{"id":19,"date":"2008-12-01T16:53:11","date_gmt":"2008-12-01T08:53:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whosreallyrunningtheworld.blogtown.co.nz\/?page_id=19"},"modified":"2008-12-01T17:31:17","modified_gmt":"2008-12-01T09:31:17","slug":"50-things-you%e2%80%99re-not-supposed-to-know","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/whosreallyrunningtheworld.blogtown.co.nz\/?page_id=19","title":{"rendered":"50 THINGS YOU\u2019RE NOT SUPPOSED TO KNOW"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"CONTENTS
\nIntroduction
\n01 The Ten Commandments We Always See Aren’t the Ten Commandments
\n02 One of the Popes Wrote an Erotic Book
\n03 The CIA Commits Over 100,000 Serious Crimes Each Year
\n04 The First CIA Agent to Die in the Line of Duty Was Douglas Mackiernan
\n05 After 9\/11, the Defense Department Wanted to Poison Afghanistan’s Food Supply
\n06 The US Government Lies About the Number of Terrorism Convictions It Obtains
\n07 The US Is Planning to Provoke Terrorist Attacks
\n08 The US and Soviet Union Considered Detonating Nuclear Bombs on the Moon
\n09 Two Atomic Bombs Were Dropped on North Carolina
\n10 World War III Almost Started in 1995
\n11 The Korean War Never Ended
\n12 Agent Orange Was Used in Korea
\n13 Kent State Wasn’t the Only \u2014 or Even the First \u2014 Massacre of College Students During the
\nVietnam Era
\n14 Winston Churchill Believed in a Worldwide Jewish Conspiracy
\n15 The Auschwitz Tattoo Was Originally an IBM Code Number
\n16 Adolph Hitler’s Blood Relatives Are Alive and Well in New York State
\n17 Around One Quarter of “Witches” Were Men
\n18 The Virginia Colonists Practiced Cannibalism
\n19 Many of the Pioneering Feminists Opposed Abortion
\n20 Black People Served in the Confederate Army
\n21 Electric Cars Have Been Around Since the 1880s
\n22 Juries Are Allowed to Judge the Law, Not Just the Facts
\n23 The Police Aren’t Legally Obligated to Protect You
\n24 The Government Can Take Your House and Land, Then Sell Them to Private Corporations
\n25 The Supreme Court Has Ruled That You’re Allowed to Ingest Any Drug, Especially If
\nYou’re an Addict
\n26 The Age of Consent in Most of the US Is Not Eighteen
\n27 Most Scientists Don’t Read All of the Articles They Cite
\n28 Louis Pasteur Suppressed Experiments That Didn’t Support His Theories
\n29 The Creator of the GAIA Hypothesis Supports Nuclear Power
\n30 Genetically-Engineered Humans Have Already Been Born
\n31 The Insurance Industry Wants to Genetically Test All Policy Holders
\n32 Smoking Causes Problems Other Than Lung Cancer and Heart Disease
\n33 Herds of Milk-Producing Cows Are Rife With Bovine Leukemia Virus
\n34 Most Doctors Don’t Know the Radiation Level of CAT Scans
\n35 Medication Errors Kill Thousands Each Year
\n36 Prescription Drugs Kill Over 100,000 Annually
\n37 Work Kills More People Than War
\n38 The Suicide Rate Is Highest Among the Elderly
\n39 For Low-Risk People, a Positive Result from an HIV Test Is Wrong Half the Time
\n40 DNA Matching Is Not Infallible<\/p>\n

41 An FBI Expert Testified That Lie Detectors Are Worthless for Security Screening
\n42 The Bayer Company Made Heroin
\n43 LSD Has Been Used Successfully in Psychiatric Therapy
\n44 Carl Sagan Was an Avid Pot-Smoker
\n45 One of the Heroes of Black Hawk Down Is a Convicted Child Molester
\n46 The Auto Industry Says That SUV Drivers Are Selfish and Insecure
\n47 The Word “Squaw” Is Not a Derisive Term for the Vagina
\n48 You Can Mail Letters for Little or No Cost
\n49 Advertisers’ Influence on the News Media Is Widespread
\n50 The World’s Museums Contain Innumerable Fakes<\/p>\n

INTRODUCTION <\/p>\n

Certain parties don’t want you to know certain facts. For example, if Bayer were proud that it
\nintroduced heroin to the world, wouldn’t that fact be on the company’s Website? After all, it was
\none of the most popular drugs of the twentieth century. The official corporate history mentions
\nthe release of aspirin in 1899 but not heroin during the previous year. <\/p>\n

Do you think the Catholic Church wants you to know that Pope Pius II wrote an erotic book?
\nTrue, the canonical Catholic Encyclopedia does mention the title in passing, but it demurely
\nneglects to say anything about it. <\/p>\n

Historians don’t seem too happy about the fact that Winston Churchill decried an alleged
\nworldwide Jewish conspiracy, so you won’t read that very often. Likewise, the cannibalistic
\ntendencies of the Virginia colonists and our close call with World War III I are just too
\ndiscomforting to be widely admitted. <\/p>\n

My lady-love was an active feminist in the 1970s, yet she had never heard that the founding
\nmothers of feminism opposed abortion. Small wonder, since their prolife views are almost never
\nmentioned in biographies or documentaries. I was surprised when Richard Metzger,
\nDisinformation’s creative director, told me that Carl Sagan loved reefer. I guess the Drug
\nWarriors won’t be using the famous scientist as a poster child for the “evils” of pot. <\/p>\n

The tobacco companies finally had to cop to lung cancer, but they still prefer that you remain
\nignorant of all the other health problems caused by smoking. You won’t see “Causes blindness”
\nor “Doubles risk of genital cancer” on the warning label. The beef industry sued Oprah Winfrey
\nfor discussing the possibility of mad cow disease in the US, so do you think that the dairy
\nindustry will be very happy when people find out that most milk starts out containing bovine
\nleukemia virus? <\/p>\n

Activists have been arrested for telling people about their full powers as jurors. Plans lo nuke the
\nMoon have been classified. The military successfully pressured a movie studio to change the
\nname of a character in the flick Black Hawk Down; that particular commando is currently in the
\nstockade for raping a child under twelve. <\/p>\n

Certain parties don’t want you to know certain facts. That’s a fact. <\/p>\n

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS WE ALWAYS SEE AREN’T THE TEN
\nCOMMANDMENTS <\/p>\n

First Amendment battles continue to rage across the US over the posting of the Ten
\nCommand-ments in public places \u2014 courthouses, schools, parks, and pretty much anywhere else
\nyou can imagine. Christians argue that they’re a part of our Western heritage that should be
\ndisplayed as ubiquitously as traffic signs. Congressman Bob Barr hilariously suggested that the
\nColumbine massacre wouldn’t have happened if the Ten Commandments (also called the
\nDecalogue) had been posted in the high school, and some government officials have directly,
\npurposely disobeyed court rulings against the display of these ten directives supposedly handed
\ndown from on high. <\/p>\n

Too bad they’re all talking about the wrong rules. <\/p>\n

Every Decalogue you see \u2014 from the 5,000-pound granite behemoth inside the Alabama State
\nJudicial Building to the little wallet-cards sold at Christian bookstores \u2014 is bogus. Simply
\nreading the Bible will prove this. Getting out your King James version, turn to Exodus 20:2-17.
\nYou’ll see the familiar list of rules about having no other gods, honoring your parents, not killing
\nor coveting, and so on. At this point, though, Moses is just repeating to the people what God told
\nhim on Mount Si’nai. These are not written down in any form. <\/p>\n

Later, Moses goes back to the Mount, where God gives him two “tables of stone” with rules
\nwritten on them (Exodus 31:18). But when Moses comes down the mountain lugging his load, he
\nsees the people worshipping a statue of a calf, causing him to throw a tantrum and smash the
\ntablets on the ground (Exodus 32:19). <\/p>\n

