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updated 15 October 2014
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updated 15 October 2014
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Yearender: 2002: US Defence Policy Board advises the Pentagon of a view that Saudi Arabia is a key element in the spread of terrorism from the Arab World. "It is central to the self-destruction of the Arab world and the chief vector of the Arab crisis and its outwardly-directed aggression." Paul Sheean writing in Weekend Sydney Morning Herald (17-18 January 2004).
Yearender: 2002: UN passes a US-sponsored resolution calling for creation of a Palestinian state. Syria does not support it. Israel occupies Bethlehem, Jenin, Hebron, Ramallah and other West Bank towns.
And given what happens in Iraq in
early 2003, to top off the Year 2002, a little inside-running on
the people lately running the world - Ed
The International Knowledge Gap
The National Geographic-Roper 2002 Global Geographic Literacy
Survey found that 83% of young Americans aged 18 to 24 could not
find Afghanistan or Israel on a world map, but knew that the island
featured in 2002 season's television show Survivor is in the South
Pacific.
Additionally, Americans, who came in next to last among the nine
countries surveyed, held a grossly exaggerated self-image--nearly
30% thought the U.S. population to be a billion or more. Less than
half could identify France, the United Kingdom or Japan on a world
map, while less than two-thirds could correctly identify
China...
http://www.asiaintheschools.org/knowledgegap.htm
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December 2002: Singapore: Alleged failed Al-Qa'ida plot to bomb US targets.
31 December 2002: Raelians, founded in 1997, have an aim of bringing humanity to eternal life via cloning, says its leader, Claude Vorilhon, who is aged 56 and otherwise known as Rael. About now is has a list of 2000 "customers" willing to pay US $200,000 each to have themselves or a loved one cloned. In the US currently, a firm named Clonaid is managed by a scientist and Raelian, Dr. Brigette Boissilier, aged 46, has been conducting research into cloning. It was reported by 28 December 2003 that Clonaid had run secretive experiments resulting in the birth of a cloned girl, delivered by caesarean section. Four other cloned babies are on the way. Few details are available, which is only fuelling very mixed reactions from world media and commentators of all sorts.
26 December 2002: Al-Jazeera broadcasts a tape said to be from bin-Laden, sent via Pakistan, saying eg., "We say our terror against America is blessed terror in order to put an end to suppression, in order for the United States to stop its support to Israel."
25 December 2000: Amrozi, later one of the Bali bombers of October 2002, has been ordered by major Al-Qa'ida operative, Hambali, to blow up churches in an East Java district as a "warm-up" for later bombing operations. Amrozi said that the noted Philippines terrorist Fathur Rahman alias Ghozi, was related to Amrozi's wife. (Reported in Australian newspaper, 20 June 2003)
C10thBC or later: Aphrodite was here?: Archaeologists in Greece led by Alexandros Manzarakis-Ainian suspect they have discovered a sacred chamber of an ancient Greek temple on the island of Kythnos which may have belonged to the goddess of love, Aphrodite. Or, it may have belonged to the wife of Zeus, Hera. Finds have been made in ruins at rear of the temple of about 1500 artefacts, including jewels, vases and statues, probably gifts from devotees, along with a statue of a divinity. The chamber was called "adyton" and only priests were allowed to enter. The temple was discovered in late 2001. Kythnos was an ancient capital on the north shore of its island and was inhabited possibly since the Tenth Century BC. (Reported 20 December 2002)
"Honour killings" in Pakistan: This year, at least 460 women in Pakistan have been killed by relatives in so-called "honour killings" to protect a family's name, according to a human rights group in Pakistan. Most of the women were killed by fathers, brothers or husbands on suspicion about extra-marital sexual activity. About 372 women were killed for similar reasons in the previous year. About 300 or more women were killed in the southern province of Sindh, "where a repressive tribal and feudal system holds sway". A case is even noted of a son killing his mother for "misbehaviour", while some men with whom a woman is allegedly associated might also be killed. The situations arise due to a complex interplay of old tribal codes regarding male honour, views on a man's ability to protect such honour, and an Islamic system's legal bias against women, where any such killing may also not be construed as a crime against the state, but against the victim, whose relatives have an option of protesting/forgiving, or not. If the victim's relatives do not protest (or conducted a killing), a view may be taken that there has been no offense. (Reported 14 December 2002 in Australia)
6 December 2002: Reports arise that an Internet site claiming to represent Al-Qa'ida says the group has decided to launch suicide attacks against Israel with the aim of destroying it.
22 November 2002: By now, reported possible capture by US of Al-Qa'ida's No. 3 operative, and chief operator in the Persian Gulf area, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who is said to have been involved in the 1998 bombing of US embassies in Africa and the October 2000 attack on USS destroyer, Cole. Nashiri is a Saudi Arabian who has worked with bin-Laden for ten years.
Newly-published book: Rohan Gunaratna, Inside Al-Qa'ida: Global Network of Terror. Scribe, 2002. (Quotes and views include: "Australia has to work jointly with South-East Asian countries to destroy JI. Its failure to do so will result in further attacks." - The designated successor to Osama bin-Laden is the principal strategist of Al-Qa'ida, Dr. Ayman al-Zawhair, who co-ordinates terrorist operations world-wide. - Outside Pakistan and Afghanistan, Al-Qa'ida concentrates its members in the Horn of Africa, Chechnya, and the Pankisi Gorge in Georgia in Russia, Yemen and South-East Asia.)
Iraq's opinion: "The people and rulers of Baghdad have
resolved to compel the Mongols of this age to commit suicide on its
walls." Saddam Hussein is determined to violently repel invaders
and has massed his troops and people for war. His remarks were made
during a speech to commemorate the 12th anniversary of the Gulf
War, which Hussein does not believe he lost. Meanwhile, predictions
are that Middle America is planning huge marches for peace.
The Weekend Australian, 18-19 December, 2002.
December 2002: Publication in London of book, Mother Teresa's Secret. (Il Segreto di Madre Teresa). Her writings reveal she experienced a 50-year-long crisis of doubt in the existence of God, that is, during the period she worked with the poor and dying of Calcutta.
1993: Abu Bakar Bashir (according to The Weekend
Australian of 14-15- December 2002) in 1993 gave a lecture in
Sydney in which he urged the establishment of an Islamic state in
Australia. It is reported in Australia by 16 November 2002 that
Bashir and another JI linkman, Abdullah Sungkar, have several times
travelled into Australia under false names to give lectures on
"religious topics". Another Indonesian-based group which advocates
creation of a South-East Asian Islamic state is Darul Islam. Such
groups term the philosophy of the existing Indonesian state
ideology as "Pancasila".
Bashir in 2002 was aged 64, of some Arabic descent. He was born in
Jombank, eastern Java in 1938 and became attracted to radical
Islamic groups (eg., the Darul Islam movement that worked against
Indonesian secularism in the 1950s). He has been working against
the secular state of Indonesia since he was a teenager. He led a
youth movement, and was behind a radio station urging
non-co-operation with any government institution "not governed by
Sharia Law". In 1973 he started a self-governing commune run on
strict Islamic lines. He spent some years Soeharto's jails from the
late 1970s for subversion (circulating literature calling for
jihad against enemies of Islam); then he fled to Malaysia
where he lived for 14 years. In Malaysia, at time he recruited men
for the Afghan jihad. He returned to Indonesia in 1998 as
Soeharto's regime fell. It is said that in the mid-1990s, Osama
bin-Laden sent his brother-in-law Muhammad Jamal Khalifa to
Indonesia to confer with Bashir. To Bashir, it is thought, Bali is
a last vestige of Hindu-Buddhist culture and modern Western
decadence as well. On the same page, an Indonesian specialist,
Damien Kingsbury, is quoted as saying, "We have to be very
honest... Islam is essentially a religion of emancipation...
Dispossessed people seek simple answers to complex questions." (See
articles, p. 9 of weekend Sydney Morning Herald, 19-20
October 2002)
1958: The Bigfoot Hoax in California: In 1958 (first sighting) and in 1967 ("photographic evidence of an apelike creature), Californians found they had a big ape living in their forests. Bigfoot folklore grew apace. It was all a hoax perpetrated by Ray Wallace, who died in November 2002 and his family have confessed the absurdities. The 1967 photo of "Bigfoot" was of Ray's wife dressed in a gorilla suit. (Voila Hollywood!) (Reported The Weekend Australian, 14-15 December 2002)
Religion vs Genetics: A Mormon challenging his faith in the US has rather predictably been hit with a media storm amongst other problems for disputing the "lost tribes of Israel" version of the origins of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He is Thomas Murphy of Seattle, who after some research has claimed in public that genetic evidence cannot show that modern Native Americans are descendants of lost Israelites who "wandered" across the Atlantic to America thousands of years ago. Once arrived, the Mormon belief is, the Israelites split into two tribes, the fair-skinned Nephites and the darker-skinned Lamanites. Later the Nephites were wiped out, the Lamanites survived as "Native Americans". Murphy now opts on the side of the usual explanation, that Native Americans are descendants of Asians migrating across a Bering Strait land bridge somewhere near Alaska - it is not possible for any sort of Mediterranean people to have become Native Americans. Murphy now finds The Book of Mormon to be "nineteenth-century fiction", and so has faced a punishment of excommunication which has been withdrawn due to anticipations of a media storm. Meanwhile, the orthodox Mormon view continues: that The Book of Mormon came from 45kg of gold plates inscribed faux-Egyptian by the ancient Nephites, discovered in the early 1800s in New York State and translated by founder of the Mormon Church, Joseph Smith, at the direction of an angel. The Economist reporting this suggests, "It is hardly science or history; but then the same might be said of other religious books." (Reported 14 December 2002)
By 14 December 2002, the Australian death toll from the Bali Bombing stands at 88.
