From The History and Conspiracies of the Pharmaceutical Industry and How Cancer Politics Have Kept You in the Dark.
"...Long before OPEC, there was I.G. Farben. In the late 1920s, it stood poised to control the entire European petroleum market by offering a less expensive synthetic substitute. This plan might have been desirable to Germany, preparing for war, and for Europe in general, but it was a threat to the hegemony of the multinational oil interests of the Rockefellers, known then as Standard Oil Of New Jersey. John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (1839-1937), was the quintessential 19th.-century capitalist “robber baron,” building up immense wealth by controlling an entire industry—oil. By the late 1860s, he already owned the world’s largest refinery; in 1870, he founded Standard Oil Company with the intention of “consolidating nearly all oil refining into one giant corporation,” explains historian Daniel Yergin in The Prize. Already by 1879, Rockefeller’s reach was prodigious; he owned 90% of America’s oil refining capacity and, in 1899, his new company, Standard Oil Of New Jersey held stock in 41 other corporations.
In 1929, Rockefeller and I.G. Farben cut a deal. Rockefeller would sell oil but not drugs and have the hydrogenation patent for use outside of Germany; I/G. Farben would stay out of oil outside of Germany and sell only chemicals. I.G. Farben also received 2% of Standard’s stock, worth $35 million. In 1930, the 2 giants established a joint company to develop the oil-chemical field. Over the decades, the Rockefeller/I.G. Farben cartel would reap massive profits from both areas. What better arrangement than to control both drugs and oil? Nearly all manufactured chemicals, including drugs, require coal tar or crude oil as a component (often in the form of petroleum jelly)..."
From SCIENTIST AT WORK: Bruce N. Ames; Strong Views on Origins of Cancer
"...When it comes to controversy, Dr. Bruce N. Ames, though not physically intimidating at 5 feet 9 inches tall, is no shrinking violet. The man who invented the leading laboratory test to screen chemicals for their ability to damage genes has years of solid science and the accolades of countless colleagues behind him when he makes such provocative and socially unpopular statements as these:
"I think pesticides lower the cancer rate."
"Pollution seems to me to be mostly a red herring as a cause of cancer."
"Environmentalists are forever issuing scare reports based on very shallow science."
"Standard animal cancer tests done with high doses are practically useless for predicting a chemical's risk to humans."
"Nearly all the polluted wells in the U.S. seem less of a hazard than chlorinated tap water."
"99.9 percent of the toxic chemicals we're exposed to are completely natural -- you consume about 50 toxic chemicals whenever you eat a plant."
"Elimination of cancer is not in the cards, even if we get rid of every external factor."
"Nearly half of all natural chemicals tested, like half of synthetic chemicals, are carcinogenic in rodents when given at high doses."
"We're shooting ourselves in the foot with environmental regulations that cost over 2 percent of the G.N.P., much of it to regulate trivia."
Coming as they do from a highly respected scientist who does not do consulting work for industry, such remarks are especially irritating to those who believe that modern industry has touched off an epidemic of cancer and birth defects by contaminating the air, water, soil and food with toxic chemicals..."
From Many Believe Cancer Myths
Hiding A Cure
The ACS telephone survey included 957 randomly selected adults from across the nation who reported that they had no history of cancer. Among the most common misconceptions identified in the survey:
* 41 percent said they believed surgery could spread cancer, and 13 percent said they didn't know if this was true.
* 27 percent agreed with the statement: "There is currently a cure for cancer but the medical industry won't tell the public about it because they make too much money treating cancer patients." Fourteen percent believed the statement might be true.
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From Anarchism and sex
"...Within certain historic anarchist traditions (as well as within the left), there has often been a significant strand of ‘puritanism’ towards sex and any activities deemed generally frivolous.