In neither of these cases does the Bible refer to “commandments.” In the first instance, they are
\n“words” which “God spake,” while the tablets contain “testimony.” It is only when Moses goes
\nback for new tablets that we see the phrase “ten commandments” (Exodus 34:28). In an
\ninteresting turn of events, the commandments on these tablets are significantly different than the
\nten rules Moses recited for the people, meaning that either Moses’ memory is faulty or God
\nchanged his mind. <\/p>\n

Thus, without further ado, we present to you the real “Ten Commandments” as handed down by
\nthe LORD unto Moses (and plainly listed in Exodus 34:13-28). We eagerly await all the new
\nDecalogues, which will undoubtedly contain this correct version: <\/p>\n

I. Thou shalt worship no other god.
\nII. Thou shalt make thee no molten gods.
\nIII.. The feast of unleavened bread thou shalt keep
\nIV. Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest.
\nV. Thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, of the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of
\ningathering at the year’s end.
\nVI. Thrice In the year shall all your men children appear before the Lord God.
\nVII. Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven. <\/p>\n

VIII. Neither shall the sacrifice of the feast of the passover be left unto the morning.
\nIX. The first of the firstfruits of thy land thou shalt bring unto the house of the LORD thy God.
\nX. Thou shalt not seethe a kid [ie, a young goat] in his mother’s milk.
\nONE OF THE POPES WROTE AN EROTIC BOOK <\/p>\n

Before he was Pope Pius II, Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini was a poet, scholar, diplomat, and
\nrakehell. And an author. In fact, he wrote a bestseller. People in fifteenth-century Europe couldn’t
\nget enough of his Latin novella Historia de duobus amantibus. An article in a scholarly
\npublication on literature claims that Historia “was undoubtedly one of the most read stories of
\nthe whole Renaissance.” The Oxford edition gives a Cliff Notes version of the storyline: “The
\nGoodli History tells of the illicit love of Euralius, a high official in the retinue of the [German]
\nEmperor Sigismund, and Lucres, a married lady from Siena [Italy].” <\/p>\n

It was probably written in 1444, but the earliest known printing is from Antwerp in 1488. By the
\nturn of the century, 37 editions had been published. Somewhere around 1553, the short book
\nappeared in English under the wonderfully old-school title The Goodli History of the Moste
\nNoble and Beautyfull Ladye Lucres of Scene in Tuskane, and of Her Louer Eurialus Verye
\nPleasaunt and Delectable vnto ye Reder. Despite the obvious historical interest of this archaic
\nVatican porn, it has never been translated into contemporary language. (The passages quoted <\/p>\n

below mark the first time that any of the book has appeared in <\/p>\n

modern English.) <\/p>\n

The 1400s being what they were, the action is pretty tame by today’s
\nstandards. At one point, Euralius scales a wall to be with Lucres:
\n“When she saw her lover, she clasped him in her arms. There was
\nembracing and kissing, and with full sail they followed their lusts and
\nwearied Venus, now with Ceres, and now with Bacchus was
\nrefreshed.” Loosely translated, that last part means that they shagged,
\nthen ate, then drank wine. <\/p>\n

His Holiness describes the next time they hook up: <\/p>\n

Thus talking to each other, they went into the bedroom, where they had such a night as we
\njudge the two lovers Paris and Helen had after he had taken her away, and it was so
\npleasant that they thought Mars and Venus had never known such pleasure…. <\/p>\n

Her mouth, and now her eyes, and now her cheeks he kissed. Pulling down her clothes, he
\nsaw such beauty as he had never seen before. “I have found more, I believe,” said Euralius,
\n“than Acteon saw of Diana when she bathed in the fountain. What is more pleasant or
\nmore fair than these limbs?… O fair neck and pleasant breasts, is it you that I touch? Is it
\nyou that I have? Are you in my hands? O round limbs, O sweet body, do I have you in my
\narms?… O pleasant kisses, O dear embraces, O sweet bites, no man alive is happier than I
\nam, or more blessed.”… <\/p>\n

He strained, and she strained, and when they were done they weren’t weary. Like Athens,
\nwho rose from the ground stronger, soon after battle they were more desirous of war. <\/p>\n

But Euralius isn’t just a horndog. He waxes philosophical about love to Lucres’ cousin-in-law: <\/p>\n

You know that man is prone to love. Whether it is virtue or vice, it reigns everywhere. No
\nheart of flesh hasn’t sometime felt the pricks of love. You know that neither the wise
\nSolomon nor the strong Sampson has escaped from this passion. Furthermore, the nature
\nof a kindled heart and a foolish love is this: The more it is allowed, the more it burns, with
\nnothing sooner healing this than the obtaining of the loved. There have been many, both in
\nour time and that of our elders, whose foolish love has been the cause of cruel death. And
\nmany who, after sex and love vouchsafed, have stopped burning. Nothing is better when
\nlove has crept into your bones than to give in to the burning, for those who strive against
\nthe tempest often wreck, while those who drive with the storm escape. <\/p>\n

Besides sex and wisdom, the story also contains a lot of humor, as when Lucres’ husband
\nborrows a horse from Euralius: “He says to himself, ‘If you leap upon my horse, I shall do the
\nsame thing to your wife.'” <\/p>\n

Popes just don’t write books like that anymore! <\/p>\n

03
\nTHE CIA COMMITS OVER 100,000 SERIOUS CRIMES EACH YEAR <\/p>\n

It’s no big secret that the Central Intelligence Agency breaks the law. But just how often its does
\nin is a shocker. A Congressional report reveals that the CIA’s spooks “engage in highly illegal
\nactivities” at least 100,000 times each year (which breaks down to hundreds of crimes every
\nday). Mind you, we aren’t talking about run-of-the-mill illegal activities \u2014 these are “highly
\nillegal activities” that “break extremely serious laws.” <\/p>\n

In 1996, the House of Representatives’ Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released a
\nhuge report entitled “IC21: The Intelligence Community in the 21st Century.” Buried amid
\nhun-dreds of pages is a single, devastating paragraph: <\/p>\n

The CS [clandestine service] is the only part of the IC [intelligence community], indeed of
\nthe government, where hundreds of employees on a daily basis are directed to break
\nextremely serious laws in countries around the world in the face of frequently sophisticated
\nefforts by foreign governments to catch them. A safe estimate is that several hundred times
\nevery day (easily 100,000 times a year) DO [Directorate of Operations] officers engage in
\nhighly illegal activities (according to foreign law) that not only risk political embarrassment
\nto the US but also endanger the freedom if not lives of the participating foreign nationals
\nand, more than occasionally, of the clandestine officer himself. <\/p>\n

Amazingly, there is no explanation, no follow-up. The report simply drops this bombshell and
\nmoves on as blithely as if it had just printed a grocery list. <\/p>\n

One of the world’s foremost experts on the CIA \u2014 John Kelly, who uncovered this revelation \u2014
\nnotes that this is “the first official admission and definition of CIA covert operations as crimes.”
\nHe goes on to say: <\/p>\n

The report suggested that the CIA’s crimes include murder and that “the targets of the CS
\n[Clandestine Service] are increasingly international and transnational and a global
\npresence is increasingly crucial to attack those targets.” In other words, we are not talking
\nabout simply stealing secrets. We are talking about the CIA committing crimes against
\nhumanity with de facto impunity and con-gressional sanctioning. <\/p>\n

Other government documents, including CIA reports, show that the CIA’s crimes include
\nterrorism, assassination, torture, and systematic violations of human rights. The documents
\nalso show that these crimes are part and parcel of deliberate CIA policy (the
\n[congressional] report notes that CIA personnel are “directed” to commit crimes). <\/p>\n

04
\nTHE FIRST CIA AGENT TO DIE IN THE LINE OF DUTY WAS DOUGLAS
\nMACKIERNAN <\/p>\n

As of the year 2000, 69 CIA agents had died in the line of duty. Of these, the identities of 40
\nremain classified. Former Washington Post and Time reporter Ted Gup spent three years hacking
\ndown information about these mysterious spooks who gave their lives for the Agency. (Mm
\nresulting publication, The Book of Honor, names almost all of them.) <\/p>\n

