Year 2000

Is extinction forever? Australian Museum, is to take steps to clone the 130-year-old remains of a young Tasmanian Tiger (thylacine. Reported May 2000. Ethical concerns exist: is this a matter of creating life? Meanwhile, Australian researchers in Adelaide/Melbourne have lately cloned a sheep and a calf.

April 2001: Microsoft scientists are working on a research project - Skyserver - designed to put survey information from the heavens into a huge Internet database so that anyone can consult it. A senior Microsoft researcher involved is Jim Gray. The project should be Net available by April 2001. Earlier, Microsoft has been working on TerraServer which presents aerial pictures of the Earth's surface as housed on one of the largest databases serving the Internet. (Reported 25 April 2000)

Forever Amber?: April, 2000: Germany hands back to Russia, portions of the Czar's famed Amber Room, stolen by the Nazis during World War Two.

The world-wide GM debate: Lord Melchett, executive director of Greenpeace, in Britain has spoken out against the use of genetically modified food as representing "the most irreversible and frightening" threat to mankind. His view: "You are putting it out into the environment on which all human and animal life depends"... Reported in world press week ending 8 April, 2000.

The cloning argument: The British Government is now deciding on approval for the cloning of human embryos, which may pave the way for creating "spare parts for human bodies" via tissue engineering. Reported 4 April, 2000.

April 2000 from 23 October, 1999: World publicity for a plan to clone a Woolly Mammoth recently de-iced from Siberian permafrost. One researcher is French explorer Bernard Buigues. The animal had been in a 22,000kg ice-block on the Taimyr Peninsula of Northern Siberia and was transported using the world's largest helicopter. By April 2000, researchers will begin closer examination of the animal. Now the search is on for a frozen woolly rhino.

Slavery: In Africa, the uncared for continent: Human rights and UN officials report that in Lesotho, Africa, are about 60,000 "herder boys" living and working in indentured servitude. Some are as young as six. Their poverty-stricken parents hire them to cattle owners for food, small cash amounts or to pay debts. When they become adults, they have no education and are unemployable. A spokesperson is Malineo Motsephe, of UNICEF in the capital of Lesotho, Maseru. The World Bank has been examining the system behind this sort of "child labour". Another commentator is Charles Jacobs, co-founder of a one-year-old American Anti-Slavery Group in Boston, which has formed mainly to end the slave trade in Sudan. (Reported 12 June 1999)

1999, October: India, State of Orissa devastated by powerful cyclone, and by floods again by late July 2001.

1999: US President Bill Clinton orders a government investigation into if and how the entertainment business markets violence to children.

From early December, 1999: On Public Display in Australia, Reconstructed Dutch East India Company ship Batavia on display at Australian National Maritime Museum Wharf, Darling Harbour, Sydney. Contact: (02) 9298 3777. She ran aground on the West Australian Coast, 3 June 1629.

There is nothing new about the sex-slave trade... Which has surfaced freshly in Kosovo, where Eastern European women - Moldovan, Ukrainian, Bulgarian and Romanian - are being traded. Some are as young as 15. (Reported 29 April 2000 with information from UN police officers)

From 25 April, 2000: Krakens: From antiquity, The Kraken has been mentioned, but never tracked. Now, the son of Jacques Cousteau, Jean-Michael, is using submersibles to search for legendary giant squid (architeuthis dux) in waters 600m deep off New Zealand. At Kailoura Canyon off the NZ south island, waters known to be the haunt of sperm whale.

