists. But a few years ago, neurologists using
brain scans and other monitoring devices started coming up with support for
the belief that hypnosis is a genuinely altered state of awareness.

A key feature of the trance state is the ability of subjects to experience
intense hallucinations at the suggestion of the hypnotist. These visions
have none of the paleness of ordinary imaginings and are as vivid as dreams.
David 

[CTRL] Forgotten aspect of slavery

2000-06-07 Thread John Taylor

COMPLICITY 101


BY

DENNIS RAITT


Although the "politically correct" academia, the NAACP and it’s Hate-the-
South media allies continue their quest to revise and sanitize Southern
history, it is refreshing to find an individual like Larry Koger. Mr. Koger
holds an M.A. in history from Howard University where he researched his
book: Black Slaveowners, Free Black Slave Masters in South Carolina,
1790-1860.

"Most Americans, black and white, believe that slavery was a system
exclusively maintained by whites to exploit black people. But in fact black
Americans played a role in the annals of the ‘peculiar institution’ as slave
masters. Many blacks of the antebellum period believed that slavery and the
exploitation of their own people was a viable economic system for profit. In
Louisiana, Maryland, South Carolina, and Virginia, free blacks owned more
than 10,000 slaves, according to the federal census of 1830.

Many black masters were large planters who owned scores of slaves and
planted large quantities of cotton, rice, and cane sugar. Not all black
masters were planters, many were craftsmen and artisans. The institution of
black slave owning was widespread, stretching as far north as New York and
as far south as Florida, extending westward into Kentucky, Mississippi,
Louisiana and Missouri.

Many black masters were former slaves, many being emancipated for
meritorious military duty, faithful service, saving a life, and other such
reasons. Basically stated, they arose from slavery to freedom to slaveowner.
Once freed, they obtained slaves through inheritance or purchase, including
those of their immediate families. Free blacks not only used slave labor to
work in farming, but also purchased slaves to work in their businesses as
skilled and unskilled laborers. Others hired out their slaves to
non-slaveowners and appropriated the proceeds to help themselves. The
attitudes and actions of black masters were much the same as white
slaveowners.

From the U.S. census, just around Charleston, South Carolina, the percentage
of free black slaveowners increased from 25% in 1830 to 92% in 1860. Just
between 1800 and 1820, the number of black masters increased by 411%.
Another census showed an increase and then a decline in the percentage of
female black slaveowners from 71% in 1820 to 58% in 1864. Perhaps the most
striking fact about the statistics complied from the federal census is that
42% of the slaves held by free blacks were females between the ages of 10
and 54.

In short, the economic benefits of slavery stimulated ex-slaves to buy
slaves to be utilized as laborers or hired out. In a society where slavery
was an accepted form of labor, not the racism blamed today, it was not
surprising that former slaves exploited the vast reservoir of slave labor.
They viewed slavery as a viable and legitimate institution which could be
used for investment purposes in producing more wealth.

Like the white man, black masters had to deal with all types of disciplinary
problems which required the need to place advertisements in local newspapers
for the return of their runaway slaves, placing disobedient slaves in the
city jail or workhouse, flogging, and sale on the auction block.

Life of the slaves under black ownership was not much different from the
life of slaves held by white planters. In either case, the slaves usually
worked from 8 to 10 hours a day, with Sundays and customary holidays off.

Although the black planters did not pay their slaves, they provided food,
clothing, medical care and shelter as did the whites. Also the mandatory
slave tax was paid yearly.

In the antebellum south, a network of personal relationships developed
between the black elite and the whites. Often the face-to-face,
person-to-person contacts permitted Southern whites to see each other as men
and women. Free blacks not only attended church with whites but often lived
a few doors down. Many of the well-to-do free blacks owned homes,
plantations and slaves. They made legal contracts and filed lawsuits to
protect their property.

As the antislavery movement in the 1850’s intensified, many black
slaveowners began to doubt the continued existence of slavery. Rather than
bequeath the slaves to their children, they began to liquidate their human
chattel and gave the proceeds from the sales to their beloved ones.

