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Y2K DOOMSAYER HAS WAITED A LIFETIME TO PROVE HIMSELF
Monday, December 20, 1999
By Luke McCann

http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/991220/4w.html

HORNING'S MILLS, Ontario, Dec 20 (Reuters) - Bruce Beach has buried 42
school buses underground near his home in a rural Ontario hamlet in
anticipation of the worst disaster mankind has ever seen.

Beach is an experienced bomb-shelter builder and a self-professed doomsayer
with an inkling that his moment of truth is finally looming. It may not be
January 1, 2000, but it may not be too much later, either.

With help from his son-in-law and three hired handymen the buses have been
knitted together in an underground steel labyrinth. He's working on his
bunker late into December because the weather is unseasonably warm and time
is running out.

The moment he's waited a lifetime for could be just days away.

"Prepare for the worst, hope for the best and expect something in between,"
is his Y2K motto.

With sleeping rotations, Beach believes he can shelter nearly 500 people.
The facility includes air intakes, a nursery, a dentist's chair, a
decontamination area and a sound-proof room for people who may have a
breakdown.

"If government and big business are concerned enough and making
preparations, shutting down pipelines and stockpiling with food...it seems
prudent for us to make preparations," said Beach, a 65-year-old with a big
white beard who lives with his wife and looks after his 99-year-old mother.

Few Canadians have devoted as much time and effort to safeguard against
millennium mishaps as this survivalist, who describes himself as
"misunderstood". But then few believe the apocalypse is around the corner.

The disregard for the perils of life in this century has left Beach, a
transplanted American, spooked and isolated.

As a young American soldier in the 1960s he was inspecting missile launch
sites and had "first-hand experience of a nuclear threat, and prepared."

He built his first bunker in 1964 in Kansas, and would eventually lend a
hand in constructing more than 20 of them. Now he has just this one near his
house in Horning's Mills, about 100 miles north of Toronto.

He started buying and burying school buses in the early 1980s, a decade
after he moved to Canada. He made the move because, he said, he feared
landing in a U.S. concentration camp for social agitators.

Beach held a wedding party for his daughter in the bunker and it has
suffered petty vandalism on several occasions, but otherwise it has gone
quietly through the decades.

"It's too creepy to work here full-time," said a handyman replacing rotted
floor paneling. He added that Beach has always made lunch or bought pizza
for workers at the bunker.

He has received e-mails of interest in bunker-making from as far away as
Australia and Russia. But he can't find anyone closer to home who shares his
interest. "If I knew how to find them I would," he said with a shrug.

And even in this time of marketable doom and gloom, he has been unsuccessful
at selling his bunker as a place to be at New Year's. He advertised an
overnight Y2K party in his bunker with a big screen television and lots of
food and fun in Toronto newspapers. No one responded.

He said most people are not interested because they didn't experience the
bedlam of the 1960s or the big New York electrical blackout of the same
decade.

Beach hopes his Web site, www.webpal.org/ArkTwo, will spark some enthusiasm.

He believes the millennium bug may not abruptly end the world on January 1
but he says the end could come six months later, following a cascade of
geopolitical problems.

"`Of course everybody just says 'Beach the nut.'"

Layout of beach's underground bus-bunker:
http://www.webpal.org/ArkTwo/shel04.gif


------------

David Sunfellow, Founder & Publisher
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
P.O. Box 10627
Sedona, AZ USA 86339-8627

Primary eMail: nhne@...
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LINCOLN LAB IS ONLY ONE IN U.S. TO TEST PESTICIDES ON HUMANS
Sunday, December 19, 1999
by Jake Thompson
OMAHA WORLD-HERALD CO.

http://omaha.com/Omaha/OWH/StoryViewer/1,3153,267806,00.html

Washington - In the only known testing of its kind under way in the United
States, MDS Harris Laboratory in Lincoln has been conducting pesticide
research on humans.

Researchers this year asked volunteers in Nebraska to swallow small doses of
a pesticide to examine its potential harmful effects on people.

The study was one of 14 submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency
that involve people ingesting 10 different pesticides. The 13 other studies
were on volunteers in the United Kingdom.

Together, the studies are at the heart of a debate among scientists,
ethicists and pesticide makers about the scientific value, the standards for
and the moral justification of testing pesticides on humans.

While some at the EPA, which regulates pesticides, see clear value in these
human studies, which are legal, many do not, said John Carley, special
assistant in the EPA's Office of Pesticide Programs.

"There are many people at the agency who are troubled by the fact this
testing has ever gone on and is going on, or might ever go on in the
future," Carley said.

The EPA recently established a panel to review human testing.

For the MDS Harris research, some of the 60 volunteers swallowed a capsule
containing chlorpyrifos, a pesticide widely used on crops as well as in
schools, hospitals and 20 million homes to kill such pests as termites,
ticks, cockroaches and fire ants. The pesticide is commonly marketed as
Lorsban or Dursban.

Some of the 60 volunteers were part of a control group and were given a
placebo. The volunteers earned $460 for their participation. Carley said
participants in Great Britain are paid twice as much.

Earlier this year, the EPA concluded that chlorpyrifos poses high risks to
millions of Americans because it can disrupt the nervous system.

Supporters of the research said it is hoped that the tests will show how
much of the pesticides can be ingested without any noticeable harm to
people. Those supporters note that doses given to the volunteers fell well
under a toxic dose.

According to results from the MDS Harris study, volunteers who swallowed the
pesticide capsules reported developing one incident each of nausea,
vomiting, abdominal pain, shortness of breath, impairment of sensation and
chest pain. Those symptoms were possibly or probably related to ingesting
the pesticide, according to the study.

MDS Harris declined to discuss the study, referring questions to its client,
Dow Chemical, the principal maker of chlorpyrifos.

But Dr. Jim McClurg, MDS Harris' president of life sciences, said all of its
studies follow international rules protecting participants and are reviewed
by independent experts before and after the work. McClurg said the
Lincoln-based company, founded in 1933, has clinics in a handful of cities
worldwide and does a large amount of research on the clinical development of
drugs.

Garry Hamlin, a spokesman for Dow AgroSciences, said Dow sought the human
research to add to the 3,600 previous research studies and reports on the
pesticide. They involved lab studies, animal research and studies of people
who apply the pesticide or routinely work in areas in which it is applied.

Direct testing on human volunteers can help clear up uncertainty that exists
between animal studies and the eventual impact on people, he said.

The previous research guided the dosage levels in MDS Harris' study so that
it "would not cause any harm to the volunteers," Hamlin said.

Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, an activist
organization in Washington that has tracked the human research trend, called
the testing questionable. "Would you want your kid to participate in a study
like this?"

The American Crop Protection Association says that human tests are safe and
that the compounds studied are widely found in small concentrations in the
environment and the nation's food supply.

For years, the EPA has neither required nor encouraged human tests. And
while such tests flourished in the 1960s and 1970s, according to Carley,
concerns about the ethics and safety led most companies to discontinue such
tests.

Then, in 1996, Congress passed the Food Quality Protection Act, which
required stricter protections for children from pesticides.

Attempting to show that their products are safe, large pesticide makers
resumed testing their pesticides on people to aid in the government's risk
assessment. The argument is this: Human studies are more accurate than
animal studies and might establish a higher safe dose.

In May 1998, the EPA published a federal notice that human tests might be
helpful in assessing safety risks.

When criticism of the notice surfaced, the EPA set up a special advisory
panel to recommend a refined policy that considers the safety, ethics and
conditions for human tests.

The advisory panel held its second meeting Nov. 30. An EPA background paper
for the meeting noted that the agency accepts other human tests, such as
those studying people who apply pesticides on fields and for businesses.

But the agency said that the 1996 law "may have unintentionally created an
incentive" to test pesticides in human volunteers.

"These studies raise difficult scientific and ethical questions we are not
yet able to answer, and we are deeply concerned about them," the background
paper states.

The pesticide makers compare the pesticide studies to what are called Phase
1 clinical drug tests commonly submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration. In those tests, the objective is to determine adverse
reaction levels to a drug.

Jeffrey Kahn, a bioethicist at the University of Minnesota and an EPA
advisory panel member, said the pesticide tests are fundamentally different.
The ultimate goal in drug tests is to make people healthy, he said, but the
pesticide tests help determine at what levels of exposure people become
sick.

Further, the drug tests usually involve people who already are ill, while
the pesticide tests seek healthy subjects.

"I think there's a question of how much risk healthy individuals should bear
when there's not a clear benefit to the person," Kahn said. "All of the risk
is to the individual subjects, and all the benefits are to society or the
companies producing these chemicals."

Another issue before the advisory panel is whether human pesticide studies
are statistically valid.

Dr. Herbert Needleman of the University of Pittsburgh, who is a member of
the advisory panel, said the sample size in the 14 studies sent to the EPA
was too small. One examined seven subjects and another examined 50, he said.

That cannot help establish what is called a no-effect level, a government
standard below which there is no noticeable reaction. A study would need
from 1,000 to 5,000 human participants to be statistically correct,
Needleman said.

Ray McAllister, senior director of scientific and regulatory policy for the
Washington-based crop association, disagreed. He said that the studies are
valid because they examine enzyme function, which varies in humans anyway.
So finding a response in a small number of human pesticide testers could be
translated to the population at large, he said.

It's also important, McAllister said, that the testing subjects volunteer
and are informed of the substance they are taking, the dosage and its risks.

A copy of the informed-consent form was included in the study sent to the
EPA. The seven-page form explains that the test involves chlorpyrifos,
sketches its effects on the nervous system, outlines how the study will be
conducted and warns that there are 15 potential adverse reactions, including
headache, dizziness, abdominal cramps, tremors and tightness in the chest.

It also has a pregnancy-related warning: "Although animal studies indicate
little or no risk in humans, the possible side effects to a fetus or embryo
are unknown."

Of the volunteers in the MDS Harris study, 30 were men and 30 were women.
Slightly more than one-third were 18 to 25 years old, the rest in their late
20s to early 50s. Most were nonsmokers.

The volunteers were enlisted through ads in newspapers and on MDS Harris'
Internet site, such as one ad that says, "EARN EXTRA MONEY. Make a
Difference by Assisting in Medical Research. "

Participants were given health screenings and drug and alcohol tests to
determine medical history and fitness. They were told that the test material
was a registered insecticide, according to the study.

The volunteers were given capsules with either chlorpyrifos or the placebo.
They were given pills three or four times a day. Their vital signs were
tracked and urine and blood samples were collected by MDS Harris staff.

The study used two phases and several groups to examine the effects of a
rising dose of chlorpyrifos, documents show.


------------

David Sunfellow, Founder & Publisher
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
P.O. Box 10627
Sedona, AZ USA 86339-8627

Primary eMail: nhne@...
Secondary eMail: nhne@...
NHNE: http://www.nhne.com/
wild2k: http://www.wild2k.com/
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STETHOSCOPE IN THE SKY:
TERRA LAUNCHED TO TRACK EARTH'S HEALTH

The $1.3 billion satellite will enable scientists to conduct daily checkups
on Earth's health      

Mission a 'planetary equivalent of a house call'

December 18, 1999
By Interactive Writer Amanda Barnett

http://cnn.com/1999/TECH/space/12/18/terra.01/index.html

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, California (CNN) -- NASA on Saturday launched a
$1.3 billion satellite that will enable scientists from the United States,
Canada and Japan to conduct daily checkups on the health of planet Earth.

High winds threatened to scrub the liftoff, but the 10,700-pound Terra
satellite went aloft aboard an Atlas 2 rocket about 11 a.m. (2 p.m. EST),
moments before a launch window of some 40 minutes was to close.

Within minutes, the satellite dropped its rocket boosters as planned,
separated from the main rocket and raced toward orbit, prompting a burst of
applause from NASA controllers back on Earth.

NASA had delayed the liftoff from Thursday, when on-board computers detected
a problem with only seconds remaining in the countdown. An automatic
software check indicated that rocket's "power-on-internal" status was not
confirmed. Mission technicians verified that Atlas power was on internal
status.

Terra is the flagship of the Earth Observing System, a series of spacecraft
that NASA plans to put in orbit to measure how Earth's oceans, air, land and
people function together.

Terra project scientist Yoram Kaufman calls the mission the planetary
equivalent of a house call and says it will "start the first comprehensive
and well-deserved checkup of the planet."

Viewing Earth as a system

Unlike previous missions that focused on one aspect of the Earth's
environment, Kaufman says Terra will use new instruments to allow scientists
to "look on the Earth as a system."

Scientists from the around the world collaborated to identify key
measurements that will be taken by the five instruments on board the
satellite.

Some of the things Terra will monitor include changes in land cover, climate
change, ozone and natural disasters such as wildfires, droughts and floods.
"This is a very complex living, changing climate," Kaufman said.

Having a satellite with multiple instruments will give scientists a "fresh
view that could never have been obtained before," he said.

Global effort to monitor Earth

The satellite will sweep the Earth every 100 minutes in a near polar orbit.
The data collected will be shared by hundreds of scientists around the
world.

According to Michael King, the senior U.S. project scientist for the
mission, Terra will go "from pole to pole" to observe, document and study
every aspect of Earth.

Scientist believe the satellite will help them understand how Earth's
climate will evolve and how best to manage the planet's natural resources.

The five instruments on Terra:

*    ASTER: Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer.
This instrument will take high resolution infrared images of the Earth.
ASTER is a cooperative effort between NASA and Japan's Ministry of
International Trade and Industry.

*    CERES: Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System. This device
consists of two broadband scanning radiometers that will measure the Earth's
radiation balance and the role clouds play in maintaining that balance.

*    MISR: Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer. This is a new type of
instrument that will let scientists view the Earth with cameras pointed at
nine different angles.

*    MODIS: Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer. This instrument
will view the entire surface of the Earth every one to two days, making
observations of land and ocean surface temperature, land surface cover,
clouds, aerosols, water vapor and fires.

*    MOPITT -- Measurements Of Pollution In The Troposphere. An instrument
designed to study the lower atmosphere and observe how it interacts with the
land and ocean. MOPITT is provided by Canada and will be managed by the
Canadian Space Agency.

Data from the Terra satellite will be downlinked by the Tracking and Data
Relay Satellites that are also used to monitor space shuttles.


------------

David Sunfellow, Founder & Publisher
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
P.O. Box 10627
Sedona, AZ USA 86339-8627

Primary eMail: nhne@...
Secondary eMail: nhne@...
NHNE: http://www.nhne.com/
wild2k: http://www.wild2k.com/
Phone: (520) 282-6120
Fax: (815) 346-1492

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EDITOR'S COMMENT:

Now here's an interesing new product. It was mentioned this morning on the
WIRED website as a Christmas gift for the person who has everything. It also
costs as much as the big screen TV it seeks to replace ($899.00).

--- David Sunfellow

------------

EYE-TREK

http://www.eye-trek.com/welcome_e.html

Get the cinema feeling:
The big screen by a small device

Eye-Trek opens up a whole new world of entertainment to you. Although only
the size of a pair of sunglasses, Eye-Trek presents video and TV-films
impressively large, as if you were watching a 52" screen from 2m distance.
Now you can see films, videos or concerts in cinema format. Accompanied by
full-bodied stereo sound that you receive via the integrated headphones, you
have the sensation of being part of the action. No matter where you may be
at the time - lying on the sofa or sitting in the garden.

You can take Eye-Trek wherever you want and use it whenever you want
-without disturbing others. Eye-Trek is ultracompact, easy to wear and
weighsonly 85 gramms. Just connect Eye-Trek to any TV, video equipment,
DVD-player, camcorder or any other video source - and experience a new
dimension of entertainment

With a portable DVD-player you can watch your favourite movie wherever you
happen to be. It has never been so convenient to enjoy your personal
audio-video programme, even outdoors or on a train journey. And more: with
the Cordless Sender-Receiver System you can experience a new form of freedom
at home. Receive signals signals from TV, video etc. even through walls and
adjust your appliances by remote control.

You just have to plug the Eye-Trek cable into your video source and put on
the multimedia glasses. Immediately you will be absorbed into the movie
action. Your neighbours remain undisturbed. High image quality and realistic
stereo sound can be fully enjoyed.

You will be able to enjoy your movie in a relaxed position, day and night,
regardless of light conditions. The See-Around-Design assures that you never
lose awareness of your surroundings.

Eye-Trek is already being used by Japan Airlines: JAL provides its first
class passengers on long-haul flights with eye-trek to offer undisturbed
video and movie entertainment.


------------

David Sunfellow, Founder & Publisher
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
P.O. Box 10627
Sedona, AZ USA 86339-8627

Primary eMail: nhne@...
Secondary eMail: nhne@...
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CSIS WARNS OF MILLENNIAL CULT ATTACKS
400 groups worldwide:
Believers may try to hasten apocalypse with mass violence
Saturday, December 18, 1999
Stewart Bell
National Post

http://www.nationalpost.com/home.asp?f=991218/155564

A Canadian intelligence report is warning that hundreds of "doomsday
religious movements" are anticipating an apocalypse at the turn of the
millennium and may resort to mass violence.

An estimated 400 cults espousing end-of-the-world scenarios tied to 2000 may
have stockpiled weapons to bring about their prophecies, says the Canadian
Security Intelligence Service report obtained by the National Post.

The cults pose a clear and continuing threat to the safety of Canadians,
says the report, which adds that violence might be used either to help
trigger an envisioned apocalypse or to save face when one fails to
materialize.

"The approaching year 2000 AD has stimulated millennial anxiety and
heightened concern that its unfolding will bring an increase in potential
threats by groups that would choose to assert their apocalyptic beliefs
through violence," the report says.

"While it is not known which cults have the potential for violence, this
does not imply that possible threats posed by doomsday religious movements
should be ignored, as they can quickly manifest themselves in a variety of
forms."

The report, to be released next week, follows a similar analysis by the FBI,
which has launched Project Megiddo, named after the biblical setting of
God's final battle with evil, to prepare for a 2000-related act of religious
violence.

It comes as intelligence and law enforcement agencies are trying to cope
with the possibility that terrorists and cults will resort to bloodshed as
the millennium ends.

"The reality surrounding Y2K is that ... you have a fixed date around which
any number of people may decide that they want to do something," Ward
Elcock, the CSIS director, said in an interview conducted before details of
the agency's assessment emerged.

"Y2K kind of has an appeal to everybody, so you have to be concerned and we
have to be vigilant and it will mean that people in the organization are
working hard for the next two or three weeks through to Y2K and slightly
afterwards."

But even compared to political terrorists, doomsday cults are proving a
challenge to government agencies because they are inherently irrational and
unpredictable. "Any could pose a realistic threat to public safety almost
overnight," says the CSIS report.

Fears of mass violence related to 2000 have been growing since 1995, when
the Aum Shinrikyo cult released nerve gas in the Tokyo subway, killing 12
and injuring 5,500. Canada has not been immune to doomsday cults. Fifty-four
members of the Order of the Solar Temple committed mass suicide in 1994,
including five in Quebec.

Despite gun-control measures in Canada, cults may have acquired weapons
through illegal channels and "it is feared that some doomsday-like groups
may have mastered the production of biological agents," the report says.
Millennialism, the belief that human suffering will be eliminated by an
apocalypse, is found in many religions, but not all foresee a violent end.
Some even see it as a catalyst for peace. But a third of the 1,200 active
cults around the world "subscribe to doomsday philosophies which foresee
catastrophe on or around the year 2000."

The report says law enforcement agencies should be on the watch for the
early-warning signs that a cult is preparing for the "last days," such as an
increase in the procurement of weapons, relocation to an isolated area, a
rise in violent rhetoric, an internal leadership struggle or a public
humiliation.