Dinosaur with Heart?: Could a dinosaur fossil possibly contain the remains of a heart? Meaning, were dinosaurs warm-blooded? American researchers think yes. US researchers have been working on an artefact from a Thescelosaurus (a pony-sized plant-eater roaming the US 66 million years ago that is not from the lineage of dinosaurs that produced birds) - a grapefruit-sized reddish-brown heart, as denoted by 3D computerised images The heart may have had a four-chamber structure and a single aorta. One researcher is Dr. Dale Russell, North Carolina State Museum of Natural Science. Reported 22 April, 2000. See a recent issue of the journal, Science. Check Website: http://www.dinoheart.org

Japan: The Japanese Government on 14-4-2000 approved a Bill that if passed will ban human cloning. (Reported 15 April 2000)

Lost World of international charity: In Ethiopia, following severe drought, "less than 7 per cent of food aid has reached the intended beneficiaries. The Somali region is especially hard hit. (World Food Program report) (Reported 12 April 2000)

The lost world of "Holocaust denial": British revisionist historian David Irving, 62, faces financial ruin after a British judge, Justice Gray, rejected Irving's libel claim against a US academic who called Irving "a Holocaust denier". The US academic was Prof. Deborah Lipstadt, published by Penguin. Irving is a self-published author. Lipstadt was represented by London QC Richard Rampton. Part of the defense was formed since the Israeli Government had allowed the use of Adolf Eichmann's handwritten memoirs, which have been under heavy security for 25 years. (Reported 12 April 2000)

Male homosexuals: "Studies have shown gay men have more circulating male hormones in their bodies and larger genitalia". (From a newspaper, reported 8 April 2000)

Abu Simbel, Egypt: A high-tech show is being planned to present the glories of the reign of Pharaoh Ramses II (reigned 1298BC-1235). Computer equipment will simulate the presence of four giant, rock-cut statues, 20m-tall collossi, at Abu Simbel, 1225km south of Cairo. A similar show will also be staged at a nearby temple of Queen Nefertiti. About 7000-9000 tourists are expected to visit the show daily. (Reported early in 2000)

Suicide in China: Concern is being expressed about the suicide rate in China, which perhaps claims 250,000 lives per year, or as medical researchers suggest, 300,000. The World Bank says the figure could be even higher. China has one-fifth of the world's population. The rate is highest in rural areas. Most suicides are the result of family conflict, not alcoholism or mental illness as in the West. Many Chinese rural suicides take pesticide, for which there are usually no resuscitation facilities in their area. (Reported 8 April 2000)

April 2000- 22 April 1550: The first encounter between Europeans and South American Indians, as recorded by Pero Vaz de Caminha, an official scribe for a Portuguese flotilla that accidentally arrived on the coast of Brazil, off-course for a voyage to India. The Indians were given a red beret, a linen hood and a black hat. In return, the Indians gave a headdress of bird feathers, a necklace of white beads. Not so long later, the Portuguese enslaved the Indians. At the time of first contact, there were about five million Indians, in 1400 tribes speaking 1300 languages. In April 2000, a 500th anniversary was observed at Porto Seguro, a small coastal town. Today, DNA research reveals that about 45 million Brazilians, about a third of the population, share some indigenous DNA levels. Brazil still has about 30 pockets of Amazon jungle where so-called Stone Age tribes live, of about 100-300 people. Land rights remain a serious issue for Brazil's indigenous people.

March 2000: Tel Aviv, Israel: "Today it is with profound emotion that I set foot in the land where God chose to pitch his tent." Pope John Paul II on arriving at Tel Aviv for his pilgrimage to the Holy Land. (Reported 25 March, 2000)

In China during March-April 2000: The remains of a 1200-year-old Nestorian Church have been found near the ancient city of Xian. The presence of the Nestorians dating from that period has been well established, but no trace of an actual "church" has been seen before. I have heard rumours of the possibility of the continued use of Nestorian symbols and possibly some rituals in remote areas of Inner Mongolia - a subject that I would like to pursue, but have lacked the time to do so.
(From emailer Colin Disley in China in 2000)