By 1863, as the War for Southern Independence began to worsen, it was
becoming apparent that it was only a matter of time before their valuable
slave property would be freed. By this time it was hard if not impossible to
find a willing buyer. Thus after the war, like their white counterparts, the
newly freed slaves would work the land, not for wages, but for food, shelter
and clothing. In essence the only major difference between the antebellum
arrangements and the Reconstruction contracts was the distinction between
forced labor and a quasi-voluntary system which developed after slavery."

So the next time the NAACP and the leftist-media 

[CTRL] Thought control

2000-06-07 Thread John Taylor

Columnist Dan Walters' (www.sacbee.com) article in the San Mateo County
Times
6/5/00,  alerts us to  California Assemblyman Darrell Steinberg's  method
of
asking "private" questions of school children by requiring that the
American
Academy of Pediatrics recommendations be incorporated into existing health
screening programs operated by the county government. It passed.

Example of questions:
1. Whether the childs family had a history of mental illness, domestic
violence or drug use.
4. Whether the family or neighbors own guns.
5. Whether ...involved with gangs.
7. Whether the child had signs of poor self esteem.
etc.

It passed.

  The Cal. Assembly also included,  in a different bill,  that the
Museum of Tolerance (Simon Wiesenthal Center in LA) should be consulted in
developing hate crime prevention in schools, etc.  They are putting into
Law
that their policies etc. are reasonable and to be part of our government.



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and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and
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effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said,
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gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers;
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[CTRL] The effect of Aids in Africa-scientific american

2000-06-07 Thread John Taylor

Scientific American


CARE FOR A DYING CONTINENT


In Zimbabwe--where AIDS is prematurely killing a generation of
adults--counselors
and researchers struggle against social customs, viral resourcefulness and
despair.




By Carol Ezzell, staff writer
Photographs: Karin Retief/Trace Images/The Image Works

"If the younger generation does not change, we are going to perish."
 Millicent Tigere perches expectantly on the edge of the sofa, her hands
folded in the lap of her simple black skirt. At the age of 20, she has
already been married for two years and has a one-year-old baby girl, now
strapped to her back with a white terrycloth towel. One of her relatives
died a year ago, and she suspects the cause was AIDS. She has come to the
clinic today to find out if she herself has a future--or if her child is
destined to become an orphan like the estimated 10 million others on the
continent of Africa.

Millicent lives in a town on the outskirts of Harare, the capital city of
the southern African nation of Zimbabwe. Her husband, who is 26, has a job
as a bank teller--a feat, considering the country's unemployment rate of
roughly 50 percent. Millicent speaks a little English, which is Zimbabwe's
official language, but she prefers to conduct her AIDS counseling session
primarily in Shona, her tribal tongue.

Chiratidzo Muyaka, Millicent's counselor, is a motherly figure in her 40s
with glasses and big brown eyes. Her past experience as a schoolteacher
shows as she guides Millicent through the "pretest" questionnaire that will
prepare her for her blood test for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV),
the cause of AIDS.

Does she know how the AIDS virus is spread? Millicent confidently and
correctly identifies unprotected sex, sharing hypodermic needles and
childbirth as the major means through which HIV is transmitted.




THE GOMBEDZAS
 Has she had sex with anyone other than her husband? She shakes her head no.
Has her husband had sex with other women? "I don't think so," she answers,
laughing nervously behind her hand.

Has she thought about what might happen if she tests positive? Her smile
fades. She pauses to reach back and pull up one of her sleeping baby's
flower-patterned socks before answering. "I get worried if I am positive,
because I would be divorced [by my husband], and I worry about
breast-feeding." Nevertheless, she declares, she plans to share the results
of her test with her husband.

Although she says she and her husband have never used condoms because she
takes birth-control pills, Millicent agrees to discuss condom use with him
before she returns in two weeks to receive the results of her HIV test. She
takes a dozen free condoms because, she says, she and her spouse have sex
nearly every night. Then she leaves the counseling room for the clinic's
examining room to have her blood sample drawn.

The chances that Millicent is not already infected with HIV are not good.
Zimbabwe's National AIDS Coordination Program (NACP) estimates that between
20 and 25 percent of the population carries the virus. The likelihood that
one in every four people I meet is infected with HIV haunts me as I walk the
streets of Harare. The face of HIV is everywhere: on the taxi driver who
drove me to my first appointment this morning, on my waiter last night, on
the woman selling roasted corn on the cob at the side of the road, on the
businessman emerging from his Mercedes.