10 December 2002: International pressure increases on the US to release information it has on Iraq's program(s) of weapons of mass destruction.
Reported 12 December 2002: Abu Bakar Bashir is now thought to
have called on his JI followers by about November 2000 to suspend
armed struggle for a Moslem state, including bombings, because of
fears of a crackdown on activists after an investigation by
Brussels-based International Crisis Group. It is also thought the
later Bali bombers were part of a hardline group of younger JI
members who were feeling that Bashir was by now "too weak and
accommodating".
Note: The founder of JI in Indonesia was Abdullah Sungkar.
9 December 2002: Indonesia's war-torn Aceh province may have a truce due to signing of an accord between government and separatist rebels.
Reported 8 November 2002: Accused Bali bomber Amrozi is reportedly not happy that Australians had died in the bombing, he had wanted Americans to die. Amrozi is also said to have admitted to links to Jemaah Islamiah cleric Abu Bakar Bashir and Al-Qa'ida's No. 3 man, Hambali (who was captured by 15 August 2003 or earlier, possibly in Thailand).
Cultural sensitivity: Malaysia's trade minister, Rafidah Aziz, a Moslem, was affronted when she went through some airport security checks, and had to put her hand luggage in front of sniffer dogs. It was a fasting month and dogs are haram (forbidden) to Moslems. "They [the security staff] were so insensitive," she complained. (Reported 8 December, 2002)
On 16 March, 1988, Saddam Hussein made his way into negative military history when he became the first leader ever to use chemical weapons on his own people, at Halabja, Kurdish territory, and up to 250 other communities, killing as many as 5000 people. Almost no medical investigative work has been done on the survivors, however, by the suppliers of the little-known agents, used, the UN, or any international opponents of the use of weapons of mass destruction. (Reported 7-8 December, 2002 in Sydney Morning Herald, article by a special correspondent)
30 November 2002: Confessed Bali bomber Imam Samudra (alias Abdul Asiz) is quoted as recently saying, "This is a sacred struggle, not a heinous one. Allah is great." By 9 November, Weekend Australian newspaper has carried a story that CNN had reported that Al-Qa'ida had bragged on a website that it claimed responsibility for the Bali attacks.
26 November 2002: Sydney Morning Herald reports that Yugoslavia is now said to be a hub for East European smugglers and military experts who are supplying Saddam Hussein with equipment and know-how to help him frustrate a US air campaign against Iraq.
Views of Malaysian prime minister Mahatir Mohamed: "I don't think the US is winning [the war on terror]. I don't think so because this is the kind of war that can go on for ages." He also feels, that Australia is more belligerent than many European countries; in South-East Asia, Australia will always be regarded as an outsider and never be accepted; the US since 9/11 has lately alienated much Islamic opinion; that the western media is often smearing Islam; his government has taken steps to jail about 70 members of radical Islamist groups wishing to overthrow his government, including one group linked to Jemaah Islamiah; both Malaysia and Singapore had warned Indonesia about JI; the US should not take military action against Iraq; (Reported 23-24 November 2002 in Weekend Australian)
13,000BC: Descent of the Wolves: "All domestic dogs are descended from just a handful of female wolves tamed in East Asia about 15,000 years ago, (China or Mongolia, according to the first researchers to examine the animal's genetic origins. The use of dogs spread rapidly, probably to help with hunting, through Europe, Asia, Africa; and to North America across the Bering Strait about 14,000 years ago. However, the North American dogs may have died out, as dog descent of today comes from animals brought by Europeans. The researchers examined hair samples to conduct their investigations into the transmission of mitochondrial (maternal) DNA. (Remains of greyhounds have been found in the pyramids of Egypt.) East Asian dogs had a higher genetic variability, indicating their domestication a longest time ago. There are genes from only five female wolves in today's dogs. But one of the oldest dog artefacts is a 12,000-year-old canine jaw bone found in Israel, which had led to views that dogs originated in the Middle East. The first wolves emerged in nature between 40,000 and 15,000 years ago. One researcher involved is Peter Savolainen, a scientist with Swedish Royal Institute of Technology. (Reported 23-24 November 2002 and see a recent issue of journal Science) (Reported 23-24 November 2002)
Lagos, Nigeria: Miss World Islamic Riot: In Kaduna in Northern Nigeria, a newspaper article by Isioma Daniel, published as promotion for a Miss World contest ramped up, had suggested that Mohammed, the Prophet of Islam, might have chosen a wife "from amongst the contestants". The result was a series of riots in which 100 people have been stabbed, bludgeoned or burned to death in Nigeria. The office of the newspaper, This Day, was burned. Some 500 people have been injured and many homes have been torched. One man was necked with a burning tyre. Hundreds and police and soldiers were needed to restore order. Protesters viewed the Miss World contest as indecent and promoting sexual promiscuity. The newspaper has run a front-page apology. (Reported 23-24 November 2002)
The alleged mastermind of the Bali bombing was Imam Samudra, who is also wanted in Indonesia for bombings about Jakarta and elsewhere. Samudra's two bodyguards have also been arrested. Samudra has admitted his involvement after questioning by 11 November 2002 or earlier. The cost of the bombing was offset by funds gained from an earlier robbery of two gold shops in West Java. (Reported 23-24 November 2002)
Views of Paul Wolfowitz: Australian SAS units have impressed US deputy Secretary of Defence, Paul Wolfowitz, who wishes them to be used in Iraq if hostilities break out with Hussein's regime. Roaming around various issues, Wolfowitz has reportedly said, if war arose with Iraq, there would be a long list of "awful consequences" including further regional instability and more terrorist strikes in South-East Asia.; to do nothing about Iraq would be dangerous, if force is to be used against Iraq, that also is dangerous; removing Hussein would improve discussions between Israel and Palestine; Indonesia is in for troubles as hardliners wish to change its fledgling democracy to a hardline Islamic state; "I know people say we're being single-minded but it is a struggle between good and evil", he said, hoping Indonesia would become a model for the Islamic world. (Reported 23-24 November 2002 in Weekend Australian)
US has now captured an Al-Qa'ida operative, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, suspected leader of the group's Persian Gulf operations, with "close links" to bin-Laden. Saudi-born, al-Nashiri is suspected of involvement in the bombing of USS Cole at Aden and bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. (Reported 23-24 November 2002 in Weekend Australian)
Weeping statue of Virgin Mary?Investigators have been asked to prove if a weeping statue of the Virgin Mary in Western Australia is an act of God or a fake religious curiosity. For the past three months, rose-scented oil has been apparently trickling from the eyes of a 70cm-high statue in Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Rockingham, south of Perth. (Reported 23 November 2002)
"Australia is a key target in a new wave of attacks being planned by Al-Qa'ida..." This view is based on assessment of "generic intelligence information". (Reported 23 November 2002, front page, Sydney Morning Herald)
Tricks of the weapons inspection trade: When they go into Iraq, UN weapons inspectors first have to renovate their former headquarters in Baghdad. One of their problems will be finding if, as they have photos, Iraq has mobile labs for chemical weapons development mounted on 18-wheel tractor trailers. The inspectors now have a radar system which can detect use of electrical equipment to a depth of 30 metres. "Alex" is a portable sensor capable of detecting metals with potential nuclear uses. An advanced hand-held nucleic acid analyser can detect presence of anthrax or bubonic plague on a cotton swab in 15 minutes. (Reported world press, 19 November 2002)
1993: Abu Bakar Bashir (according to The Weekend Australian of 14-15- December 2002) in 1993 gave a lecture in Sydney in which he urged the establishment of an Islamic state in Australia. It is reported in Australia by 16 November 2002 that Bashir and another JI linkman, Abdullah Sungkar, have several times travelled into Australia under false names to give lectures on "religious topics". Another Indonesian-based group which advocates creation of a South-East Asian Islamic state is Darul Islam. Such groups term the philosophy of the existing Indonesian state ideology as "Pancasila".