Uganda Death Cult: March 2000: Death cult, a church at Kanungu, in western Uganda. Followers of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God. At least some are Catholics or former Catholics. What had first seemed to shocked observers to be a mass suicide was mass murder at the house of a former Catholic priest, where 300 bodies were found. The 300 dead are first thought to have set themselves alight in a belief that the Virgin Mary was coming to spirit them to heaven. But then began the discovery of murdered bodies, six thrown in a pit in the house of one of the cult leaders in Kanungu. Then, 153 bodies were found buried under the floor of a cult transit camp, half of these 153 were children, about 50km from the church. Other groups of bodies were found. A cult leader is Dominic Kataribaabo, a former Catholic priest. The cult is led by former Catholic teacher, Joseph Kibwetere, who was influenced by Credeonia Mwerinde, who said she was a former prostitute and claimed to see visions of the Virgin Mary. The cult banned sex, wealth had to be handed over, and silence was enforced. It preached the end of the world being nigh and that only believers would be saved. The cult had also predicted the end of the world would be on 31 December, 1999. Did leaders panic when the date failed to materialise and begin to murder their followers? It remains strange that all this happened in one of the most densely populated parts of Uganda. (Reported after March 2000 in world press)

Post-Holocaust pressure: Jewish groups are pressuring the Vatican to open its records on the timeframe of The Holocaust, following a recent apology by the Pope for past actions of followers of the Catholic Church, prior to his visit to Israel. (Reported 14 March, 2000)

Origins of life?: Some 500 million years ago, "a sudden proliferation of living things on earth" coincides with an increase in meteor and comet impacts on the moon. This would correspond with the rise in animal types about 400 million years ago in what is known as "the Cambrian explosion", according to a new study in the journal, "Science", discussing how life could have been seeded by chemicals of extra-terrestrial origin, (a process called panspermia, though hotly debated ). A researcher has been Paul Renne, director of Berkeley Geochronology Centre. (Reported 11 March, 2000)

1780s: Slavery on the African West Coast: SBS TV screens documentary entitled: As it Happened: Cahokia - African Trade. The upshot is that there was no African tribe on the West Coast which did not have its own form of participation in the transAtlantic slave trade. West Coast Africans admit this on guided tours through old slave trading forts. Today, Afro-Americans when they visit Mother Africa and this part of the coast, and go on such tours, are often tearfully devastated to find that it is not only Europeans who can be blamed for the slave trade which took their ancestors to the Americas.
By the late eighteenth century, England-educated Africans might be writing on slaving business from the West African coast to people in Bristol or Liverpool. One-tenth of all slaves were provided by Wedah, which was managed by Africans. Goree was often managed by African women who liased with white merchants. One slave market of West Africa did not close till 1906. To the north of Africa, African boys were sold to Arabs for use as eunuchs, the death rate for eunuch candidates was 90 per cent.
(Screened 8 March, 2000 in Australia)

Rome: Pope John Paul II takes an unprecedented step for a Pope, apologising and asking for world forgiveness for the sins of the followers of the Catholic Church (not the Church itself); regarding the Crusades, the Inquisitions, mistreatment of Jewish people, and varied forms of social oppression in more recent centuries. Rather predictably, world reaction has been varied. (Reported March 12-13 2000)

Lost in the world of international high finance since 1933-1945? SBS TV in Australia screens fascinating documentary, Banking with Hitler. On the BIS, an international finance institution which among other things after 1918 handled German reparations payments to Allied nations. British economist Maynard Keynes argued successfully during World War II, when the Nazis had increasingly used BIS for deeply criminal purposes, that the BIS should not be disbanded as it could be useful still at the end of the war. (Reported 4 March, 2000)

Australia: The fastest-growing religion in Australia is Hinduism - "the lure of 3 million gods". (Reported 2 March 2000, ABC TV)

Medicos prescribe religious activities against heart disease? A growing body of medical opinion now seems to favour religious belief. Surgery professor Gabriel Kune of Melbourne University began some debate about 1980 when he found that some religious believers had less chance of developing certain kinds of bowel cancer. And, in early 2000, The New England Journal of Medicine published an article, "Should Physicians Prescribe Religious Activities?"