The first to die was Douglas Mackiernan. Undercover as a State Department diplomat, the US
\nArmy Air Corps Major worked in the capital of China’s Xinjiang (Sinkiang) province, which
\nGup says “was widely regarded as the most remote and desolate consulate on earth.” He went
\nthere m May 1947 to keep an eye on China’s border with the Soviet Union and to monitor the
\nHusskies’ atomic tests. <\/p>\n

In late September 1949, during the Communist takeover of China, Mackiernan left, but it was too
\nlate to use normal routes. Incredibly, he decided to go by foot during winter all the way to India,
\nwhich would take him across a desert and the Himalayas. He, three White Russians, and a
\nFulbright scholar slogged the 1,000-mile trek in eight months. On April 29, 1950, they managed
\nlo reach the border of Tibet, but guards there thought the men were commies or bandits, and
\nopened fire on them. <\/p>\n

Hitting the ground, the bedraggled travelers waved a white flag, which stopped the gunfire. They
\nslowly walked toward the border guards with their hands over their heads, but the Tibetans shot
\nthem, killing Mackiernan and two of the Russians. To add insult to injury, the guards cut the
\nheads off the corpses. Their remains are buried at that spot. <\/p>\n

With documents from the National Archives, Mackiernan’s widow, and other sources, Gup
\npulled the CIA’s first casualty out of the classified shadows. To this day, the Agency refuses to
\nacknow-ledge Mackiernan’s existence. <\/p>\n

05 <\/p>\n

AFTER 9\/11, THE DEFENSE DEPARTMENT WANTED TO POISON
\nAFGHANISTAN’S FOOD SUPPLY
\nOne of the strangest things the media do is to bury huge revelations deep in the bowels of a
\nlarger story. A perfect example occurs in “10 Days in September,” an epic eight-day series that
\nran in the Washington Post. In part six, Bob Woodward and Dan Balz are recounting the Bush
\nAdministration’s activities on September 17, 2001, six days after the 9\/11 attacks. Bush and
\nNational Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice have headed to the Pentagon to be briefed on action
\nagainst Afghanistan by a two-star general from the Special Operation Command: <\/p>\n

Rice and Frank Miller, the senior NSC staffer for defense, went with the president to the
\nPentagon. Before the briefing, Miller reviewed the classified slide presentation prepared
\nfor Bush and got a big surprise. <\/p>\n

One slide about special operations in Afghanistan said: Thinking Outside the Box \u2014
\nPoisoning Food Supply. Miller was shocked and showed it to Rice. The United States
\ndoesn’t know how to do this, Miller reminded her, and we’re not allowed. It would
\neffectively be a chemical or biological attack \u2014 clearly banned by treaties that the United
\nStates had signed, including the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. <\/p>\n

Nice took the slide to Rumsfeld. “This slide is not going to be shown to the president of the
\nUnited States,” she said. <\/p>\n

Rumsfeld agreed. “You’re right,” he said. <\/p>\n

Pentagon officials said later that their own internal review had caught the offending slide
\nand that it never would have been shown to the president or to Rumsfeld. <\/p>\n

06
\nTHE US GOVERNMENT LIES ABOUT THE NUMBER OF TERRORISM
\nCONVICTIONS IT OBTAINS
\nNaturally enough, the Justice Department likes to trumpet convictions of terrorists. Besides
\ngarnering great publicity and allowing the citizenry to sleep snugly at night, this means more
\nmoney for the department. The problem is that the numbers are a sham. <\/p>\n

The story broke when the Philadelphia Inquirer examined convictions that the Justice
\nDepart-ment said involved terrorism during the five year-period ending September 30, 2001.
\nThey found ludicrous examples of misclassification: <\/p>\n

In one vivid example, an assistant US attorney in San Francisco asked US District Judge
\nMarilyn H. Patel on Monday to stiffen a sentence against an Arizona man who got drunk
\non a United Airlines flight from Shanghai, repeatedly rang the call button, demanded more
\nliquor, and put his hands on a flight attendant. Justice Department records show the case
\nas “domestic terrorism.” <\/p>\n

In another case: “A tenant fighting eviction called his landlord, impersonated an FBI agent, and
\nsaid the bureau did not want the tenant evicted. The landlord recognized the man’s voice and
\ncalled the real FBI.” <\/p>\n

Other “terrorist” incidents included prisoners rioting for better food, “the former court employee
\nwho shoved and threatened a judge,” and “[s]even Chinese sailors [who] were convicted of
\ntaking over a Taiwanese fishing boat and sailing to the US territory of Guam, where they hoped
\nto win political asylum.” <\/p>\n

After this chicanery was exposed, Republican Congressman Dan Burton asked the General
\nAccounting Office \u2014 a nonpartisan governmental unit that investigates matters for Congress \u2014
\nto look into the Justice Department’s claims of terrorist convictions. Sure enough, the GAO
\nreported that the situation isn’t nearly as rosy as we’ve been told. <\/p>\n

In the year after 9\/11 \u2014 from September 30, 2001, to that date the following year \u2014 the Justice
\nDepartment maintained that 288 terrorists had been convicted in the US of their heinous crimes.
\nBut the GAO found that at least 132 of these cases (approximately 42 percent) had nothing to do
\nwith terrorism. Because of the GAO’s methodology, it didn’t verify every one of the remaining
\n166 convictions, so it refers to their accuracy as “questionable.” <\/p>\n

The deception is even worse when you zoom in on the cases classified as “international
\nterrorism,” which are the most headline-grabbing of all. Out of 174 such convictions, 131 (an
\namazing 75 percent) weren’t really about terror. <\/p>\n

After all of this humiliation, the Justice Department must’ve cleaned up its act, right? That’s what
\nit told the Philadelphia Inquirer. Well, the paper did a follow-up on “terrorism” cases for the first
\ntwo months of 2003. Out of the 56 federal cases supposedly involving terrorism, at least 41 were
\nbogus. Eight of them involved Puerto Ricans protesting the Navy’s use of Vieques as a bombing
\nrange. The prosecutor who handled these cases says she doesn’t know why they were classified
\nas terrorism. Similarly, 28 Latinos were arrested for working at airports with phony ID, and a
\nspokesman for the US Attorney says they weren’t even suspected of being involved in terrorism.
\nThe most ridiculous example: “A Middle Eastern man indicted in Detroit for allegedly passing
\nbad checks who has the same name as a Hezbollah leader.” <\/p>\n

07 <\/p>\n

THE US IS PLANNING TO PROVOKE TERRORIST ATTACKS
\nPerhaps the government won’t need to inflate its terrorism-arrest stats after it implements the
\nDefense Science Board’s recommendation. This influential committee inside the Pentagon has
\nproposed a terrifying way to fight evil-doers: Goad them into making terrorist attacks. Yes, you
\nread correctly. Instead of waiting for a plot to be hatched and possibly executed, go out and make
\nit happen. <\/p>\n

In summer 2002, the Defense Science Board outlined all kinds of ways to fight the war on
\nterrorism around the world. The scariest suggestion involves the creation of a new 100-man,
\n$100-million team called the Proactive Pre-emptive Operations Group, or P2OG. <\/p>\n

This combination of elite special forces soldiers and intelligence agents will have “an entirely
\nnew capability to proactively, pre-emptively provoke responses from adversary\/terrorist groups,”
\naccording to the DSB’s report. <\/p>\n

Just how the P2OG will “provoke” terrorists into action is not specified, at least in the
\nunclassified portions of the report. United Press International \u2014 which apparently has access to
\nthe full, classified version of the report \u2014 says that techniques could include “stealing their
\nmoney or tricking them with fake communications.” The Moscow Times offers further
\npossibilities, such as killing family members and infiltrating the groups with provocateurs, who
\nwill suggest and even direct terrorist strikes. <\/p>\n