------------

David Sunfellow, Founder & Publisher
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
P.O. Box 10627
Sedona, AZ USA 86339-8627

Primary eMail: nhne@...
Secondary eMail: nhne@...
NHNE: http://www.nhne.com/
wild2k: http://www.wild2k.com/
Phone: (520) 282-6120
Fax: (815) 346-1492

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------------

EMBRYONIC STEM CELL RESEARCH CALLED TOP BREAKTHROUGH OF 1999
December 16, 1999

http://cnn.com/1999/HEALTH/12/16/science.best.ap/index.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The editors of Science selected stem cell research as the
"Breakthrough of the Year," saying the technology on how to direct the
transformation of stem cells into new body parts could dramatically change
medicine and extend life.

This technology "raises hopes of dazzling medical applications," the editors
of the journal Science said in a report appearing Friday.
But the research also created a troubling ethical debate that was heard
throughout the year in the White House, in Congress and in laboratories
coast to coast.

Embryonic stem cells are the ancestral cells that give rise to all of the
tissues and organs in the body. Researchers believe that such cells, taken
from human embryos or fetuses, could be directed to grow replacements for
ailing hearts, livers or other organs.

Use of embryonic stem cells has been denounced by some members of Congress
and by antiabortion groups.

President Clinton asked a commission to evaluate the ethics of using stem
cells in federally funded research. The report supported the research.
National Institutes of Health director Dr. Harold Varmus also supported stem
cell research and proposed guidelines that would permit government funding,
but only if the embryonic stem cells used were developed by private funds.
The work was to be monitored by a special oversight commission.

Researchers have also found that some stem cells taken from adult tissue
could be converted into other types of cells -- brain cells becoming blood
cells, or bone marrow becoming liver.

Science editor Floyd E. Bloom said in an editorial about stem cells:
"Although much remains to be done to convert today's results into tomorrow's
treatments and tools, the likelihood of success seems high."

Runner-up for breakthrough of the year were the huge advances in genomics,
the science of deciphering the basic genetic pattern of life. The complete
gene sequence for three microbes was completed in 1999, and a third of the
base pairs in human DNA, along with one complete chromosome, number 22. A
rough draft of the entire human genome is expected by March.

The other research advances selected and listed by Science in no particular
order:

- Cooling fermions, one of the two basic particles of matter, to near
absolute zero to create a state of matter in which atoms act like waves
instead of individual particles.

- Resolving the structure of the ribosome, a sort of protein-making factory
inside a cell.

- Finding more planets beyond the solar system. Astronomers now have
evidence of about 30 planets orbiting distant suns and have captured what
may be a view of one planet orbiting across the face of a star.

- Researchers have found new molecules in the brain that play a role in
creating memories and learning.

- Astronomers found new evidence that the universe is flat. This supports
the Big Bang theory by establishing a precise balance between matter and
energy.

- Researchers developed photonic crystals, components that manipulate light
waves just as semiconductors manipulate electrical current. Photonic
crystals could lead to new types of computers and communication circuits.

- Cell fossils were discovered that push the known existence of complex life
back to 2.7 billion years, a billion years earlier than previously known.

- Gamma ray bursts, cosmic eruptions that put out more energy in seconds
than the sun does in 10 billion years, were linked to the birth of black
holes. This provides one answer to a mystery that has persisted for 30
years.

For the "blunder of the year," Science selected the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration's failed Mars Climate Orbiter. The $87 million Mars
probe was lost when NASA engineers used pound-seconds, an English system
measure, instead of Newton-seconds, a metric measure, to guide the craft's
rocket firings.

For "Breakdown of the Year," Science selected the decision by the Kansas
State Board of Education to drop evolution from statewide science teaching
standards. The decision is considered a triumph for creationists who
believe, along with 35 percent of all American adults, that the Biblical
account of creation is literally true.


------------

David Sunfellow, Founder & Publisher
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
P.O. Box 10627
Sedona, AZ USA 86339-8627

Primary eMail: nhne@...
Secondary eMail: nhne@...
NHNE: http://www.nhne.com/
wild2k: http://www.wild2k.com/
Phone: (520) 282-6120
Fax: (815) 346-1492

Subscribe NHNE Mailing List:
send a blank message to <nhnelist-on@...>

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------------

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Current Members: 210

------------

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To discuss NHNE news items with others of like mind:
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nhne@...

To support NHNE:
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------------

EMBRYONIC STEM CELL RESEARCH CALLED TOP BREAKTHROUGH OF 1999
December 16, 1999

http://cnn.com/1999/HEALTH/12/16/science.best.ap/index.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The editors of Science selected stem cell research as the
"Breakthrough of the Year," saying the technology on how to direct the
transformation of stem cells into new body parts could dramatically change
medicine and extend life.

This technology "raises hopes of dazzling medical applications," the editors
of the journal Science said in a report appearing Friday.
But the research also created a troubling ethical debate that was heard
throughout the year in the White House, in Congress and in laboratories
coast to coast.

Embryonic stem cells are the ancestral cells that give rise to all of the
tissues and organs in the body. Researchers believe that such cells, taken
from human embryos or fetuses, could be directed to grow replacements for
ailing hearts, livers or other organs.

Use of embryonic stem cells has been denounced by some members of Congress
and by antiabortion groups.

President Clinton asked a commission to evaluate the ethics of using stem
cells in federally funded research. The report supported the research.
National Institutes of Health director Dr. Harold Varmus also supported stem
cell research and proposed guidelines that would permit government funding,
but only if the embryonic stem cells used were developed by private funds.
The work was to be monitored by a special oversight commission.

Researchers have also found that some stem cells taken from adult tissue
could be converted into other types of cells -- brain cells becoming blood
cells, or bone marrow becoming liver.

Science editor Floyd E. Bloom said in an editorial about stem cells:
"Although much remains to be done to convert today's results into tomorrow's
treatments and tools, the likelihood of success seems high."

Runner-up for breakthrough of the year were the huge advances in genomics,
the science of deciphering the basic genetic pattern of life. The complete
gene sequence for three microbes was completed in 1999, and a third of the
base pairs in human DNA, along with one complete chromosome, number 22. A
rough draft of the entire human genome is expected by March.

The other research advances selected and listed by Science in no particular
order:

- Cooling fermions, one of the two basic particles of matter, to near
absolute zero to create a state of matter in which atoms act like waves
instead of individual particles.

- Resolving the structure of the ribosome, a sort of protein-making factory
inside a cell.

- Finding more planets beyond the solar system. Astronomers now have
evidence of about 30 planets orbiting distant suns and have captured what
may be a view of one planet orbiting across the face of a star.

- Researchers have found new molecules in the brain that play a role in
creating memories and learning.

- Astronomers found new evidence that the universe is flat. This supports
the Big Bang theory by establishing a precise balance between matter and
energy.

- Researchers developed photonic crystals, components that manipulate light
waves just as semiconductors manipulate electrical current. Photonic
crystals could lead to new types of computers and communication circuits.

- Cell fossils were discovered that push the known existence of complex life
back to 2.7 billion years, a billion years earlier than previously known.

- Gamma ray bursts, cosmic eruptions that put out more energy in seconds
than the sun does in 10 billion years, were linked to the birth of black
holes. This provides one answer to a mystery that has persisted for 30
years.

For the "blunder of the year," Science selected the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration's failed Mars Climate Orbiter. The $87 million Mars
probe was lost when NASA engineers used pound-seconds, an English system
measure, instead of Newton-seconds, a metric measure, to guide the craft's
rocket firings.

For "Breakdown of the Year," Science selected the decision by the Kansas
State Board of Education to drop evolution from statewide science teaching
standards. The decision is considered a triumph for creationists who
believe, along with 35 percent of all American adults, that the Biblical
account of creation is literally true.


------------

David Sunfellow, Founder & Publisher
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
P.O. Box 10627
Sedona, AZ USA 86339-8627

Primary eMail: nhne@...
Secondary eMail: nhne@...
NHNE: http://www.nhne.com/
wild2k: http://www.wild2k.com/
Phone: (520) 282-6120
Fax: (815) 346-1492

Subscribe NHNE Mailing List:
send a blank message to <nhnelist-on@...>

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You can say so with a tax-deductible donation:
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"News,
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& Consumer Protection
for Spiritual Seekers"

------------

NHNE News List
Current Members: 209

------------

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To discuss NHNE news items with others of like mind:
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To review past NHNE news posts:
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To send in current news and information:
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nhne@...

To support NHNE:
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------------

EDITOR'S COMMENT:

We've all heard about various kinds of implants and tracking devices. Here's
another one that claims to be the first such device to overcome obstacles
such as unwieldy size, maintenance requirements, insufficient or
inconvenient power-supply, and activation difficulties...

--- David Sunfellow

------------

Applied Digital Solutions Acquires Rights to World's First Digital Device
Implantable in Humans - With Applications in E-business to Business,
Security, Health Care and Criminal Justice

http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/991215/fl_applied_3.html

PALM BEACH, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 15, 1999-- Inserted just under the
skin, with maintenance-free regenerating power supply, miniature "Digital
Angel®" has multi-billion dollar market potential.

Applied Digital Solutions, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADSX - news) today announced that it
has acquired the patent rights to a miniature digital transceiver -- which
it has named "Digital Angel®" -- that can be used for a variety of
purposes, such as providing a tamper-proof means of identification for
enhanced e-business security, locating lost or missing individuals, tracking
the location of valuable property and monitoring the medical conditions of
at-risk patients.

In the agreement signed last week, ADS acquired the right to develop this
unique product itself for all of its applications or to sublicense the
development of specific applications to other entities. A special technology
group has been formed within ADS to supervise the development of the device.
The implantable transceiver sends and receives data and can be continuously
tracked by GPS (Global Positioning Satellite) technology. The transceiver's
power supply and actuation system are unlike anything ever created. When
implanted within a body, the device is powered electromechanically through
the movement of muscles, and it can be activated either by the "wearer" or
by the monitoring facility. A novel sensation feedback feature will even
allow the wearer to control the device to some degree. The "smart" device
is also small enough to be hidden inconspicuously on or within valuable
personal belongings and priceless works of art.

Commenting on Digital Angel's® many potential applications, Richard J.
Sullivan, Chairman and CEO of Applied Digital Solutions, Inc. (ADS), said:
"We believe its potential for improving individual and e-business security
and enhancing the quality of life for millions of people is virtually
limitless. Although we're in the early developmental phase, we expect to
come forward with applications in many different areas, from medical
monitoring to law enforcement. However, in keeping with our core strengths
in the e-business to business arena, we plan to focus our initial
development efforts on the growing field of e-commerce security and user ID
verification."

Sullivan added that the multi-purpose technology would enable ADS to tap
into a vast global market, through licensing and other commercial
arrangements, with an estimated total value in excess of $100 billion. "The
e-business to business security market alone could reach as high as $10 to
$12 billion in the near future," Sullivan added.

ADS is actively seeking joint venture partners to help develop and market
the unique technology. The company expects to create a working prototype by
the end of next year.

Applied Digital Solutions, Inc. is an e-business to business solutions
provider offering Internet, telecom, LAN and software services to a wide
variety of businesses throughout North America.

For more information, visit the Company's web site at:
http://www.adsx.com

Statements about the Company's future expectations, including future
revenues and earnings, and all other statements in this press release other
than historical facts are 'forward-looking statements' within the meaning of
Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, Section 21E of the Securities
Exchange Act of 1934, and as that term is defined in the Private Litigation
Reform Act of 1995. The Company intends that such forward-looking statements
involve risks and uncertainties and are subject to change at any time, and
the Company's actual results could differ materially from expected results.
The Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements to
reflect subsequently occurring events or circumstances.

BACKGROUND AND TECHNICAL ABSTRACT

Digital Angel®
E-Business Security, Emergency Location and Medical Monitoring
Background

On May 13, 1997, United States Patent Number 5,629,678 was granted for a
"personal tracking and recovery system," consisting of a miniature digital
transceiver -- implantable in humans -- with a built-in, electromechanical
power supply and actuation system. These features enable the device to
remain implanted and functional for years without maintenance. This
transceiver sends and receives data and can be continuously tracked by
Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) technology.

On December 10, 1999, Applied Digital Solutions, Inc. (ADS) acquired the
patent rights to this technology, which the company refers to as "Digital
Angel®." The agreement gives ADS the right to develop this unique product
for all of its applications or to sublicense the development of specific
applications to other entities. ADS is actively seeking joint venture
partners to develop and market this technology. We expect to produce a
prototype of the device by the end of 2000. We believe the potential global
market for this device -- in all of its applications -- could exceed $100
billion.

Limitations of Competing Technologies

While a number of other tracking and monitoring technologies have been
patented and marketed in the past, they are all unsuitable for the
widespread tracking, recovery and identification of people due to a variety
of limitations, including unwieldy size, maintenance requirements,
insufficient or inconvenient power-supply and activation difficulties. For
the first time in the history of location and monitoring technology, Digital
Angel® overcomes these limitations.

Basic Features and Potential Uses of Digital Angel®

The Digital Angel® transceiver can be implanted just under the skin or
hidden inconspicuously on or within valuable personal belongings and
priceless works of art. When implanted within the human body, the
transceiver is powered electromechanically through the movement of muscles.
It can be activated either by the "wearer" or by a remote monitoring
facility. The device also can monitor certain biological functions of the
human body - such as heart rate - and send a distress signal to a monitoring
facility when it detects a medical emergency.

Although still in the early developmental stage, we believe Digital Angel®
could have an array of beneficial potential applications: provide a
tamper-proof means of locating and identifying individuals for e-business
and e-commerce security; locate individuals, including children, who are
lost or who have been abducted; monitor the medical conditions of at-risk
patients; track and locate military, diplomatic and other essential
government personnel; determine the location or the authenticity of valuable
property; track the whereabouts of wilderness sports enthusiasts (mountain
climbers, hikers, skiers, etc.).

About Applied Digital Solutions, Inc.

Applied Digital Solutions, Inc. is an e-business to business solutions
provider offering Internet, telecom, LAN and software services to a wide
variety of businesses throughout North America. ADS is led by Richard J.
Sullivan, who was elected Chairman of the Board of Directors and named Chief
Executive Officer in May 1993. Since assuming this role, he has spearheaded
the acquisition of some 40 companies over the past five years. During his
tenure as Chairman and CEO, ADS has experienced record revenue and profit
growth.

For more information, visit the Company's web site at:
www.adsx.com


------------

David Sunfellow, Founder & Publisher
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
P.O. Box 10627
Sedona, AZ USA 86339-8627

Primary eMail: nhne@...
Secondary eMail: nhne@...
NHNE: http://www.nhne.com/
wild2k: http://www.wild2k.com/
Phone: (520) 282-6120
Fax: (815) 346-1492

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send a blank message to <nhnelist-on@...>

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Current Members: 209

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------------

EDITOR'S COMMENT:

Here's one more long, but very interesting piece on the Seattle WTO
situation. Thanks to Tom Atlee for forwarding it...

--- David Sunfellow

------------

While we've all read quite a bit, here's a detailed blow by blow from the
streets of Seattle written by the Executive Director of Rainforest Action
Network and circulated to friends, forwarded here with his permission:

SEATTLE - BLOW BY BLOW

By Kelly Quirke <kellyq@...>
Executive Director
Rainforest Action Network

Years from now, when we look back from the ecologically sustainable society
we have created and tell the story of the 20th century, I think we'll all
agree that the failure of the WTO Ministerial in Seattle will be regarded as
a turning point in history. And as I mentioned in my brief message last
week, the bards and pundits should agree that the RAN/Ruckus family was the
most important collection of activists there during that electrifying week.

We were ensconced in an apartment building/convalescent home on the southern
reaches of Capitol Hill, an area known to locals as "Pill Hill" because of
all the nearby hospitals. Our place of residence was a temporary home to
elders and folks recovering from chemo and the like, or to their visting
loved ones. Thus, we conducted many a meeting in whispers, perhaps the most
truly amazing thing to come out of that tumultuous week +. I myself was in
Seattle for 12 days, and the reason we chose these apartments was their
proximity to the action and the fact that they had kitchens - the theory
being that cooking for ourselves was far cheaper than not and more
nutritious to boot. Together with Ruckus, Amazon Watch and the witches of
San Francisco's Reclaiming collective, we took over the floors, beds and
couches of 8 two-bedroom apartments in two catty-corner four-story buildings
a 20 minute walk from the Convention Center and, important later, 10 minutes
from the jail.

The grin I was to carry for much of the first week began almost as soon as I
deplaned and was quickly in the company of seven or eight of the most
talented activists I know. That number grew to over 30 as the troops kept
arriving. RAN itself had 15 full time staff  representing the organization
in Seattle. And from those first moments the relentlessness that, more than
anything, characterized us over the coming period was well in evidence.

I arrived on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. Those involved in the
crane climb and banner hang with which we planned to inaugurate the week of
action, plus Krikor Didonian, our office manager and, for  Seattle, our
domestic logistics coordinator, were already there.

We were already well-plugged into the DAN (Direct Action Network)
infrastructure, as one of its sponsors and primary financial supporters. DAN
is the group that for months had been coordinating logistics, housing,
non-violence trainings, legal, and most of all, the opening day "Peoples
Convergence" at the WTO. By this time, though, DAN had no plan to facilitate
ways for relatively last-minute, largely unaffiliated arrivals to fit into
the Convergence. They expected perhaps hundreds of people to arrive singly,
coupled or in small affinity groups to Seattle, with no notion of how to
plug in. Help was needed. So, together with Global Exchange and Ruckus, we
volunteered to coordinate particiption for these good people who had arrived
in Seattle with little more than their heartfelt commitment to act for a
better world.

For the next several days we worked to fit these folks into meaningful
action. This meant that Patrick Reinsborough, our grassroots coordinator,
and Jen Krill of the Old Growth campaign hung in through hours, days, of DAN
"cluster" meetings (DAN operates on consensus), working on coordination for
the Convergence. It's this exhausting, unglamorous, sometimes maddening work
of which revolutions are made.

Come Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend, much of the rest of the extended RAN
family had arrived. Numerous people were plugged into the action - as
drivers, as security diversion, as grometeers for the banner, as media
runners - which was planned for dawn on Sunday morning. But that night we
hit an unforeseen snag. One of the climbers was fearful of a new state law
which made it a felony to cross a fence into private property to commit a
felony. Since we theoretically could be charged with a felony (conspiracy to
commit a misdemeanor is a felony - yep, an Orwellian thought crime), she
decided at 11:30 that evening - five hours before we were to move on the
crane - to drop out of the action. Off I went to bed, wrecked and
disheartened.

When I awoke just after dawn hours later to a sky without a single cloud, my
heart sank even further. Our greatest fear for the action was heavy rains
and strong winds. Instead, Sunday was to be the mildest day of our stay,
with beautiful postcard views of Mt. Rainier to the south.

But then, some interesting news. Westy, also a gut-wrenched early riser, had
driven down to the crane to discover that the site was on the route of that
day's Seattle Marathon, and was completely roped-off. We would have been
able to scale the crane, but we wouldn't have been able to get the media
right up close to it. Serendipity in action? In the morning the climbing
team met, shared their disappointment, and got to work to figure out ways to
salvage the action. One by one our alternative climbers declined to join the
action until Ruckus director John Sellers heroically volunteered to join the
team. I think John said at the time that he had spent so much time helping
others prepare to get arrested in Seattle that he had better run that risk
too, and that this might be his only chance. The action was on again,
scheduled for the next morning, Monday, November 29, or, in the parlance of
the Seattle activists, N29.

I think you know the rest, and have seen the photos. The action came off
perfectly, and you needed your fingers and your toes to count all the media.
With the Space Needle as a backdrop, we unfurled a net banner with two
one-way arrows, labelled "DEMOCRACY" and "WTO,"pointing in opposite
directions. During a conversation with the ABC World News Tonight producer
on the scene he asked me why we chose this crane. I explained that as
activists we worked to be very sure of our message and thought in symbols as
well as words. So, I explained, being from San Francisco we knew that the
symbol of SF is the Golden Gate Bridge, so in coming to Seattle...as I began
to gesture to the Space Needle he interrupted me with a smile, head shaking,
and said, "you guys know media."