I have come to Zimbabwe because it represents one of the best of the worst.
As in other sub-Saharan African nations, the AIDS problem here is so severe
that it eclipses the often-used term "crisis." AIDS is destined to alter
history in Africa--and, in fact, the world--to a degree not seen in
humanity's past since the Black Death. But unlike some other African
countries, Zimbabwe is not riven by tribal violence. If any behavioral
intervention against AIDS will work in Africa, one of its best chances will
be here.

But that one-in-four estimate of Zimbabweans infected with HIV is likely to
be optimistic, based on scanty data and wishful thinking. The statistic
derives from blood samples collected periodically from pregnant women who
show up at a dozen maternity clinics around the country--a system that even
Evaristo Marowa, director of the NACP, acknowledges is inaccurate.

Workers at the clinic to which Millicent has come see HIV infection rates
that are much higher. Nearly 40 percent of the women presenting themselves
for HIV counseling and testing have turned up positive, according to
epidemiologist Nancy S. Padian of the University of California at San
Francisco. Padian is collaborating with Z. Michael Chirenje, Tsungai Chipato
and Michael T. Mbizvo of the University of Zimbabwe's department of
obstetrics and gynecology on studies to find ways to prevent the spread of
HIV, which in Africa is transmitted largely through heterosexual sex and
from mother to newborn. Like many other AIDS researchers, they are focusing
on women instead of men in part 

Re: [CTRL] John Taylor was Elizabeth Taylor

2000-05-30 Thread John Taylor

I plead not guilty.
 I have an alibi.
Being at least 10 000km away in south africa makes it difficult to commit a
crime in the usa.

(the only shot i have made in anger was after I had been bound and  a gun
held against my skull. whilst working late one nighti got away and fired
a shotfortunately I am a bad shot and missed.

John H Taylor
(there are lots of taylors.none of us being alien clones...i hope

-Original Message-
From: Tenorlove [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: 30 May 2000 08:38
Subject: [CTRL] John Taylor was Elizabeth Taylor


 A man named John Taylor has been arrested for the Wendy's massacre
in New York City. 

Isn't there a John Taylor on this list, too? I would imagine it's a
rather common name. My local phone directory has three John Taylors, 1
John F. Taylor, 1 John H. Taylor, 1 John T. Taylor, 2 Jonathans, 3
Jeans  a Jeannie, and 15 J. Taylors with various middle initials. Not
to mention 2 more columns of Taylors.

__
Do You Yahoo!?
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and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and
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gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers;
be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and
nazi's need not apply.

Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.

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[CTRL] Chinese demographics

1999-01-06 Thread John Taylor

When Demographics of a country become scewed toward Men, then often the response is
"since we cant make love lets make war."

This tied with america's sale(gift) of nuclear technology to china and the massive 
build up of the military indutrial complex of china
(encoraged by western banks) could(will?) lead to very dangerous situation in a few 
years time.
(it should also be remembered that  western gajin are not quite human and only given 
grudging respect---but as a competing thought is that the chinese have not been an 
imperialistic country and find it difficult to rule other population groups---where 
they have done it
as they did in Tibet they have carried out genocidal activities where 1-2 million 
Tibetans have been killed by chinese rule at the beginning of their rule and where 
they are now carrying out a policy of genetic and cultural overwhelment)





PS Purvin and gertz did a study on the likely crude price in the new millenium and 
came to the conclusion that it will depend almost entirely on one factor- chinese 
growth rate. If the chinese economy doesnt grow then crude is likely to remain in the 
10-20$/bl range that exists at the moment but if the chinese economy continues to grow 
at the present 8%pa then a crude shortage is likely to develop and then the sky 
becomes the limit for the crude price--and the same is likely for other commodities


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bCHINESE DEMOGRAPHICS
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6.3 brides for seven brothers