Once the terrorists have been provoked, what then? UPI says that by taking action, the terrorists
\nwould be “exposing themselves to ‘quick-response’ attacks by US forces.” In other words, the
\nplan is to hit the hornet’s nest with a stick, while waiting nearby with a can of bug spray. The
\nflaws in this approach are obvious. Although not spelled out in the UPI article or the report itsef,
\nthe idea seems to be that the P2OG will cause terrorists to make an attack but supposedly stop
\nthem light before the attack actually occurs. Will the P2OG always be able to prevent terrorism it
\ncreates from taking place? Will it always be able to “neutralize” all of the terrorists during that
\ncrucial window after a plan has been put into motion but before it’s been carried out? I wouldn’t
\nwant to bet lives on it. But that’s exactly what’s happening. <\/p>\n

Whenever any future terrorist attack occurs \u2014 an embassy is truck-bombed, a nightclub is
\nblown to smithereens, prominent buildings are hit with hijacked passenger jets \u2014 we’ll never be
\n100 percent sure that this wasn’t an operation the P2OG provoked but then was unable to stop in
\ntime. <\/p>\n

08
\nTHE US AND SOVIET UNION CONSIDERED DETONATING NUCLEAR BOMBS ON
\nTHE MOON
\nYou’d be forgiven for thinking that this is an unused scene from Dr. Strangelove, but the United
\nStates and the Soviet Union have seriously considered exploding atomic bombs on the Moon. <\/p>\n

It was the late 1950s, and the Cold War was extremely chilly. Someone in the US government
\ngot the bright idea of nuking the Moon, and in 1958 the Air Force Special Weapons Center
\nspearheaded the project (labeled A119, “A Study of Lunar Research Flights”). <\/p>\n

The idea was to shock and awe the Soviet Union, and everybody else, with a massive display of
\nAmerican nuclear might. What better demonstration than an atomic explosion on our closest
\ncelestial neighbor? According to the project’s reports, the flash would’ve been visible to the
\nnaked eye on Earth. (It’s been suggested that another motivation may have been to use the Moon
\nas a test range, thus avoiding the problems with irradiating our home planet.) <\/p>\n

Carl Sagan was among the scientists lending his intellectual muscle to this hare-brained scheme.
\nThe project’s leader was physicist Leonard Reiffel, who said: “I made it clear at the time there
\nwould be a huge cost to science of destroying a pristine lunar environment, but the US Air Force
\nwere mainly concerned about how the nuclear explosion would play on earth.” <\/p>\n

When a reporter for Reuters asked him what had happened to Project A119, Reiffel replied,
\n“After the final report in early- to mid-1959, it simply went away, as things sometimes do in the
\nworld of classified activities.” <\/p>\n

Astoundingly, this wasn’t the only time that a nuclear strike on the Moon was contemplated.
\nScience reporter Keay Davidson reveals that “in 1956, W.W. Kellogg of RAND Corporation
\nconsidered the possibility of launching an atomic bomb to the Moon.” In 1957, NASA’s Jet
\nPropulsion Laboratory put forth Project Red Socks, the first serious proposal to send spacecraft
\nto the Moon. One of its lesser suggestions was to nuke the Moon in order to send lunar rocks
\nhurtling back to Earth, where they could be collected and studied. The following year, the
\nleading American astronomer of the time, Gerard Kuiper, coauthored a memo which considered
\nthe scientific advantages of nuking the Moon. The creator of the hydrogen bomb, physicist
\nEdward Teller, similarly mused about dropping atomic bombs on the Moon in order to study the
\nseismic waves they would create. <\/p>\n

The Soviet Union got in on the act, also in the late 1950s. Project E-4 would’ve used a probe
\narmed with an A-bomb to blast the Moon, apparently as a display of one-upmanship. The idea
\nreached the stage of a full-scale model but was aborted for fear of the probe falling back to Earth. <\/p>\n

09
\nTWO ATOMIC BOMBS WERE DROPPED ON NORTH CAROLINA
\nFortunately, no atomic bombs were dropped on the Moon, but the same can’t be said of North
\nCarolina. The Tar Heel State’s brush with nuclear catastrophe came on January 24, 1961, about
\nhalf past midnight. A B-52 with two nukes on-board was cruising the skies near Goldsboro and
\nFaro when its right wing leaked fuel and exploded. The jet disintegrated. Five crewmen survived,
\nwhile three died. <\/p>\n

The two MARK 39 thermonuclear bombs disengaged from the jet. Each one had a yield of two
\nto tour megatons (reports vary), up to 250 times as powerful as the bomb that decimated
\nHiroshima. The parachute opened on one of them, and it drifted to the earth relatively gently. But
\nthe parachute failed to open on the other, so it plowed into a marshy patch of land owned by a
\nfarmer. <\/p>\n

The nuke with the parachute was recovered easily. However, its twin proved much more difficult
\nto retrieve. Because of the swampiness of the area, workers were able to drag out only part of the
\nbomb. One of its most crucial components \u2014 the “secondary,” which contains nuclear material <\/p>\n

\u2014 is still in the ground, probably around 150 feet down. <\/p>\n

The federal government bought rights to this swatch of land to prevent any owners from digging
\nmore than five feet under the surface. To this day, state regulators test the radiation levels of the
\nground water in the area every year. The head of the North Carolina Division of Radiation
\nProtection has said that they’ve found only normal levels but that “there is still an open question
\nas to whether a hazard exists.” <\/p>\n

The big question is whether or not North Carolina’s own Fat Man and Little Boy could’ve
\nactually detonated. Due to the technicalities of nuclear weapons \u2014 and the ambiguous nature of
\nthe terms “unarmed,” “armed,” and “partially armed” \u2014 it’s hard to give a definitive answer. We
\ndo know this: The Defense Department said that the ill-fated B-52 was part of a program (since
\ndiscontinued) that continuously kept nuclear bombs in the air, ready for dropping. So, the answer
\nis yes, that jet was fully capable of unleashing its A-bombs in completely armed mode, with all
\nthat this implies \u2014 mushroom clouds, vaporized people, dangerous radiation levels for decades,
\netc. <\/p>\n

According to the late Chuck Hansen \u2014 one of the world’s leading authorities on nuclear
\nweapons \u2014 the pilot of the B-52 would’ve had to throw a switch to arm the bombs. Since he
\ndidn’t, the bombs couldn’t have gone off. Hansen mentions the possibility that the switch
\ncould’ve been activated while the jet was breaking apart and exploding. Luckily this didn’t
\nhappen, but it was a possibility. <\/p>\n

That switch apparently was the only thing that stopped the bombs from turning part of North
\nCarolina into toast. The government’s own reports show that for both bombs, three of the four
\narming devices had activated. Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara further
\ncorroborated this during a press conference, saying that the nukes “went through all but one” of
\nthe necessary steps. <\/p>\n

Hansen told college students researching this near-miss: <\/p>\n

This was a very dangerous incident and I suspect that steps were taken afterwards to
\nprevent any repetition of it. I do not now know of any other weapon accident that came this
\nclose to a full-scale nuclear detonation (which is not to say that any such incident did not
\noccur later). <\/p>\n

10 <\/p>\n

WORLD WAR III ALMOST STARTED IN 1995
\nWhat were you doing on January 25, 1995? Whatever it was, it was almost the last thing you
\never did. On that day, the world came within minutes of a nuclear war between the US and
\nRussia. <\/p>\n

Norway and the United States had launched a research rocket (for charting the Arctic) from a
\nNorwegian island. Following standard protocol, Norway had alerted Russia in advance about the
\nfiring, but the message never made its way to the right people. In the middle of the night,
\nRussian radar detected what looked like a nuclear missile launched toward Moscow from a US
\nsubmarine. <\/p>\n

The military immediately called President Boris Yeltsin, awakening him with the news that the
\ncountry appeared to be under attack (no word on whether Yeltsin had been in a vodka-induced
\ndrunken slumber). The groggy president, for the first time ever, activated the infamous black
\nsuitcase that contains the codes for launching nuclear missiles. He had just a few minutes to
\ndecide whether to launch any or all of the country’s 2,000 hair-trigger nukes at the US.
\nLuckily for the entire world, while Yeltsin was conferring with his highest advisors, Russia’s
\nradar showed that the missile was headed out to sea. The red alert was cancelled. World War III
\nwas averted. <\/p>\n

