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Friday, December 27, 2002
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Alice Bailey & Djwhal Khul wrote: The distribution of the world's resources and the settled unity of the peoples of the world are in reality one and the same thing, for behind all modern wars lies a fundamental economic problem. Solve that and wars will very largely cease. In considering, therefore, the preservation of peace, as sought for and emphasized by the United Nations at this time, it becomes immediately apparent that peace, security and world stability are primarily tied up with the economic problem. When there is freedom from want, one of the major causes of war will disappear. Where there is uneven distribution of the world's riches and where there is a situation in which some nations have or take everything and other nations lack the necessities of life, it is obvious that there is a trouble-breeding factor there and that something must be done. Therefore we should deal with world unity and peace primarily from the angle of the economic problem. ... It is essential for the future happiness and progress of humanity that there should be no return to the old ways, whether political, religious or economic. Therefore, in handling these problems, we should search out the wrong conditions which have brought humanity to its present state of almost cataclysmic disaster. These conditions were the result of religious faiths which have not moved forward in their thinking for hundreds of years; of economic systems which lay the emphasis upon the accumulation of riches and material possessions and which leave all the power and the produce of the earth in the hands of a relatively few men, while the rest of humanity struggle for a bare subsistence; and of political regimes run by the corrupt, the totalitarian-minded, the grafters and those who love place and power more than they love their fellowmen. (12/27/02) | |
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Martin Murenbeeld writes: The practice of hedging gold price risk by selling gold "forward," as done by Barrick and other mining firms, generates an extreme amount of controversy. Barrick's hedging contracts have been called "fraudulent ... an invitation to bankruptcy" by no less than a professor emeritus at the Memorial University of Newfoundland, and Barrick's officers "blockheads wrapped up in their own glory who do not understand the very nature of the product they help bring up from the bowels of the earth." In a legal action brought forward by Reginald Howe on Dec. 7, 2000, an action supported by the Gold Anti-Trust Action group (GATA), Barrick, along with the Federal Reserve and major banks, was charged with suppressing the price of gold. It was claimed "Barrick has material non-public knowledge of [a] gold price-fixing scheme which they have used to their advantage." The Howe case was thrown out of court, but that hasn't stopped the attacks. On Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2002, Blanchard and Company, a supporter of GATA, filed in a Louisiana court the charge that Barrick and JP Morgan Chase Co. had "unlawfully combined to actively manipulate the price of gold." Indeed, Barrick's hedging program "involves a unique step whereby Barrick, and the bullion banks with which it operates in combination, can flood the market with central bank gold." That Blanchard did not also name all gold-lending central banks as co-defendants is a curious oversight! ... Daan Joubert writes: Hoo, boy. All this dust being raised by Tim Wood’s article on the Blanchard-Barrick-JPM lawsuit! One would think that the dispute of whether gold is being manipulated by a nest of conspirators has been settled a long time ago, with the pro and con camps withdrawing into their own circles so that each of them can tell their converted that they have WON! And then Blanchard comes along to light the fuse again! One can imagine much the same kind of abuse being thrown at each other in the days long ago when the people were divided over the relative positions and motions of the sun and the earth and later also whether the earth was flat or a ball. Then, as now with this conspiracy thing, the opposing camps were violently casting all kinds of philosophical arguments at each other, with little effect to convince, when all they had to do was to wait until improved knowledge and more detailed understanding of reality solved the dispute in an objective manner, to find that a round earth was orbiting around the sun. (12/27/02) | |
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BBC News: Science -- Doctors have managed to make cells taken from human foetuses grow into fully functional kidneys in a mouse. The technique could offer a more practical way of helping patients who need organ transplants. Thousands in the UK alone are on the waiting list for a new kidney. Even if one is found, the patient will have to take anti-rejection drugs forever. However, just a small number of specially selected cells taken from the foetus and transplanted into a mouse were able to carry on developing and create an entire organ with all its different parts. ... The advance, by doctors at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, was reported in the latest edition of Nature Medicine. (12/27/02) | |
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BBC News: Science -- A whale that beached itself in Japan this summer has turned out to be the most complete specimen ever seen of a rare species, scientists have said. The creature, which died soon after coming ashore in July, has been identified as a Longman's beaked whale. ... That species - Indopacetus pacificus - is known from two skull samples, one found in 1882 and the other in 1968, and from other fragmentary remains found in South Africa, the Maldives and Kenya. In 1926, HA Longman described the original find as a new species. ... When the South African specimen was found in August, whale expert Vic Cockcroft said the discovery of a Longman's beaked whale was extremely important. "It's amazingly valuable, simply because we know absolutely nothing about the animals because they have only been seen two or three times alive," he said. "We don't know the maximum size, we don't know where they feed or what they feed on. I mean we know absolutely nothing about them, where they occur even," Dr Cockcroft said. (12/27/02) | |