"We warned Australia about its participation in Afghanistan and against its despicable effort to separate East Timor. It ignored the warning until it woke up to the sounds of explosions in Bali. Its Government subsequently pretended, falsely, that its citizens were not targeted." - Alleged words of Osama bin-Laden. (Noted by 16 November 2002)
Buddhist blood boils over: Death threats have been levelled at the Dalai Lama, the exiled leader of Tibetan Buddhism, if he does not leave India. The threats seem to emanate from the northern Indian town of Charamsala, where a Tibetan cult, Shugden, is lodged, also where the Dalai Lama lives. In 1991 was established New Kadampa Tradition (NKT), a branch of the Shugden, by Kelsang Gyatso; this cult now seems to be based in UK. This cult "worships" a 350-year-old "wrathful Tibetan deity, Dorje Shugden, who has been depicted wearing a necklace of 50 severed human heads and having four fangs. He is a sword-wielding warrior figure with three blood-red eyes and rides a snow lion through a sea of boiling blood. His followers consider themselves to be guardians of Tibetan Buddhism but as extremists have been compared to the Taliban. The Dalai Lama apparently says the Shugdens are a danger to the solidarity of exiled Tibetans, and the cult's deity should not be worshipped; the cult fosters religious intolerance and renders Buddhism a cult of spirit worship. (This website scratches its head and wonders why the world lately has so many reports about "death or orthodoxy"? Also, just what is to be the future for ambiguity and doubt? We have mistakenly thought the only certainties available are death and taxes- Ed) (Reported 16 November 2002)
Mickey Mouse given new birthday?: It used to be thought that Walt Disney first drew Mickey Mouse in 1928. Now, a medieval fresco (700 years old) with "an uncanny resemblance" to Mickey Mouse, but maybe depicting local legends about weasles, has been found in the village of Malta in Carinthia Province, Southern Austria, on an exterior wall of a Church. The "mickey mouse" image is one of various other animals surrounding a St Christopher figure who stands in a river. The Disney Company refuses to comment, Carinthian tourism officials are excited, and this website wonders why Carinthians since 1928 have taken this long to notice the situation? (Is this a hoax, a publicity stunt, a copyright problem for Disney or a Seinfieldian nothing? - Ed) (Reported 16 November 2002)
Bali Bombing: Amrozi the Bali Bomber comes from the village Tenggulun, in one of the poorest areas of Java. His father has two wives and Amrozi has seven brothers and sisters and five stepbrothers and stepsisters. When once working in Malaysia, Amrozi had taken lessons on the Koran from Abu Bakar Bashir. A school run by Amrozi's brother Khozin "propagates hardline Islamic views and divides its village", partly as it recommends the rule of Sharia law. (Reported 16 November 2002, Sydney Morning Herald)
Tartness about art: Arts funding in Australia "has become so bureaucratic and out of touch with audiences" that a founding member of the Australia Council has called for it to be disbanded. He says, "It's totally lost touch with the larger arts community, let alone the general public". The protestor is sculptor Ron Robertson-Swann, patron of the hugely popular annual Sculpture by the Sea exhibition at Bondi in Sydney. (Reported 16 November 2002 in Sydney Morning Herald)
A Hindu religious service held at Kuta Beach, Bali, attended by thousands, assists the spirits of the Bali bombing victims into their next life. The heads of sacrificial animals including buffaloes, monkeys and pigs are laid on several elaborate altars erected in the ruins of the Sari Club. (Reported 15-16 November 2002)
12 November 2002: Broadcast on Al-Jazeera of an audio tape said
to be of bin-Laden warning of future terrorist attacks and praising
attacks in Bali, Yemen, Kuwait and Moscow.
Update: 12-15 November 2002: Another release of a threatening
audiotape from Osama bin-Laden (via Al-Jazeera) will raise
fresh fears of a new wave of terrorist attacks, especially in
Western Europe, say US officials and European diplomats. Fears are
that the tape is code-worded to unleash new orders for terrorists.
Views are that the tape itself has perhaps been re-recorded to
disguise the route it has travelled. On this tape, bin-Laden
suggests that the recent Bali Bombing has due to "God's orders".
Other notable dates for messages from bin-Laden, broadcast to the
West, include: 7 October 2001, 3 November 2001, 13 December 2001,
15 December 2001, 19 May 2002, 14 October 2002 and 26 October
2002.
11 November 2002. The Vatican has seriously warned Catholic priests and bishops against use of the Internet to hear "online confessions", fearing any rise of blackmail or other misuse of information conveyed, eg., by hackers.
Terrorist chiefs allegedly have recently held a "summit" in a border region of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay (at Ciudad del Este in Paraguay) to discuss new attacks against US and Israeli targets, CNN has reported. Among those meeting were men from Al-Qa'ida. Hezbollah and other extremist organizations. Commenting has been Miguel Toma, head of Argentina's intelligence agency. The triple border area near Ciudad del Este has a population of 220,000, 30,000 down to 12,000 being of Arabic origin, and is thought to be a zone for illegal activism, money laundering, weapons sales, drug trafficking, fake documentations and counterfeiting. (Reported 9 November 2002)
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US Joint Chiefs of Staff re reportedly concerned that their efforts in Afghanistan against remnants of al-Qa'ida and the Taliban are adapting too quickly to ways to confront US forces. US troops are "increasingly outwitted in the field". US' General Myers is also reconsidering playing down its military operations and doing more work of reconstruction. It also seems to become a problem that some of Afghanistan's warlords have been armed. (Reported 9 November 2002)
Headlines: Britain may call up 10,000 reservists for war with Iraq. (Reported 5 November 2002)
Al-Jazeera in trouble in Kuwait: Popular Arabic TV news station Al-Jazeera is in trouble in Kuwait, with its local office closed down, due to alleged "lack of objectivity" in reportage of Kuwaiti affairs. The station has already been "warned" about its coverages. One view is that Al-Jazeera is pro-Iraq and wishes to report the results of Kuwaiti activities as the US prepares for possible war with Iraq. (Reported 5 November 2002)
The old problem of warlords in Afghanistan: When Hamid Karzai was installed as president of Afghanistan earlier this year, he was not given an international peacekeeping force to be expanded beyond Kabul to help exert his authority and influence. Warlords still hold sway over large areas of Afghanistan, using customs duties, local taxes and perhaps some drug trafficking to pay their own armies. Due to a US policy, some such armies are being recruited into US-led forces cleaning up remnants of Taliban and Al-Qa'-ida forces. In this climate, Karzai has just acted to try to enforce his authority, by sacking about 15 provincial officials, including some intelligence chiefs, and disbanding some "military units". But it is thought that his action will only succeed if the people agree with him versus some warlords. (It seems to Lost Worlds that US foreign policy here has no answer at all to the old problem of warlords in Afghanistan -Ed). (Reported 5 November 2002)
5 November 2002: Malaysia: The home state, Kedah, of the Malaysian PM, Dr. Mahatir Mohamed, is setting up recording devices at mosques to deter prayer-leaders from delivering anti-government sermons to their Moslem congregations.
Lima, Peru: Lake Titicaca presents a sacred site: Oceanic engineer Gustavo Villavicencio is one of a research time which has found a sacred site, or place of offerings, with ramps, stairways and walls built of interlocking stones, some 2-8 metres below the surface of Lake Titicaca. The remains were built when the lake was about 20-30 metres lower than today. Lake Titicaca, high in the Andes and shared by Peru and Bolivia, by legend gave birth to the Inca sun god Manco Capac and his sister Mama Ocllo, before the founding of the Inca city Cusco, heart of a dynasty. (Reported 2 November 2002)
The world continues to worry about claims from North Korea that it has a right to develop nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction due to threats to its sovereignty from the US. Intelligence sources claim that North Korea is enriching civilian-use plutonium to weapons-grade status. (Reported 2 November 2002)
The official count of Australian dead due to the Bali bombing is now 34, but is expected to reach 89, newspapers say. Meanwhile, aid donors to Indonesia are considering using the trauma of the Bali bombing to reinvigorate "stalled economic reforms vital to winning back investor confidence and preventing an economic recovery from petering out". Behind this view appears to be the World Bank-led Consultative Group on Indonesia. (Reported 29 October 2002)
Should the term "ethnic cleansing" be proscribed?: Lost Worlds greatly objects to use of the term "ethnic cleansing", since there is no such thing as "ethnic dirtiness", and the term is simply a euphemism for murder. Consider the following newspaper report from Guwahati, India, where 22 villagers are killed and four police and others are injured when "tribal militants" (from National Democratic Front of Bodoland) raided a village in the province of Assam. The victims were lined up and shot as part of "an 'ethnic cleansing' drive". In a world being globalised as it is, with communication facilities presumably making the globe feel smaller, there can be no such thing as ethnic purity. So the term "ethnic cleansing" and actions resulting from a belief in the idea of ethnic cleansing should be regarded as for madmen only. (Reported 29 October 2002 )
Abu Bakar Bashir, regarded as leader of Jemaah Islamiah (JI) is now under guard, apprehended by Indonesian police and taken to Jakarta due to suspicions he was involved in church bombings carried out in Indonesia in 2000. (Bashir's activities are based in Solo, Central Java) A co-founder of JI is said to be the late Abdullah Achmad Sungkar, who is claimed to have visited Australia. JI is now listed by Australian authorities as a terrorist organisation. Bashir was taken from a hospital bed in Solo, while his supporters mounted a riot, hurling rocks and bottles at police. (Reported 29 October 2002)
Pan-Islamic State? Jemaah Islamiah's "wild vision" of a pan-Islamic state for South-East Asia, which could even include northern Australia, has now been commented by senior Philippines security officials. The Australian component - including the Indonesia province of western New Guinea - is now revealed as one of four zones called "Mantiqui" (M4). M1 includes Malaysia, Singapore and Southern Thailand. M2 has most of Indonesia. M3 has eastern Malaysia and Indonesia including Sulawesi and Borneo, plus Brunei and Southern Philippines. Philippine officials have pieced together this outline with the help of Singaporean and Indonesian investigators. (Reported 29 October 2002)
20 October 2002: National Day of Mourning for Australia due to the 12 October car-bombing attack near Kuta Beach, Bali. (And very heartfelt too - Ed)
Re Bali Bombing: At Concord, Sydney, reported 18 October 2002, Dr Peter Haertsch at Concord Hospital in Sydney said, "It was evident we were dealing with burn injuries the like of which we have never seen before."
Indonesia: Bashir has been called in as a suspect re the Bali bombing by Indonesian police, despite his earlier denials of any involvements. (Reported 18 October 2002)
A bigger black hole: Astronomers at Germany's Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics have detected "overwhelming evidence" that there is a super-massive black hole at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy. Occupying the black hole of a star named S2, which has a 15.2-year orbit around an unseen object which is 2.6 million times larger than our sun. A commentator on the discovery - "absolutely fantastic", was Ray Norris, deputy director of CSIRO's Australia Telescope. (Reported 18 October 2002)
Bali visit: Concern continues re interpretation in
Australia of US intelligence received concerning events in Bali.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard at a press conference answers
questions on how much forewarning Australia had on the Bali
bombing, then flies to Bali for a sunset memorial service for
Australian victims. In Indonesia/Bali, four people are held as
suspects but contradictory reports arise on suspects, and one
suspect has already been released. Bashir says Jeemiah Islamiah
(fix) "does not exist" and that he believes the Bali attack was
work of "US agents".