Religious tolerance writ small: Philippines president Joseph Estrada (by December 2000 under impeachment proceedings), visits southern Philippines, and one man is killed and eight injured as probably Christian vigilantes attack a mosque. Meantime, probably Muslim rebels bomb a Catholic radio station. (Reported 29 February, 2000)

Pompeii, Italy: Renovating the lost world of archaeological purity: Pompeii and its ruins, lately neglected, are to be given a new lease of life as private firms help to restore archaeological sites, as government provides "protection" from the Mafia's grip. (The Camorra)

Mount Vesuvius in AD79 blew up and buried Pompeii in volcanic ash. (Reported 26 February 2000)

David and Goliath, as in the Bible story: Goliath may have lost his fight with David due to poor vision, is the theory of Mr. Vladimir Berginer, a neurologist at Ben-Gurion University, of the Negev. Perhaps, Goliath, the three-metre tall champion of the Philistine, suffered acromegaly, which is associated with gigantism, and means poor peripheral vision. This is due to a tumour of the pituitary gland pressing on the point where the optic nerves cross over. (Reported 19 February, 2000)

King Arthur's Round Table was located where? A researcher in Scotland, Archie McKerracher, believes it was not in any castle in England's West Country, at Glastonbury or the Cornish castle of Tintagel, but in present-day Stirlingshire in Scotland. Precisely, behind No. 40 Adam Crescent, Stenhousemuir, Stirlingshire. Where, the knight's meeting place was "a round hut" or a beehive-shaped stone hut. (Reported 15 February 2000)

Buddhism in Cambodia: Tales of sex, alcohol use, arson and threats of violence at the Kien Svay Krav pagoda in the capital, Phnom Penh. One monk has had his house burned down. The dispute is said to relate to a time in 1994 when older monks and some local authorities sold 6 hectares of Pagoda land - which became a useful tourist site. Parking and admission fees are also related to a spate of allegations. (Reported 9 February 2000)

China and government attitude to cults: Another cult has been vilified by the Chinese government. This time, it is a cult called Zhong-gong, a spiritual group termed "an evil cult" by President Jiang Zemin, the same words used to describe Falun Gong, outlawed in July 1999. (Reported in Australia on 1 February 2000)

London: The UK House of Commons votes to lower the age of consent for male homosexuals from 18 to 16. (Reported February 2000)

Allegations arise on Korean TV that Korean troops in Vietnam before 1973 massacred hundreds of civilians as part of searches for undercover Vietcong troops. Meantime, US troops are now said to have killed hundreds of Korean civilians during the Korean war, for which compensations are now being asked. (Reported 12 February 2000)

In Africa, the uncared-for continent: By February 2000: Following genocide a few years ago in Rwanda, Africa, husband-sharing has become common in the country, where 11 per cent of the population are estimated to be HIV-positive.

The art of seduction: "Being seductive is a physical activity, like sport", says French expert and teacher, Veronique Jillien, mistress of a Paris-based School of Seduction. But rest assured, manners and good conversation also count. (Reported February 2000)

Robbing Robin Hood of his reputation?: The suspicion is getting about that Robin Hood was gay, hence all that good fellowship and solidarity with other outlaws in the forest. By February 2000, see works by Stephen Knight, Professor of English Literature at Cardiff University, UK. Read his book: Robin Hood: A Complete Study of the English Outlaw. 1994.

On the US West Coast: Revd. Mort Fanu becomes co-founder of First Presbyterian Church of Elvis the Divine. (Let us all hope there is no second church for this - LW). (Reported 12 February, 2000)

By February, 2000: There has been a 3,600 per cent increase in the price of admission to the Taj Mahal, the famous 347-year-old monument to romantic love, at Agra in northern India. The result has been a steep drop in overseas tourist numbers in the area. The monument usually has 2.4 million visitors annually, but only 0.7 million are non-Indians.