What makes this even more nerve-racking is that Russia’s early-warning systems are in much
\nworse shape now than they were in ’95. The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers
\nexplains that while Russia needs 21 satellites to have a complete, fully-redundant network
\ncapable of accurately detecting missile launches, as of 1999 they have only three. Heaven help us
\nif some Russian bureaucrat again forgets to tell the command and control center that a nearby
\ncountry is launching a research rocket. <\/p>\n

11
\nTHE KOREAN WAR NEVER ENDED
\nBetter not tell Hawkeye Pierce and the rest of the gang from M*A*S*H, but the Korean War is
\ntechnically still happening. This comes to us from no less an authority than Howard S. Levie, the
\nI man who drafted the Korean Armistice Agreement. At the time, this law professor was a
\ncaptain in the Office of the Judge Advocate General (JAG). He explains: <\/p>\n

An armistice is not a peace treaty. While its main objective is to bring about a cease-fire, a
\nhalt to hostilities, that halt may be indefinite or for a specified period of time only. An
\narmistice agreement does not terminate the state of war between the belligerents. A state of
\nwar continues to exist with all of its implications for the belligerents and for the neutrals. <\/p>\n

The Korean Armistice itself even specifies that it is only a stop-gap measure “until a final
\npeaceful settlement is achieved.” To date, this settlement \u2014 otherwise known as a peace
\ntreaty \u2014 has never occurred. One attempt was made, at the Geneva Convention of 1954, but
\nnothing came of it. <\/p>\n

Interestingly, the Armistice wasn’t signed at all by South Korea but rather by the head honchos in
\nthe United Nations Command, North Korea’s army, and China’s army. It should also be noted
\nthat the conflict in Korea wasn’t technically a “war,” because \u2014 like so many other post-WWII
\nhostilities \u2014 there was no formal declaration of war. As The Korean War: An Encyclopedia
\ntrenchantly observes: “Since the war had never been declared, it was fitting that the should be no
\nofficial ending, merely a suspension of hostilities.” <\/p>\n

North Korea has more than once denounced the Armistice, threatening to press the “play” button
\non the long-paused Korean War. Most recently, in February 2003, Kim Jong-il’s government said
\nthat because of repeated US violations, the Armistice is merely “a blank piece of paper without
\nany effect or significance.” <\/p>\n

12 <\/p>\n

AGENT ORANGE WAS USED IN KOREA
\n“Agent Orange” is practically synonymous with the Vietnam War. The Dow Chemical defoliant
\nwas used to de-junglize large areas, exposing enemy troops, supplies, and infiltrators. It has been
\nlinked, though never definitively, to a number of nasty health problems such as Hodgkin’s
\ndisease and adult-onset diabetes, plus spina bifida in offspring. The Veterans Administration
\ncompensates sick veterans who were exposed in Vietnam. <\/p>\n

But it turns out that ‘Nam wasn’t the only place to get doused with this super-herbicide. From
\nApril 1968 to July 1969, 21,000 gallons of Agent Orange were sprayed along a strip of land
\nabutting the southern border of the Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas. During that time
\nperiod, mound 80,000 US military personnel served in South Korea, although not all of them
\nwould’ve been in the vicinity of the DMZ. The VA contradicts itself regarding who did the
\nspraying, claiming at one point that it was South Korea but saying at another that the Department
\nof Defense did it. <\/p>\n

In September 2000, the VA quietly sent letters to veterans who served in Korea during the
\nspraying, letting them know that they may have been dosed with Agent Orange. Since these
\nletters were sent over 30 years after the exposure, the Pentagon must’ve just found out about it,
\nlight? Actually, even if you buy the story that the South Koreans were responsible, the US
\nmilitary knew about the spraying at the time it happened but kept quiet about it for decades. It
\nwas only when news reports began citing declassified documents in 1999 that the government
\ndecided to do something. <\/p>\n

Possibly exposed vets can get tested for free by the Veterans Administration. The catch is, if
\nthey’re sick with Hodgkin’s or some other horrible disease, they \u2014 unlike their Vietnam
\ncompatriots \u2014 aren’t eligible for compensation or additional health care. However, for their
\nagony, Korean vets will receive a free newsletter, the same one that Vietnam vets get. <\/p>\n

13
\nKENT STATE WASN’T THE ONLY \u2014 OR EVEN THE FIRST \u2014 MASSACRE OF
\nCOLLEGE STUDENTS DURING THE VIETNAM ERA
\nIt’s one of the defining moments of the Vietnam era and, more than that, twentieth-century US
\nhistory in general. On May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard opened fire on unarmed Kent State
\nUniversity students protesting the war. Four were killed, eight were wounded, and another was
\nleft paralyzed. It’s so ingrained in the country’s psyche that it even appears in American history
\ntextbooks, and the anniversary is noted each year by the major media. <\/p>\n

Yet this wasn’t the only time the authorities slaughtered unarmed college kids during this time
\nperiod. It happened on at least two other occasions, which have been almost completely
\nforgotten. <\/p>\n

A mere ten days after the Kent State massacre, students at the historically black Jackson State
\nUniversity in Mississippi were protesting not only the Vietnam War and the recent killings at
\nKent, but racism as well. On the night of May 14, 1970, during the protests, a small riot broke
\nout when a false rumor swept the campus: The black mayor of Fayette, Mississippi, was said to
\nhave been assassinated. As at Kent State, some students or provocateurs threw bricks and stones
\nand set fires. Firefighters trying to put out a blaze in a men’s dorm were hassled by an angry
\ncrowd, so they called for police protection. The campus was cordoned off. <\/p>\n

Jackson State’s Website devoted to the incident says: “Seventy-five city policemen and
\nMississippi State Police officers armed with carbines, submachine guns, shotguns, service
\nrevolvers and some personal weapons, responded to the call.” After the fire had been
\nextinguished, the heavily armed cops marched down the street, herding students towards a
\nwomen’s dorm. As the notes: “No one seems to know why.” <\/p>\n

Seventy-five to 100 students were pushed back until they were in front of the dorm, where they
\nbegan yelling and throwing things at the police. “Accounts disagree as to what happened next.
\nSome students said the police advanced in a line, warned them, then opened fire. Others said the
\npolice abruptly opened fire on the crowd and the dormitory. Other witnesses reported that the
\nstudents were under the control of a campus security officer when the police opened fire. Police
\nclaimed they spotted a powder flare in the Alexander West Hall third floor stairwell window and
\nfire in self-defense on the dormitory only. Two local television news reporters present at the
\nshooting agreed that a shot was fired, but were uncertain of the direction. A radio reporter
\nclaimed to have seen an arm and a pistol extending from a dormitory window.” <\/p>\n

Two people \u2014 both outside the dorm \u2014 were killed in over 30 seconds of sustained gunfire
\nfrom the cops. Jackson student Phillip Lafayette Gibbs was shot in the head, and a bystander \u2014
\nhigh-school senior James Earl Green \u2014 took it in the chest. A dozen students were nonfatally
\nshot, and many more were injured by flying glass. Over 460 rounds had hit the dorm. No
\nmember of law enforcement was injured. <\/p>\n

Aim the carnage, Inspector “Goon” Jones radioed the dispatcher, saying that “nigger students”
\nbeen killed. When the dispatcher asked him about the injured, he said: “I think there are about
\nthree more nigger males there…. There were two nigger gals \u2014 two more nigger gals from over
\nthere shot in the arm, I believe.” <\/p>\n

Even less known is the Orangeburg massacre, which took place two years earlier. Students at
\nSouth Carolina State University in Orangeburg \u2014joined by students from another black college,
\nClaflin University \u2014 were protesting the failure of the town’s only bowling alley to racially
\nintegrate. February 8,1968, was the fourth night of demonstrations, and students had lit a bonfire
\non campus. Police doused it, but a second one was started. When the cops tried to extinguish this
\none, the crowd \u2014 in a scene to be replayed at Kent and Jackson \u2014 started throwing things at
\nthem. One highway patrolmen fired warning shots into the air, and all hell broke loose as the
\nassembled police opened fire on the unarmed crowd. <\/p>\n