Indonesia will now pass tough anti-terrorism laws. A great deal of
Australian angst is reported due to slowness in release of details
on victim remains/identification. Psychology counsellors
interviewed on Australian TV are tending to mention the phases of
emotional reaction that victims' relatives will naturally be
passing through: currently, anger and protest. (Reported 17 October
2002)
17 October 2002: Zamboanga: Two bombs explode at two department stores, killing six people.
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12 October 2002: Sulawesi, Indonesia: Bomb explodes outside the Philippines consulate in Manado.
Bali and Australian outrage: A very worrying aspect of
the car-bomb terror attack on the Sari Club near Kuta Beach, Bali,
is a report fed from Washington Post that by late September,
US intelligence via intercept(s) had reports ("precise
warnings") of threat(s) to a major tourist destination (perhaps in
South East Asia?), which was not passed on to Australia. Bali was
mentioned as a "possibility". All Australia heard of was the
possibility of "something" happening in South East Asia.
Meantime, Australian prime minister John Howard has told parliament
that he wants the UN to officially list Indonesian Islamic activist
group, Jemaah Islamiah, led by Abu Bakar Bashir, as a
terrorist organisation. Jemaah Islamiah was named as having at
least indirect links to al-Qa'ida (and possibly to the Bali
bombing) by late Monday 14 October 2002 by Indonesian defence
minister Matori Abdul Djalil. (Jemaah Islamiah aims for "an Islamic
state covering most of southeast Asia".)
(Newspapers and evening TV news in Australia, 15 October 2002)
:-) Emoticon event: 20th Anniversary 19 September 2002 for the smiley emoticon :-) - First typed by a researcher at the Carnegie Mellon University Dept. of Computer Science, Scott Fahiman. (Nice one, Scott! :-)
By 15 October 2002, Jakarta has already blamed Al-Qa-ida for the
Bali Bombing, "with the co-operation of local terrorists". One
militant already named, who already says any accusation groundless,
is cleric Abu Bakir Bashir, leader of Jemaah Islamiah. Bashir by 16
October in The Australian is quoted as saying, "This is a
despicable act and a game played by foreign intelligence headed by
Zionists and the US."
The Australian feels 12 October is Australia's blackest day
since World War Two.
14 October 2002: Re the Bali Bombing, A writer for Jakarta Post, Dewi Anggraeni, feels "it would be unwise to conclude that the likely suspects are linked to Al-Qa'ida."
Atlantis - where was it?: Rumours are surfacing again about the site of long-lost Atlantis, somewhere off Cuba. An unmanned submarine has been sending "ghostly" video images of massive stones in oddly symmetrical square and pyramid shapes, located in an 8km-square area on a deep-ocean plain off Cuba's western tip. The images are in care of a company contracted by the Cuban government to seek oil/gas reserves and maybe the wrecks of old treasure ships, Canadian firm Advanced Digital Communications (spokesman Paul Weinzweig). The firm uses side-scan sonar and computerised global positioning equipment. The "Atlantis" location was discovered in 2000, but Weinzweig has been careful to not use "the A word". It's all rather strange, weird and unexplained. Someone glad about it all though is an anthropologist from California, George Erikson, who co-wrote a book which predicted Atlantis would be found off "the tropical Americas". Other "locations" for Atlantis are near the Greek coast, off Crete, or "off Gibraltar". (Reported 12 October 2002 by Washington Post)
A suicide-bomber theory strengthens as explanation for the crippling of the French oil tanker, Limburg, as investigators have found pieces of a fibreglass hull and parts of an outboard motor 20 metres above waterline on Limburg's deck.. (Reported 12 October 2002)
Islamic militants have been blamed for sixteen pro-Russian police in Chechnya being killed as a bomb ripped apart a police station in Grozny. (Reported 12 October 2002 in Australia)
US may withdraw non-essential staff from its embassy in Indonesia because of concern rising about their safety. (Reported 12 October 2002)
Japanese terror sect renamed: The Aum Shinrikyo sect has reappeared in Tokyo, now renamed Aleph (a word from Ancient Greek). The sect is now reported to have about 1000 members. It was founded by "guru" Shoko Asahara (now on trial for murder and other crimes), and now runs a computer company in Japan. New sect leader is Fumihiro Joyu. In 1997, sect members made a sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway. Aleph now claims it has apologised and paid compensation for such matters. (Reported 12 October 2002)
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Headlines: Life after Saddam: US to run Baghdad. US is now working on a plan modelled on their post-war occupation of Japan for managing Iraq once Hussein is gone. There will be a war-crimes tribunal for Iraqi leaders and "a slow transition" to an elected civilian government, however long this takes to develop. Initially will be government by an American military commander, possibly General Tommy R. Franks or one of his subordinates. Meantime the US Congress (with the Senate led by Democrats) has just authorised President Bush to wage war on Iraq "if necessary". US is keen to avoid dealing with situations as arose in Afghanistan once the Taliban there had fallen. Searches will be made of oil field equipment and for stocks of weapons of mass destruction. (Reported 12 October 2002)
10 October 2002: Bali Bombing, killing many Australians
on holiday.
June 2003 - Mixed Bali motives: Further motives have been
discussed for conducting the Bali Bombing. Motives are now to
include: the island's mainly Hindu population should have revenge
taken on them for loss of life of 200 Moslems massacred by Hindus
in Gujarat, India. Other motives are said to have been: Bali is a
favoured tourist destination for US and Australian travellers, plus
people from other countries which have been mistreating, attacking
and humiliating Moslems across the world. (The drunken hedonism -
decadence? - of Westerners holidaying on Bali has also been
mentioned.) (Reported 7 June 2003)
Update of 5 July 2003: Reports arise (Sydney Morning Herald,
Australia) that the architects of the Bali Bombing had intended to
target the Sari Club by Kuta Beach the previous Friday night, 11
October, partly as fewer locals would be on the streets, but the
explosions were delayed as bombs were not yet ready. The bomber
Mukhlas has suggested the bombings were motivated by hatred of "the
enemies of Islam", resentment of Australia's 1999 "occupation" of
East Timor, and resentment of Australia's role with the US in
confronting Saddam Hussein. Mukhlas says his team made efforts to
kill only westerners at the Sari Club and Paddy's Irish Bar. The
Sari Club bombed weighed 1000kg, a symbolic comment on the
one-tonne bombs being dropped on Muslims by Americans in the Middle
East. Mukhlas' recent writings by July 2003 indicate he hates the
UN, the US and its allies, and believes he is fighting a holy war.
He views Westerners as dirty animals who deserve to be wiped out.
Mukhlas claims to have fought alongside Osama bin-Laden in
Afghanistan against Soviet Union forces.
10 October 2002: Philippines: Kidapawan City: Bomb explodes at a crowded bus station, killing eight people.
8 October, 2002: Claims arise in Australian newspapers of 21 June 2003 that the Australian government was warned two days before the Bali bombing (by Office of National Assessments) that Jemaah Islamiah operatives were at large in Indonesia. Bali mastermind Imam Samudra was mentioned in this context by 10 October.
Alleged link to Al-Qa'ida: 8 October 2002: Kuwait: Two gunmen in a pick-up truck attack a unit of US marines training on an island off Kuwait.
8 October 2002: Report from Tampa, Florida: A US salvage company has arranged a deal to try to recover what may be "the richest shipwreck ever", the hulk of a British warship carrying gold and silver now worth an estimated $US4 billion that sank off Gibraltar in 1694.
Alleged link to Al-Qa'ida: 6 October 2002: Yemen: Explosion on a French oil tanker which is rammed by a small boat. Govt. of Yemen says it was a terrorist attack.
Saint's body slow to decay: It's often thought that the bodies of saints can be slow to decay, and another case has arisen in Siberia, causing great puzzlement. This case involves a spiritual leader of Russia's Buddhists of 1927, Dashi-Dorzho Itigilov, then aged 75, the 12th Pandit Hambo Lama. He gathered his followers, crossed his legs into the lotus position, meditated, chanted a prayer, and died. Later, the Stalinists of Russia executed hundreds of lamas, and destroyed 46 Buddhist temples. Itigilov had instructed his followers to inspect his body in 30 years, and so they did, exhuming his remains, and finding his body still perfectly intact in the lotus position, as he had died. But as the Russians were still hostile to Buddhism, the remains were reburied in an unmarked grave. The matter was almost forgotten, till 11 September this year. The body had continued in a state of preservation. The remains have been re-dressed and may now be seen by devotees. No one professes to understand this phenomenon. (Reported 5 October 2002, and from New York Times)
Whatever the UN decides to do or not about Iraq and reports from weapons inspectors, it seems "the White House is committed to pressing ahead with its plans to topple Saddam Hussein"... (Reported in Australia 5 October 2002)
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Falun Gong firewalled: There is currently little point in looking for a Falun Gong website in China, as the government's "Great Firewall of China" will ensure you get a message, "This page cannot be displayed". Meantime, some of the cult members have found ways to hack around and even beam their messages on some satellite-driven, state-run TV channels, perhaps working from Taiwan. Technical views are that "it is not easy" to hijack an ongoing TV transmission via a satellite. (Reported 5 October 2002)
The world's best city living: According to Economist Intelligence Unit in London, the world's best living conditions are in Melbourne, Australia, with Vancouver in Canada a close second. (Reported without bickering, 5-6 October 2002 in The Sydney Morning Herald)
Contrary to what many politicians believe, today's press in the US is not aggressive enough and favours quick stories over stories taking more time, according to one of the journalists who broke the Watergate scandal story, Bob Woodward. (Reported 5 October 2002)
7 October 2002: The first anniversary of outbreak of hostilities in Afghanistan, and as revenge, intelligence sources claim that plots had arisen to terrorise the US and its allies, especially Australia, by hitting "weak points", or tourists, as reported to Australia some weeks before October 7. The attack(s) might occur in Indonesia. Some threats were associated with JI. Osama bin-Laden is said to have taped a message: "I have warned the Australian people. They were involved in the war against Afghanistan. They ignored my warnings and woke up to the sound of explosions in Bali." Intelligence sources also claim that by September 2002, evidence has arisen of links between JI and Al-Qa'ida for a plan to hit Western "weak points" by striking at bars, restaurants and tourist spots favoured by Westerners. (Reported 16 November 2002 in Sydney Morning Herald, front page)
2 October 2002: Philippines: Suspected Abu Sayyaf guerillas detonate a nail bomb in an open-air market. Three people killed including an American Green Beret.