That night, exhausted but supercharged (a physical state that would be
maintained for the rest of my stay, save a little down time in jail), I went
off to speak at the "People's Gala," our alternative to the opening cocktail
party being held that night for the WTO ministers. After an opening band and
many speakers, including Tom Haydren and Jello Biafra, it was my turn to
take the stage. But minutes before I went on, I was informed that the
climbers were out of jail and were on their way to the show. So I stalled a
bit and finally went on stage, borrowing from Randy's book by waving a
3-foot long monkeywrench up at the microphone. I started off with a shout of
"Welcome to the revolution!" and then called the climbers on stage to an
uproarious ovation. As they waved, arms overhead, to the crowd, I shouted
into the mike while pointing to the crowd, "If you do non-violent direct
action you can be heroes too!"

That was fun. The next day things got weird.

N30. You've all seen the images. Tear gas, rubber bullet guns fired
point-blank into the crowd, pepper spray, guns firing marble-sized plastic
orbs filled with pepper spray, designed to explode on impact, guns firing
wooden dowels (like tinker toys without the hole), Star Wars, Robocop,
gas-masked, full-armored, jack-booted storm troopers, concussion grenades
and rumors of non-lethal nerve gas. Armored vehicles, smashed windows,
burning dumpsters, blood and general mayhem.

What you may not have heard, and what you must spread the truth about, is
this:  Not one act of property destruction or violence was perpetrated to
incite the police violence. Without warning or provocation they suddenly
opened fire on the peaceful protesters ringing the intersection of 6th and
University who had successfully prevented to ministers from entering the
Convention Center and the Paramount Theater, where opening ceremonies were
supposed to be held. They forced the protesters out and secured a lane for
ministers to begin moving through. By this time, the Ministerial was already
delayed by several hours. As people retreated, coughing, crying and bleeding
from the police armed offensive, rumors flew that the opening of the
Ministerial had been called off.

Over the course of the next hour, the police line gradually bullied its way
down a block to 6th and Pike and the entrance to the Sheraton, where the
WTO's Michael Moore was suppossedly trapped, unable to get to the Paramount.
The police batallion threatened a lockdown of at least 30 people, chained to
a platform in the middle of the intersection. Hundreds of people sat down or
milled around the lockdown, determined to protect the immobile resistors
from the police assault. Vinegar-splashed rags (for tear gas) were torn and
passed about. Toothpaste (for gas) got daubed under the eyes. But the
police, with another lane near the Sheraton cleared and witnessing the
preparations, resilience and fortitude of the crowd, marched no further.

It was during these several hours, since the shooting had begun, that I was
continually blown away by the actions of the protesters, especially our
folks. To cite just one example, one of our crew, Beka Economopoulos, a
student organizer from Philly, had found one of the unexploded pepper-spray
plastic marbles after a police barrage where she witnessed a nearby seated
protester have some teeth blown out by their gunfire. We got Beka in front
of as many cameras and media notepads as we could find, and over the course
of a very tense couple of hours Beka gave countless interviews of what she
had witnessed, all the while displaying the plastic marble for view. When
Beka was not conducting these interviews she was at the front lines,
directly in the shadow of the troopers, exhorting the protesters over her
small bullhorn to sit, to sing, and otherwise keep the peace during this
intense situation.

In addition to Beka and scores more, I had the opportunity during the
mid-morning to spend some time with Anita Roddick, in her anti-WTO poncho,
analyzing the situation, sharing information, and otherwise doing what she
could along with everyone else. It was very heartening for me to see her
there in the thick of it with all the other resistors, and a reminder that,
as with other supporter/friends like Bonnie Raitt, Anita is a partner
activist. I can't think of many other funders of this movement who would
dare venture to the front lines.

Earlier in the day the authorities had succesfully squashed DAN's
communications sysem. Again, we were there with the solution. Using the
Nextel radio/phones we had just purchased, we operated under the bad guys'
radar and effectively became the communications and tactical squad for the
rest of the day.

Finally, the labor march  made it to the streets. Unfortunately though, our
friends at the AFL/CIO were determined not to get too close to the action.
Despite our requests to head for the front lines, where we figured they
would change the tone and perhaps blunt the aggression of the cops, the
majority stayed their course, which was several blocks away from the action.
Beautifully, though, several thousand of the 40,000 workers broke rank and
took part of the march up the streets and into the heart of it. Suddenly,
what had been a tense stand-off became something of a party, with labor
marchers and direct actioneers mixing it up. During the march we scaled the
facade of a building on the route and dropped yet another banner: this one
graphic'd with the American colonies' rattlesnake and the Earth and the
message: WTO - DON'T TRADE ON ME, underscored with "Don't Let Democracy Die
In Seattle." Needless to say, the marchers went nuts when they saw that. We
were having fun again.

After grabbing a bite, I dashed to the office of the Independent Media
Center, where Westy was preparing an end-of-day press conference. With Randy
as our spokesperson, we joined with Ruckus, Global Exchange and a protester
who displayed the handful of rubber pellets he had been shot with, and
proclaimed victory. The day, we thought, was nearing its end, and we had
shut down the WTO.

Whoa, as you undoubtedly know. As darkness fell, the looters took to the
streets and the police panicked. It got very eerie as concussion grenades
exploded, fires burned, the police shot at everything in sight, and the
streets were fogged with gas. Things were getting out of hand, and, barking
constantly into our radios ("No, don't go that way, the cops are attacking!"
"Turn around, they're clubbing people from horseback down there!" "They're
dropping tear gas from helicopters!"), we gathered all our people up, many
of whom were resolutely still fighting to keep peace on the barricades, and
returned to our temporary home.

From there we watched the police assault on the residents of Capitol Hill,
much as you did. We regrouped, debriefed, dispatched representatives to the
meeting at DAN HQ, just on the edge of the curfew zone, and planned our
moves for the next day.

I'll pick up the pace of the tale from here. By the next morning, the police
had switched tactics. No longer would they shoot, it seemed, now they would
assault and arrest. Clueless in Seattle, to quote Tom Hayden. At the police
chief and mayor's press conference we had watched on TV late the night
before, they announced that they were going to go after the "ringleaders."
Early the next morning, D1, John Sellers was singled out and attacked by
three police, leaving him with a cut over one eye and a bruise and scrape on
his forehead. They had clearly targeted John, despite the fact that he had
spent months working with both protesters and cops to ensure that resistance
to the WTO was non-violent. This was the day that Clinton was going to
speak, and they were going to make sure that the protesters knew their
place.

And at about 10am I found my place - pinned against a wall with over a
hundred others by National Guard dressed in Seattle PD armor, watching them
arrest another hundred peaceful, non-violent marchers who had been herded
and trapped in a small corner plaza downtown. After being assured we would
not be arrested (I still wanted to go inside the Ministerial with my
credential), we stood singing good old traditionals like America the
Beautiful, My Country 'Tis of Thee and This Land is Your Land. Apparently we
didn't sing too well because as soon as they finished with those willing to
be arrested, they pivoted and rushed us, smashing us into the wall. Within
10 minutes I was cuffed and in the bus. They drove us to a converted naval
base, where we spent the next 15 hours on the bus, eating and drinking only
the food and water we had on hand (they gave us none), doing interviews and
organizing the next morning's press conference until our cell phones went
dead (we were quite adept at getting out of the plastic cuffs), singing,
meeting (of course) and demanding to see our lawyers.

Finally, at 1am, after moving the two busses away from view of the TV
cameras, they stormed the busses, and, pepper spraying those who vigorously
resisted, dragged us indoors into the facility. At 9am, after stripping us
of belts and shoelaces, we were shackled around the waist, wrists and ankles
and transferred to jail.

Many of the protesters were taken to the downtown Seattle jail, but I was in
a group of 30 men taken some 20 miles south of Seattle to their new "justice
facility" in Kent. By early Friday morning (D3), troubled by no contact with
my 7-year-old (who had seen some of the carnage on TV and was wigged that
both his parents were in jail) and reasoning that with my credential I was
more valuable outside than another body practicing jail solidarity (the
tactic by which you refuse to cooperate with authorities and stay in jail
until certain demands are met, such as equal charges and treatment for all
those arrested) on the inside, I bailed.

Whisked back to the ranch by Westy, after an hour's sleep I was off to the
courthouse for the climber's arraignment. From there I ventured for the
first time into the Ministerial, where I was able to join Randy and seven
other colleagues in dropping a banner describing the WTO's threat to
forests. Unlike other international fora I have attended, this kind of
exercise of free speech is not tolerated here, and all involved, save me,
were whisked out of the meeting, their credentials jerked. For some reason,
after some saber rattling, they determined that I was not worthy of being
tossed.

I emerged at day's end to the Seattle Times' afternoon headline: Summit Ends
In Failure. We had won.

Still to come were more long nights in the streets, on the phone and at the
jail, where hundreds had set up camp in the courtyard, demanding the
immediate release of all the - obviously political - prisoners. We kept the
vigil until late Sunday night, when the last of our people - and most of the
rest - had been released. During this time we heard dozens of horror stories
of jail brutality which I will not pass along here. Suffice it to say that
there is a word to describe the jail treatment - it's called torture. It
seems that, as determined as we were to demand our rights, the Seattle City
Attorney, Mark Sidran, was determined to teach the protesters a lesson. With
the number of civil suits planned and both Amnesty International and the
ACLU interested in the case, as well as a demand for a Justice Department
probe into the police and jail fiasco, Mr. Sidran may have bitten off more
than he can chew.


Two things have stayed with me since then. The first, tremendously moving,
sense is how RELENTLESS we were. Day after day, no matter what they threw at
us, we kept coming back, more determined, creative, resourceful and
passionate than ever. As I told Helene Cooper of the Wall Street Journal,
when the Romans fed the Christians to the lions, they miscalculated. The WTO
and Seattle authorities, because of their attempts to squash dissent, have
now created lifetime activists, the WTO will forever mean tear gas, new
alliances have been galvanized, and, to paraphrase the Seattle Times' Sunday
headline, the tide is turning.

The other is that we had, in Seattle, a real-life glimpse of what
corporate-controlled reality looks like. Police in the streets, no civil
rights, martial law, jail brutality - we saw that what we jump-started the
week with: an action warning about the loss of democracy - is not just
activist rhetoric, not just some advertisement, but real. We saw, all week
long, as did the rest of the world, what they will do to get their way.

But this is only the glimpse of A future, not THE future.  All week long we
also saw us. In the streets, counting on each other, trusting each other,
loving each other. Determined, utterly determined, to create a world where
reverence is what we practice, with work that fulfills us; building
communities based on interdependence and cooperation and nurturing
relationships that breathe passion into our lives.

Make it so.


Kelly Quirke
Executive Director
Rainforest Action Network

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?"

-Mary Oliver, A Summer Day


------------

David Sunfellow, Founder & Publisher
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
P.O. Box 10627
Sedona, AZ USA 86339-8627

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AGING SECRETS IN A CAN OF WORMS
by Lindsey Arent
Friday, December 17, 1999

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,33095,00.html

You're only as old as you feel -- and see and smell, according to new
research.

Scientists at the University of California at San Francisco have uncovered a
link between lifespan and sensory perception in worms. The findings could
one day lead to a better understanding of how humans age, scientists said.

"People just don¹t think about aging as arbitrary," said UCSF biochemistry
professor, Cynthia Kenyon, who led the study. "And the idea that you could
change one gene and have such a dramatic change is a real concept-breaker, a
paradigm-shifter," she said.

Kenyon and Javier Apfeld, whose research is published in the current issue
of Nature, studied aging in the microscopic, soil-dwelling worm
Caenorhabditis elegans, or C. elegans.

"We found that worms can smell and taste things," said Kenyon. "If we
changed genes that are needed for the worms to smell and taste, they lived
longer."

Kenyon and Apfeld discovered that if the worms were unable to receive
environmental signals or cues, they lived longer, healthier lives, and aged
later in life than the unaltered worms.

The scientists believe that sensory cues from the worms' surroundings were
likely to be just as important as their genes in determining lifespan.
"It makes us think that somehow perception can affect how long [the worm]
lives," Kenyon said. "And it suggests that there is something out there in
the world that affects life span. We don¹t know what."

Worms are especially good for studying human biological systems, Kenyon
said, because "we know that what lots of worms do, we do the same way." But
it will be at least 10 years before scientists figure out if humans have an
analogous aging system.

C. elegans worms have a life span that lasts roughly 18 days and they age
very rapidly, Kenyon said. During this time, the organism feeds itself and
reproduces, and receives sensory signals through sensory organs, called
amphids, located on its head, and phasmids, on its tail.

Kenyon and Apfeld found that worms with impaired sensory organs lived up to
50 percent longer than regular worms, and seemed healthier later in their
lifespan.

"Imagine that there is something in the environment that makes them age more
rapidly than normal," she said. "If they don¹t smell it, they age slowly."

One theory for the worms' lengthened lifespan and increased energy level is
that chemicals or signals in the environment might provide the animal with
important information about things like concentration of the worm
population, or food accessibility -­ signals which might play a major role
in controlling the animal's lifespan.

The mutant worms were unable to sense the signals. Kenyon believes the
impediment somehow caused them to live longer.

Kenyon and Apfeld hypothesize that signals created in the worms' nervous
system might have been transmitted to the hormonal system scientists believe
controls lifespan in the worms.

"We have no idea whether something in the environment affects our lifespan,"
Kenyon said. "It's possible -- the fact that it happened in the worm -- it
makes us wonder."


------------

David Sunfellow, Founder & Publisher
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
P.O. Box 10627
Sedona, AZ USA 86339-8627

Primary eMail: nhne@...
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EDITOR'S COMMENT:

The James Randi Foundation offers $1,000,000 to anyone who can demonstrate
paranomal ability under test conditions. According to a recent post by
Randi, "many hundreds" of people have applied, but so far no one has passed
their tests and claimed the money. Randi also claims that none of today's
well-known psychics and seers have attempted to take Randi's challenge.

What follows is a list of questions and answers that Randi recently posted
on his website concerning this interesting challenge. It would be
interesting to see how fair the tests are that Randi's Foundation
administers and also who has taken the tests so far...

--- David Sunfellow

------------

James Randi Educational Foundation

From Randi's Opinion Archive
December 12, 1999

http://www.randi.org/jr/faq.html

F.A.Q. ANTICIPATED LINES OF INQUIRY . . .

As might be expected, I find that when I'm interviewed by the media, I very
often get the same question tossed at me regarding my work and the handling
of claimants for the JREF million- dollar prize. And, e-mail correspondents
ask many similar questions. Here are a dozen of the favorites, along with my
brief responses.

About investigations of psychics, and claimants for the prize . . .

(1) What's the toughest case you've ever had to crack?

None have been particularly difficult. The hardest part has always been to
get the claimant to state clearly what he or she thinks they can do, under
what conditions, and with what accuracy. Most are very vague about these
aspects, and very few have any notion of how a proper test should be
conducted. We at JREF sometimes take months getting those matters settled,
only to have the applicant suddenly drop out of the negotiations. But the
actually solving of what's happening, or why claimants believe that they
have powers if that state is ever reached is easy, because the range of
claims is rather small and nothing really new is ever offered. The claims
are sometimes interesting variations on very old misconceptions or
delusions, but seldom is there anything that surprises us or that requires
very much heavy analysis. Of course, there are some situations where not
enough information is given by the applicant, even though we try to get all
the needed data, so we are not able, in these cases, to ever determine what
the claim might consist of.

(2) Has there ever been a time when you thought, "This is the one that will
take the prize?"

No. I wish there were some really challenging offers or claims, just to add
some excitement to my job, but it's pretty well the same old material,
endlessly repeated. And never have I ever even been much surprised at a
claim, though I'm often surprised at the fact that anyone is actually
surprised by it, or taken in by it, even for a moment.

(3) To date, how many persons have been tested for the million-dollar prize
offered by JREF?

That's not a simple question to answer. Many hundreds have made application,
and most have had to be instructed to reapply sometimes several times
because they did it incorrectly or incompletely. There are, at any given
time, about 40 to 60 applicants being considered, but from experience we
know that the vast majority will drop out even before any proper preliminary
test can be designed. Of those who get to the preliminary stage, perhaps
half will actually be tested, and some of those will quit before completion.
To date, no one has actually passed the simple preliminaries and arrived at
the formal test stage, though a couple dozen have completed and failed the
preliminaries. So, no one has been formally tested for the big prize, though
we're ready and willing.

(4) Why does it appear that you only test persons with very minor and even
frivolous claims, and not the prominent "psychic" performers and/or
scientists who appear on television and in the media, and who write books
about their careers?

We can only test persons who either apply to become claimants for the
million-dollar prize, or who will actually submit themselves to undergoing
proper test procedures. The "stars" never do this, and in fact they do
anything they can to avoid us and our challenge; they would rather just run
on about past glories, point to anecdotal evidence, or grandly ignore our
genuine offer to test them. The people who do apply are probably honestly
convinced of their abilities, and have no fear of discovery. Where are James
Van Praagh, Sylvia Browne, George Anderson, John Edward, and the rest of the
current "big names"? And why hasn't Uri Geller, the professional
spoon-bender (remember him from the 70s?) snapped up this easy cash? One can
only wonder.

We at JREF must offer to test any and every applicant, because we cannot be
the judges of whether a claim is likely to be valid. Only occasionally, we
encounter a claim that is just so silly, we do not offer to go ahead with
negotiations. Example: a person claimed to be controlling every event in the
world just by shaking his head, and even sent us a video of himself in
action. He also "fed" a spirit living in a black stone, through a hole in
that stone. We are tolerant, but not quite naive enough to spend time
discussing such a claim.

(5) What harm does it do to simply let people believe in silly things? Why
do you take away their pleasant delusions?

The potential harm is very real, and dangerous. Belief in such obvious
flummeries as astrology or fortune-telling can appear quite incorrectly to
give confirmatory results, and that can lead to the victim pursuing more
dangerous, expensive, and health-related scams. Blind belief can be
comforting, but it can easily cripple reason and productivity, and stop
intellectual progress. We at JREF never try to impose our beliefs or
philosophy on others; we only try to inform them, and suggest that there are
alternate choices to be made. Examples of personal tragedies resulting from
an uncritical embrace of supernatural claims, are plentiful.

(6) Why do you continue to preach critical thinking about the paranormal,
superstition, and quackery, if you can't ever really disabuse people of
their errors?

We feel that an effort must be made, particularly to get young people
thinking critically and bravely about these subjects. Those who have not
completely surrendered to careless acceptance of flim-flam, can be brought
to think about their decisions, and in many cases can and will change their
minds. Others, we realize, will retain their delusions because they have so
much invested in them. Not to try to communicate what we know to be true,
would be unethical.

(7) Will you ever win the battle of rationality over superstition?

We think that "war" will never be won, because the scam-artists and the
honestly deluded promoters of nonsense are constantly being replaced with
others. And though Barnum never said it, there does appear to be "a sucker
born every minute." So, we have predators and prey, and that is a natural
and expected condition of life. It has ever been thus. The JREF only hopes
to teach those who through no fault of their own, are unaware of certain
facts of the real world, to be harder prey for the predators to catch. But
there's a difference between winning a "war" and winning a "battle." We win
battles every day, when someone walks through our doors and announces that
we've added in some way to their understanding of the world. Every class of
kids that we speak to, every audience in any part of the world, wins us a
battle. That's why we stay with it.

(8) But you're not a scientist. How can you speak on these matters with
authority?