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New York Life: Business -- Anil Duggal is 37 years old, but he looks like a mischievous boy as he turns his office lights low. He hits a button and grins gleefully as the flat panel he holds generates a white glow bright enough to light the room. The panel is made from thin sheets of specially treated plastic on glass that seems to generate almost as much light from a small jolt of electricity as an incandescent lightbulb running on standard current. If Mr. Duggal and his team of researchers at the General Electric Global Research Center in this small town not far from Schenectady can figure out how to dispense with the glass, they could be a short hop away from developing super-thin lighting and energy sources that could be rolled off printing presses like newspapers. And that could usher in an era of cheap, clean-burning lights, batteries, solar cells — and the beginning of plastic-based electronics. ... Lexan polycarbonate, the first super-strong heat resistant plastic and the precursor to the whole family of so-called engineered thermoplastics, was born here in 1953; it became the underpinning of GE Plastics. Today, G.E.'s nanotechnology researchers are studying why nature can turn calcium carbonate into lustrous, strong seashells, while human beings can only wrest chalk from the same substance. If they crack that mystery, the result might be heat-resistant ceramic materials that are as light as dinner plates yet as strong as steel. GE Power Systems and GE Aircraft Engines could use the materials to make more durable and efficient generators and turbines, and GE Plastics could probably find a host of outside customers.(12/27/02) | |
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Christian Science Montitor -- Coming to a screen near you: Al Jazeera in English. The Arabic-language news network, notorious for broadcasting the statements of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda colleagues, plans to open an English-language website in early 2003 and begin distributing English-language news programming by satellite and cable late next year. Since it began broadcasting in 1996, Al Jazeera has brought unprecedented Arabic-language journalistic scrutiny to the regimes of the Middle East. Now its executives and journalists say they want to provide English speakers in the US and elsewhere with more accurate and informed reporting about the world's most turbulent region. Headquartered in this small, wealthy Persian Gulf kingdom, Al Jazeera has won American praise for raising media standards in the Arab world, where virtually all news outlets operate under some form of government control. In efforts to address the Arab world directly, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld have granted the channel interviews since Sept. 11, 2001. In mid-December, during a visit to Doha, Mr. Rumsfeld scheduled another interview with the channel, but pulled out following a testy exchange with an Al Jazeera reporter at a press conference. Al Jazeera, says Kenton Keith, a former US ambassador to Qatar, "no more than other news organizations, has a slant. Its slant happens to be one most Americans are not comfortable with.... But the fact is that Al Jazeera has revolutionized media in the Middle East. (12/27/02) | |
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Washington Post -- U.S. retailers, reeling from a lackluster holiday season that is forecast to be the weakest in more than 30 years, may ring in the new year with steep markdowns on clothing, accessories -- and profit forecasts. Analysts cut earnings estimates for retailers ranging from sector leader Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to upscale jeweler Tiffany & Co. Inc. on Tuesday, a day after major chain stores reported another week of tepid sales in what was supposed to be the biggest shopping period of the year. In a weekly report on Tuesday, the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishiand UBS Warburg forecast holiday sales in November and December would be up an anemic 1.5 percent over last year, the smallest gain since the banks began tracking weekly sales in 1970. (12/27/02) | |
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Washinton Post -- The dollar slipped to three-year lows against the euro and a four-year low against the Swiss franc in holiday-thinned Asian trade on Thursday as worries over a possible war with Iraq continued to pressure the greenback. Traders said sentiment remained bearish for the U.S. currency as speculation is growing that the United States will attack Iraq shortly after January 27 -- the deadline for United Nations arms inspectors to give their reports to the U.N. Security Council. Israel's military intelligence chief has told lawmakers that any U.S. assault on Iraq is likely to be in early February, the Israeli parliament's spokesman said on Wednesday. "I think the market is almost 100 percent convinced that there will be war," said Koichi Ono, economist at Daiwa Institute of Research. Although some analysts think the impact of war on the U.S. economy would be negligible, especially if it finished quickly, the dollar is under pressure as many firms are likely to curtail investment before the war ends, putting a brake on the economy. (12/27/02) | |
5:17:37 AM 
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© TrustMark
2003
Timothy Wilken.
Last update:
1/1/2003; 4:07:10 AM.
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