Travel alerts: New intelligence information arriving to Australian Government, and to parliament, results in new travel alerts, re threat(s) to Australian interests in Indonesia. Australians are advised to get out of Indonesia. (Reported 17 October 2002)
1 October 2002: Obituary of Uziel Gal (Born Germany 15 Dec., 1923-7 Sep. 2002, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US), inventor from 1948 of the famed Uzi sub-machine gun, based on Czech weapons and "a marvel of compactness".
Alleged Al-Qa'ida plot: 23 September 2002: Jakarta: Bomb explodes 20 metres from a US embassy house.
16 September 2002: Alleged plot: East Timor: Non-essential Australian embassy staff evacuated after threats from a group said to be linked to Al-Qa'ida terrorist network.
12-13 September 2002: Intelligence agency in Australia, Office of National Assessments (ONA), receives a request from Dept. of Foreign Affairs on Iraq's WMD capabilities and capacity for such "weaponisation". Initially, ONA thought there was no firm evidence of new chemical and biological weapons production in Iraq. ONA now began to "harden" its assessments "overnight" and also became swamped with intelligence information of varying quality as to its "testedness". Till 12 September 2002, ONA thought Iraq's WMD capability was small and "probably degraded". Comparisons can be made here to a British intelligence assessment later arising by 20 September 2002. (According to front page of Sydney Morning Herald, 2 March 2004 and articles inside)
Alleged link to Al-Qa'ida: 11 September 2002: A plot to bomb US embassies in South East Asia is foiled. Embassies in Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Cambodia are closed.
31 August 2002: Alleged terrorist plot: Freeport mine, Papua: Gunfire attack on workers for the world's biggest goldmine. Two Americans and an Indonesian are killed.
The Catholic Church in Australia has come under attack from one of its most senior figures, Bishop Pat Power, on issues ranging from the church's teachings on sexuality to its culture of secrecy and male-dominated power base. (Reported 28 August 2002)
For 650AD approx: Jakarta, Indonesia: Villagers have discovered remains of an ancient Hindu-Buddhist temple in West Java that may provide new clues on the origins of the Javanese people. The village is Cangkuang Rancaekek, 132km s/w of Jakarta. The temple may date to C7thAD, possibly older than Indonesia's famous Borobudur Buddhist temple in Yogyakarta, Java and a neighbouring Prambanan Hindu temple. (Islam did not spread through Indonesia till the 14th and 15th centuries. Indonesia's earliest Hindu temples are in Batujajar, West Java, dating from C2nd-C4thAD. (Reported 24 August 2002)
2002: Death of Norwegian explorer and anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl, died aged 87. He used his balsa raft, Kon-Tiki, in 1947 to try to prove that Pacific settlement originated with South Americans sailing west across the Pacific.
24 August 2002: That extraordinary woman, Leni Riefenstahl, German film-maker during the Nazi era, is now in trouble again over mysteries remaining about 120 gypsies from concentration camps who appeared as extras in her 1940 film, Tiefland - what happened to them later? A prosecutor's office in Frankfurt has announced on her centenary that the German gypsy organisation, Rom, has made complaints. Riefenstahl has said none of her extras were killed, and that she had seen them after the war, while in Germany, denying Holocaust circumstances is a crime. (Riefenstahl also made the movies Triumph Of The Will in 1934 and Olympia on the Berlin Olympics in 1936 - using money provided by Hitler. She confesses that as a young woman she was naively swept up by Hitler's "enormous, hypnotic power").
UN call to query Taliban deaths: A confidential UN memo has recommended a "full-fledged criminal investigation" into the deaths in Afghanistan late last year of hundreds of Taliban prisoners held by the US-backed Northern Alliance. UN investigators had found a mass grave where Taliban POWs had suffocated while being transferred from Kunduz to a prison at Shiberghan after Taliban resistance in northern Afghanistan had collapsed. Some POWs had possibly been "buried with heavy machinery over a large area of the desert". (The Australian, citing Newsweek, 20 August 2002)
20 August 2002: Japan: Japanese researchers are following a tail of cold, old Woolly Mammoth sperm to try to clone the huge ancient beasts, using a female Indian elephant. They are also looking at re-creating Musk Ox and Canadian Bison. Plans are to create an Ice Age theme park. The science departments concerned are at universities of Kinki and Tifu. A mammoth-like creature could be developed in about 50 years for a suitable breeding program. (A geneticist acquaintance of Lost Worlds says that any such project has serious "technical problems" to surmount.)
2003, 1 August : For its first-ever assignment out of Europe, NATO is to send 5000 troops from 31 nations to help police Afghanistan. An innovation in world affairs. (Late night ABC TV news, Australia, 8 August 2003)
Japan still hiding from history?: "Japan's refusal to
confront its war crimes is a continuing cause of friction with its
old enemies". A museum at the Yakushini Shrine in Central Tokyo
honours Japanese war dead "including 14 A-class war criminals". The
museum labels the Rape of Nanking, late 1937, when about 300,000
Chinese were killed and about 20,000 women raped, with troops under
General Matsui, is termed, "the Nanjing incident". The current
governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, once called the Najing
Massacre "a fabrication". (Reported 3-4 August 2002, article by
Shane Green in Sydney Morning Herald, weekend edition)
In related matters, Jeff Roberts, a reviewer of a book on Japanese
refusal to compensate former "comfort women" writes on a website:
... (Reviewed for H-Women@msu.edu (October 1996) by Jeff Roberts,
Tennessee Technological University): "Curiously, many Japanese
right-wing organizations have responded to [the prospect of] even
vague apologies with intense venom. They claim that Japan was not
responsible for the war, that their actions were not lawless by the
standards of the day, and that human rights were denied to all
under wartime conditions."
30 July 2002: Mexico City: A manuscript dated 23 September 1524 has been found at Mexico's National Library of Anthropology and History, detailing the takeover of Mexico by Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortes.
30 July 2002: Pope John Paul II has issued his public denunciation of priests who sexually abused children, telling a million young pilgrims at an outdoor mass in Canada, saying the matters bring the Church "a deep sense of sadness and shame".
2002: Death of famed US musicologist Alan Lomax (1915-2002), discoverer/preserver of Woody Guthrie, Muddy Waters, Huddie Ledbetter (Leadbelly), who spent his life trying to "preserve folk traditions from the homogenising effects of mass media".
Four billion years ago: A new theory arises in Australia about the origins of life on Earth, as University of Queensland researchers say they have found hard evidence that carbon-rich meteorites bombarded Earth four billion years ago. Other planets besides Earth were also showered at this time. This so-called Heavy Bombardment lasted for 150 million years. The researchers include: Professor Ken Collerson, Ronny Schoenberg, Balz Kamber of the university's new Advanced Centre for Isotope Research Excellence, reported in the latest edition of science journal, Nature. (Reported in Australia by 26 July 2002)
July 2002: Russia: Edward Lee Howard, the notorious American traitor and the first CIA agent to defect to the KGB, has died after breaking his neck due to a fall at his Russian dacha.
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Greek police find that the membership of the feared terrorist group, November 17, has included two/three brothers, sons of an Orthodox priest, said to be behind 23 murders. Left-wing group November 17 has roamed across Greece for 27 years, killing, bombing, assassinating. (As reported 20 July 2002 in Australia)
Maybe World's Worst Serial Killer?: An inquiry now finds that Dr. Harold Frederick Shipman of Hyde/Todmorden, near Manchester, has killed 215 of his former patients, while a further 45 patients died in "suspicious" circumstances. Shipman refuses to admit to the killing or discuss why they happened, but is now regarded as possibly the world's worst serial killer. (Reported 20 July 2002)
10 July 2002: Seven million-year-old humanoid skull discovered: Cautious but fascinating claims are being made about a new humanoid skull found in the African Chad Desert, a seven-million-year-old skull now named Toumai. The specimen has about the brain capacity of a chimpanzee, but a human-like set of features, including human-like canine teeth. The queries are, is Toumai a direct or indirect ancestor of modern humanity, is Toumai the fabled "missing link" between humanity and apedom?
Two million years ago: The first human ancestors to migrate from Africa almost 2 million years ago may have been much less intelligent than is generally thought. New fossils (aged 1.75 million years ago) found in, Dmanisi Georgia, Russia, of homo erectus specimens examined by a team from Georgian Academy of Sciences in Tbilisi, had a brain size of 600 cubic centimetres, as compared with 800 cubic centimetres for other similar specimens and at least 1200 cubic centimetres for modern humans. Leader of research is David Lordkipanidze, who has published a recent article in journal Science. These homo erectus specimens will now be called homo ergaster. Homo ergaster used "pebble-chopper" type tools as found in East Africa, known as Oldowan tools. It now seems that the first exodus of humans from Africa was about two million years ago, not one million years ago, as earlier thought. Also, that the reason these homo ergaster went to Russia was due to an ecological extension of African-like conditions to there, a possibility which reduces the need to discuss new adaptations or human-evolutionary changes. (Reported 6 July 2002)
Crossing to the other side: Sao Paulo, Brazil: The most popular spiritual medium in Brazil, Chico Xavier, author of 500 books with messages from the dead, has died of heart failure aged 82. Reported 3 July 2002)
The Catholic Church (in Vienna) threatens to excommunicate a group of women who plan to be ordained. The women are a mixed group from Austria, Germany and the US. The ordinations were to be conducted by "an unnamed bishop in a private ceremony". (Reported 29 June 2002)
Hollywood versus Reality: A
movie is now being made in Victoria, Australia, about Australia's
most famous bushranger, Ned Kelly. Certain Hollywood executives are
reportedly worried, however, about the big, bushy beard worn by
actor Ned for the movie - it isn't sexy enough!