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BEIJING AND SHANGHAI

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 img src="/0KhAc0hZ/editorial/editorial_gifs/null.gif" height=5 width=446!-- 
found rubric --/td/trtrtdnbsp;/tdtdnbsp;/tdtdbrimg 
src=/0KhAc0hZ/editorial/freeforall/current/editorial_gifs/null.gif' width=1 
height=7brBfont face="Times, Times New Roman" size=2centerLife is going to be 
lonely for millions of men in the world#146;s most populous nation
/font/B/center

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Economist Further Reading --
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src="/0KhAc0hZ/editorial/editorial_gifs/h_further_reading.gif" width="92" height="18"
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/table/tdtdnbsp;/tdtdfont face='Times New Roman, Times, serif' size=3THE 
cheeky eight-year-old son of the local restaurateur in a village not far from Beijing 
is already well informed on the facts of life, Chinese style. He has, he announces, a 
two-month-old baby sister. #147;The fine was 15,000 yuan,#148; he adds proudly. A 
second child for a mere $1,800 is quite a bargain#151;if the family had lived closer 
to Beijing, they might have had to pay 50,000 yuan. And her birthplace was not her 
only stroke of luck: her parents already have a son. China is not a good country in 
which to be conceived as a second daughter.
brimg src=/0KhAc0hZ/editorial/freeforall/current/editorial_gifs/null.gif' width=1 
height=7brOn 

[CTRL] FW: BIG OIL'S CANNIBALS HUNGRY FOR MORE.

1998-12-22 Thread John Taylor

 -Caveat Lector-

1998-12-17:
UK: YEAREND - BIG OIL'S CANNIBALS HUNGRY FOR MORE.
(REUTR)
By William Maclean
LONDON (Reuters) - Oil majors will stampede for new trophy deals
in old Middle East haunts in 1999 while pursuing a merger spree
back home to cut costs and raise market share.

Battling low prices and weak demand, Big Oil's herd instinct will
drive companies into each others' arms and fire a parallel race for
the world's cheapest and biggest reserves in the Gulf.

Both trends gathered pace in a redrawing of the world's energy map
in 1998, spurred by a disastrous 40 percent price crash born of
Asian economic collapse and rising Iraqi exports.

As the century closes, hungry corporate cannibals will dine again
on Wall Street for more mega-merger economies of scale.

"We think that there is more consolidation to come - alliances,
joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions," said Jay Wilson of
bankers J.P. Morgan.

Prospects for an early oil price recovery are remote with a stubborn stock
overhang and rescue efforts mired in bickering inside producer club OPEC.


GOLIATHS OFFER BETTER FINANCING, TECHNOLOGY, REACH

Sweeping budget cuts forced on oil firms by the price rout will take a good two
years to provide big falls in crude supply - too late to save weaker explorers
and even some large integrated companies.

A Reuters poll of experts projects an average price for benchmark Brent crude of
just $13.50 a barrel in 1999, unchanged from this year after a 30 percent slide.


"The only thing you can conclude is that there is going to be more
consolidation," said Exxon chairman Lee Raymond.

The Texas-based firm is merging with Mobil to form the world's largest company
by revenue, reuniting the largest successors from the 1911 breakup of John D.
Rockefeller's Standard Oil.

The $240 billion giant will dwarf a proposed $110 billion British Petroleum and
Amoco combination created to nip the heels of the larger Royal Dutch/Shell.

Already earning pre-merger incomes greater than those of many countries where
they operate, such new goliaths will have the muscle to grab the lion's share of
the best upstream prospects and widen downstream access to the
 consumer.

Such titans don't want only multi-billion dollar savings.

They target more leverage from new technology by spreading it over a wider base,
improving returns on capital to shore up a must-have status with institutional
investors.

They also want sheer size to attract Middle East countries seeking capital from
foreign partners to expand their reserves, the world's most plentiful and the
cheapest to extract.

Rod Peacock of J.P. Morgan, a banker involved in Exxon and BP's respective
mergers, says oil super-giants offer Gulf states unrivalled technology,
financial strength and global reach.


GULF REOPENING PRESSURES SAUDI, MEXICO TO FOLLOW SUIT

And mergers may simplify the Gulf states' choice.

"Being big wins you a seat at the table. It means people pay attention to you,"
said Bob Maguire, a managing director at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter .

That seems to be the case in Kuwait, seeking to boost its output capacity in an
undeclared race for foreign capital with other Gulf states as well as Venezuela,
Nigeria and the Caspian.