Authority does not rest with scientists, when emotion, need, and desperation
are involved. Scientists are human beings, too, and can be deceived and
self-deceived. We at the JREF are skilled in two directions: we know how
people are fooled by others, and we know how people fool themselves. We deal
with hard, basic, facts, and we try our best to make them known. We try to
protect people from influences that might obscure the true danger of
uncritical thinking. We often succeed. And, please just examine our list of
advisors, and you will see that we have very substantial and eminent
scientific authorities on hand to provide the advice and specialization we
require.

(9) Scientific papers have been written supporting paranormal events and
talents. Therefore, how can you deny them?

Scientists can be wrong very wrong. The history of science is replete with
serious errors of judgement, bad research, faked results, and simple
mistakes, made by scientists in every field. The beauty of science is that
it corrects itself by its own nature and design. By this means, science
provides us with clearer and clearer views of how the world works.
Unfortunately, though science itself is self-correcting, the scientists
involved do not necessarily correct themselves. And, there is not a single
example of a scientific discovery in the field of parapsychology that has
been independently replicated. That makes parapsychology absolutely unique
in the world of science.

(10) What projects are you working on at this moment?

In some cases, we can't say. Sorry. There are always investigations
underway, but those matters, because of their very nature, cannot be openly
discussed. But, TV specials are being developed and written, books are
nearing completion, and lectures are being contracted, all over the world.
We try to keep folks informed via our web page.

(11) If what you say is true, that the supernatural powers being claimed
every day in the media, are unproven, why is it that scientists themselves
don't speak out against those claims?

It's truly unfortunate that more concerned scientists don't trouble to make
statements when they see their colleagues going overboard on some matters.
At one time we had Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, Isaac Asimov, B.F. Skinner,
and a spectrum of scientific luminaries who dared stick their necks out and
make their opinions clearly heard in the media. These giants are gone now,
and others with comparable profiles are not evident. We need more clear
voices of reason to be heard, more often. It's quite true that by and large,
scientists do live in "ivory towers," and do not choose to become involved
in public controversies.

(12) Are countries other than the USA also plagued by incredible beliefs and
claims of quackery, pseudoscience, and magic?

Oh, yes. It's difficult to determine or define a "silliness factor" for any
culture, but we can say that all parts of the Earth are currently getting
deeper and deeper into such nonsense. Though the "flavor" of the beliefs may
vary, they are there in full bloom. In one place, medieval medical notions
may be in full effect, while in another location the populace is enamored at
the moment with summoning up spirits. And, it's not getting better. Quite
the contrary.

In Padua, Italy, I recently attended the annual convention of CICAP the
Comitato Italiano per il Controllo delle Aftermazioni sul Paranormale
(Italian Committee for Control of Claims of the Paranormal), and having
thereby attained a bit of a profile in the local press, I became the subject
of some angry questions and accusations. One fierce-looking woman approached
me festooned with beads and crystals, hair awry and determined to slap me
down with The Big Question. Through an interpreter, she demanded that I look
her straight in the eye and give her "the chemical formula for the soul." I
feel that this person, in common with so many others, really thinks that
such a question is one that surely must floor me instantly. She placed her
statement, then smiled triumphantly, awaiting my confusion which did not
materialize. I looked her right in the eye and simply told her that she
wasn't making sense, and that she did not understand the nature of the
matter she was trying to discuss.

It is a delicate matter, this process. While not ridiculing the honestly
self-deceived, we must try to show them where they've gone off-track. We
also have to handle them firmly but gently, so that we can move on to other
matters. The charlatans seldom come to us, but when we must deal with them,
we do so with great care, ever conscious of the litigious society we are
immersed in, willy-nilly. Of course, when confronted with a particularly
incredible claim like "remote viewing" (the current version of
"clairvoyance") we can easily stop short and ask ourselves just why we are
involved with such obvious nonsense. But this is the job we chose to take
on, and it has its rewards in the feedback we get from those who have
listened, learned, and benefitted from our efforts. That's the payoff.
Bring on the next contender . . .

--- James Randi

James Randi Educational Foundation
201 S.E. 12th Street
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33316-1815

phone: (954) 467-1112
fax: (954) 467-1660
eMail: jref@...
Website: http://www.randi.org/


------------

David Sunfellow, Founder & Publisher
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
P.O. Box 10627
Sedona, AZ USA 86339-8627

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A NEW PLANETARY SEARCH PARTY
by Leander Kahney
Thursday, December 16, 1999
WIRED NEWS

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,33092,00.html?tw=wn19991216

SAN FRANCISCO -- Scientists seeking the answers to some of mankind's most
profound questions are combining forces to search for the origins of life.
At a Tuesday session of the American Geophysical Union conference,
researchers described the emerging science of astrobiology, which will
attempt to answer such universal questions as: Where did life come from?
What might extraterrestrial life look like? And what is the future of
mankind once we leave the planet?

Traditionally, different disciplines have attempted to address such
questions individually. Organic chemists, for example, are searching the
stars for the chains of the chemicals that are the basic building blocks of
life. Chemists are also studying the planetary conditions necessary to
kick-start life, and biologists are investigating how early, pre-biotic life
forms evolve from self-replicating molecules into complex, cellular
organisms.

For the first time, astrobiology is trying to merge earth and space
sciences, including biology, astronomy, chemistry, geology, oceanography,
and meteorology, into a comprehensive search for life on and outside planet
Earth.

"The problem of the origin of life is as big as the space between the
stars," said Chris Chyba, an assistant professor at the University of
Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Lab.

Mike Myer, NASA's discipline scientist for astrobiology, said the new field
would play an increasingly important role in the space agency's ambitious
program for exploring the solar system and surrounding galaxies.

"NASA is embarking on major endeavors in planetary exploration, and we'd
better have an intelligent approach to identifying what's out there," Myer
said.

NASA has established the Astrobiology Institute -- a "virtual" institute
made up of 11 US research centers linked via the Net -- to address these
issues. Each center has its own specialty, Myer said. While Arizona State
University is set up to study life in extreme climates, NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory is adept at finding evidence of life in
extraterrestrial samples.

The hoopla surrounding the 1996 discovery of a Mars meteorite, which is
thought to contain fossil evidence of bacteria, was one of the new
discipline's first publicity coups, Myer said.

The AGU is even considering adding astrobiology to its list of fundamental
areas of study, which would be the first such addition in more than 30
years, according to Samuel Bowring, an MIT professor, who also spoke on
astrobiology.

If the AGU goes ahead, astrobiology will join the atmospheric and ocean
sciences, solid earth sciences, hydrologic sciences, and space sciences as a
core research area.

Despite recent setbacks, future exploration of Mars could determine whether
life on Earth may have actually started on the Red Planet, Chyba said. After
being transported here via meteorite, life may have thrived on Earth while
dying out as Mars' atmosphere leaked away.

Other destinations, like Europa -- an icy moon orbiting Jupiter -- may
resemble early Earth when life was just beginning, he suggested. Chyba said
Europa is an intriguing subject in helping to understand life on Earth.


------------

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a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
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EDITOR'S COMMENT:

For more background information about the following story, see "Chinese 'Big
Foot' Hunt" in NHNE News Brief 9, Friday, August 25, 1995:

http://www.nhne.com/newsbriefs/nhnenb09.html#bigfoot

--- David Sunfellow

------------

CHINESE SCIENTISTS STEP UP SEARCH FOR MYSTERIOUS "BIGFOOT"
Thursday, December 16, 1999
(Thanks to CNI News)

http://www.insidechina.com/news.php3?id=115788

BEIJING, Dec 3, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) China has launched a new
campaign to track down a legendary half-man half-ape creature dubbed China's
"Bigfoot", official media reported Friday.

A team of scientists from the prestigious Chinese Academy of Sciences are on
the hunt for the mythical animal in the remote forests of the Shennongjia
Nature Reserve in central Hubei, Xinhua reported.

Wang Fangcheng, head of the Committee for the Search for Rare Animals and
Plants, said that paleoanthropologists from the academy were determined to
find proof of the "Bigfoot".

"After repeated frustrations in previous searches, many people have become
disappointed in finding Bigfoot, however, a few scientists believe the
possibility exists that such an animal is still there," Wang said.

A team of scientists, reporters and local officials entered Shennongjia in
October this year after receiving reports of sightings of the animal from a
hunter in August.

According to the hunter, the animal was 2.5 meters tall, covered with long,
red hair, and moved very fast.

The scientists have discovered 40-cm-long footprints, brown hair and chewed
corn cobs at the spot where the hunter said he encountered the strange
beast.

After examining the evidence, Yuan Zhenxin, an established
paleoanthropologist from the academy, ruled out theories that the mystery
animal was in fact a bear.

"There are abundant forests, food and water in the Shennongjia Natural
Reserve which have a warm climate that quite suits the Wild Man," Yuan said.
Scientists have unearthed hundreds of fossilised teeth of an extinct giant
ape in the area, proving that Shennongjia was a home to big primates, Xinhua
reported.

Some scientists have speculated that the "Bigfoot" might be a descendent of
one of the giant apes, Xinhua said.

Hundreds of local people have reported Bigfoot sightings over the past
decades.

China has organized several high-profile searches for the unidentified
animal in recent years, but no conclusive evidence was obtained during the
hunts.

 
------------

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a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
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Exotic Microbes Discovered near Lake Vostok
NASA Space Science News home
December 10, 1999

http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast10dec99_2.htm

BASED ON A NASA/AMES PRESS RELEASE

Scientists have discovered a microbial world hidden deep beneath the frozen
Antarctic ice that could help them learn more about how life can survive
under extreme conditions on other planets or moons.

Their findings are featured in a research paper co-authored by Dr. Chris
McKay, a planetary scientist at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field,
CA, which will be published in the Dec. 10 issue of Science magazine.
Co-authored by a multi-disciplinary science team, the research paper
entitled "Geomicro-biology of Subglacial Ice Above Lake Vostok, Antarctica,"
analyzes the ice above Lake Vostok, a huge freshwater lake buried deep below
the East Antarctic ice sheet.

"Microbes within the liquid water habitat of Lake Vostok may shed light on
the viability of life in similar harsh environments beyond Earth, such as in
the frozen ocean subsurface on Jupiter's moon, Europa, "McKay said. Galileo
spacecraft results imply that a subsurface ocean could exist on Europa.

The research team tested samples from the ice 3,590 meters below Vostok
Station, and found diverse colonies of microbes. Scientists say this is
significant because the lake has been isolated from the usual sources of
atmospheric-derived energy, such as photosynthesis, for millions of years.

"How the bacteria get energy (to survive) is an important question," McKay
said. "The lake could be an analog to sub-ice Europa or subsurface Mars
where conditions are similar."

Scientists believe ice is a good environment for primitive bacteria. The
bacteria need less food because it's cold, and its metabolism slows down,
somewhat like a hibernating bear's. Another finding was that DNA extracted
from the microbes present in the team's Lake Vostok sample indicated the
presence of only a few subgroups of known bacteria, coupled with low overall
microbial diversity.

"It's what you'd expect, not teeming with rich life," McKay said. The team
also found signs of bacterial life in the ice core and detected metabolic
activity in some of the bacteria by measuring the bacteria's respiration
rates during incubation.

Scientists said the sampled Vostok glacier ice also suggested that the lake
water derived from a mixture of melted ice from both glacial and
interglacial periods, deposited there approximately one million years ago.

Although the thickness of the ice on Europa is not known, scientists think
that tidal forces could form cracks extending to the surface. Under the thin
ice, conditions may be similar to the conditions at Lake Vostok. "If a
similar ice layer is present under the surface of Europa's icy oceans, it
may also harbor life," said McKay.

The research team included the paper's lead author, Dr. John Priscu, and
others from the departments of Biology, Earth Science and Physics at Montana
State University, Bozeman, MT. Other researchers were from the department of
Geology, the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, and the U. S. Geological
Survey, Reston, VA.

------------

Web Links
Related Stories:

Divining Water on Europa -- Sep 9, 1999
http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast09sep99_1.htm

Circumstantial evidence for water on Europa mounts as JPL scientists try an
ingenious experiment to find hexagonal water-ice crystals on the frigid
surface of Jupiter's iciest moon.


Astrobiologists To Hunt Small Game in Siberia -- Jul. 27, 1999
http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast27jul99_1.htm

Arctic permafrost may hold clues to life on other worlds.


The Frosty Plains of Europa -- Dec. 3, 1998
http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast03dec98_1.htm

As Galileo returns new images of Europa, NASA scientists prepare to study
samples from a potentially similar environment here on Earth.


Clues to possible life on Europa may lie buried in Antarctic ice -- Mar. 5,
1998
http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast05mar98_1.htm

Exotic microbial forms turn up in ice above Antarctica's Lake Vostok.


------------

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Ordinary house cat gives birth to African wildcat
December 15, 1999
Associated Press/CNN

http://cnn.com/1999/NATURE/12/14/interspeciesbirth.ap/index.html
    
NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Scientists have announced an extraordinary birth, saying
they have pulled off the unprecedented feat of transferring a frozen embryo
between species by bringing a rare African wildcat to term in the womb of an
ordinary house cat.

Researchers at the Audubon Institute Center for Research of Endangered
Species said the advancement could be used to resurrect entire species.

"If extinction happens in the wild, the technology will be there to bring
the species back," said Ron Foreman, chief executive officer of Audubon
Institute.

Rebecca Spindler, a researcher at the National Zoo's Conservation and
Research Center in Front Royal, Virginia, cautioned that the process is no
substitute for conservation.

Animal world
 
"I think we have to be careful how we use this," Spindler said. "People tend
to believe that we can bring a species to the brink of extinction and bring
it back. That's not necessarily true."

Still, she called Monday's announcement an exciting breakthrough.

The house cat, Cayenne, acts towards her kitten like any typical feline
mother: protecting her, nursing her and objecting loudly when her offspring
is picked up. And the baby wildcat, named Jazz, nurses off her surrogate
mother.

"She thinks she has the ugliest baby in the world, but she takes care of
it," said Betty Dresser, the center's director for research.

Jazz was born November 24, about 70 days after scientists had taken sperm
from a male African wildcat named Sid and the egg of a female named Sheena
and implanted the embryo in the domestic cat.

Because of its size -- ranging in weight from three pounds to eight pounds
-- the African wildcat was considered to be a good match for a domestic cat.
Cayenne was chosen because she had proven herself able to carry kittens to
term, having had nine litters.

Ms. Dresser and C. Earle Pope, another researcher at the center, produced a
kitten from in vitro fertilization and a frozen embryo in 1994. In Jazz's
case, scientists grew the embryo in an incubator for five days, then froze
it for a week at minus 373 degrees. Researchers implanted eight embryos into
Cayenne in hopes that at least one would survive.

The freezing process is not a necessary step in embryo transfers, but it was
done to advance the idea that extinct species might be recreated years later
by thawing frozen embryos when a suitable surrogate species is found.

Scientists are not sure yet how long frozen embryos can be kept, but Ms.
Dresser said they might be good for hundreds of thousands of years.

"If this technology had been available during the age of the dinosaurs, we
might have dinosaurs today," she said.

Before the implant, the frozen embryo was kept with a "frozen zoo" of
reproductive material from exotic cats, bongo antelopes and other endangered
species in canisters of liquid nitrogen. Those other animals are also the
subjects of embryo transfer studies.


------------

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a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
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Lesson From the 20th Century: Be Cautious About the Word Impossible
The Future Gets Fun Again in Wired's January 2000 Issue
Wednesday December 15

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/991215/ca_wired_j_1.html

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Apocalyptic predictions, Y2K
breakdowns ... listening for what's next would make anyone run for the
hills. But, according to Wired's January 2000 issue, breakthrough
explorations and burgeoning technology are shaping a future that's
increasingly bright -- so now more than ever is the time to have some fun.

Don't Die - Stay Pretty -- The Ultrahuman Makeover
p. 176

Superlongevity is an exploding science. According to Wired's January issue,
we're on the edge of an era that will not only raise the maximum age, but
will deliver new methods for preserving -- even redesigning -- our bodies.
Plus, Your Lifespan Revealed, Wired's Immortality Reality Check, p. 184.


Throw Out the Old Body, Bring in the New -- Head Transplants Made Real
p.194

What if it were possible to have not only a new kidney or heart -- but a
whole new body from the neck down? According to Wired, the day is not far
off when a human head transplant is as common as replacing a kidney.


The Future of Travel -- First-Ever Lunar Cruise Ship Hotel
p.132

By 2030, Gen-Z honeymooners will routinely shuttle into outer space to spend
seven days in otherworldly bliss. Others may spend a week aboard a
luxurious, permanently orbiting moon cruiser 12 times the size of the
International Space Station. Wired unveils the $500 million vision of Robert
Bigelow, owner and operator of Budget Suites of America and billionaire king
of extended-stay accommodations.


Who Needs NASA? -- Astropreneurs Want Humans on Mars by 2010
p.118

Peter Diamandis wants to wrestle NASA's stranglehold on our future in space,
and he's serious enough to have created a $10M prize for a space vessel he
can work with. "I'm sick and tired of waiting -- that's the bottom line,"
Diamandis tells Wired. He's betting his Xprize will help push the first
private flight crew past the suborbital barrier.


Plus, Love & Rockets, Flying Cars, Bruce Sterling's In/Out List for the Next
100 years ... and more.

The January issue of Wired is on newsstands now.


------------

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Why Men See Things Differently
by Kristen Philipkoski
Tuesday, December 14, 1999
WIRED

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,33033,00.html?tw=wn19991214

Scientists at Johns Hopkins say fundamental differences in the human brain
may account for better spatial awareness in men and greater emotional
understanding in women.

Research published in the Cerebral Cortex journal, showed that the male
brain has a significantly larger inferior parietal lobule (IPL) than the
female brain.

"It's a fairly large difference in that people used to think of the brain as
being symmetrical," said contributing researcher Patrick Barta, an associate
professor in psychiatric neuro-imaging at the Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine.

The IPL, located on each side of the brain just above ear level, is the same
part of the brain found to be comparatively large in Albert Einstein, as
well as in other physicists and mathematicians.

"We don't know how exactly that fits in with the research, but clearly
[Einstein] had a great visualization ability," Barta said.

The researchers found that the right side of the women's IPL was larger,
which they linked to the ability to sense relationships between body parts
and awareness of certain feelings. For example, a woman would more likely
detect anger in someone's voice than a man, Barta said.

The left side, associated with perception, such as judging how fast
something is moving, estimating time, and being able to mentally rotate 3D
figures, was larger in men.

In the study, researchers took multiple resonance images of the brains of 15
men and women around 40 years of age.

The scientists used new computer software developed by Barta to compare the
volume of the men's and women's IPL. The software highlights the IPL by
colorizing it in computer images and calculating the volume. They factored
in the men's overall larger head and brain size, and found that men had
about six percent more IPL tissue than women.

The Johns Hopkins researchers said that while the individual composition of
brain structure underlies certain characteristics in men and women, it would
be an oversimplification to say that men are automatically better at some
things than women.

"But there's also a danger in saying blithely that males and females are
exactly the same because they're not," said Simon LeVay, a neuroanatomist
and author of the book Sexual Brain.

"It may not be entirely that [men and women] may gravitate towards different
skills," LeVay said. "You want to find the truth, whether innate brain
characteristics cause boys and girls to prefer, or do better, at some tasks,
or social pressures and experiences force boys and girls into different
pathways."

LeVay said it is also feasible to reverse the argument and conclude that,
instead of the differences existing at birth, experiences could cause
differences in brain development and structure.

"I don't know the answer Š but my hunch is that it's a matter of being born
different."

The only way to find out whether there is a biological basis for differences
in spatial skills, LeVay said, is to scan the brains of very young children
to determine if the differences are present at a very young age.

The original purpose of the study was to get information for further
research to study the differences between the brains of a control group with
those of schizophrenics.

The area of the brain in which the IPL is located (the heteromodal
association cortex) also contains the planum temporale, which controls
language skills.