Now, if this isn't just another ultra-cheap, pre-release Hollywood
publicity balloon being sent up, then Message For These
Hollywood Executives From This Website...
There is nothing wrong with Ned Kelly's beard! Butt out of
Australian bushranging history! Butt out of Australian folklore and
legend! Get real about beards-in-history! Get real and Get A
Life!
When you get a life, go down to South America and make an honest,
historically accurate movie on Simon Bolivar. Then go to Russia and
make an honest, historically accurate movie about the Russian
Revolution. Then go to India and make an honest, historically
accurate movie (cast of thousands of beards!) on the 1857-58 Indian
mutiny! Etc, etc, etc. Get out of Hollywood! Get out of the USA!
Discover how the wide the world really is! Discover that it is
real! And Get A Life!!
(Reported 28 June 2002 - in world press? Bah humbug!! - Ed)
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25 June 2002: Almost 3000 white Zimbabwean farmers face criminal prosecution from today if they produce food or exports to help feed their country's population, much of it now threatened by starvation.
18 June 2002: Internationally-noted lawyer Edward Fagan launches a class action on behalf of victims of South Africa's apartheid regime. Protests about his action have already occurred in Zurich, home of Swiss bankers.
Old habits die hard: "Freemasons are working hard to de-mystify their organisation in the eyes of the public. So Adele Hudson, of Enmore, Sydney, thinks they might have done better with the name of a new café in the Masonic Centre on Goulbourn Street, Sydney - Secrets. (Item from Column 8, Sydney Morning Herald, 15-16 June 2002)
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New work begins about 15 June 2002, for converting part of a closed army base into a testing site for missile defences. Work on six underground silos for missile interceptors. At Fort Greely Alaska.
To 15 June 2002: Dangerous New Anglo-German War Of Words:
Firstly, the German magazine Der Spiegel described Britain's
queen as "a nondescript housewife of 76". So the conservative UK
magazine, The Spectator, accused Germany of being "an
insufferably dowdy country". This annoyed the German newspaper
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which volleyed with
this:
"Great Britain is a degenerate country, riddled with complexes
because of its loss of power, inhabited by fox-hunters in ludicrous
costumes, and hypocritical lefties who send their spoiled children
to private schools. The British have bad healthcare, bad teeth and
bad skin, which they regularly burn on southern beaches because
they find suntan lotion unsporty. Their food is inedible and their
beer tepid and tasteless."
Gee, what a putdown! We'd better take Basil Fawlty's advice here,
so we won't mention the war. Lost Worlds here kindly decides
to refrain from taking all this back as far as 1939, thank you. All
this is from Quotes of the Week column, Sydney Morning
Herald, weekend edition, 15-16 June 2002, p. 26.
Good luck to all of you! It must be admitted, however, that in
Australian sun, Germans generally tan much better than the English
do. It is not known why this is.)
16 June 2002: Italy and the Vatican: Canonisation of stigmatic Franciscan monk, Padre Pio, beatified in 1999. Giant TV screens are set up across Rome so the faithful can watch the ceremony re this amazingly popular monk-saint.
June 2002: Italy: The Vatican: Words of Jesus the world media
has forgotten evidently: Around the English-speaking world, the
past few years, in Ireland, Australia, the US particularly,
Catholic clergy and entire dioceses are in disarray, and meetings
are called at the Vatican, about accusations of child sexual abuse
or other sexual abuse of the laity by clergy, and financial payouts
in respect of same. However, some of the most serious words Jesus
ever uttered appear to have been forgotten in respect of these
scandals. Here are those words:
"But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that
believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be
hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth
of the sea... Woe to the world because of scandals. For it must
needs be that scandals come: but nevertheless woe to that man by
whom the scandal cometh."
Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 18, Verses 6-7.
12-13 June 2002: Feminism forgets?: The 13 June 2002 will be the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the Australian Federal electoral system, the first in the world to give women the right to enrol, vote, and stand as candidates in elections. But no articles in newspapers waxing lyrical or learned about this, just a deafening silence. (Item from column by D. D. McNicoll, The Australian, 11 June 2002)
10 June 2002: At UN World Food Summit in Rome, UN leader Kofi Annan had torn into rich nations for allowing 815 million people to live in hunger. "It is time to act", Annan said. UN organisations want another US$24 billion to halve the number of the world's hungry by 2015. In 1996, rich countries attending a similar UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), agreed to halve the world's number of hungry people, to 400 million by 1015. But by 2002, the number of hungry is still about 815 million, including 300 million children. Somewhere, one person dies of starvation each four minutes.
1452AD-8 June 2002: DNA on ice: Whitehorse, Yukon territory: Canada: For 550 years, an indigenous person named Kwaday has been iced into a glacier high in Tatshenshini-Alesk Provincial Park, British Columbia. He was discovered by three male teachers hunting mountain sheep. Kwaday Dan Ts'inchi ("Long Ago Person Found") becomes one of the most complete sets of human remains found from the "pre-contact period" before Europeans arrived. Researchers are now seeking to find any of Kwaday's direct descendants, before his remains are cremated. See a recent issue of Canadian Journal of Archaeology.
Politicians in Victoria, Australia, are backing Greek claims for restoration to Greece by Britain of the contentious Elgin Marbles in time for the 2004 Olympic Games in Greece. (Reported 6 June 2002)
The following question arrives to Lost Worlds on 3 June
2002:
Hello, Do you/did you have any premonitions of the 9/11 attacks on
the WTC at your website? Here's what I painted:
http://www.september11news.com/Mysteries3.htm/
Best regards,
Charles Burwell (artist)
http://web.wt.net/~anart/index.html/
" I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed
corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a
trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
"
--Thomas Jefferson, 3rd US president 1801-1809
" Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because
it is a merger of State and corporate power."
--Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), Fascist Dictator of Italy
All very eerie - Ed
1942: Australia not at risk of invasion by Japan in WW Two: Japan did not intend to invade Australia by March 1942 or later, as thought by General Douglas Macarthur, US President Franklin Roosevelt or Churchill, but threats of invasion were played up by Australian prime minister John Curtin, according to new research by Dr. Peter Stanley, principal historian at Australian War Memorial in Canberra. Any actual attacks on Australia were diversionary tactics, Stanley concludes. (Reported 1 June 2002)
Reported 1 June 2002: Latest discovery on Mars is of water beneath its surface, after hints of such a possibility arose in 2000 after inspections of latest NASA photographs. Next thing, talk surfaces of private individuals funding a visit there, by say 2018.
May 2002: Alleged plot: Surabaya, Indonesia: Plot to bomb a US naval vessels fails when Omar Al-Faruq (a senior representative for Al-Qa'ida in South East Asia) has trouble finding suicide bombers.
May 2002: The terrorism problem: University of Tasmania will host a conference on globalisation of terror, with visiting experts from Rand Corporation and University of St Andrews' counter-terrorist centre. (See for example:
Kanan Makiya, Cruelty and Silence: War, Tyranny, Uprising and the Arab World. Norton-Cape, 2001.)
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27 May 2002: Massive ice fields have been discovered on Mars, prompting views that this will refuel desires for astronauts to visit Mars.
22 May 2002: The 1860s gang wars of New York between Irish and descendants of the original Anglo-Dutch settlers are to be remembered in a movie planned by director Martin Scorsese, budgeted at around US$100 million. The film's producer is Harvey Weinstein of Miramax.
21 May 2002: Pope John Paul II is reportedly becoming enthusiastic about prospects for using the Internet to spread the word of God. The Vatican made its first venture onto the Web on 25 December 1995, when it posted a papal website featuring the Pope's message.
Attitude to Suicide: China, it seems from a sad commentary, leads the way for female suicide. When totals are considered, China accounts for half the world's female suicides. And suicide now seems to be the biggest cause of death for people aged between 15-34 years. Culturally, China has "never expressly forbidden" suicide as a protest, or an action. "Only 60 per cent of suicides in China are due to clinical psychiatric problems, as compared to 98 per cent in other countries". (Reported in Australia 11 May 2002)
7 May 2002: Cairo, Egypt: Archaeologists have found the remains of a 4500-year-old pyramid, the 110th to be found in Egypt and the first in four years. (Reported in world press this date)
6 May 2002: Burma: Authorities free dissident politician Ang San Suu Kyi after 20 months of house arrest.
May 2002: Geneva: The UN Committee Against Torture has criticized Saudi Arabia over amputations and floggings it carries out under Sharia Law. (Time Magazine)
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World's most ancient rocks: New research is being conducted on the world's most ancient rocks, 3.7 million years old, which are found in "a few small areas" of Australia, Greenland (the island of Akilla of Western Greenland), Canada and China. Do they hold clues on the origins of life. Australian researchers have lately found that some such rocks (from ancient sediments) contain material from meteorites. One researcher concerned is Dr. Allen Nutman of Australian National University. Relevant debates on ages of rocks, a lighter isotope of carbon, and was the Earth once subject of meteor showers as the Moon had once been, are now ten years old or more. (Reported in Australia in 2002)
30 April 2002: Reportage that the original inhabitants of South Africa, Bushmen of the Kalahari - numbering about 50,000 - have been forced off their traditional land in sub-Saharan Africa after losing a legal battle with Botswana government, so ending a 40,000 year-old hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Locally, the Bushmen are known as Basarwa, now forced off the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (which is roughly the size of Denmark). Government views are that servicing the nomads is too expensive, they cannot remain forever nomadic, and their children must go to school.