"I think it made our life much easier," said Kuwaiti Oil Minister Sheikh Saud
Nasser al-Sabah.

"Instead of negotiating with BP and Amoco separately, we have both of them in
one. Instead of Exxon and Mobil, we have them both in one."

The Gulf reopening signals the return next century of Middle East OPEC powers to
their former position at the heart of the global oil industry after 20 years as
nationalised backwaters.

Dusting cobwebs from some of the oldest oil relationships, the reopening also
pressures state giants Saudi Arabia and Mexico to join the investment race or
risk losing out.

It also means that the upside-down world of international oil exploration, where
the bulk of development has occurred in costly areas like the North Sea, will
see a return to commercial normality as investment shifts to t he Gulf's
low-risk fields.

"I suspect that by 2005, 2010, we will see the normal laws of economics
reasserting themselves, with the volume increases going to the low-cost
producers," Royal Dutch/Shell chairman Mark Moody-Stuart told Petroleum Intel
ligence Weekly.

"And if that happens it almost certainly means lower oil prices," said
Moody-Stuart, whose company is the latest to confirm talks on possible
post-sanctions projects with Iraq.

Maguire says being huge gives companies the financial clout to make a big bet on
a sole risk basis upstream rather than settling for the syndicated returns
earned by smaller rivals.


MEGA-MAJORS COULD SHRUG OFF TAKEOVER PRESSURE

A possible additional motive for OPEC states inviting in foreign capital is to
divert that money away from non-OPEC areas that are the source of competing
production, he said.

"For that reason, you'd rather bring in the guy who's spending a lot rather than
spending a 

[CTRL] Not really conspiracy but Ian Smith's quote is very apt

1998-12-18 Thread John Taylor

 -Caveat Lector-

"What I learnt from British politicians was that diplomacy is just a polite word for 
deceit"



SUNDAY TIMES
December 13 1998

Smith defies Mugabe's land-grabbers
by R W Johnson
Harare

THOUGH 80 next year and a little gaunt, Ian Smith has aged well. He is instantly 
recognisable as the man who issued Rhodesia's unilateral declaration of independence 
(UDI) in 1965, a rebellion he finally surrendered in 1980 when one-man, one-vote 
elections brought President Robert Mugabe to power in what is now Zimbabwe.
Today Smith's farm at Shurugwi is on the list of 841 properties that Mugabe has 
designated for state seizure in order, he says, to allow resettlement by landless 
Africans.
"It's got nothing to do with land for the poor," said Smith. "The state's already 
taken over 2m acres of land, but it's not been distributed to the landless. The 
gangsters have got most of it."
By the gangsters, he explains, he means the government and its cronies.
"I can take you out and show you 20 farms within a 40-mile radius of Harare that were 
once productive, flourishing enterprises, homes where people brought up their children 
and provided employment for many hundreds. Mugabe pushed those people off their land 
and today it's just sterile," he said.
What Smith says is true enough. The head of the army, General Rex Nhongo, who as a 
guerrilla led the first attack on a white farm, is a member of the Zanu politburo. 
Despite his claimed socialist views, he has Zimbabwe's biggest land holding, with 17 
farms. Joshua Nkomo, the vice-president, has interests in 16 farms. Abandoned 
farmhouses around Harare have been looted and the termites are now at work - a sad 
scene of devastation.
What will Smith do? "I got their letter. I told them I wasn't interested. The 
agreement was that they wouldn't take over family farms or highly developed ones and 
mine is both those things," he said.
"Janet [my wife] and I have farmed there for 50 years and we've invested millions in 
it. We're not going to be pushed off. I'll go to the appeal court and with so many 
cases pending it'll take them 10 years to hear them all. I don't expect to be around 
by then anyway. Meanwhile, I'm not budging. My children are here and so are my 
grandchildren. I'm not going anywhere."
Is he not afraid that the government will single him out for exemplary treatment? The 
telephone is tapped, of course, Smith says.
"Janet and I have been arrested three times and they've confiscated my firearms and 
papers. But I just ignored them, and when they realised they were getting nowhere they 
stopped. I've always spoken my mind and I always will," he said.
In Mugabe's first year in power, Smith helped him. "We got on like a house on fire. I 
was very impressed. But then he started all this nonsense about wanting a one-party 
state, and I told him I'd have to criticise him publicly for that. He hasn't spoken to 
me once in the 17 years since then."
Does he not feel partly responsible for the mess now? Was it not the long guerrilla 
war following UDI that produced Mugabe? Rubbish, Smith says, the fault lay with the 
British politicians who sold the country down the river.
"Rab Butler promised us independence but refused to write it down, saying it was 
unnecessary because 'we were all part of the family'," said Smith.
" The most two-faced of the lot was that Lord Carrington fellow. The Tories would put 
their arm around you and say, 'You're one of us', and then betray you. What I learnt 
from British politicians was that diplomacy is just a polite word for deceit."
Many Zimbabweans are horrified at the scale of their country's deterioration. 
Inflation is 45%, unemployment 50%, the currency has collapsed, no investment is 
coming in and as the economy spirals downwards, Mugabe simply tries to blame it all on 
the whites.
Does Smith realise that many South Africans look at Zimbabwe, their northern 
neighbour, and worry that Thabo Mbeki, their next president, could follow the Mugabe 
model?
Smith will have none of this. He has the greatest admiration for Nelson Mandela and 
Mbeki, he says. They are not gangsters and they know much better than to kill the 
goose that lays the golden eggs.
"White South Africans have to face up to the bad things they did. It will take time to 
get apartheid out of that system. You've got to allow for that, but South Africa is 
the hope of Africa and I have confidence in it," he said.
Smith is not without hope for Zimbabwe. "The most hopeful thing is that their own 
people are fed up with them now," he said, pointing to recent riots over food and fuel 
price rises. More and more black people are complaining to him about how their 
children go to bed hungry at night.
The denouement of the Zanu party leadership is becoming clear. Mugabe has sent 6,000 
troops to war in the Congo without even asking parliament. The country cannot afford 
the war and most believe that the troops are there to protect the financial interests 
of 