Women were found to have a larger, nearly symmetrical planum temporale, than
men, whose left side is larger than the right. In both male and female
schizophrenics, it's the opposite: the right side is larger than the left.

The Johns Hopkins researchers want to determine if schizophrenics also have
an IPL structure opposite to healthy people.


------------

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NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
P.O. Box 10627
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Seattle City Council hears eight hours of WTO 'horror stories'
by J. Martin McOmber
Seattle Times
Thursday, December 9, 1999

http://www.seattletimes.com/news/local/html98/coun_19991209.html

By the end of the evening, even the most outrageous stories seemed dulled by
repetition: beatings in jail, business owners tear-gassed outside their
stores, innocent bystanders arrested, peaceful protesters silenced.

Seattle City Council President Sue Donaldson convened last night's
unprecedented eight-hour public hearing to give people a chance to tell city
officials what happened on the streets and in the jails during last week's
World Trade Organization meeting.

But the marathon of testimony by some 120 people will provide a powerful
backdrop of anger and frustration as a task force of three council members
launches what could be one of the most explosive investigations in the
city's history.

"It galvanized my determination to get some answers for what the hell went
wrong," said Councilman Jim Compton, who will chair the ad hoc committee
doing the investigation. "There were some genuine horror stories I heard."

Hundreds of people packed the downtown library's woefully inadequate
auditorium for a chance to complain about their treatment.

The ground rules were simple: three minutes to speak out.

By 4 p.m., as the public hearing got under way, the line of speakers
stretched out the library's Fifth Avenue doors and around the block. Even
the pouring rain and long wait did little to discourage those who came to
speak their piece.

"I feel it is important for everyone to learn what happened," said Russ
Wilson, 30, of Seattle. "When we get together, it seems our voices can be
heard."

But the crowd quickly grew restless. A broken cable cut sound to the
loudspeaker outside. Dozens of people crowded around the smoked-glass
windows of the auditorium to watch. There were heated exchanges at the doors
as security guards refused to let any more people inside.

"This is very symbolic to me: the whole issue is about being heard," fumed
Sam Eliason, 36, who took the day off work to attend. "There has got to be a
room around here that could fit everyone. How about the stadium? We bought
it."

In a bid to defuse tensions over the inadequate space, Donaldson hastily
scheduled a second public hearing at Seattle Center on Tuesday. The exact
location will be determined later, but the meeting will begin at 4 p.m.

Not all the council was there

Only five of the City Council members stayed for all or at least most of the
public hearing. Margaret Pageler did not attend at all.

Peter Clarke, Pageler's legislative aide, said she could not attend because
she had two other committments, including a meeting with the state Board of
Health.

Richard McIver and Jan Drago left early to attend a dinner in honor of
former South African President Nelson Mandela, who is visiting Seattle.
Retiring Councilwoman Tina Podlodowski left early to pick up her children
and did not return.

The sight of just five council members on stage clearly disappointed many
speakers, leading some to wonder if dining with a foreign dignitary, even
one of Mandela's stature, was more important than listening to the outrage
of citizens.

"Where are the other City Council members?" asked Mark Canfield, as those
outside the library pounded the windows in support.

Others asked where Mayor Paul Schell was.

The mayor-council rift

In some ways, it was probably a good thing the city's top politician wasn't
around; he might have been booed from the room. More than a dozen speakers
called for his resignation, and the rest of the audience seemed to like the
idea.

The mayor had asked to attend the public hearing, but Donaldson told him
this was a "council event." The exchange is the latest sign of the worsening
relationship between the mayor and council, a battle that will likely be
played out repeatedly in the months ahead.

Seattle is largely considered a strong-mayor, strong-council form of
government. Like the mayor, all nine City Council members are elected
citywide. As the legislative body, the council often acts independently of
the mayor.

Last night's public hearing was, in one sense, a bid by the City Council to
affirm its role as an independent check on the mayor, much like a hostile
Congress often holds hearings or investigates actions by the White House.

Council members Nick Licata, Jan Drago and Compton are leading the
wide-ranging inquiry into the city's handling of the WTO meeting and the
demonstration that closed the downtown for much of last week and led to
spectacular clashes in the city's most populated neighborhood, Capitol Hill.

The meeting of the international trade body in Seattle last week drew
thousands of protesters to the city. Police in riot gear used tear gas,
pepper spray and rubber bullets to clear them from the streets. About 600
people were arrested before the WTO meeting ended.

Schell and Police Chief Norm Stamper, who announced this week that he was
retiring, have been criticized for how the WTO and protests were handled.
The City Council's investigation is one of many promised.

Council gets subpoena power

The council's task force learned yesterday that it would have the power to
subpoena witnesses, a potent weapon that the council has rarely if ever
used.

Reacting to the stories at last night's hearing, Licata raised the stakes
even higher, saying he would ask Amnesty International to be involved in the
council's investigation. He wants the human-rights group to look into
several issues, including the use of nonlethal weapons and the treatment of
those arrested.

Licata said he was struck by the makeup of last night's crowd, which he
described as largely middle-class and politically liberal.

In other words, a lot like Seattle.

Police officer interrupted

Last night's testimony was often vivid and emotional. Anger rose in many
voices and boomed through the crowded room. Many were filled with righteous
indignation at police misconduct brought down on them or a friend.

One police officer who tried to give testimony was initially shouted down by
audience members, many of whom had spoken out about violation of their
free-speech rights last week.

The public venting was punctuated with occasional humor and, at times, the
bizarre. Bejamin Handstand Festival, of Miami, ended his testimony with
three spiritual howls.

It wasn't difficult for many audience members to be swept up in the mood,
which at time approached the fevered pitch of a religious revival. Shouts of
"That's right" and whooping cheers often followed a particularly
well-phrased jab at the powers before them.

One group, Independent Media Center, played a graphic video of the harsh
tactics used by police on protesters who refused to move.

The council was prepared for a much rowdier crowd, with escape routes mapped
out if the situation became hostile. It never did. While the audience was
often loud and raucous, it was mostly well-behaved.

A one-sided gathering

Listening to last night's crowd, it might seem as though the entire city was
gearing up to recall Schell, throw the council out of office, and impeach
City Attorney Mark Sidran and King County Executive Ron Sims for good
measure.

But Licata cautioned against that generalization.

"The people who are going to show up are the people who were hurt or knew
people who were hurt," he said. "But there are a lot of people who are
silent, who were supportive of the police, and they aren't the kind who are
going to show up. That is something the council needs to recognize."

Across the street from the library, the Direct Action Network organized a
rally that turned into a sort of people's hearing. On a sound system draped
in plastic garbage bags and raincoats to protect it from the weather,
speakers took the microphone to give testimony virtually indistinguishable
from that going on inside the library.

At the end of the hearing, council members said they got the message, loud
and clear.

"I heard a number of stories tonight that were truly compelling," said
Councilman Richard Conlin. He said his job now was to sort out the reality
from so many conflicting reports.

Some of those arrested told of abuse, but Conlin said jail officials were
telling him a different story. And while many people told the council that
police repeatedly used tear gas with no warning, Conlin said police
commanders told him they gave warnings, and even provided him with precise
accounts of the time and wording of those warnings.

Councilman Peter Steinbrueck said, "This has been absolutely riveting for me
for the last seven and a half hours."

Responding to one speaker's charge that there were many glazed eyes on the
council, Steinbrueck said if his eyes seemed that way, it was only because
he was holding back tears.

"I would have stayed here all night if necessary to listen to you. You've
convinced me."


------------

David Sunfellow, Founder & Publisher
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
P.O. Box 10627
Sedona, AZ USA 86339-8627

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Repairing Scratched CD's
(Thanks to Michael Sohaski for this tip.)

http://www.startribune.com/stOnLine/cgi-bin/article?thisSlug=TECR09&date=09-
Dec-1999

Wipe Out, a product of THE ESPRIT DEVELOPMENT CORP. in Flemington, N.J.,
promises to remove scratches from compact discs and CD-ROMs. The company
offers a money-back guarantee if Wipe Out fails to permanently repair discs
as advertised.

In tests, it worked quite well. It corrected the performance of a
consistently balky CD-ROM and removed a scratch from a damaged music CD.
Calling Wipe Out a kit is a bit of a stretch. What comes in the box are
instructions, a soft cloth and a bottle of polishing liquid.

To repair a CD, the user applies a drop or two of the liquid to the damaged
CD, then places the CD on a hard, flat surface and rubs the liquid into the
surface for a few seconds until the scratch disappears.

Most of the damage CDs suffer is in the plastic surface of the disc. The
data is stored on a metallic wafer under the plastic, where it is protected.
CDs fail when the laser in the CD player or CD-ROM drive encounters a
scratch in the plastic that makes it lose its place in tracking the data on
the metallic wafer underneath.

Wipe Out is like a liquid sandpaper that removes the scratch and returns the
plastic to its original smooth condition.

Wipe Out sells for about $15; it can be found at Sam Goody and Tower Record
stores or ordered online from:

http://www.cdrepair.com

(877) 947-3688


------------

David Sunfellow, Founder & Publisher
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
P.O. Box 10627
Sedona, AZ USA 86339-8627

Primary eMail: nhne@...
Secondary eMail: nhne@...
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------------

EDITOR'S COMMENT:

Here is a quick summary of articles that appear in the current issue of
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN. Some very interesting stuff here...

--- David Sunfellow

------------

QUICK ARTICLE SUMMARIES
End of the Millennium Special Issue:
WHAT SCIENCE WILL KNOW IN 2050
December 1999

http://www.sciam.com/1999/1299issue/1299quicksummary.html

Today's top scientific authorities speculate on the great questions that
further research will answer within the next five decades:

............

The Unexpected Science to Come
Sir John Maddox
http://www.sciam.com/1999/1299issue/1299maddox.html

The most important discoveries of the next 50 years are likely to be ones of
which we cannot now even conceive.

............

A Unified Physics by 2050?
Steven Weinberg
http://www.sciam.com/1999/1299issue/1299weinberg.html

Experiments should let particle physicists complete the Standard Model, but
a unified theory of all forces may require radically new ideas.

............

Exploring Our Universe and Others
Martin Rees

In the 21st century cosmologists will unravel the mystery of our universe¹s
birth--and perhaps prove the existence of other universes as well.

............

Deciphering the Code of Life
Francis S. Collins and Karin G. Jegalian

With a complete catalogue of all the genes in hand, biologists will spend
the next decades answering the most intriguing questions about life.

............

The End of Nature versus Nurture
Frans B. M. de Waal

Arguments about whether our behavior is shaped more by genetics or
environment ought to yield to a more enlightened view.

............

The Human Impact on Climate
Thomas R. Karl and Kevin E. Trenberth

The magnitude of our species¹ effect on climate could be clear by 2050, but
only if nations commit to long-term monitoring now.

............

Can Human Aging Be Postponed?
Michael R. Rose

No single elixir or treatment will do the trick. Antiaging therapies of the
future will need to counter many destructive biochemical processes at once
to maintain youthfulness.

............

How the Brain Creates the Mind
Antonio R. Damasio

The origin of the conscious mind might seem eternally mysterious, but a
better understanding of the brain¹s workings should explain it.

............

Is There Life Elsewhere in the Universe?
Jill C. Tarter and Christopher F. Chyba

Scientists¹ search for life beyond Earth has been less thorough than is
commonly thought--but that is about to change.

............

Rise of the Robots
Hans Moravec

By 2050 robotic ³brains² based on computers that execute 100 trillion
instructions per second will rival human intelligence.

------------

David Sunfellow, Founder & Publisher
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
P.O. Box 10627
Sedona, AZ USA 86339-8627

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------------

EDITOR'S COMMENT:

Here's another post on the Seattle/WTO situation. This one comes from folks
who believe that violence against corporate interests is an acceptable way
to make change. Moreover, they felt those who advocated and practiced more
militant actions were discriminated against and, on some occasions, attacked
by the much larger contingencies of peace-seeking activists who came to
Seattle to protest the WTO.

Thanks to Larry Morningstar for forwarding this.

--- David Sunfellow

------------

Activist-intellectuals state support for militant anarchists
by WIN
5:30pm Fri Dec 3 '99

A Group of Activist Intellectuals Defend Strategic Damage to Corporate
Property in Seattle and Eugene.

WTO Protest Organizers:
Don't Throw the Radicals Overboard

Dec. 2, 1999

"The People, United, Will Never Be Defeated," was one of the most commonly
heard chants in the days of marches protesting the WTO summit in Seattle.
However, one of the most striking elements of the WTO protests was the level
of conflict between adherents of a "nonviolent" protest method, and those
who preferred to express more concretely their feelings towards global
capitalism. A tide of reaction has been swelling against the latter, with
great arrogance on the part of the former. As a group of activist
intellectuals, we feel the need to state our support for the group the media
has been calling, only somewhat inaccurately, "the Anarchists from Eugene."

We -- the broad Left, anti-corporate, pro-livable world community --
controlled the streets of downtown Seattle from 7 am on Tuesday to roughly 7
pm. After that period -- with Mayor Schell and Governor Locke's declarations
of martial law and the violent offensive by local, county, state police and
the National Guard -- the streets were a war zone, but during that period,
they were a liberated area. Inside that liberated area a spectrum of protest
and resistance activities took place, many of which warmed our hearts.

Violence against property, as we'll call the attacks against corporate chain
stores by activists, was one of the conscious strategies that was employed.
These activities began on the afternoon of Monday, Nov. 29th, with the
smashing of a window at McDonald's. The next day, Tuesday, Nov. 30th, they
started again shortly after 10 am, at the corner of 6th Ave. and Pike St.,
when police began shooting tear gas cannisters and rubber bullets into the
crowd. Throughout the day activists, protecting their identities with hoods
and kerchiefs, formed "black blocks" to move en masse to attack unoccupied
chain stores such as the Gap, Nike, Levi, Disney, and Bank of America. This
is a key point that the media and President Clinton, among others, are
trying to obscure: the crowd did not attack "mom and pop stores," but the
physical manifestations of "McDomination".

Adherents to "non-violent" protest methods preach against targeting
corporate property. We feel that this is an uncritical acceptance of the
dominant value system of American consumer society: private property has a
higher value than life. At this time, we feel that we, as activists, need to
debate these issues further among ourselves. The problem we are addressing
immediately is that these "non-violent" activists used their numerical
advantage to isolate and dominate practitioners of alternate protest
philosophies: most visibly, the black block anarchists. As a spectrum of
protest activities manifested themselves, scenes we witnessed included
"non-violent" activists linking arms to protect the corporate theme store
Nike Town from the aggressive acts of a black block. Riot police soon
replaced the "peace advocates" as if to say, "We'll take over now. You're
only volunteering to protect property, we do it for a living."

Elsewhere throughout the day "non-violent" activists de-masked, and on at
least one occasion beat, an individual who was acting against property. Many
elements of the broad Left, anti-corporate, pro-livable world community have
been alarmingly willing to distance themselves from the direct, militant
forms of protest. The World Trade Observer, a daily tabloid published by a
network of mainstream environmental and fair trade organizations, which
features the writing of prominent figures such as Ralph Nader and Norman
Solomon, offers one example. In describing the previous day's festivities in
their Wednesday, December 1st issue, they identified as a "troubling theme"
the practice of "the police singling out peaceful demonstrators for gassing
and beating... while ignoring black-clad hooligans breaking windows and
spraying paint." We witnessed other "non-violent" protesters criticize the
police, not for waging chemical warfare to cleanse the streets of
protesters, but for failing to enter into the crowd and extract the
practitioners of militant protest. The implication of these statements is
that the crowd would have handed over some of its members to the police, if
the police had only asked.

We strongly urge progressive activists to reconsider this stance.

There will undoubtedly be repercussions from the fact that we took control
of a major city for twelve hours, as the leading administrative body of
global capitalism met to brainstorm for the next millennium. It is unfair,
and irresponsible, to offer "the Anarchists from Eugene" to the state as
scapegoats. Without the support of the rest of the WTO protesters, the
direct action practitioners are at great risk.

Grand juries have become common in the militant animal rights and
environmental movements: we would not think it a surprising development for
there to be an inquisition exploring "conspiracy to riot" charges for the
day of well-directed rage in Seattle. Gas-masks have been declared illegal
in Seattle under Mayor Schell's martial law, and the donning of hoods is
being explored by prosecutors in Eugene as a possible excuse for sentence
enhancement. The price of protecting oneself and one's identity from police
violence is rising.

As people who are interested in counteracting the ill effects of
globalization and ensuring a livable new millennium, we need to consciously
confront the criminalization of radical political philosophies. We feel that
those who belittle and distance themselves from the actions of "the
Anarchists from Eugene" have either ignored or simply did not realize the
level of contributions anarchists -- black-clad and otherwise -- made
towards bringing the N30 Festival of Resistance into reality. These include
the innovative and joyful protest methods of the Direct Action Network, a
sustained consciousness-raising effort from Left Bank Books, alternative
social structures offered by Food Not Bombs and Homes Not Jails, the
Anarchist hotline, housing networks, and so on. It also should not go unsaid
that developing a community able to produced several hundred predominantly
white youths with middle-class backgrounds to take militant action against
their real enemy is no small feat of organization. It has taken years of
sowing and tending to seeds of awareness and resistance, and we, at least,
appreciate that effort.

If the Left activist community is to be united and strong, more
communication and internal discussion around strategical issues is
necessary. Our contact information is listed below. All of us have
experience with social movements, and many of us have mapped the repressive
tactics used against them. We encourage media to get in touch with us as
well.

Daniel Burton-Rose, (206) 324-8165, ex. 1. Co-editor, The Celling of
America: An Inside Look at the U.S. Prison Industry (Common Courage Press,
1998), editor, win: a newsletter on activism at the extremes.

Ward Churchill, (303) 492-5066 (voice mail). Author, Pacifism as Pathology:
Reflections on the Role of Armed Struggle in North America (Arbeiter Ring:
1998).

Robin Hahnel, (202) 885-2712, rhahnel@.... Author, Panic Rules:
Everything You Need to Know About the Global Economy (South End Press,
1999); Professor, American University.

Kent Jewell, (206) 324-8165, ex. 3. Former co-owner, Left Bank Books
Collective.

George Katsiaficas, (617) 989-4384. Author: The Subversion of Politics:
European Autonomous Social Movements and the Decolonization of Everyday Life
(Humanities Press, 1997) and The Global Imagination of the New Left (South
End Press, 1987); editor, with Kathleen Cleaver, Liberation, Imagination,
and the Black Panther Party (Routledge, forthcoming); editor, New Political
Science.

Christian Parenti, (415) 626-4034, seapea@.... Lockdown America: Police
and Prisons in the Age of Crisis (Verso, 1999); instructor, New College.

Robert Perkinson, (203) 772-1600, robert.perkinson@.... Instructor,
Yale University.

Signatures are on file with win, a movement consultancy
group currently based in Seattle.


------------

David Sunfellow, Founder & Publisher
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
P.O. Box 10627
Sedona, AZ USA 86339-8627

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------------

EDITOR'S COMMENT:

Although a couple days old now, here's a first-hand account of the WTO
street demonstrations in Seattle, reportedly from Peter Bergel. Thanks to
Larry Morningstar for passing on this information.