30 April 2002: Boston: US Catholics continue erupting in fury over claims of sexual abuse by their clergy. The Vatican has earlier been the scene of high-level discussion about how to handle what amounts to a crisis for US Catholicism.
On 24 April 2002, US writer Gore Vidal spoke to website journal Salon from his home in Los Angeles, about his new book on 9/11/01 issues, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to Be So Hated. Recommended is a visit to salon.com to see the story on Vidal's new book - Ed
Stop the handout mentality: The Australian Aboriginal "father of reconciliation", Pat Dodson, has called on his people and their communities to stop taking government handouts, adopt a new attitude, and take new directions, or, "we're dead". Dodson's venue was a Canberra conference on indigenous governance. (Reported 6 April 2002)
Strange Confession: A church minister in US says his own father, not James Earl Ray, assassinated Martin Luther King in a Memphis Hotel in 1968. He is Rev. Ronald Denton Wilson of Florida, now aged 61, son of Henry Clay Wilson, died 1990, who led three other conspirators in the matter. The killing was not "racist" in motive, Wilson thought King was "a communist". But Gainesville Sun has reported that Wilson Senior was a member of the Klu Klux Klan and took part in beatings of black people. James Earl Ray had merely bought the rifle for Wilson's conspirators. (Reported from New York Times, 6 April 2002)
1700BC: A British treasure-hunter cum amateur archaeologist, Cliff Bradshaw, has unearthed a 3700-year-old gold cup - probably a ceremonial vessel dating around 1700BC - near Sandwich, Kent. It was found with a simple metal detector on a prehistoric mound on a farm, and its gold is some of the oldest ever found in Britain. It could be worth a fortune (up to £250,000), says English Heritage, the body charged with preserving treasures from England's antiquity. The cup has a curved base and broad handles, but has been recently crushed, probably by agricultural machinery. (Reported 6 April 2002)
"An Ohio truck driver who assisted
Osama bin-Laden in Afghanistan had helped devise a plan to destroy
New York's Brooklyn Bridge (with gas cutters, called in Australia,
oxy-acetylene torches) and other US targets.... He is allegedly
Lyman Faris, 34, of Columbus, Ohio, who met bin-Laden in 2000 at an
al-Qa'ida training camp. Faris may have been asked to help plan a
second wave of attacks after 11 September 2001. Faris has been
talking with US legal authorities since 1 May if not earlier, about
helping the US delve into al-Qa'ida operations. Originally from
Kashmir, he first arrived in the US in 1994, and later married. He
had meeting in 2000, 2001 and early 2002 about such plans.
(Reported in The Weekend Australian, 21-22 June, 2003)
It was reported 17 June 2003 and earlier by Newsweek that
the same plan to blow the Brooklyn Bridge was also revealed by
captured Al-Qa'ida operations chief Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who also
spoke of plans to blow up grounded airlines and to derail passenger
trains.
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2 April 2002: A 150-year-old 300-page manuscript of a runaway slave, believed to be the first novel written by a black woman, written before 1860, is to be published this week in the US. Title is The Bondwoman's Narrative, by Hannah Crafts, on her life as a young house slave in North Carolina before she fled to New Jersey.
2 April 2002 and much earlier: "The French identity is based on an historical nonsense, according to a French academic, who says that the Gauls were a fiction invented by the Romans and exploited by the French revolutionaries after 1789." The academic is history professor at College de France, in his new book, Par Toutatis. The Gallic people never existed and symbols suggesting they did are figments of popular imagination. A "mosaic of people" had lived in France before Roman times, some putting up little fight against the Romans. (Reported 2 April 2002 in The Australian)
29 March 2002: Hamburg, Germany: A former SS Officer, Friedrich Engel, 93, is to be tried in Germany for allegedly ordering the massacre of 59 prisoners in Italy in 1944, a Hamburg prosecutor has announced. Engel, who lives in Hamburg, was sentenced in absentia in Turin, Italy, in 1999 for war crimes.
19 March 2002: Nazi pop arts opens in New York: Outrage erupts in New York when Jewish Museum in New York on Manhattan's Upper East Side. An exhibition is mount, Mirroring Evil: Nazi Imagery/Recent Art. The show drew protests from Jewish leaders for months before it opened. The "art" on show (just mainstream pop art, derivative shock-schlok, really) was by 13 artists from eight countries, suggesting that tastelessness is truly international and has no boundaries at all. (Reported 19 March 2002)
9 March 2002: The time they are a'strangin' "When the press is full of government fictions and lies and corporate fiction and lies, it's hard for novels to compete" ...Australian writer Drusilla Modjeska on Adelaide Writers' Week topic, "Why I'm Not Reading Fiction".
23 February 2002: Scientology attacked again in France: France is now testing out a new "cult-busting law" which could end in banning Scientology there. Three former Scientologists are lodging harrassment charges against The Church of Scientology in France, which has about 10,000 members and sympathisers. One French organisation lining up against Scientology is National Union of Associations for the Defence of Families and the Individual. (Reported 23 February 2002)
23 February 2002-1937: Anyone who has seen the Charlie Chaplin movie, The Great Dictator, will remember the scene depicting Hitler (or, Adenoid Hynkel) madly toying with a globe of the world. Amazingly, it now seems there was such a globe of the world in Hitler's hands, with a diameter of 1.5m. In 1937, several such globes were made for top Nazis, according to Reinhard Horn, a librarian with Bavarian State Library's maps and pictures department. It is thought a globe now on show at the library, which is pocked with bullet holes and bayonet stabs inflicted by allied solders, once stood in Hitler's office. (Reported 23 February 2002)
18 February 2002: Worries at the
speed of light: Newspaper states: "American scientists have
succeeded in a feat that will boggle the minds of those who believe
that nothing travels as fast as light: they have made light stop.
Professor Lene Hau has led a team at Rowland Institute of
Cambridge, Massachusetts, which has made a pulse of laser light
slow to a complete halt, then after a thousandth of a second, start
up again. A group meanwhile at a university in Texas hopes to go
further by stopping light and then reversing its direction.
(Reported by Sunday Telegraph, London, 18 February 2002)
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Now we know the "colours" of space: Space is not black,
as we might have thought, but "an elegant shade of pale green", as
researchers have found from studying light emitted by 200,000
galaxies. The colour is vaguely between turquoise and aquamarine.
Research has been conducted by Dr. Karl Glazebrook and Ivan Baldry,
of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. They suggest the universe
started with a "blue period", now to green, and will move on to a
red period. (Reported by 12 February 2002) But Oops: By 9
March 2002, this has to be corrected by astronomers. Due to a
computer glitch, the colour of the universe is not "pale green",
but "off-white, not quite beige". Apologising here is Terry
Bridges, a member of the Anglo-Australian Observatory Team.
Evidently, a computer program had a "red shift" in it.
This story continues to 19 March 2002, and the "colour of space"
has again been adjusted slightly to beige, or rather, "cosmic
latte". Two astronomer commenting most recently are from Johns
Hopkins University are Karl Glazebrook and Ivan Baldry, who blamed
a bug in an electronic colour palette. They have received "a lot"
of correspondence from colour scientists, they said.
12 February 2002: World first for world justice?: Strongman Slobodan Milosevic is now in the dock at The Hague, the first world leader to be tried for alleged crimes against humanity. The trial may last up to two years and will hear 66 charges. Milosevic does not recognise the authority of the court holding him. A prosecutor speaks of the "medieval savagery" of the alleged crimes in question.
Rethink on the first Renaissance painter: "The Father" of
Renaissance painting, that is, modern painting, is generally taken
to have been Giotto, of Florence, from about 1300AD. Now this view
is being challenged in favour of the earlier-working painter,
Pietro Cavallini. The pro-Giotto/pro-Florence view began with
Florentine writer Giorgio Vasari from 1550, with his book The
Lives of The Artists. Challenging the old views are Bruno
Zanardi, the restorer of the endangered Assisi frescos between
1978-1982 (at the Church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli, near the
Capitoline Hill, Rome), and art historian Tomasso Strinati.
New views on a 1290 date for the work of Cavallini began to
circulate on the Internet in 2001. A Life of St Francis of Assisi
in fresco-form is taken to be the first great fresco cycle of the
Renaissance - painted by Cavallini and not Giotto as has been
thought. Conclusion? "Italian art history will never be able to go
back to its old ways of understanding."
(From an article by Waldemar Januszczak in The Weekend
Australian Magazine, 9-10 February 2002)
Syphilis not imported from the New World by Columbus' men
after all?: New researched based in the UK port city, Hull, now
tends to indicate that syphilis is a disease thousands of years old
in Europe, and not newly-arising in Europe and the East due to
Columbus' sailors from 1492 bringing infection back from the New
World.
Syphilis in its venereal/tertiary form was known in a Greek city in
Italy about 600BC (Metaponto?), and also at Pompeii. The major
clues used for research so far in the past are the uniquely
grooved-teeth of the children of any mother with a case of
syphilis.
What is confusing is that the bacteria etc. causing syphilis only
attack the human venereal system when they are threatened by an
unhelpful environment - otherwise, syphilis can be an innocuous,
non-lethal childhood skin-rash-problem which once contracted, also
immunises the later adult against any form of venereal
syphilis.