[CTRL] The developing NWO- a marxist critique

1998-12-11 Thread John Taylor

 -Caveat Lector-

The South African Revolution in its International Context

1. The End of Isolation?
From its launch in 1921, the Communist Party in South Africa has committed itself to 
an internationalist perspective. We have always sought to understand the 
interconnectedness of our own struggle with socialist, working class, democratic and 
liberation struggles around the world. We have also seen the propagation of the 
values of internationalism within our country as a core Communist Party task. The 
SACP is, today, convinced that internationalism is more relevant than ever before.
A strategic understanding of present international forces is central to developing a 
clear programme for the South African transformation struggle. A failure to develop 
such an understanding will lead to many illusions and mistakes. Coming to terms with 
the place of the post-1994 South Africa within the world has proved to be an area of 
considerable uncertainty, if not plain confusion. Justified pride in our successful 
political transition and the genuine respect it has inspired around the world have 
also instilled illusions about global realities, and our place within them.
In many quarters the ending of apartheid has been presented, unproblematically, as an 
"end to our international isolation". There is much that is mistaken in this way of 
presenting matters.
For most of its existence, the apartheid regime (like the minority regimes before it 
in South Africa) was not isolated from the world. On the contrary, it was, in its way, 
an integral part of a broader world system. For many decades our Party, and the wider 
ANC-led liberation movement, characterised minority-rule in our country as a variant 
of colonialism - as colonialism of a special type (CST).
By invoking the concept CST we were not just referring to the colonial origins of 
modern South Africa in the phase of industrial imperialism. We were referring to the 
specific path of capital accumulation pursued in South Africa, which was forged, with 
the active backing of British imperialism, around the colonial alignment of class 
forces and the national oppression of the majority. It was around this colonial 
alignment of class forces that South Africa was integrated into a wider imperialist 
system that was, at once, economic, political and military in character. As late as 
the 1970s, successive United States administrations pursued the deliberate strategic 
decision to back white minority rule in South Africa, in the context of intensifying a 
Cold War struggle in Southern Africa. The apartheid regime was seen as an important 
regional gendarme, as a component, therefore, of a broader imperialist bloc.
Partial sanctions were only imposed, reluctantly and belatedly, on the apartheid 
regime by the major imperialist powers following all-round international popular 
pressure, and also a growing perception that apartheid was no longer a necessary or 
even viable regional political dispensation from an imperialist perspective. These 
perceptions were reinforced by:
*   the growing instability within South Africa, including the systemic failure of 
the imperialist inspired coercive-reform measures, introduced by the apartheid regime 
through the late 1970s and 80s;
*   the weakening political and military capacity of the Soviet Union and its 
broader bloc in the 1980s;
*   and the increasing capacity of imperialist forces to dominate Africa through 
the management and manipulation of the debt crisis. In the course of the 1980s,
*   by way of harsh structural adjustment programmes, many post-independence 
development gains were rolled back in progressive African countries. African economies 
were opened up to the predatory incursions of transnational corporations - in a very 
real sense Africa was re-colonised, not by armies, but by financial institutions.
In short, the usefulness, for imperialism, of a white minority-based regional gendarme 
had diminished by the late 1980s.
South Africa is not emerging from decades of isolation. Moreover, insofar as there 
were partial sanctions on the apartheid regime, they were imposed at the behest of the 
liberation movement and with the support of active anti-apartheid solidarity movements 
around the world. It is patent nonsense to speak of the ending of these partial 
sanctions, as if "we" were now emerging from that isolation.
Failure to correctly characterise (or even vaguely remember) the recent past, produces 
many distortions in the way in which our present place within the international system 
is understood. The word "imperialism" has virtually disappeared from the vocabulary of 
our liberation movement, as if the collapse of the Soviet bloc, and the ending of the 
Cold War, also resulted in the evaporation of the powers and consequences of 
imperialism. In fact, the global power of the most developed capitalist countries and 
of the major capitalist transnational corporations has grown 