Darwinianism on the rise? A new survey by Australian Social Monitor finds that 45 per cent of Australians are unsure whether humans evolved from lower species via Darwinian natural selection, while 55 per cent think that Darwin's theory was "definitely or probably true". It is noted by the report that Darwin as he published his work was afraid his theory would lead to an upsurge in sexual permissiveness. (Reported 1 February 2000)

Promoting a culture of non-violence and peace for the world's children

"For the first time in the history of humanity, all the Nobel Peace Prize Laureates - without exception - have signed an appeal to the heads of all the member states of the United Nations. Their appeal has been heard. The United Nations General Assembly has proclaimed the first decade of the 21st Century (from 2001-2010) The International Decade for the Promotion of a Culture of Non-violence and Peace for the Children of the World. This historic decision was unanimously passed. Check Website: http://www.nobel.org/
(From the journal Madonna, January-February, 2000)

New York: 22 January, 2000: US Entrepreneurs Dan Gluck and Alison Maddex hope to create a Museum of Sex at Fifth Avenue and 27th Street. Sex: "its impact on art, popular culture, and science throughout history". The duo have had such hopes for some time now.
(Hang in there, guys! Twenty years ago, no one could possibly have imagined that the Sydney Gay Mardi Gras could possibly become as big as it has.)

In the year 2000, troublesome sunspots are predicted. The previous worst year for sunspots, which follow an eleven-year cycle, was 1989.

January 2000: Year of release of new movies on Joan of Arc. The Messenger, The Story of Joan of Arc starring Milla Jovovich and John Malkovich, costing Aust$98 million from Luc Besson. Ron Maxwell's Joan of Arc: The Virgin Warrior, starring Mira Sorvino. In 1999 was a TV mini-series Joan of Arc starring Leelee Sobieski. There is only one known portrait of Joan, discovered in May 1999 in her birthplace, Domremy, in Eastern France. A suit of armour she presumably owned was found in an attic in a French country house in 1998. Check Website based in Alburquerque, New Mexico: http://www.stjoan-center.com/

Black Holes on the increase?: Reports spread that a space telescope launched in July 1999 has enabled the finding that the universe contains at least 100 million "black holes". (16 January 2000)

Management Consultants play the Bard Card: Business folk and government employees also are to be given work-overs by people involved in the self-improvement industry who have combed Shakespear's works for the secrets of success. Should the tactics used by the characters in Shakespear's play be imitated, or avoided?
Mr Ken Adelman has been employing this kind of approach with his company, Movers and Shakespear's. '"All the world's a stage" - it's also where you do business.' By now, three books are available providing how-to clues for business, drawn from Shakespear's work. Some think that Shakespear is particularly good at illuminating the dark side of human nature in the light of modern business practice. (Reported 10 January, 2000)

Are devotedly Christian American Protestants rediscovering the joys of sex, or only now discovering them?
New books are available, with titles such as Sex Techniques and Sexual Fulfillment in Christian Marriage. Is it a profitable publishing trend? Do Christian sex manuals sell by the million? Is it surprising that there is mention of "the most keenly sensitive organ in a woman's body" which "your Heavenly Father placed there for your enjoyment"? Do you want to listen to a cassette entitled, "How to have Holy Sex"? It is claimed that a secular survey (by the University of Chicago in 1994) has found that in the US, conservative Protestant women claim to have more orgasms than do women of other denominations, some "32 per cent every time".
Or should an attitude have been derived from what St Paul had to say a long time ago, "Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent..." (1 - Corinthians - 7).
(Reported 8 January 2000)

8 January 2000: Newspaper headline: Muslims demand holy war on Ambon (in Indonesia). Following killings in Christian-Muslim conflict in the Maluku Islands (the original Spice Islands coveted by Europeans since 1600AD and before). Meantime, also in the news, where are many missing East Timorese people?

Witches brew: Early January 2000: Former Beatle George Harrison, 56 (who dies November 2001), is attacked and almost knifed to death in his home by a "drugs psychotic", Michael Abram, 33, of Liverpool. Abram, who takes music and lyrics literally, had begun to obsess about The Beatles since he believed they were witches.

The Future in Asia? An "age-old" Asian dream to build a "Suez Canal" across Southern Thailand, linking the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, while avoiding the Straits of Malacca, has surfaced again by January 2000. (In recent months it was also reported that Asian investors were becoming increasingly interested in the Panama Canal.) With trade, security and political implications, any such Asian canal would take two to five days off voyage-times, and save about $450,000 per large oil-tanker trip. A French engineer first suggested such a canal in 1677 to King Narai the Great. British engineers failed in 1858 to make such a canal with approval from King Rama IV. The French became interested in 1869 having recently completed the Suez Canal. By 1934, Japan was plotting with Thailand to make such a canal. Present-day building costs for any such canal would be about Aust$30 billion.