The new research on such problems has been prompted by
discoveries at Hull at the Magistrates Court Site, which presented
remains of a medieval friary managed by The Augustine Friars. This
was the first Augustine friary established in England, and was
destroyed in 1539. The friars provided some kinds of male nursing
care and social welfare provision.
Early examination of the friary site revealed a skeleton dated
circa 1216AD bearing bone lesions typical of those arising
from the tertiary stage of syphilis. Other cases were found, and it
seemed that some signs of syphilis were found on 60 per cent of
bodies examined at Hull. That is, the elite of Hull suffered
long-term from the disease, Hull also being a sophisticated port
with international contacts.
Meantime, the implication is that the Indians of the New World as
met by Columbus have been unfairly blamed for 500 years now for
giving syphilis to his sailors, so that they spread it through
Europe, an outbreak noticed with considerable alarm, disgust and
fear especially amongst Spanish soldiers at the 1495 siege of
Naples, where many men developed loathsome ulcers of the
genitals.
It is also now said that the theory that syphilis originated in the
New World was only ever based on observations of five skeletons -
while the new theory on the age of syphilis in the Old World is now
based on observations of hundreds of skeletons.
One researcher working on syphilis in the New World in pre-Columbus
days suggests that it extended as far north as the Mississippi
River. It is a disease which adapts to different climates and human
societies, and is basically transmitted non-venereally, from skin
to skin. Syphilis has been around for thousands of years in human
society, and only mutates into a "sexually-transmitted killer" when
itself under threat.
(This report based on a documentary screened in Australia on SBS TV
on 3 February 2002).
2 February 2002: Sydney: Melbourne on 3rd, Brisbane on 5th. Presentation from Neale Donald Walsh, author of Conversations with God, and Thom Hartmann, author of The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight. "Banquet for the soul". At Sydney Entertainment Centre, or Vodafone Arena, Melbourne, or Brisbane Entertainment Centre. Book at www.ticketek.com
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1 February 2002: A US journalist (Daniel Pearl, for Wall St. Journal?) about eight days ago in Pakistan is kidnapped, hostaged, in return for Cuban-held men re events of late 2001. (Pearl is later murdered.)
Early 2002: The present-day ban in Japan on a woman ascending to the Chrysanthemum Throne may need to be rethought. The ban did not apply in older days, as seven women have sat on the throne. Not till the 1880s did new rules insist women could not sit on the throne, as applied by the then-emperor, Meiji, who promoted contact with the West. Japan's 125th emperor is Akihoto, born 1933, with sons Crown Prince Naruhito, and Akishino. The royal line of Japan stretches back 2500 years into mythical times, to the first ruler, the Sun God, Amataseru. The last empress, in 1762, was Go-Sakmuramachi.
January 2002: A recent UN report has named Norway as the world's best country in which to live, in terms of prosperity, health and education.
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January 2002: Intelligence sources reveal that a meeting is held in Southern Thailand. Al-Qa-ida bomb-makers decide to target tourists as a "weak point" - possibly one reason why the Sari Club on Bali was bombed in October 2002. The previous December, a plot had arisen to bomb the Australian High Commission in Singapore. (Reported 16 November 2002 in Sydney Morning Herald, front page)
30 January, 2002: Reports in Australia that in Indonesia, the people-smuggling business is in disarray, with asylum-seekers now refusing to pay the asked-for $10,000 for a boat-trip to Australia.
Hunting for the grave of Richard II: DNA tests are to be conducted on remains of a man who might be Richard II, "the last undisputed king of the house of Plantagenet". Associated may be re-examination of his father's remains, The Black Prince, buried at Canterbury Cathedral, England. History tells us that Richard II died imprisoned at Pontefract Castle in 1400, possibly starved to death by his usurper, Henry IV, before a parade of the remains, and burial at King's Langley, Hertfordshire. But legend persisted that Richard did not die, but somehow arrived at Stirling Castle, Scotland, to be held by the governor there, the Duke of Albany - who told Henry IV this was the case in 1402. This legendary Richard was still there by 1417, running up bills, and died by 1419 to be buried with regal pomp - on the north side of the High Altar of Black Friars - the site now under re-investigation by archaeologists. (Reported by 29 January 2002, from The Times)
12 January 2002: Korea: South Korea's dog restaurant owners and angry and biting back. They have threatened to cripple the websites of leading US and French media firms who are criticising them with "insulting reports" on the eating of dog meat. (Horses for courses, rather?)
11 January 2002: Message for the so-called men of
Belfast, Northern Ireland: Real men do not interfere with
children aged around 10, particularly not girls, going to school.
Rather, real men work, pay taxes, etc., ensuring and enabling that
all children can go to school in a normal way, whatever their
religion.
Conclusion: since this Belfast madness has been going on for some
time, is that Belfast, Ireland, is sadly lacking in real manhood.
What a set of packs of cowards!!!!! Guys, please meet on
this website, if nowhere else, the utter contempt of the rest of
the world!!!!!!!!!
Concerned about current issues: try this website - Islam
denounces terrorism:
http://www.islamdenouncesterrorism.com/
The Not-Scotland Land Problem: Scotland has the highest proportion of "landlording" in the world, and a movement is growing to "buy-back" Scottish lands into the hands of Scots. Use of class-warfare rhetoric is rising along with hot air, claims of land nationalisation, and hopes of a return to locals having more control of land rights. The problems of today started with the feudal system set up in Scotland in the 12th Century. (Reported 5 January 2002)
New research: (Reported late 2001 - early 2002) indicates that "there is no such thing as a completely logical mind". Using imaging research techniques, Dr. Dean Shibata of University of Washington finds that we engage some emotional centres of the brain when making even simple logical decisions - such as whether to wear a seat belt in a car. The brain areas for emotional experience versus logical decision-making had been thought to be compartmentalized, but they turn out to be "wired together", Shibata finds. It is now thought that the findings could assist with improving drug treatments for mentally-ill people, and help surgeons "navigate in the brain".
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January 2002: Recently re-opened on Celio Hill in Rome are houses (or a complex of 20 rooms near one-time shops) of the Roman upper-middle class, affluent, but not wealthy, located below the Basilica of saints John and Paul. The rooms (case Romanae al celio) were discovered in 1887. Restorer of the rooms is Elio Paparatti. Features of the rooms complex are "rusty red and yellow" frescoes (dated to the Fourth Century AD) depicting fruit-picking cupids, nude young men, birds, goats and scenes from mythology, courtyards with fountains, various uses of marble. An open-air courtyard was called the nymphaeum, a fresco shows the Greek goddess Persephone surrounded by cupids sailing boats on a grey-green sea.
Trend of the Future? Speaking of the Future: Items re languages: English is killing minority languages, Scottish Gaelic is in danger of dying off, many indigenous languages of Australia and North America will lose ground, half of the world 6000 languages now spoken may die by 2100. By 2002, half the world's people speak just 11 major languages, especially Mandarin Chinese, English, Hindi-or-Urdu, Spanish. See David Crystal's book, Language Death, or Andrew Dalby's book, Language in Danger. In Australia, Aboriginal languages will be particularly hard hit. (Reported 15 June 2002 in Weekend Australian, article by Richard Morrison, p. 26)
Trend of the future?: of August 1999: A new book warns that globalisation will rob us all of our cultural individuality. A single marketplace to deal in? Cultural homogenisation? Environments devoured? Less ecological diversity? Beware the "electronic herd" using the technology that brings you this very website, in fact! Not just globalisation, but Americanised-globalisation. Should the problem be called glocalism? What about act-local/think-global? See Thomas Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree. Published August 1999 by HarperCollins.
Trend of the Future? 2002: Note on forthcoming books: Claims that Islamic societies are less productive than today's Western societies partly due to the view(s) taken of the role(s) of women, in an article by David Landes and Richard A. Landes. David S. Landes is Professor of Economic History at Harvard University now preparing a book on financial dynasties. Richard A. Landes is Professor of Medieval History at Boston University now preparing a book on demotic religiosity and origins of civil society in the West. Item from article, The Australian newspaper, 10 October 2001. Page 31, on decline from 14th Century of Islamic world and centuries later, resentment of the dominant west, etc.
Trend of the Future? International group Anti-Slavery International, says an increasing number of people are being forced into slavery. They estimate that about 27 million people are now "forcibly employed". (Reported 28 May 2002) Lost Worlds recalls that the last figure they read on the number of refugees in the world was 23 million. It seems quite extraordinary that even more people could be oppressed by slavery. Whatever the real situation, there is a lot of discussion of contemporary slavery on the Internet.
2002: In Netherlands in 2002 is celebration of the 400th anniversary of the Dutch East India Company. (VOC)
Trend of the future? 2002: In 2002, predictions are that world-wide, about 24 million people will face being sacked from their jobs. Prediction comes from International Labour Organisation and other bodies by 7 November 2001. The world faces perhaps the biggest downturn in 60 years, in the US a deep and intractable recession.
Consider this? Michael Lewis, The Future Just Happened. Random House, 2001. (On the impact of the Internet and new technology - which paradoxically drives people apart, rather than enabling them to get closer)
Contact via the convenient (and virus-free): e-mail form
Stop Press: For late entries: US convenes a secret meeting in Jakarta with Indonesia's President Megawati Sukarnoputri in 2002 to pressure her to covertly hand over militant Islamic preacher, Abu Bakar Bashir. Revealing the talks is a disaffected US State Dept. translator, Fred Burks. At time of making the request, US envoy believes that the preacher is "truly evil". Megawati said she could not accede to the request. (Reported 14 January 2005 in Australian newspaper)
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