[CTRL] The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

1998-12-11 Thread John Taylor

 -Caveat Lector-

Pro McClelland of Harvard once stated that childerns stories are where the values 
imparted from one generation to the next are the most clearly seen.

John


TheDawning of the the new age new world order
D L Cuddy

Chapter Four
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Masons are supposed to be engaged in a search for "light" (Ahura-Mazda is the "spirit 
of light") with all of their"heart, mind, and strength."ln L. Frank Baum's The 
Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the tin man wants a heart, the scarecrow a mind, and the lion 
wants strength or courage (the master Mason uses the "strong grip of the lion's paw"). 
In the occult, the heart represents the female (or emotion), the mind represents the 
male (or reason), and strength stands for action.
L. Frank Baum (possibly a Buddhist) was interested in Theosophy (which he and 
his wife joined in 1896), and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is on page 36 of the 
Theosophical University Press 1989-90 catalogue, which features "the principle 
source-writings of the modern Theosophical movement and seeks to provide a 
comprehensive presentation of the ancient wisdom-tradition."
Concerning Theosophy, Baum pronounced, "God is Nature, and Nature God, " and 
in the Aberdeen, South Dakota Saturday Pioneer (January 25,1890), he wrote of "an 
eager longing to penetrate the secrets of Nature - an aspiration for knowledge we have 
thought is forbidden. " The Theosophists are "searchers for truth" and "admit the 
existence of God - not necessarily a personal God. "He believed in the theory of 
"elementals' (invisible, vapory beings) popularized in Madame Blatavasky's Isis 
Unveiled(1877), and like the Rosicrucians' belief in the combining of God and nature, 
and not unlike William Butler Yeats' (Mason and Fabian) search for a new mysticism.