--- David Sunfellow

------------

Date: Thu, 2 Dec 1999
From: "Frank H. Lucido M.D." <drfrank@...>
Subject: WTO/Seattle first-hand account from Peter Bergel

WTO/Seattle first-hand account from Peter Bergel

Friends,

The following was written by a good friend of mine, whom I respect greatly,
Peter Bergel. He is a non-violence trainer, and also trains non-violence
trainers. I know him from non-violent civil disobedience actions we have had
at the Nevada Test Site to protest (sometimes delaying) "underground"
nuclear bomb tests, on Western Shoshone land. I also know him because we
both serve on the board of directors of the Shundahai Network, which
supports the work of Corbin Harney, Western Shoshone elder and spiritual
leader, in educating the people of the world on Native American and
environmental issues, especially on the testing and use of nuclear weapons,
and on supporting the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Please read and pass
along to counter the poor reporting in the main stream press.

peace and health,
Frank Lucido MD

------------

Wed, 1 Dec 1999 06:38
Subject: Peter Bergel's WTO Report

Dear Friends,

Here is an account of the WTO actions in Seattle from my perspective.   I
have been doing nonviolence training for several days and I was on the
street all day today.  -- Peter


Notes on 11-30-99 WTO Protest Actions

Overall Impressions

* The protests today represented a new beginning of cooperation between
labor, environmental, peace, human rights and other groups.  Many were
represented and worked together very well.

* The direct action was carried out by mainly young activists who had been
trained for the week before and handled themselves superbly, by and large.
They were disciplined, radical, well-educated and had a good grasp of the
value of nonviolence, at least as a tactic.  I found that they knew a
remarkable amount about WTO, free trade, capitalism and related topics.

* The City of Seattle's downtown area was completely shut down.  The people
took over the streets and the police were not able to exercise more than
token control over them.

* For the most part, the police behaved well.  They were seriously
outnumbered, stressed, provoked at times and probably felt frightened.
Nevertheless, they used force sparingly and overstepped the need
infrequently.

* The protesters did a magnificent job of policing themselves.  The minor
outbreaks of violent anger were contained by the demonstrators with
surprising skill and commitment.

* The WTO meetings were seriously impacted.  The opening was delayed, many
delegates were prevented from attending at all, and those who did could not
get to their meetings without running the gantlet of angry protesters making
their message clear in both mass and invidual ways.

* It was probably a very significant day in the history of people's power,
"free" trade evolution and defense of democracy.

Personal Experiences

After gathering at Steinbrueck Park at 7 a.m. today, we marched downtown in
a huge march which stretched for many blocks.  How many I couldn't tell from
my position within it, but we were only half of the total since another
march started from another location, converging on the WTO meeting place
from another direction.

Once downtown, we split into different sub-groups to occupy different parts
of downtown.  The area around the WTO had been divided into thirteen sectors
with clusters of affinity groups (small autonomous action groups)
responsible for deciding upon, and carrying out, a blockade of their
sector.  My group marched around downtown a bit and wound up in front of the
Sheraton Hotel, where many delegates were staying.  Human blockades were set
up by dedicated affinity groups at every entrance, including the parking
garage.  Protesters lined up across the entrances, linked arms and stood
their ground.  At several points there were face-to-face standoffs between
protesters and police.  The police wore face shields, gas masks (at times)
and body armor and carried long sticks, sidearms, pepper spray and sometimes
plastic riot shields.  The protesters wore old clothes, rain protection and
bandannas against tear gas.  Some were wildly costumed and a few had gas
masks.

There was some pushing and rough stuff now and then when delegates tried to
get out of the hotel or get back in.  Protesters tried to prevent any entry
or egress and sometimes the delegates tried to push through.  When they did,
police interfered, if they were close by.

About 10 a.m. tear gas was used by the police to clear the immediate area.
By that time I had moved up the street and was not gassed.  When the gas
dispersed, I went back down to find out what had occasioned the use of the
gas.  It had been used to clear the intersection along Union to afford
meeting access to some WTO delegates.  However, rather few of them appeared
to be using it.  The police lined both sides of the intersection to keep it
clear.  As the delegates walked through, the crowd booed them loudly and
then began shouting "shame, shame."  A few minutes later, another tear gas
attack back up the street drove people down toward my position and the gas
followed them.  I was gassed slightly.

As I walked around downtown, I found that practically every intersection was
filled with people dancing, drumming and blockading and the numbers were
truly amazing.  The police were mostly holding various lines and not letting
people through them.  Then periodically they would use tear gas to clear an
area.  People would leave the area, circle around to another block and come
back when the gas dispersed.  The police would shortly abandon the
intersection they had just secured and move to another one and the process
would begin again.  The upshot of this was that the police were unable to
protect much of anything at all, yet hey could not spare the manpower to
arrest demonstrators without losing control of the areas they were trying to
protect.  The downtown was firmly in the protesters' hands and it was clear
that without the consent of the governed not much could be accomplished, if
enough of the governed decided to resist.

Some of the signs that impressed me included:

* The Senators who ratified the WTO  Treaty should be tried for treason.
* Do YOU remember voting for the WTO?
* Keep the sweatshop in the sauna.
* More health, less wealth.
* I hope you can eat your money.
* No legislation without representation.

I saw two police cars parked in the street as part of a police counter
blockade.  One had a flat rear tire and both had such graffiti as "Pig" and
"Fuck cops" spray-painted to them.  There was also some glass breakage,
overturning of dumpsters and paper boxes and defacing of buildings, but the
damage was trivial considering the huge numbers of people in the area, the
anger that the tear-gassing triggered and the wealth of those against which
the property damage was directed.  More important, though, was the response
of the demonstrators to virtually every outbreak of property damage or
hot-headedness.  Demonstrators moved immediately to quell property damage
and equally determinedly to break up conflicts.  Others immediately began to
chant "Nonviolent protest! Nonviolent protest!  The effect was to put the
rowdier elements on notice that their tactics were not appreciated by the
vast majority of those present.  I even saw a line of demonstrators link
arms to successfully protect the windows of a VoiceStream Wireless store
from window-breakers.

The favorite chant of the day was "Hey, hey!  Ho, ho!  WTO has got to go!"
Not too imaginitive, perhaps, but easy to learn and it had a good rhythm. At
one point, a group sang the Star Spangled Banner.  When they got to the line
about the land of the free, people stopped singing and went into wild
applause.  Another favorite chant was "Whose streets?  Our streets!  Whose
streets?  Our streets!"

Crowd size estimates on the news seem to have been characteristically small:
one early report said there were 5,000 downtown in the morning.  I would
guess the number at 4-6 times that, though that is only a guess.  All I can
say is that all the streets I went to were full of people and I would guess
that a tightly packed block would probably hold about 1,000 people. Even a
loosely packed block would have to have 3-400 in it.  And there were blocks
like that up and down many streets.  I can't imagine there were less than
10-20,000 downtown in the morning and possibly as many as 30,000. Then there
must have been a good 40-50,000 in the "Big" labor march which came downtown
in the afternoon.  That would boost the count to 50-60,000, maybe even as
high as 70,000.  Honest estimates based on helicopter pictures could be
made, but I don't know if they will be.

In many intersections, protesters "locked down."  They connected themselves
to each other and to heavy blocks or concrete-filled pipes to make it
impossible for the police to move them.  This was another reason the cops
didn't arrest people.  They just couldn't.  Some of those locked down were
still in the intersections when the police used tear gas in the area and
they just had to endure it.

I spoke briefly to a WTO delegate from Trinidad and Tobago, a small country
of less than 2,000 square miles, which has what he called "manageable
debt."  He seemed to understand what we were protesting about quite well.
Especially he understood the trade-offs forced by the requirements of debt
repayment.

People on the streets were often very helpful towards one another, sharing
water, helping them out of areas in which they didn't want to be, washing
each other's eyes and so on.  A few medical types are carrying saline
solution for severe tear gas victims.  There are also legal observers
wearing specially printed white T-shirts and taking notes on what they see
going on.

Two kinds of tear gas seemed to be in use.  One was whitish-grey and seemed
to remain relatively local where it was shot.  The other was dark, almost
black, and seemed to blanket much larger areas quickly.  It obscures vision
like smoke even if you don't get anywhere near it.

I heard many fascinating conversations about the relative power of violence
and nonviolence.  It was wonderful to hear so many people who weren't me
carrying the defense of nonviolence in these circumstances.

In some places there was plastic yellow tape marked "Police crime scene. Do
not cross."  In many others there was identical looking tape which said
instead, "Unseen crimes."

A very disciplined drum corps with drums, cymbals, flags and a
whistle-blowing majorette dressed in dark, revolutionary-looking clothing
showed up from time to time throughout the day.  They would march in tight
formation along the street, playing and responding to the whistled commands
of the majorette.  Then, at a whistled signal, they would begin to deploy in
various patterns.  They were entertaining, clever, humorous and good at what
they do.  At one point, as they marched down a street, they suddenly veered
sharply left and walked right into Starbucks, playing and marching around
several times to the shock of the customers, some of which left at once.

The vanguard of the "Big" march arrived downtown about 1:30, occupying the
whole street.  Although it came in fits and starts,  it flowed past my
vantage point for 50 minutes before I found my Salem friends and  joined
them.  We looped through a number of blocks of downtown and then began to
head out of downtown a block over from where the march came in. To my
amazement, we could see a steady stream still coming in!  It was 2:45.   I
left the march and stood on the corner to view the rest of the march.  By 3
p.m. the march's end had passed the point at which is could see it entering
downtown a block up the street.   However, it was still another 20 minutes
before the end passed my vantage point.  This means that a march that often
filled the entire street took about an hour and a half to pass one point.
Could that be less than 50,000?

I saw signs for at least these unions: steelworkers, electrical workers,
teachers, bricklayers, ILWU (Longshoremen), painters, Stanford workers,
service employees, teamsters, sheet metal workers, marine engineers, transit
workers, boilermakers, plumbers steamfitters and refigerations workers,
public service workers of Canada, cement masons, pulp paper and woodworkers,
nurses, Canadian airways workers and carpenters.

When the march had left, I went back to one of the lockdowns on 6th Avenue
right next to the Sheraton Hotel.  There were still a lot of people
downtown.  There were clearly less than before, but they still filled many
blocks and the occupation continued.  At one point there was a disturbance
as two men appeared to be trying to break though a line of protesters which
was linked to prevent delegates from getting past.  Behind them was a line
of police.  There was a scuffle and I went right over there to see if I
could help maintain the peace.  One of the two fell down and immediately got
up, very freaked out.  I began to calm him only to have my attention drawn
to the other who was a few feet away.  His suit coat was open and he had a
sidearm holster from which he had already removed the gun.  It was pointing
down, but I had a moment of serious fear as I realized that, should he raise
the weapon, I would be right in his immediate line of fire. However, he did
not raise it.  Rather, he and the other man crossed through the police line
and were gone.  The crowd had responded at once, shouting "He's got a gun.
He's got a gun."  and pointing.  The police responded by spraying the entire
scene, including me, with pepper spray. Although I have seen tear gas a
number of times before, I had never confronted pepper spray before.  It's
pretty painful just to have on your skin.  It must be really awful to have
in your eyes.

At 5 p.m., the police moved to clear the entire area.  They began firing off
large amounts of tear gas and people began to run down 6th.  A number of us
shouted for them to walk to prevent panic and stampede.  Then we moved
slowly out of the area.  The tear gas overtook us and I was gassed more
heavily this time.  The stuff isn't as nasty as what they used to use in the
60s, but it's bad enough.  Shortly after that I left.  I later heard that
the police used gas to clear most of the protesters out, but some remained
and the day's first arrests took place that evening.   I heard numbers like
22 and 25 -- a tiny number considering how many had been there during the
day.

Taken as a whole, the day was an unquestioned success.  The WTO could not
help but get the message about how they were viewed by the many thousands
present.  Moreover, they had not been able to agree on their agenda before
they arrived for this meeting and then they lost a good deal of yesterday
because the downtown area was so congested and even more of today due to
delays and absence of delegates.

Thanks for reading this far, if you have.  Please forward this to people who
should be informed.

Thank you.

Peter Bergel

------------

David Sunfellow, Founder & Publisher
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EDITOR'S COMMENT:

I'm sure everyone on this mailing list has heard about the riots in Seattle
surrounding the World Trade Organization's meeting there. What follows is a
speech that was given by President Clinton during a luncheon there. I found
it very interesting and thought you would, too...

--- David Sunfellow

------------

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary
(Seattle, Washington)
For Immediate Release
December 1, 1999

REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT TO THE LUNCHEON IN HONOR OF THE
MINISTERS ATTENDING THE MEETINGS OF THE WORLD TRADE ORGANZATION

The Four Seasons Hotel
Seattle, Washington

3:05 P.M. PST

http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/uri-res/I2R?urn:pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/1999/12/3
/3.text.1

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you very much.  Ambassador Barshefsky, thank you for
your remarks and your work.  Ladies and gentlemen, we have a very large
delegation from our administration here today, and I hope it's evidence to
you of our seriousness of purpose.  I thank the Commerce Secretary, Bill
Daley; the Agriculture Secretary, Dan Glickman; our SBA Administrator, Aida
Alvarez; my National Economic Councilor Gene Sperling; Ambassador Esserman;
and my Chief of Staff, John Podesta, all of whom are here and I thank them.

I want to say that I agree that Mike Moore is the ideal person to head the
WTO, because he has a sense of humor -- and, boy, do we need it right now.
(Laughter.)  Did you see the gentleman holding up the big white napkin here
before we started?  He was doing that to get the light for the television
cameras.  But he was standing here hold the napkin and Mike whispered to me,
he said, well, after yesterday, that could be the flag of the WTO.
(Laughter.)  We'll have rolling laughter as the translation gets through
here.

Let me begin by saying welcome to the United States and to one of our most
wonderful cities.  We are honored to have you here on a very important
mission.  Today I want to talk a little bit about the work that we're all
here to do: launching a new WTO round for a new century -- a new type of
round that I hope will be about jobs, development and broadly shared
prosperity; and about improving the quality of life, as well as the quality
of work around the world; an expanded system of rule-based trade that keeps
pace with the changing global economy and the changing global society.

Let me begin by saying that seven years ago when I had the honor to become
President of the United States, I sat down alone and sort of made a list of
the things that I hoped could be done to create the kind of world that I
wanted our children to live in, in the new century -- a world where the
interests of the United States I thought were quite clear: in peace and
stability; in democracy and prosperity.

To achieve that kind of world, I thought it was very important that the
United States support the increasing unity of Europe, and the expansion of
the European Union; that we support the expansion of NATO and its
partnership with what are now more than two dozen countries, including
Russia and Ukraine; that we support the integration of China, Russia, and
the Indian subcontinent in particular, into the large political and economic
flows of our time; that we stand against the ethnic and religious conflicts
that were still consuming the Middle East and Northern Ireland, then Bosnia
and later Kosovo; that we do what we could to help people all over the world
to deal with such things, including the tribal wars in Africa.

And I thought it was important that we give people mechanisms by which they
could work toward a shared prosperity, which is why we wanted to finish the
last WTO round; why we are working hard with our friends in Europe on a
Stability Pact for the Balkans; why we know economics must be a big part of
the Middle East peace process; why we have an Asian-Pacific Economic Forum,
where the leaders meet; why we've had two Summits of the Americas with our
friends in Latin America; why we're trying to pass the Africa and Caribbean
Basin Trade Initiatives; and why I believe it is imperative that we here
succeed in launching a new trade round that can command broad support among
ordinary citizens in all our countries and take us where we want to go.

There are negative forces I have tried to combat, in addition to the forces
of hatred based on ethnic or religious difference: the terrorists, the
problems of disease and poverty, which I hope that the large debt relief
initiative that we are pushing will help to alleviate.

But in the end, all of these changes in my view will only give us the world
we want -- where the poorest countries have children that can at least live
through childhood, and where the boys as well as the girls can go to school,
and then have a chance to make a decent living; where countries with
governance problems can work through them; where wealthy countries can
continue to prosper but do so in a way that is more responsible to helping
those who still have a long way to go economically; and where, together, we
can meet our common responsibilities to human needs, to the environment, to
the cause of world peace -- we will not get that done unless we can prove,
for all of our domestic political difficulties and all of our honest
differences, we still believe that we can have an interdependent global
economy that runs alongside our interdependent international information
society.

And we are called upon here to meet against a background of a lot of people
coming here to protest.  Some of them, I think, have a short memory -- or
maybe no memory -- of what life was like in most of your countries not so
very long ago.  So let me say again, I condemn the small number who were
violent, and who tried to prevent you from meeting.

But I'm glad the others showed up, because they represent millions of people
who are now asking questions about whether this enterprise in fact will take
us all where we want to go.  And we ought to welcome their questions, and be
prepared to give an answer, because if we cannot create an interconnected
global economy that is increasing prosperity and genuine opportunity for
people everywhere, then all of our political initiatives are going to be
less successful.  So I ask you to think about that.

When I hear the voices outside the meeting rooms, I disagree with a lot of
what they say, but I'm still glad they're here.  Why?  Because their voices
now count in this debate.  For 50 years -- one of the reasons I said we
needed a leader like Mr. Moore, with a sense of humor, because for 50 years
global trade, even though there were always conflicts -- you know, the
United States and Japan, they're our great friends and allies.  We're always
arguing about something.

But to be fair, it was a conflict that operated within a fairly narrow band.
For 50 years, trade decisions were largely the province of trade ministers,
heads of government, and business interests.  But now, what all those people
in the street tell us is that they would also like to be heard.  And they're
not so sure that this deal is working for them.

Some of them say, well -- and by the way, they're kind of like we are; a lot
of them are in conflict with each other, right?  Because a lot of them say,
well, this is not a good thing for the developing countries.  They haven't
benefited as much as they should have, while the wealthy countries have
grown wealthier in this information society.

Others say, well, even if you're growing the economy, you're hurting the
environment.  And still others say, well, companies may be getting rich in
some of these poorer countries, but actual working, laboring people are not
doing so well.  And others have other various and sundry criticisms of what
we have done.

I would like to say, first of all, I think we need to do a better job of
making the basic case.  No one in this room can seriously argue that the
world would have been a better place today if our forebears over the last 50
years had not done their work to bring us closer together.  Whatever the
problems that exist, in whatever countries represented here -- whatever the
legitimacy of any of the criticism against us -- this is a stronger, more
prosperous world because we have worked to expand the frontiers of
cooperation and reduce the barriers to trade among people.  And we need to
reiterate our conviction that that is true.  If we were all out here going
on our own, we would not be as well off in the world as we are.

Secondly, at the end of the Cold War, I am sure everyone in this room has
been struck by the cruel irony that in this most modern of ages -- when the
Internet tells us everything, as Mr. Moore said; when we are solving all the
problems of the human gene and we will soon know what's in the black holes
in the universe -- it is truly ironic when the biggest problems of human
societies are the oldest ones, those rooted in our fear of those who are
different from us -- different races, different ethnic groups, different
tribes, different religions.  All over the world, people consumed by
differences.

When people are working together for common prosperity in a rule-based
system, they have big incentives to lay the differences down and join hands
to work together.  So if we just make those two points to our critics, I
think it's very important.  Number one, the world is a better place than it
would have been, had we not had the last 50 years of increasing economic
cooperation for trade and investment.  And number two, the world of the
future will be a safer place if we continue to work together in a rule-based
system that offers enormous incentives for people to find ways to cooperate
and to give up their old hatreds and their impulses to violence and war.

Now, having said that, we now have to say: what next?  I think we have to
acknowledge a responsibility, particularly those of us in the wealthier
countries, to make sure that we are working harder to see that the benefits
of the global economy are more widely shared among and within countries --
that it truly works for ordinary people who are doing the work for the rest
of us.

I think we also have to make sure that the rules make sense and that we're
continuing to make progress, notwithstanding the domestic political
difficulties that every country will face.  We all benefit when the rules
are clear and fair.  I think that means we have to cut tariffs further on
manufactured goods and set equally ambitious goals for services.  I think we
should extend our moratorium on e-commerce.  I think we should treat
agriculture as we treat other sectors of the economy.

But we all have domestic political constraints.  Everybody knows that.  I
think we have to leave this luncheon saying, in spite of that, we're going
to find some way to keep moving forward because the world will be a better
place and the world will be a safer place.

Now, let me offer a few observations of what I hope will be done. First, I
think we have to do more to ensure that the least developed countries have
greater access to global markets, and the technical assistance to make the
most of it.