After a barrage of weapons-fire, three people were dead \u2014 eighteen-year-olds Henry Smith and I
\nSamuel Hammond, and high-school student Delano Middleton. Twenty-seven other <\/p>\n

demonstrators were wounded. The vast majority of them had been shot in the back as they ran
\naway. <\/p>\n

South Carolina’s Governor praised the police for their handling on the situation, giving all of
\nthem promotions. Nine patrolmen were eventually tried on federal charges, and all were
\nacquitted. It! was only 33 years later \u2014 on the 2001 anniversary of the carnage \u2014 that a
\nGovernor of the state admitted the heinous nature of what happened that night. Governor Jim
\nHodges said, “We deeply regret” the mass-shooting, but he stopped short of apologizing for it. <\/p>\n

14
\nWINSTON CHURCHILL BELIEVED IN A WORLDWIDE JEWISH CONSPIRACY <\/p>\n

Like Henry Ford, Britain’s larger-than-life wartime Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, believed
\nthat a group of “international Jews” was striving to take over the world. On February 8, 1920, the
\nIllustrated Sunday Herald (published in London) ran an article by Churchill. Its title: “Zionism
\nVersus Bolshevism: A Struggle for the Soul of the Jewish People.” At the time, Winnie was
\nSecretary of State for War and Air and had already been a prominent Member of Parliament. <\/p>\n

Churchill didn’t slam all Jews; rather, he painted them as a people of two extremes. “The conflict
\nbetween good and evil which proceeds unceasingly in the breast of man nowhere reaches such an
\nintensity as in the Jewish race. The dual nature of mankind is nowhere more strongly or more
\nterribly exemplified…. It would almost seem as if the gospel of Christ and the gospel of
\nAntichrist ware destined to originate among the same people; and that this mystic and mysterious
\nrace had been chosen for the supreme manifestations, both of the divine and the diabolical.” <\/p>\n

He identifies three strains of political thought among the world’s Jews: Nationalism, in which a
\nJewish person identifies first and foremost with the country in which he or she lives. Zionism, in
\nj which a Jewish person wants a country specifically for Jews (Israel would be formed 28 years
\nafter Winnie’s essay). These are both honorable, says Churchill, unlike the third option \u2014 the
\nterrorism and atheistic communism of “International Jews.” He writes: <\/p>\n

International Jews
\nIn violent opposition to all this sphere of Jewish effort rise the schemes of the International
\nJews. The adherents of this sinister confederacy are mostly men reared up among the
\nunhappy populations of countries where Jews are persecuted on account of their race.
\nMost, if not all, of them have forsaken the faith of their forefathers, and divorced from
\ntheir minds all spiritual hopes of the next world. This movement among the Jews is not
\nnew. From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky
\n(Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman
\n(United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the <\/p>\n

reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and
\nimpossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played, as a modern writer, Mrs.
\nWebster, has so ably shown, a definitely recognizable part in the tragedy of the French
\nRevolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the
\nNineteenth Century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the
\nunderworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by
\nthe hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that
\nenormous empire. <\/p>\n

Terrorist Jews
\nThere is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and In the
\nactual bringing about of the Russian Revolution, by these international and for the most
\npart atheistical Jews, it is certainly a very great one; it probably outweighs all others. With
\nthe notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews. Moreover, the
\nprincipal inspiration and driving power comes from the Jewish leaders. Thus Tchitcherin,
\na pure Russian, is eclipsed by his nominal subordinate Litvinoff, and the influence of
\nRussians like Bukharin or Lunacharski cannot be compared with the power of Trotsky, or
\nof Zinovieff, the Dictator of the Red Citadel (Petrograd) or of Krassin or Radek \u2014 all
\nJews. In the Soviet institutions the predominance of Jews is even more astonishing. And the
\nprominent, if not indeed the principal, part in the system of terrorism applied by the
\nExtraordinary Commissions for Combating Counter-Revolution has been taken by Jews,
\nand in some notable cases by Jewesses. The same evil prominence was obtained by Jews in
\nthe brief period of terror during which Bela Kun ruled in Hungary. The same phenomenon
\nhas been presented in Germany (especially in Bavaria), so far as this madness has been
\nallowed to prey upon the temporary prostration of the German people. Although in all
\nthese countries there are many non-Jews every whit as bad as the worst of the Jewish
\nrevolutionaries, the part played by the latter in proportion to their numbers in the
\npopulation is astonishing. <\/p>\n

Naturally, Churchill’s admirers aren’t exactly proud of this essay, which has led some of them to
\nquestion its authenticity. However, the leading Churchill bibliographer, Frederick Woods, has
\npronounced the article genuine, listing it in his authoritative A Bibliography of the Works of Sir
\nWinston Churchill. <\/p>\n

15
\nTHE AUSCHWITZ TATTOO WAS ORIGINALLY AN IBM CODE NUMBER
\nThe tattooed numbers on the forearms of people held and killed in Nazi concentration camps
\nhave become a chilling symbol of hatred. Victims were stamped with the indelible number in a
\ndehumanizing effort to keep track of them like widgets in the supply chain. <\/p>\n

These numbers obviously weren’t chosen at random. They were part of a coded system, with
\neach number tracked as the unlucky person who bore it was moved through the system. <\/p>\n

Edwin Black made headlines in 2001 when his painstakingly researched book, IBM and the
\nHolocaust, showed that IBM machines were used to automate the “Final Solution” and the <\/p>\n

jackbooted takeover of Europe. Worse, he showed that the top levels of the company either knew
\nor willfully turned a blind eye. <\/p>\n

A year and a half after that book gave Big Blue a black eye, the author made more startling
\ndiscoveries. IBM equipment was on-site at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Furthermore: <\/p>\n

Thanks to the new discoveries, researchers can now trace how Hollerith numbers assigned
\nto inmates evolved into the horrific tattooed numbers so symbolic of the Nazi era. (Herman
\nHollerith was the German American who first automated US census information in the late
\n19th century and founded the company that became IBM. Hollerith’s name became
\nsynonymous with the machines and the Nazi “departments” that operated them.) In one
\ncase, records show, a timber merchant from Bendzin, Poland, arrived at Auschwitz in
\nAugust 1943 and was assigned a characteristic five-digit IBM Hollerith number, 44673. The
\nnumber was part of a custom punch-card system devised by IBM to track prisoners in all
\nNazi concentration camps, including the slave labor at Auschwitz. Later in the summer of
\n1943, the Polish timber merchant’s same five-digit Hollerith number, 44673, was tattooed
\non his forearm. Eventually, during the summer of 1943, all non-Germans at Auschwitz
\nwere similarly tattooed. <\/p>\n

The Hollerith numbering system was soon scrapped at Auschwitz because so many inmates died.
\nEventually, the Nazis developed their own haphazard system. <\/p>\n

16 <\/p>\n

ADOLPH HITLER’S BLOOD RELATIVES ARE ALIVE AND WELL IN NEW YORK
\nSTATE
\nAdolph Hitler never had kids, so we tend to take for granted the idea that no one alive is closely
\nrelated to him. But historians have long known that he had a nephew who was born in Britain
\nand moved to the United States. Alois Hitler, Jr., was Adolph’s older half-brother (their common
\nparent was Alois Sr). Alois Jr. \u2014 a waiter in Dublin \u2014 married an Irish woman, and, after
\nmoving to Liverpool, they had a son, William Patrick Hitler. <\/p>\n

Pat, as he was called, moved to Germany as a young adult to take advantage of his uncle’s rising
\npolitical stature, but Adolph just gave him minor jobs and kept him out of the limelight. After
\nbeing subtly threatened by Rudolph Hess to become a German citizen, and having gotten tired of
\nbeing dissed by Adolph, Pat came to America in 1939 and went on a lecture tour around the US,
\ndenouncing his uncle. (For his part, Adolph referred to his nephew as “loathsome.”) While
\nWorld War II was raging, Pat joined the US Navy, so he could fight against Uncle Adolph.
\nAfterwards, he changed his last name, and this is where the trail goes cold. <\/p>\n