January 2000: SBS TV in Australia is screening the TV documentary, Africans in America: America's Journey Through Slavery.

Early January, 2000: A leading figure in Tibetan Buddhism, the 14-year-old lama, Ugyen Trinley Dorje, has fled from China to Tibet, then India, on foot, leaving China's religious policy on Tibetan matters "in tatters".
With several monks from 28 December, he endured a sleepless, seven-day walk from Tolung Tsurphu monastery through snow-filled Himalayan passes to the home of the Tibetan government in exile, Dharamsala. In 1992 the boy was officially recognised by China as the 17th Karmapa (head, or lama, living Buddha of the Kagyu sect) of a significant sect of Buddhism. The boy is a noted figure third in line in importance in Tibetan Buddhism from the Dalai Lama (now 64-years-old) and the Panchen Lama, as he is recognised as a reincarnation of the 16th Karmapa Rinpoche. The Dalai Lama fled similarly from Chinese influence in 1959. Dorje was born on 26 June, 1985 in Eastern Tibet to humble nomadic parents. Celestial events were said to accompany his birth; a triple sun plus rainbows and unearthly music including from conch shells. An important sect buttressing this belief system is The White Sect, which has a history stretching back to 1283AD. The first Karmapa of the Kagyu sect was given authority by the Mongolian ruler, Kublai Khan.
By 22 January, it is reported that "The seventh Reting Buddha, the two-year-old enthroned by China 'as one of the leading figures in Tibetan Buddhism', Soinam Puncong, will be taught to love the Communist Party." Puncong will be regarded as a living Buddha. Born north of Lhasa on 13 October 1997.

A FAST-GROWING cult or religion has been started in Vietnam by a woman, Ching Hai, 49-years-old, as supreme master, Here, God is to be spoken of in non-sexist terms. (Reported in Australia on 2 January 2000)

New Millennium? 1799: Approx, Editors of The Times newspaper, London, after receiving letters on when the Nineteenth Century would begin, wrote: ..."when the present century ends... is one of the most absurd (questions) that can engage the public attention, and ... it appears plain. The present century will not terminate till January 1, 1801, unless it can be made out that 99 are 100 ... It is a silly, childish discussion, and only exposes the want of brains of those who maintain a contrary opinion to that we have stated."

Christmas, 1999: Computer hackers tried to ruin the Vatican's Website in a three-day attack. Their efforts involved planting bugs to block pages or to crash the site, and inserting blasphemy or pornography.

Vikings and a Massacre: Ireland and Dublin, Discovery in Kilkenny, Southern Ireland, of Viking artefacts C1000AD, of coins and jewellery, particularly, button made of fine-woven silver wire. Artefacts found at site of a massacre and to be displayed in Dublin. (As reported in Australia on 15 January 2000)

1 January 2000: The World finds out the mass/cumulative effects of the Millennium Bug, or, Y2K Bug. Watch for news from Fiji, New Zealand, Eastern Australian on this dread morning. (As it happened, nothing happened!) Was curing the Millennium Bug a necessity, an expensive insurance premium or a scary and expensive scam? (Will we ever really know?)

1 January 2000: Release of a Website that replicates the 1066 Domesday Book compiled by William the Conqueror of England. From The Millennium Mapping Company.

2000: Palestine timeline: Second intifada (uprising) begins against Israel. Support for Hamas grows, especially in Gaza area.

2000: Scientist re-assess likely future emissions and warn that, if things go badly, the world could warm by 6 °C within a century. Series of major floods around the world reinforce fears that global warming is raising the risk of extreme weather events. But in November, crunch talks held in The Hague to finalise the "Kyoto rule book" fail to reach agreement after EU and US fall out. Decisions postponed until at least May 2001. (Greenhouse Timeline)

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