Director General Moore has dedicated himself and this organization to
extending the benefits of trade to the least developed countries and I thank
you for that, sir.  Here in Seattle, 32 developing nations are moving toward
admission to the WTO.  EU President Prodi and I have discussed this whole
issue and I have assured him, and I assure you, that the United States is
committed to a comprehensive program to help the poorest nations become full
partners in the world trading system. This initiative, which we are working
on with the EU, Japan and Canada, would enhance market access for products
from the least developed countries consistent with our GSP preference access
program and our Africa and Caribbean Basin Initiatives -- which, I am glad
to report, are making good progress through the United States Congress.

Building on our recent collaboration with Senegal, Lesotho, Zambia,
Bangladesh and Nigeria, we would also intensify our efforts to help
developing countries build the domestic institutions they need to make the
most of trade opportunities and to implement WTO obligations.  This
afternoon, I will meet with heads of international organizations that
provide trade-related technical assistance and ask them to help in this
effort.

And I will say this.  I do believe, after the Uruguay Round, when we set up
this system, that we did not pay enough attention to the internal
capacity-building in the developing nations that is necessary to really play
a part in the global economy.  And I am prepared to do my part to rectify
that omission.

We also must help these countries avert the health and pollution costs of
the industrial age.  We have to help them use clean technologies that
improve the economy, the environment and health care at the same time.  And
I will just give one example.

Today is World AIDS day.  And today, the USTR, our trade representative, and
the Department of Health and Human Services are announcing that they are
committed to working together to make sure that our intellectual property
policy is flexible enough to respond to legitimate public health crises.

Intellectual property protections are very important to a modern economy,
but when HIV and AIDS epidemics are involved, and like serious health care
crises, the United States will henceforward implement its health care and
trade policies in a manner that ensures that people in the poorest countries
won't have to go without medicine they so desperately need.  I hope this
will help South Africa and many other countries that we are committed to
support in this regard.

More generally, this new round should promote sustainable development in
places where hunger and poverty still stoke despair.  We know counties that
have opened their economies to the world have also opened the doors to
opportunity and hope for their own people.  Where barriers have fallen, by
and large, living standards have risen and democratic institutions have
become stronger.  We have to spread that more broadly.

So secondly, I want to say what I said at the WTO in Geneva last year.  I
think it is imperative that the WTO become more open and accessible.  While
other international organizations have sought and not shied from public
participation -- when that has happened, public support has grown.  If the
WTO expects to have public support grow for our endeavors, the public must
see and hear and, in a very real sense, actually join in the deliberations.
That's the only way they can know the process is fair, and know their
concerns were at least considered.

We've made progress since I issued this challenge in Geneva last year, but I
believe there's more work to be done -- from opening the hearing-room doors
to inviting in a more formal fashion public comment on trade disputes.

Now look, let me just say, I know there's a lot of controversy about this.
And as all of you know, I'm about to enter the last year of my presidency.
I will not be around to deal with the aftermath.  But I'm telling you, I've
been in this business a long time.  And in the end, we all serve and
function at the sufferance of the people -- either with their active
support, or their silent acquiescence.  What they are telling us in the
streets here is, this was an issue we used to be silent on.  We're not going
to be silent on it anymore.  We haven't necessarily given up on trade, but
we want to be heard.

The sooner the WTO opens up the process, and lets people representing those
who are outside in, the sooner we will see fewer demonstrations, more
constructive debate, and a broader level of support in every country for the
direction that every single person in this room knows that we ought to be
taking into the 21st century.  So we can do it a little bit now and a little
bit later.  We can drag our feet, or we can run through an open door.  But
my preference is to open the meetings, open the records, and let people file
their opinions.

No one -- no sensible person -- expects to win every argument, and no one
ever does.  But in a free society, people want to be heard.  And human
dignity, and political reality, demand it today.

Third, as I have said repeatedly, I believe the WTO must make sure that open
trade does indeed lift living standards -- respects core labor standards
that are essential not only to worker rights, but to human rights.   That's
why this year the United States has proposed that the WTO create a working
group on trade and labor.  To deny the importance of these issues in a
global economy is to deny the dignity of work -- the belief that honest
labor fairly compensated gives meaning and structure to our lives.  I hope
we can affirm these values at this meeting.

I am pleased that tomorrow I will sign the ILO Convention to Eliminate the
Worst Forms of Child Labor.  And I thank the United States Senate on a
bipartisan basis for supporting us in this.  I believe the WTO should
collaborate more closely with the ILO, which has worked hard to protect
human rights, to ban child labor.  I hope you will do this.

Let me say in all candor, I am well aware that a lot of the nations that we
most hope to support -- the developing nations of the world -- have
reservations when the United States says, we support bringing labor concerns
into our trade debate.  And I freely acknowledge that, if we had a certain
kind of rule, then protectionists in wealthy countries could use things like
wage differentials to keep poorer countries down -- to say, okay, you opened
your markets to us, now we'll sell to you. But you're selling to us and we
want to keep you down, so we'll say you're not paying your people enough.

The answer to that is not to avoid this labor issue -- not when there's
still child labor all over the world; not when there are still oppressive
labor practices all over the world; not when there is still evidence in
countries that ordinary people are not benefiting from this. The answer is
not to just throw away the issue.  The answer is to write the rules in such
a way that people in our position, the wealthier countries, can't do that,
can't use this as an instrument of protectionism.  We can find a way to do
this.

But there is a sense of solidarity all over the world, among ordinary people
who get up every day, will never be able to come to a luncheon like this, do
their work, raise their children, pay their taxes, form the backbone of
every nation represented here.  They deserve basic, fundamental decency.
And the progress of global trade should reflect, also, in their own lives.
I do not want the United States, or any other country, now or later, to be
able to use this as a shield for protectionism.  But to pretend that it is
not a legitimate issue in many countries is another form of denial, which I
believe will keep the global trading system from building the public support
it deserves.

Finally, we must work to protect and to improve the environment as we expand
trade.  Two weeks ago, I signed an executive order requiring careful
environmental review of our major trading agreements early enough to make a
difference -- including the input of the public and outside experts, and
considering genuinely held concerns.  We stand ready to cooperate as you
develop similar systems, and to integrate the environment more fully into
trade policy.

We are committed to finding solutions which are win-win, that benefit both
the economy and the environment -- open trade and cutting-edge clean
technologies, which I believe will be the next industrial revolution.  We
will continue to support WTO rules that recognize a nation's right to take
science-based health, safety and environmental measures, even when they're
higher than international standards.

Now, I want to say something about this.  Again, I know, there are some
people who believe my concern and the concern of the United States about the
environment is another way that somehow we can keep the developing countries
down.  That is not true.  There are basically two great clusters of
environmental issues facing the world today.  First, there are the local
issues faced primarily by the developing nations: healthy water systems and
sewer systems, systems to restrict soil erosion and to otherwise promote the
public health.

It is in everyone's interest to help those things to be installed as quickly
and efficiently as possible.  But the real issue that affects us all, that
prompts my insistence that we put this issue on the agenda, is global
warming and the related issue of the loss of species in the world as a
consequence of global warming.

And the difference in this issue and previous environmental issues is this:
once the greenhouse gases get in the atmosphere, they take a long time, 100
years or more, to dispel.  Therefore, one nation's policy, including ours --
and we are now the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, in the United
States.  We won't be long, but we are now.

But we have to do something about this.  And I want to say to you what I
said to the people at our table.  There is now clear and compelling
scientific, technological evidence that it is no longer necessary for a poor
country growing rich to do so by emitting more greenhouse gas emissions.
Or, in plainer language, a nation can develop a middle class and develop
wealth without burning more oil and coal in traditional manners.  This is a
sea change in the reality that existed just a few years ago.  And -- let's
be candid -- most people don't believe it.  A lot of people in our country
don't believe it.

But in everything from transportation to manufacturing to the generation of
electricity, to the construction of buildings, it is now possible to grow an
economy, with much less injury to the atmosphere, with available
technologies.  And within five years breathtaking changes in the way
automobile engines work and in the way fuel is made, especially from
biomass, will make these trends even more clear.

I do not believe the United States has the right to ask India or Pakistan or
China or any other country to give up economic growth.  But I do believe
that all of us can responsibly say, if you can grow at the same rate without
doing what we did -- that is, fouling the environment and then cleaning it
up -- Mr. Kono remembers -- I remember the first time I went to Tokyo over
20 years ago, people wore masks riding their bicycles around.  And now the
air there is cleaner than it is in my home town in Arkansas.

What is the difference now?  It is not just a national issue.  If you foul
the atmosphere, and then you later clean it up, the greenhouse gases are
still up there, and they'll be there for 100 years, warming the climate.

Now, we do not have a right to ask anybody to give up economic growth.  But
we do have a right to say, if we're prepared to help you finance a different
path to growth, and we can prove to you -- and you accept, on the evidence
-- that your growth will be faster, not smaller, that you'll have more good
jobs, more new technology, a broader base for your economy -- then I do
believe we ought to have those kind of environmental standards.  And we
ought to do it in a voluntary way with available technologies.  But we ought
to put environment at the core of our trade concerns.

Now, I don't know if I've persuaded any of you about any of this. But I know
one thing: this is a better world than it would have been if our forebears
hadn't done this for the last 50 years.  If we're going to go into the next
50 years, we have to recognize that we're in a very different environment.
We're in a total information society, where information has already been
globalized, and citizens all over the world have been empowered.  And they
are knocking on the door here, saying, let us in and listen to us.  This is
not an elite process anymore; this is a process we want to be heard in.

So I implore you, let's continue to make progress on all the issues where
clearly we can.  Let's open the process, and listen to people even when we
don't agree with them.  We might learn something, and they'll feel that
they've been part of a legitimate process.  And let's continue to find ways
to prove that the quality of life of ordinary citizens in every country can
be lifted, including basic labor standards and an advance on the
environmental front.

If we do this, then 50 years from now the people who will be sitting in all
these chairs will be able to have the same feelings about you that Mr. Moore
articulated our feelings for the World War II generation.

Thank you very much, and welcome again.  (Applause.)

END
3:40 P.M. PST

------------

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FOOD SUPPLY VULNERABLE TO BIOTERRORIST ATTACK
Friday, December 3, 1999
By Will Boggs, MD

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/19991203/hl/psb_7.html

WASHINGTON, Dec 03 (Reuters Health) -- While numerous groups express worries
about possible bioterrorist attacks involving airborne bacteria such as
smallpox or anthrax, the public is much more vulnerable to a biological
attack through contamination of the food supply, according to presentations
here at the 48th annual meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine
and Hygiene.

Despite more than 225 alleged cases involving the illicit use or threat of
biological agents, only 21 of 143 confirmed cases included the actual use of
any type of biological agent, according to W. Seth Carus from the National
Defense University, Washington, DC. ``All of those cases were either from
water or food contamination or from direct injection,'' he said.

Col. Gerald Parker, USAMRIID Commander, noted that the threat from
food-related bioterrorism stems from two factors. First, the biological
contamination of the food supply would require little technical expertise.
Second, attacks could take place anywhere along the food supply chain --
from harvesting to processing to distributing to preparing and serving.

Successful biological attacks have already been witnessed, Parker said,
citing deliberate Salmonella bacteria contamination of a salad bar in Oregon
and muffin contamination with Shigella bacteria in Texas. The illness
presents exactly like the natural infection, making detection difficult or
impossible, he noted.

Increasing centralization of animal and food processing and distribution
also increase the risk of a bioterrorist attack, according to consultant
Wallace Deen. ``Virtually all the beef processed in the United States takes
place within a 200 mile radius,'' Deen said. ``A serious attack with the
agent causing hoof and mouth disease, for example, could essentially wipe
out the beef supply.''

``And there are feed products and micronutrients for which there are only
one or two suppliers,'' Deen said. ``One focused act could eliminate
worldwide inventories of some key food items.''

``Biological attacks need not even be massive,'' Parker observed. ``Bacteria
could be introduced at levels below detection and grow to pathogenic
(disease-causing) levels, for example.''

Awareness of the potential for biological attacks on food and water should
enhance public health professionals' ability to recognize an attack if it
occurs. Should bioterrorists engage in such an act, Parker said, ``the
appropriate front-line response will require total integration of the
efforts of national security specialists, law enforcement agents, and the
public health service.''

None of the speakers ventured to offer a plan to prevent or prepare for a
bioterrorist assault on the food or water supply. ''Maybe there's some
value, after all, in all those Y2K survival packages people are putting
together,'' Deen quipped.


------------

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a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
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Ozone Layer Over Europe Dwindling
December 2, 1999

http://news.excite.com/news/r/991202/11/science-ozone

PARIS (Reuters) - The ozone layer over Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands and
Scandinavia has dwindled to worrying levels nearly as low as those found in
the Antarctic, the European Space Agency (ESA) said Thursday.

Measurements taken in the Netherlands showed local ozone levels were some
two-thirds below the norm for this time of year, confirming the abnormally
low levels detected over northwest Europe this week, ESA said in a
statement.

The ozone layer, high up in the atmosphere, shields Earth from much of the
sun's harmful ultraviolet rays. A gradual thinning due to emissions of
damaging man-made chemicals has increased the occurrence of skin cancer and
other illnesses related to over-exposure to ultraviolet rays, scientists
say.

The damage to the ozone layer is worst over Antarctica where a hole about
twice the size of China and more than two-and-a-half times the scope of
Europe has developed.

------------

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Arctic Melting Blamed on Warming
Thursday, December 2, 1999
By Randolph E. Schmid
Associated Press

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/19991202/sc/arctic_melting_1.html

WASHINGTON (AP) - The giant arctic ice cap may be melting as a result of
global warming, according to a new paper by an international team of
researchers.

An analysis using complex computer programs that mimic the climate system
indicates only a 2 percent chance that arctic melting over the last 19 years
is a result of natural climate changes, according to the paper appearing in
Friday's edition of the journal Science.

Also, there only is a 0.1 percent chance that the melting over the last 46
years is natural, according to the team led by Konstantin Vinnikov of the
University of Maryland.

In recent years scientists increasingly have become concerned about the
possibility that chemicals released into the atmosphere by industry are
causing the climate to warm, though some contend that the changes are part
of natural variability.

Vinnikov's team concentrated on satellite measurements of sea ice in the
Arctic taken since 1978, showing an overall decline in ice area larger than
the state of Texas.

Since the ice is floating, the melting does not affect sea levels.

They used computers in Princeton, N.J., and at the Hadley Center in Britain
to calculate the probable normal changes in the Earth's atmosphere over long
periods.

They then studied computer simulations that include greenhouse gas
increases, tending to warm the atmosphere, and aerosol increases, tending to
cool the atmosphere.

The model results with these human-induced changes included were a much
better match with the observed sea ice decreases than the model results
simulating natural variability.

The result, the team reports, ``strongly suggests that the observed decrease
in northern hemisphere sea ice extent is related to (human caused) global
warming.''

The probability that melting under normal conditions would equal that over
the last 19 years was less than 2 percent, they said, and the likelihood
that it would equal that over the last 46 years was under 0.1 percent.

In addition to the University of Maryland, participating in the study were
researchers at Rutgers University, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, the University of Illinois, NASA, the Hadley Center in Great
Britain and the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute in Russia.

------------

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EDITOR'S COMMENT:

As a side note to the following story, the youngest son of the Rev. Sun
Myung Moon committed suicide on October 28th by jumping from the 17th floor
of Harrah's hotel in Reno, Nevada. I don't have any links to this article
but can email the information to those of you who might be interested.

General links to Moon and anti-Moon organizations and articles:
http://www.freedomofmind.com/groups/moonies/moonies.htm

--- David Sunfellow

------------

Suspicion Follows Rev. Moon to South America
NEW YORK TIMES
November 28, 1999
By Larry Rohter
(Thanks to Resource Center for Freedom of Mind)

http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/americas/112899brazil-rev-moon.html

JARDIM, Brazil -- As far as the eye can see, there is almost nothing here
but pasture, with the distant line of the horizon broken only by tall
anthills and an occasional tree. But the Rev. Sun Myung Moon envisions this
remote and sparsely populated corner of Brazil as what he calls "a kingdom
of heaven on earth, a new Garden of Eden."

Moon, the 78-year-old founder of the Unification Church, who has been
rebuffed in the United States and is facing financial trouble in his native
South Korea, is seeking to reinvent himself here in the South American
heartland.

Through a venture he calls New Hope East Garden, Moon has bought thousands
of acres of pasture land and spent some $30 million, according to the
project's manager, in hope of building a spiritual and business empire here
that is to include investments in agriculture, industry and tourism, as well
as a university.

Such investment was at first welcomed in the neediest part of Mato Grosso do
Sul, a state whose own governor describes it as a land of "2 million people
and 22 million cows." But increasingly, Moon's visible presence here is
generating the same sort of opposition and suspicion that has followed him
elsewhere around the world during a long career as the self-proclaimed "true
father" and successor to Jesus Christ.

"No one knows what he's up to out there, what are the objectives of his
investments or the origins of his money," the governor, Jose Orcirio Miranda
dos Santos, said in an interview. "This has become an issue of national
security, and I think an investigation is needed."

Moon's initial warm reception has quickly chilled, with charges in the news
media and from local church officials that the sect is involved in improper
activities. In October, local Roman Catholic and Protestant churches jointly
issued an open letter accusing Moon of 10 forms of heresy, urging "the
people of God to keep their distance from the Unification sect," and calling
on local officials to "have the courage to remove this danger."

"More than a sect, this is a business that hides behind the facade of
religion in order to make money," said Monsignor Vitorio Pavanello, the
Roman Catholic bishop of Campo Grande, the state capital. "He is trying to
build an empire by buying everything in sight."

But Moon's associates offer a different explanation.

"It is our goal and desire to do something great for this region," said
Cesar Zaduski, a former president of the Unification Church in Brazil and
the general manager of the New Hope project. "Rev. Moon has a lot of
companies around the world, more than 300, and his intention is to bring
some of them here so that this region can get the benefit of development and
first world know-how and technology."

Zaduski said Moon was prepared to commit much more money to make the New
Hope venture viable. The objective, he said, is to produce fish, exotic
meats, fruit and wood for commercial markets here and abroad, and to turn
this area into a leading eco-tourism center within a few years.

Moon's representatives here said that their leader first visited the region
five years ago on a fishing trip and was impressed by its wide-open spaces
and enormous variety of wildlife. Since then, his movement has bought 220
square miles of farmland in Mato Grosso do Sul and a 310-square-mile parcel
near Fuerte Olimpo on the Paraguayan side of the nearby border, as well as
hotels and other businesses.

Moon's big push in this largely undeveloped corner of Brazil comes as the
business conglomerate he controls in South Korea has nearly collapsed.
Because of the economic crisis that swept across East Asia beginning in
1996, the debt of his Tong Il Group soared to more than $1.2 billion. Five
of its 17 companies were forced into receivership last year, and an
automobile manufacturing project in China has also failed.

His diverse enterprises in the United States appear to be in better shape.
Those include a newspaper, The Washington Times, as well as Bridgeport
University in Connecticut, a recording studio and travel agency in New York,
and a cable network, the Nostalgia Channel. But Moon has indicated recently
that he is disenchanted with the country that has been his main base of
operations since the 1970s.

"America doesn't have anywhere to go now," he said in a speech in New York
last year. "The country that represents Satan's harvest is America, the
kingdom of extreme individuality, of free sex."

Moon's critics say that his view is growing harsher because of the decline
of his influence in the United States, where he was imprisoned for a year
after being convicted of tax evasion in 1982, and where he has been the
subject of embarrassing books and news reports that his son and heir was
addicted to cocaine and abused his wife.

While he was once believed to have about 30,000 followers in the United
States, the current number of church members is believed to be about
one-tenth that number.