That is, until US-based British reporter David Gardner was assigned to track down and interview
\nWilliam Patrick. Originally given two weeks to file the story, Gardner realized that finding
\nHitler’s long-lost nephew was tougher than it first appeared. He worked on the story during his
\nspare time for several years, unearthing old news clippings, filing requests for government
\ndocuments, interviewing possible relatives, and chasing a lot of dead ends. <\/p>\n

He finally discovered that William Patrick had ended up in a small town in Long Island, New
\nYork. Pat had died in 1987, but Gardner showed up unannounced on the doorstep of his widow,
\nPhyllis, who confirmed that her late husband was Adolph Hitler’s nephew. She also mentioned
\nthat she and Pat had sons, but she quickly clammed up and asked Gardner to leave. The two
\nnever spoke again. <\/p>\n

After more legwork, Gardner found that Pat and Phyllis produced four children, all sons. The
\neldest, born in 1949, is named Alexander Adolph. (Just why Pat would name his firstborn after
\nhis detested uncle is one of many mysteries still surrounding the Hitler kin.) Then came Louis in
\n1951, Howard (1957), and Brian (1965). Howard \u2014 a fraud investigator for the IRS \u2014 died in a
\ncar crash w 1989, and Louis and Brian continue to run a landscaping business in the small New
\nYork community. Alex lives in a larger Long Island city. He twice spoke to Gardner but didn’t
\nreveal very much, saying that the family’s ancestry is “a pain in the ass.” Alex said that his
\nbrothers made a pact never to have children, in order to spare their progeny the burden of being
\nrelated to a monster. He denied having made such a vow himself, despite the fact that he is still
\nchildless. <\/p>\n

Gardner sums it up: “Although there are some distant relations living equally quiet lives in
\nAustria, the three American sons are the only descendants of the paternal line of the family. They
\nare, truly, the last of the Hitlers.” <\/p>\n

17 <\/p>\n

AROUND ONE QUARTER OF “WITCHES” WERE MEN
\nThe word “witch” has become synonymous with “woman accused of working magic,” and the
\nconsensus tells us that the witch trials in Europe and Colonial America were simply a war against
\nwomen (ie, “gendercide”). Most popular works on the subject ignore the men who were accused
\nand executed for supp-osedly practicing witchcraft. Academic works that don’t omit male
\nwitches usually explain them away, as if they were just a few special cases that don’t really
\ncount. <\/p>\n

Into this gap step Andrew Gow, an associate professor of history at the University of Alberta,
\nand one of his grad students, Lara Apps. Their book Male Witches in Early Modern Europe
\nscours the literature and finds that, of the 110,000 people tried for witchcraft and the 60,000
\nexecuted from 1450 to 1750, some-where between 20 to 25 percent were men. <\/p>\n

This is an average across Europe, the British Isles, and the American Colonies; the gender ratios
\nvary widely from place to place. The lowest percentages of males were persecuted in the Basel
\nregion of Switzerland (5 percent) and in Hungary (10 percent). Places that hovered around the
\n50\/50 mark were Finland (49 percent) and Burgundy (52 percent). Men were the clear majority
\nof “witches” in Estonia (60 percent) and Norway (73 percent). During Iceland’s witch craze, from
\n1625 to 1685, an amazing 110 out of 120 “witches” were men, for a percentage of 92. As for <\/p>\n

America, almost a third of those executed during the <\/p>\n

infamous Salem witch trials (six out of nineteen) were men. <\/p>\n

Besides bringing these numbers to light, professor Gow and
\npupil Apps present serious challenges to the attempts to erase
\nmale witches from the picture. For example, some writers
\nclaim that the men were caught up in the hysteria solely
\nbecause they were related to accused women. In this
\nscenario, the men were only “secondary targets” (“collateral
\ndamage,” perhaps?). But in numerous instances men were
\npersecuted by themselves. In other cases, a woman became a
\nsecondary target after her husband had been singled out as a
\nwitch. <\/p>\n

Although women were the overall majority of victims, the
\n“burning times” were pretty rough for men, too. <\/p>\n

18 <\/p>\n

THE VIRGINIA COLONISTS PRACTICED CANNIBALISM
\nDuring the harsh winter of 1609-1610, British subjects in the famous colony of Jamestown,
\nVirginia, ate their dead and their shit. This fact doesn’t make it into very many US history
\ntextbooks, and the state’s official Website apparently forgot to mention it in their history section. <\/p>\n

When you think about it rationally, this fact should be a part of mainstream history. After all, it
\ndemonstrates the strong will to survive among the colonists. It shows the mind-boggling
\nhardships they endured and overcame. Yet the taboo against eating these two items is so
\nover-powering that this episode can’t be mentioned in conventional history. <\/p>\n

Luckily, an unconventional historian, Howard Zinn, revealed this fact in his classic A People’s
\nHistory of the United States. Food was so nonexistent during that winter, only 60 out of 500
\ncolonists survived. A government document from that time gives the gruesome details: <\/p>\n

Driven thru insufferable hunger to eat those things which nature most abhorred, the flesh
\nand excrements of man as well of our own nation as of an Indian, digged by some out of his
\ngrave after he had lain buried three days and wholly devoured him; others, envying the <\/p>\n

better state of body of any whom hunger has not yet so much wasted as their own, lay wait
\nand threatened to kill and eat them; one among them slew his wife as she slept in his
\nbosom, cut her in pieces, salted her and fed upon her till he had clean devoured all parts
\nsaving her head. <\/p>\n

MANY OF THE PIONEERING FEMINISTS OPPOSED ABORTION
\nThe idea that feminism equals the right to an abortion has become so ingrained that it -.iiems
\nludicrous to think otherwise. “Prolife feminism” appears to be an inherent contradiction in terms.
\nYet more than 20 founding mothers of the feminist movement \u2014 who helped secure women’s
\nrights to vote, to own property, to use contraception, to divorce abusive husbands \u2014 were
\nadamantly opposed to abortion. <\/p>\n

The most famous nineteenth-century feminist \u2014 Susan B. Anthony, she of the ill-fated dollar
\ncoin \u2014 referred to abortion as “the horrible crime of child-murder.” And that’s just for starters.
\nShe also called it “infanticide,” “this most monstrous crime,” “evil,” and a “dreadful deed.”
\nSurprisingly, given that unsparing language, she didn’t believe that it should be made illegal.
\nResponding to an article in which a man called for the outlawing of abortion, Anthony writes:
\n“Much as I deplore the horrible crime of child-murder, earnestly as I desire its suppression, I
\ncannot believe with the writer of the above-mentioned article, that such a law would have the
\ndesired effect. It seems to be only mowing off the top of the noxious weed, while the root
\nremains.” <\/p>\n

The root, she believed, was the horrible way in which women (and
\nchildren) were treated. As summed up in the book Prolife
\nFeminism, these pioneering women felt that “abortion was the
\nproduct of a social system that compelled women to remain
\nignorant about their bodies, that enabled men to dominate them
\nsexually without taking responsibility for the consequences, that
\ndenied women support during and after the resulting pregnancies,
\nand that placed far more value on a child’s ‘legitimacy’ than on his
\nor her life and well-being.” <\/p>\n

Indeed, while Anthony gave women a lot of grief for ending a pregnancy, she reserved the most
\nvitriol for the men who knocked them up: <\/p>\n

Guilty? Yes, no matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the
\nunborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her
\nconscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; but oh! thrice guilty is he who, for selfish
\ngratification, heedless of her prayers, indifferent to her fate, drove her to the desperation
\nwhich impelled her to her crime. <\/p>\n