We all know the story about Emma Goldman dancing all night with the blokes at an anarchist social event, then being chastised for behaviour not befitting a revolutionary (we know about her subsequent outrage too). We also know that some sections of the anarchist movement in the Spanish revolution have been accused of similar puritanism, and the idea that anarchist and communist revolutionaries should somehow live their lives like ascetic monks or nuns still, in some quarters, continues to this day.
The novels of 19th century anarchist writers like Octave Mirbeau were classed as pornography by the literary establishment of the time. The Diary of a Chambermaid portrayed the sexual habits of the bourgeoisie in such a way that Jean Grave commented, “What filth and decay there is under the pretty surface of our society”. To be fair, Mirbeau’s proletarian anti-heroine, Celestine, was certainly no sexual saint either, but the emphasis on the so called sexual ‘perversity’ and ‘depravity’ of the rich at play clearly implies the notion that sexual waywardness is in some way bourgeois. This is really not that dissimilar from the old Militant Tendency (now the Socialist Party) telling us a few years back that homosexuality was nothing but a bourgeois disease..."
From Memoirs Recount Limitations Of Life In Modern Iran
"...Fellow memoir writer Azar Nafisi, author of Things I've Been Silent About, grew up in Iran in an earlier generation and remembers a sense of freedom that stands in stark contrast to the current reality.
"I grew up in a society where my heroine was a young Iranian feminist poet who openly wrote about having sinned in the arms of a man who was not her husband. I took all of this for granted," Nafisi says.
But Nafisi says that members of her daughter's generation have been jailed and flogged for wearing lipstick — which she jokingly refers to as a "weapon of mass destruction" — or for showing their hair or listening to forbidden music..."
1987: Remembering the ''March against fear and intimidation'' in Forsyth, Georgia
Two members of the Southern White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, wearing starched and pressed combat fatigues, sat in a restuarant Wednesday night in Cumming, Ga., and, as snow began to swirl outside, considered the likelihood of trouble when thousands of people gather this Saturday for a ''march against fear and intimidation'' in Forsyth County.
''I really don't know what's going to happen,'' said Mike Eddington, one of the Klan members. ''But I think it should worry the other side, don't you?''
Both Mr. Eddington, a construction worker from adjacent Gwinnett County, and his colleague, Bobby Starnes, a welder from nearby Barrow County, said they expected members of Klan organizations from more than 20 states to be on hand for a counterdemonstration on Saturday.
It was a similar crowd of Klan members and their friends and sympathizers that erupted into violence last Saturday when a small group of blacks and whites trying to stage a ''walk for brotherhood'' were driven back onto their bus by stones and bottles, threats and insults hurled from the crowd. National Leaders to March
The incident, which took place just 30 miles north of Atlanta, the capital of the civil rights movement in America, stunned the city and its civil rights establishment, which was celebrating the second national holiday in honor of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In response to the incident, Dr. King's widow, Coretta Scott King, and other leaders of the civil rights movement have planned the return march on Forsyth County Saturday. Among the national political figures who plan to participate are Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia, former Senator Gary Hart of Colorado, Representative John Lewis of Georgia and the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
The King Center has ordered 100 buses to transport the marchers from their starting point at the King grave here in downtown Atlanta to the highway exit to Cumming, the county seat. '2,000 to 5,000' Expected
The Rev. Hosea Williams, the civil rights leader who also is an Atlanta City Councilman and who was hit by a stone in last Saturday's incident, said he expected the march to attract ''anywhere from 2,000 to 5,000 people.''
The weather, which produced a rare 4 to 6 inches of snow here Wednesday night, will not deter the marchers, Mr. Williams said. ''We are going to march in Forsyth County this Saturday if it's cold as ice or if it gets hotter than hell.''
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From Turkey's Kurdish clashes continue
"...Demonstrators marking the 10th anniversary of the arrest of Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan have clashed with Turkish police for a second day.
Police used water cannon and tear gas to break up thousands of stone-throwing demonstrators across south-east Turkey.
A number of demonstrators and police were injured and some 50 arrests made.