But Zaduski said Moon's interest in South America resulted from a desire to
focus on the Roman Catholic world, after emerging from a Confucian and
Buddhist environment and spending a long time in a predominantly Protestant
atmosphere. No place, he added, has a larger concentration of Roman
Catholics than South America, in particular in the region of the customs
union called Mercosur, which consists of Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay,
Uruguay, Bolivia and Chile.

"What unites South America is Mercosur, and what is the heart of Mercosur?"
he asked. "This region here, where you can build a project that goes beyond
borders. If we can build something here that works, it can be an example to
many other parts of South America."

In recent years, Moon has been active in Uruguay, Brazil's southern neighbor
-- so much so that the capital, Montevideo, is now derisively called
Moontevideo by some. There, the sect has acquired the luxury Victoria Plaza
Hotel, operates the newspaper Tiempos del Mundo and retains an interest in a
bank, Banco de Credito, in which the government intervened last year after
complaints of irregularities.

Here, Moon built up good will early on by donating ambulances to mayors,
sponsoring barbecues for residents and making donations to political
campaigns. He also opened a school on his New Hope property, invited local
children to enroll and even offered to provide transportation from their
homes. But relations are now openly hostile.

"When they first began acquiring property here, we expected that they would
promote and contribute to the prosperity of our region by generating jobs
and taxes," said Marcio Campos Monteiro, the mayor of Jardim, a town of
21,000 people. "But all they seem to be doing is stockpiling land, without
producing anything or hiring from the local labor force."

Monteiro contends that Moon's presence here has actually hurt the local
economy. The sect now owns 10 percent of the county, he said, and government
revenues have dropped because he has withdrawn so much land from production
and the tax rolls, claiming a religious exemption.

The New Hope site includes at least 20 buildings, but has less than 200
permanent residents and many of those who work there are Korean, Japanese,
American and European volunteers who rarely leave the compound and come for
40-day courses of instruction, paying their own way as well as making
donations.

Civic and church groups have also begun to complain loudly, and have even
charged that local youths are being recruited and sent off for
indoctrination in Sao Paulo, where the sect has its Brazilian headquarters.
Though local police declined to discuss the matter, there are also
complaints that converts are being held against their will at New Hope.

"I recently had two young people who had run away from New Hope come in here
seeking help in getting back home to Pernambuco," 1,500 miles away, said
Bruno Padron, the Roman Catholic bishop here. "They focus on the poor and
the needy, and once they have them in their family, they refuse to let them
go."

Recent reports in the Brazilian news media have also suggested that the sect
may be involved in drug trafficking and other forms of contraband smuggling
across the notoriously porous border with Paraguay in order to generate
revenues.

Miranda dos Santos would say only that "the federal government is looking
into those questions."

Zaduski dismissed such accusations as "crazy stories" and illogical. "Rev.
Moon comes here quite often, so if his people were doing something illegal,
he would not want to be so close," he said. "That would be stupid, because
he is a big target."

Despite the increasingly tense atmosphere here, Moon apparently plans to
plunge ahead. In September, the government extended Moon's visa for two more
years.

"He is really amazed by the way nature here is so pristine," Zaduski said.
"He wants the entire world to understand that the heavenly father wants this
treasure to be kept for all mankind, and that is why he is putting so much
of his own time and guidance into this."

------------

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a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
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Doomsday group lives in Bible days, awaiting end
November 30, 1999
By Paul Holmes
REUTERS

http://news.excite.com/news/r/991130/14/millennium-doomsday

MOUNT GERIZIM, West Bank (Reuters) - In their handmade linen robes, sandals
and cloth head-dresses, the White family look like extras on the set of a
film about the Bible.

But the family of seven from Detroit, Michigan, are living the Bible days
for real in the Promised Land getting ready for what they hope and pray will
be the end of the world.

"We're on a pilgrimage out of Babylon," said the mother of the family, Ader,
39. "I believe the millennium is Judgment Day and we are going to be
judged."

As Ader spoke Tuesday, her seven-month-old daughter Serena suckled at her
breast in a spartan farmhouse with no electricity, gas, running water or
glass in the windows.

Outside, four more children aged 4 to 15 tended to the donkeys, chickens and
livestock the family and two friends keep in the shadow of this biblical
mountain near Nablus in the West Bank that, for the Whites, is 17 hours on
foot from Jerusalem.

"We just wait. And if we die waiting, fair enough," said John Kohath, a
74-year-old retired maintenance worker from Guildford, England, with a
flowing white beard and a belief that the end might almost be nigh.

BELIEVERS IN THE LOST ARK

The approach of 2000 has proved a magnetic draw to the Holy Land for
religious cultists, many of them fringe Christians from the United States
and Europe, who interpret the start of a new millennium on Jan. 1 as the
sign of the Second Coming.

That's not what the Whites think.

By their estimate, based on what they say is a corrected reading of the
Hebrew calendar, the year is now 6000 and the end will come when the lost
biblical Ark of the Covenant reappears at the dawn of 6001 sometime next
spring.

"We're convinced it is in Jerusalem in a cave in the Old City. My husband
has been there. He knows," said Ader. "The millennium of Yehoah (God) starts
this March or April. It depends on the first new moon after the vernal
equinox."

In Detroit, Ader, a former Seventh Day Adventist who changed her first name
from Darcy, put her business management skills to use running her husband's
business as a chiropractor and lived in a six-bedroom house set in 40 acres
of land.

Home is now a few bare cement rooms the Whites get rent-free from an
expatriate Palestinian in return for tending his olive trees. It is the 38th
place they have lived since selling all their worldly goods and flying to
Israel five years ago.

"I was considered lunatic fringe back then because I wasn't mainline
Christian," said Ader. She rejects any suggestion of fanaticism or mental
instability. "Why should we be fanatics for wanting to dress as it says in
our kingdom?" she asked.

The children -- bright, lively and eager to show visitors around -- have
never been to school.

"Green grass for the animals" is all Matthew, the eldest, says he misses
from Detroit.

NO PHOTOS, NO PASSPORTS

The family shuns modern transport as far as possible, preferring to walk
everywhere or travel by donkey. Camels were the Whites' preferred mode of
transport until they found the ships of the desert fared poorly in 20th
century traffic.

The group is strictly vegetarian and lives off food cooked over wood by
Rivkah Olson, a former piano teacher from Texas.

"When I came here I changed my name because I realized Roxy doesn't fit in
this country," said Olson, 63, explaining that she, like the others, had
adopted a Hebrew first name.

The group regards photographs as ungodly idolatry and burned their passports
for that reason when they arrived in Israel.

"All the police in this area know us. They say we're 100 percent OK," said
Ader. But now there is a problem.

Ader's 42-year-old husband Shomer, who changed his name from Mark, got a new
U.S. passport in Jerusalem recently so he could fly back to the United
States to visit his mother.

He is stuck in Germany trying to return to the Promised Land because the
Israeli authorities, waging a pre-millennium crackdown on fringe cultists,
refuse to allow him back in.

The crisis means the Whites have had to borrow a mobile telephone to stay in
touch and Ader says it is all because her husband had his passport
photograph taken.

"My husband is in the Valley of Decision," she said. "Yehoah is saying to
him: 'If you want to stand before my throne you can't do it with a
picture."'
 

------------

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a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
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Sedona, AZ USA 86339-8627

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EDITOR'S COMMENT:

The following article is significant for two reasons: 1. It is the cover
story of the current issue of TIME MAGAZINE and; 2. it has an informative
beginning (Excerpt One) and inspiring end (Excerpt Two). Since I am not
usually a fan of fictionalized historical accounts (especially in the case
of Jesus), the middle of the article was my least favorite part. What
follows is the beginning and end of the TIME article, and the URL to the
complete story. Be sure to read the author's account of his healing
encounter with Jesus in "Excerpt Two" -- and remember this is appearing in
TIME MAGAZINE...

--- David Sunfellow

------------

JESUS OF NAZARETH
TIME MAGAZINE Cover Story
December 6, 1999
by Reynolds Price

http://www.pathfinder.com/time/magazine/articles/0,3266,35079,00.html

A great novelist and biblical scholar examines what faith and historical
research tell us after 2,000 years and emerges with his own apocryphal
Gospel.

------------

EXCERPT ONE:

The memory of any stretch of years eventually resolves to a list of names,
and one of the useful ways of recalling the past two millenniums is by
listing the people who acquired great power. Muhammad, Catherine the Great,
Marx, Gandhi, Hitler, Roosevelt, Stalin and Mao come quickly to mind.
There's no question that each of those figures changed the lives of millions
and evoked responses from worship through hatred.

It would require much exotic calculation, however, to deny that the single
most powerful figure--not merely in these two millenniums but in all human
history--has been Jesus of Nazareth. Not only is the prevalent system of
denoting the years based on an erroneous 6th century calculation of the date
of his birth, but a serious argument can be made that no one else's life has
proved remotely as powerful and enduring as that of Jesus. It's an
astonishing conclusion in light of the fact that Jesus was a man who lived a
short life in a rural backwater of the Roman Empire, who died in agony as a
convicted criminal, and who may never have intended so much as a small
portion of the effects worked in his name.

Who was Jesus then? And how can we learn more about him?

We have little that might be called history concerning the man. There is a
meager handful of unrevealing allusions to his existence in early Roman and
Jewish sources. The recently recovered remains of a modest house in
Capernaum give strong signs of being Peter's residence, which was apparently
Jesus' Galilean headquarters. Ongoing excavations in Galilee clarify the
picture of the small-town world in which he learned the builder's trade and
acquired his deep knowledge of the Jewish scriptures. Modern studies have
confirmed the good possibility that the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in
Jerusalem covers the site of his execution and burial. And five years ago,
the apparent tomb and bones of the high priest Caiaphas, who presided at
Jesus' inquest, were discovered by accident. No doubt future discoveries
will continue to increase understanding of that provincial ethos, and there
is always the chance that something truly sensational may be found: a
complete 1st century manuscript Gospel, the travel notes of an actual
disciple or a memorandum from some quailing pupil of the dead rabbi on the
Sabbath during which he lay in the tomb.

There was initial hope that the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947
would throw light on the roots of Christianity. There was speculation that
perhaps John the Baptist and even Jesus himself were members of the sect or
closely related to it. The scrolls have already contributed to a fuller
understanding of the textual history of Jewish scripture and the realities
of 1st century Judaism--especially its variety of apocalyptic hopes and the
absence of anything that might be called orthodoxy. However, they have shed
no direct light on Jesus. The Nag Hammadi manuscripts, discovered by
Egyptian farmers in 1945, also proved of interest chiefly to students of the
swarm of theologies that proliferated in early Christianity. The chance that
they contain reliable historical information about Jesus is slender, though
they hint tantalizingly that Jesus may have been more liberal in his views
of women and sexuality than later church fathers allowed.

Our only substantial biographical sources are the New Testament Gospels:
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, brief documents written in colloquial Greek
late in the generation of those who knew Jesus first- or secondhand. By the
end of the 2nd century, these four had become the basic canonical texts of
the mainline Christianity of Rome and the Middle East.

A curious reader can also find survivors in several modern editions of New
Testament Apocrypha (from the Greek apokruphos, "hidden")--scraps of other
Gospels, letters, apocalypses, acts of the apostles and other figures
related to Jesus. Some of them offer occasionally striking, even comic,
moments. There are numerous stories about the young Jesus, for instance--a
sometimes amusing, sometimes dangerous superchild playmate. And there may be
actual moments of history in the mostly fictional tales of the acts of John
the Beloved, Peter, Paul and others.

To glance at one of the most interesting remains, there are a few surviving
speeches of Jesus from the Gospel of the Hebrews and a post-Resurrection
appearance from the same source that have the ring of authenticity. "Now the
Lord...went to James [his brother] and appeared to him. For James had taken
an oath that he would not eat bread...till that hour when he saw him risen
from the dead... The Lord said, 'Bring a table and bread'... He took bread
and blessed and broke it and gave it to James the Just and said to him, 'My
brother, eat your bread, for the Son of Man is risen from those who sleep.'"


EXCERPT TWO:

...the variety of their Resurrection stories is both convincing and
unnerving. Most of them have a grainy credibility; at least one (Matthew's)
seems generic and manufactured. Paul's account, in I Corinthians 15, was
written some 25 years after Jesus' death and precedes Mark by perhaps a
decade.

Even with the completion of the four canonical Gospels, Paul's
interpretation of the Resurrection remains the fullest--in the silently
cataclysmic event of Jesus' return to life, God the Father ratified and
glorified the Son's chosen path and the redemptive agony to which Jesus had
consented in his horrific death. Finally Paul asserts what seems, to many
Christians and non-Christians alike, the hardest and truest test of all: "If
Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is empty, and your faith is
empty."

It is on such passionate belief that the existence of Christianity and its
success as a world religion has depended. Without some such conviction, how
else might a core of terrified cowards and brave women be so emboldened to
spread the news of their teacher's salvation to a hostile world? There was
no real money in it for them, no great power or glamour, only centuries of
persecution. The still astonishing fact is that they believed their teacher
had died and then returned, not in a vision but in a credible body, to urge
them outward. What more has any person ever known about him?

And the fact remains that the substance of Jesus' teaching is the basis on
which many Christians establish their faith. Its piercing good sense,
imaginative eloquence, the breathtaking stringency of his ethical demands
and his simultaneous patience and compassion are crucial to the intimacy
that so many establish with this long gone man. The promises he makes in the
Gospel of John, in the resonant (and quite literal) King James translation,
have strengthened endangered men and women from the terrors of Roman
martyrdom till today--"Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God,
believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not
so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you...that where I
am, there ye may be also."

At heart, the ethical teachings of Jesus are not markedly different from
those of the earlier Jewish prophets, above all Isaiah. Jesus' emphasis on
acceptance and mercy is especially strong, even to the point of demanding
that his followers not resist evil. He insists that the unrepentant outlaws
of the world will enter the reign of God before the righteous. Yet he
demands that his hearers be "perfect even as your Father in Heaven is
perfect." His sense of the imminence of God's reign, and the change of heart
it demands, is expressed in earlier Hebrew scripture, but only Jesus expects
to administer the reign.

Whatever Jesus' final expectation, that reign did not arrive in his lifetime
or in the lives of his earliest companions. Yet a majority of his followers
continue to expect it. In the face of so long an uncertainty, how has his
following not only endured but grown so hugely through two millenniums? And
what can be expected of his long potent holding power over human imagination
and hope in the near and distant future? If benign Christian institutions
and the capacity to believe in a God who loves his creation should weaken
fatally, if the artistic inspiration of the figure of Jesus should wane--as
it has in some of the West today--are the existential promises of his
teaching sufficient to maintain a world faith? What else has he to offer a
ferociously diverse but rapidly shrinking planet?

As any believer might point out, there is the chance that Jesus was right.
Perhaps he was what he claimed to be--the Son of God, the Messiah of Israel.
Since his Resurrection, he has become--in the minds of billions--a
transnational Messiah who continues to care for individual humans and to
save them from internal and external evil.

I am one who believes himself a direct recipient of such care. Fifteen years
ago, as I was about to undergo five weeks of withering radiation for a
10-in.-long cancer inside my spinal cord, I found myself--an outlaw
Christian who had, and has, no active tie with a church--transported,
thoroughly awake, to another entirely credible time and place. I was lying
on the shore of the Lake of Galilee with Jesus' disciples asleep around me.

Then Jesus came forward and silently indicated that I should follow him into
the lake. Waist deep in the water, I felt him pour handfuls down the long
fresh scar on my back--the relic of unsuccessful surgery a month before.
Jesus suddenly told me, "Your sins are forgiven." Appalled by my dire
physical outlook, I thought ungratefully, "That's the last thing I need"; so
I asked him, "Am I also cured?" He said, "That too." Then, as though I'd
forced his hand, he turned and climbed ashore with me well behind him.

Despite succeeding years of more successful but unavoidably devastating
surgeries, permanent paralysis of my legs and a nonstop assault of spinal
pain, I've experienced no similar encounter. That fact tends to validate,
for me, an objective core to the experience. If I manufactured one visionary
self-consolation, why wouldn't I have repeated that solace in ensuing years
of even worse trouble? In any case, to the surprise of my doctors, I've
survived without apparent return of the cancer, and my life is more
rewarding and productive than before that washing in Galilee. My lifelong
sense that Jesus of Nazareth stood in a unique and redeeming relation to the
Creator of this universe at least has intensified, though I have felt no
right to claim intimacy with him. As for so many others, he has never seemed
less than mysterious, and my experience of his overwhelming but oddly
businesslike healing and the memory of the unstinting mercy in his grave
face and eyes are indelible.

Yet a person who shares Jesus' belief in himself may feel what I
cannot--that one must accept his final instruction to the disciples at the
end of Matthew: "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Go then and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all
that I have commanded you; and see, I am with you all the days to the end of
the age."

Given the gleaming confidence of those words, and in light of the appalling
failings of Jesus' followers, that last command goes on contributing heavily
to the evils of national and religious warfare, institutional and individual
hatred, imperialism and enslavement--and all in the name of a teacher who,
to our knowledge, never refused a single person who approached him honestly.
Yet alongside that havoc, and in the same two millenniums, Jesus' meaning
has resulted in the most far-reaching movements of mercy, tolerance and
human freedom and in the high-water marks of Western art. His words in
Matthew 11 still extend their old welcome--"Come unto me, all ye that labor
and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and
learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto
your souls." Such a deep-rooted promise seems unlikely to relent.

Complete Story:
http://www.pathfinder.com/time/magazine/articles/0,3266,35079,00.html


------------

David Sunfellow, Founder & Publisher
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
P.O. Box 10627
Sedona, AZ USA 86339-8627

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Friday, November 26, 1999
Jerusalem Braces for Syndrome Surge in Millennium

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/19991126/od/millennium_syndrome_1.html

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Jerusalem's main psychiatric clinic said Thursday it
expected a surge in admissions among millennium pilgrims struck by a
syndrome that convinces some people that they are characters from the bible.

"There is already an increase of about 50 to 60 percent," Gregory Katz, a
doctor at the Givat Shaul Mental Health Center, told Israel Radio.

"If all the forecasts of an increase in tourists are true, then we think the
cases will increase by 100 percent...We have a new emergency room but the
situation is difficult because we have to treat many sick people not
including the tourists."

Katz said the clinic was at present treating three foreigners affected by
what is known as Jerusalem Syndrome, including a woman who was convinced she
was a prophet.

The syndrome afflicts a minority of pilgrims to Jerusalem who are
overwhelmed by the religious magnetism of the Holy City, sacred to
Christians, Jews and Muslims.

The Givat Shaul clinic usually treats about 150 cases of the syndrome a
year, of which about 40 require admission.

The disorder is most notable among some Protestant Christians and Jews,
predominantly from the United States and Europe, according to Katz and
Jerusalem district psychiatrist Yair Bar-El, who identified the syndrome in
1982.

Some sufferers arrive mentally disturbed and become convinced they are
biblical figures such as Old Testament prophets, King David, Jesus, John the
Baptist or the Virgin Mary.

Others come to Jerusalem with visions of the end of the world and a third
type arrives perfectly sane yet feels inexplicably compelled to don white
robes -- sometimes their hotel bed sheets -- and preach rambling sermons.
"We've seen cases from aged 17 to 70," said Katz. "The average age is 35 and
people are of above average education."

Israel and the Palestinian Authority expect a record three million pilgrims
and tourists to visit the Holy Land in 2000 to mark the start of
Christianity's third millennium.

Israel has expelled about 60 Christian cultists from the country so far this
year, concerned that a tiny minority of zealots with apocalyptic visions of
the end of the world might try to trigger violence.

------------

David Sunfellow, Founder & Publisher
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
P.O. Box 10627
Sedona, AZ USA 86339-8627

Primary eMail: nhne@...
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