Baum believed in reincarnation, in karma, that there was no Devil, and "that man on 
earth was only, one step on a ladder through many states of consciousness, through 
mans 'universes, to  a final state of Enlightenment, "according to Michael Patrick 
Hearn in his book, The Annotated Wizard of Oz (1973). Hearn is also quoted in Children 
:s Lirerarure Review, (CLR), vol. 15, as saying:
"The author of The Wonderful Wizard of 0Z  was well read in the occult sciences. 
.Paracelsus, the sixteenth century) Swiss alchemist and physician, divided all 
spirits into , four categories: Air, sylphs; Water, nymphs or undines; Earth, gnomes; 
Fire, salamanders. These could be expanded to the ancient idea' of the four states of 
matter - gas, liquid, solid, and energy.. A quick glance at  Baum 's fairy tales 
reveals rhat he wrote about each Paracelsian classification of spirits. His sylphs are 
rhe 'winged fairies'(Lulea of Queen Zixie of Ix; Lurline of The Tin Woodman of oz); 
the undines are the mermaids
(Aquureine of The Sea Fairies; the wonder fairies of the first chapter of The 
Scarecrow of 0z));
 the gnomes are the Nomes (the Nome king of The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus und 
Ozma of Oz);
and the salamanders are the ,fairies of energy' (the Demon of Electricity of TheMaster 
Key; the Lovely Lady of light of Tik-Tok of 0z).
Baum seems to have created a highly sophisticated cosmology by interpreting 
this theory of spirits of elementals' in terms of tradirional fairies. This is 
basically a religion of Nature.

 Modern science itself has its origin in The Wonder   full world of Oz the occult 
sciences, in the search for the secrets of nature. It is nor by mistake that the 
Shaggy Man in The Patchwork Girl of Oz refers to Oz as being a fairyland where magic 
is a science. 'Both science and magic have the same ends. "

In many of Baum's works, there are revealing references. In The Master Key, a 
boy summons up the "Demon of Electricity," and A Kidnapped Santa Claus refers to a 
"Demon of Repentance." The Tin Woodman of Oz has a giantess skilled in 
transformations, and in Dorothy and the Wizard Of Oz, there is a climb up "Pyramid 
Mountain." Baum was a pacifist, and in Ozma of Oz, Dorothy is shipwrecked, and 
Princess Ozma (close friend of Glinda, "the greatest of sorceresses") is threatened by 
an attack from the Nome king, but he is powerless in the face of her faith and love as 
she states, "No one has the right to destroy any living creatures, however evil they 
may be, or  hurt them or make them unhappy. I will not fight - even to save my 
kingdom. "
In the Saturday Pioneer (October 18, 1890), Baud wrote that "the absurd and 
legendary devil is the enigma of the Church, "and in the Oz books, he said there were 
both "good and "bad" demons and witches. (Baum also wrote a play, The Uplift of 
Lucifer, or Raising Hell in 1915.) Remember when you read Revelation 4:3 (". there was 
a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald"), that in life Satan 
tries to imitate God. Could this be why Dorothy sings "Somewhere Over the Rain-bow," 
while the rainbow looks green in some Oz books 

[CTRL] Shakespeare

1998-12-08 Thread John Taylor

 -Caveat Lector-

Shakespeare
(Independent, 5 xi '98)

A new computer analysis of stylistic features provides fresh testimony that all but 
the more obscure Shakespeare plays (Merry Wives of Windsor, etc.) were written by 
Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford (1550-1604). The supply of astronomical 
references in the plays dries up after 1604; and the last ten years of actor-manager 
William Shakespeare's own life -- though he by then enjoyed great affluence and 
leisure -- produced only Pericles, Cymbeline, Winter's Tale, The Tempest and (with 
John Fletcher's help) Henry VIII.

Just how William Shakespeare (1564-1616) could have written the world's greatest plays 
has long puzzled historians and psychologists. There is no documentary evidence that 
William ever attended Stratford's excellent Grammar School -- though the civic status 
of his father [a glover and wool dealer] would have entitled him to do so. At age 18, 
William married his pregnant girlfriend, Anne Hathaway, 26. By age 20, he had become 
the father of three children, including two twins [a boy and a girl] so sought work 
with a theatrical touring company which took him to London. Essentially, the question 
has been one of whether largely untutored Shakespeare could have been sufficient to 
the writing of plays involving a good knowledge of Greek, Roman, Italian and English 
history -- together with awareness of the latest advances in astronomy (as in Hamlet, 
where a starburst is mentioned that had only just been observed by English courtiers).

The Italianate Englishman, Edward de Vere, came from a distinguished military family. 
Though violent and spendthrift, he was a highly regarded Elizabethan courtier-poet. 
His lyric poem 'What cunning can express' is the best of those securely attributed to 
him (Chambers Biographical Dictionary).

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. That being said, CTRL
gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers;
be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and
nazi's need not apply.

Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.


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Om