Protesters were angry that Mr Ocalan continues to be held as the only inmate on a prison island where he is serving a life sentence for treason..."
From The Deadly Face of Development: Struggle Against Evictions in Korea
"...On Monday, January 19th, evictee-protesters members from Jun Chul Yun, or the Federation Against House Demolition, including tenants from the neighborhood as well as other areas, occupied a five story building in Yongsan4ga neighborhood and assembled a defensive shelter on the roof. Roof-top access was blocked to prevent the police from removing them. The evictee-protesters prepared themselves for an occupation and struggle, supplied with, among other items, paint thinner and molotov cocktails.
A 1,500 strong police force was dispatched to disperse about 50 protesters. At 10pm, the night before the police raid, "contract workers" hired by the landowners, referred to by many as "construction thugs" for their traditional role in threatening and attacking evictees, gathered on the second floor of the building. The police threatened to use force against the protestors unless they ended their sit-in. In an apparent attempt to intimidate the protesters, the construction thugs set fire to used tires on the third floor of the building.
At 6am, Tuesday the 20th, the police sent a SWAT team into the building, and mobilized three water trucks to spray the roof with water. In an unprecedentedly short period of time for dealing with protests and sit-ins, a SWAT team was deployed in an "anti-terror" operation. According to Yongsan District police chief Baek Dong-san, they took such swift action because the protesters continued hurling cocktails, bricks and golf balls and spraying acid at officers and passers-by. There were 42 activists on the roof. Access to the roof being blocked off from inside the building, the police used a crane to lift the SWAT team above the roof in a metal storage container unit. The police sprayed the roof from the container box with a water hose, while the protesters resisted, throwing molotov cocktails. At 7:30, a fire, of unknown origins broke out within the makeshift fort. The police continued to spray water cannons and hoses at the roof, the water mixing with paint thinner and spreading the fire throughout the building. The smoke grew thicker and flames bigger, and protesters struggled to evacuate the shed. As the shed filled with water, the paint-thinner, being lighter than water, floated on the surface and prevented the fire from being extinguished. Cans of paint thinner were seen being frantically thrown out of small windows in the shed, in an attempt to prevent the growth of the fire. One protester, seeking to flee the flames, hung from a window, eventually falling four floors to the ground. He suffered severe injuries from the fall, as the police had not prepared any mattresses around the building. The fire was ultimately extinguished by 8am. Five protesters and a police officer died. The cause of death of all six individuals is under investigation..."
From Even anarchists like a little romance
"...Anarchists share few of the beliefs of mainstream society - except the desire to be with someone special on Valentine's Day. So the once-notorious group Class War is marking 14 February with a speed-dating event.
It's the day every singleton dreads. If recession, bad weather and global turmoil aren't enough to make a lonely heart's blood boil, then surely the arrival of 14 February must turn every spinster and bachelor into a committed anti-St Valentine dissident.
Roxy the penguin at London Zoo, who has no mate (despite 431 friends on MySpace)
Ugh. Valentine's Day is too commercial
Happily, salvation is on hand from an unexpected quarter: Class War, anarchist agitators of tabloid infamy, and now Britain's most unlikely matchmakers.
Better known for generating outraged headlines - the group was blamed by Fleet Street for instigating 1990's Trafalgar Square poll tax riots, and featured a regular page three "hospitalised copper" in its own newspaper - its activists have arrived upon a fresh tactic to advance the downfall of bourgeois society. Speed dating.
This Valentine's night, the outfit once condemned by the Daily Mail as a "sinister urban revolutionary band dedicated to turning the nation's inner cities into no-go areas for the police" wants to help introduce curious insurrectionaries to each other for fun, friendship, or possibly more..."
The phenomenon that was Max Headroom
Max Headroom I love 1985
Max Headroom and intro to the series
Max Headroom - Paranoimia
Max Headroom on Security
20 Minutes into the Future
The Max Headroom chronicles
Max Headroom trivia
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