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Anthony’s best friend for life, resented society’s dictate that all women
\nmust become mothers. Yet she also thought that “maternity is grand,” but it must be on the <\/p>\n

woman’s own terms. Despite this, she railed against abortion. Like her pal, she referred to
\nabortions as “murder,” “a crying evil,” “abominations,” and “revolting outrages against the laws
\nof nature and our common humanity.” Also like Anthony, Stanton laid the blame for abortion at
\nthe feet of men. <\/p>\n

Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, lionized as the first US woman to become a medical doctor (in 1849),
\nwrote in her diary: <\/p>\n

The gross perversion and destruction of motherhood by the abortionist filled me with
\nindignation, and awakened active antagonism. That the honorable term “female
\nphysician” should be exclusively applied to those women who carried on this shocking
\ntrade seemed to me a horror. It was an utter degradation of what might and should become
\na noble position for women. <\/p>\n

Another prolife feminist was Victoria Woodhull, best known for being the first female candidate
\n.for US President (way back in 1870). Radical even by early feminist standards, she and her
\nsister, Tennnessee Claflin, declared that children had rights which began at conception. Their
\nessay “The slaughter of the Innocents” first discusses the abominable death rate of children under
\nfive, then turns its sights on abortion: <\/p>\n

We are aware that many women attempt to excuse themselves for procuring abortions,
\nupon the ground that it is not murder. But the fact of resort to so weak an argument only
\nshows the more palpably that they fully realize the enormity of the crime. Is it not equally
\ndestroying the would-be future oak, to crush the sprout before it pushes its head above the
\nsod, as it is to cut down the sapling, or cut down the tree? Is it not equally to destroy life, to
\ncrush it in its very germ, and to take it when the germ has evolved to any given point in its
\nline of development? Let those who can see any difference regarding the time when life,
\nonce begun, is taken, console themselves that they are not murderers having b\u00ab\u00abn
\nabortionists. <\/p>\n

20
\nBLACK PEOPLE SERVED IN THE CONFEDERATE ARMY <\/p>\n

Like “prolife feminist,” the phrase “black Confederate” seems like an oxymoron. But the record
\nshows that many slaves and free blacks were a part of the South’s military during the US Civil
\nWar. <\/p>\n

None other than abolitionist Frederick Douglass, a former slave and one of the most prominent
\nAfrican Americans in history, declared: <\/p>\n

There are at present moment [autumn 1861], many colored men in the Confederate Army
\ndoing duty not only as cooks, servants, and laborers, but as real soldiers, having musket on
\ntheir shoulders and bullets in their pockets, ready to shoot down loyal troops and do all
\nthat soldiers may do to destroy the Federal government and build up that of the traitors
\nand rebels. <\/p>\n

In Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia, Professor Ervin L. Jordan, Jr.,
\nwrites: <\/p>\n

Numerous black Virginians served with Confederate forces as soldiers, sailors, teamsters,
\nspies, and hospital personnel…. I know of black Confederate sharp-shooters who saw
\ncombat during the 1862 Seven Days Campaign and [of] the existence of black companies
\n[which] organized and drilled in Richmond in March-April 1865. Integrated companies of
\nblack and white hospital workers fought against the Union army in the Petersburg trenches
\nduring March 1865. There were several recruitment campaigns and charity balls held in
\nVirginia on behalf of black soldiers and special camps of instruction were established to
\ntrain them. <\/p>\n

The book Black Confederates contains loads of
\nprimary documents testifying to the role of African
\nAmericans: letters, military documents, tributes,
\nobituaries, contemporaneous newspaper articles, and
\nmore. In an 1862 letter to his uncle, a soldier at Camp
\nBrown in Knoxville, Tennessee, wrote that his
\ncompany had recently gunned down six Union
\nsoldiers and that “Jack Thomas a colored person that
\nbelongs to our company killed one of them.” <\/p>\n

An 1861 article in the Montgomery Advertiser says:
\n“We are informed that Mr. G.C. Hale, of Autauga County, yesterday tendered to Governor
\nMoore the services of a company of negroes, to assist in driving back the horde of abolition
\nsycophants who are now talking so flippantly of reducing to a conquered province the
\nConfederate States of the South.” <\/p>\n

The obituary of black South Carolinian Henry Brown states that he had never been a slave and
\nhad served in three wars: the Mexican, the Spanish-American, and the Civil (on the side of the
\nSouth). He was given a 21-gun salute at his funeral. <\/p>\n

In 1890, black Union veteran Joseph T. Wilson wrote in his book, The Black Phalanx: A History
\nof the Negro Soldiers of the United States, that New Orleans was home to two Native Guard
\nregiments, which comprised 3,000 “colored men.” Referring to these regiments in an 1898 book,
\nUnion Captain Dan Matson said: “Here is a strange fact. We find that the Confederates
\nthemselves first armed and mustered the Negro as a solider in the late war.” <\/p>\n

Most blacks in the Confederate Army, though, were in supporting roles such as cook, musician,
\nnurse, and the catch-all “servant.” However, a lot of them ended up fighting on the battlefield,
\neven though the South didn’t officially induct black soldiers until late in the conflict. And all of
\nthem \u2014 whether inducted or not, whether solider or some other position \u2014 were eligible for
\nmilitary pensions from several Southern states (including Tennessee and Mississippi), an records
\nshow that many of them signed up for these benefits. <\/p>\n

A follow-up volume, Black Southerners in Confederate Armies, presents even more source
\ndocuments. A book from 1866 contains the recollection of a Union man whose compatriot killed
\na black Confederate sniper “who, through his skill as a marksman, had done more injury to our
\nmen that any dozen of his white compeers…” Union documents show Henry Marshall, a black
\nsoldier with the 14th Kentucky Cavalry, being held in Northern prisoner of war camps. A
\npension document from South Carolina reveals that “a free Negro who volunteered” for the army
\nserved from August 1861 to the end of the war \u2014 over three and a half years. An obituary for
\nGeorge Mathewson says that the former slave received “a Cross of Honor for bravery in action,”
\nbased on his role as standard-bearer. <\/p>\n

The New York Tribune noted “that the Rebels organized and employed ‘Negro troops’ a full year
\nbefore our government could be persuaded to do any thing of the sort.” After the Battle of
\nGettys-burg, the New York Herald reported: “Among the rebel prisoners who were marched
\nthrough Gettysburg there were observed seven negroes in uniform and fully accoutered as
\nsoldiers.” <\/p>\n

An article from Smithsonian magazine relates: “A New York Times correspondent with Grant in
\n1863 wrote: ‘The guns of the rebel battery were manned almost wholly by Negroes, a single
\nwhite man, or perhaps two, directing operations.'” <\/p>\n

While it certainly couldn’t be said that African Americans played a major military role in the
\nSouthern army, they were definitely there. And some of them had even volunteered. <\/p>\n

21 <\/p>\n

ELECTRIC CARS HAVE BEEN AROUND SINCE THE 1880s
\nThe car of the future runs completely on electricity. No more dependence on gas. No more
\nchoking the atmosphere with fumes. Whenever the possibility of electric cars is raised, the media
\nand other commentators ooh and ahh over the potential. But this technology isn’t futuristic \u2014 it’s
\npositively retro. Cars powered by electricity have been on the scene since the 1800s and actually
\npredate gas-powered cars. <\/p>\n

A blacksmith in Vermont \u2014 Thomas Davenport \u2014 built the first rotary electric motor in 1833
\nand it to power a model train the next year. In the late 1830s, Scottish inventor Robert Davidson
\nrigged a carriage with an electric motor powered by batteries. In his Pulitzer-nominated book
\nTaking Charge, archaeology professor and technology historian Michael Brian Schiffer writes <\/p>\n

After this remarkable achievement, the idea of an
\nelectric car languished for decades. In 1881, a
\nFrench experi-menter debuted a personal vehicle
\nthat ran on electricity, a tricycle (ie, three wheels
\nand a seat) for adults. In 1888, many inventors in
\nthe US, Britain, and Europe started creating three-
\nand four-wheel vehicles \u2014 which could carry two
\nto six people \u2014 that ran on electricity. These <\/p>\n

that this “was perhaps the first electric car.” <\/p>\n

vehicles remained principally curios-ities until May 1897, when the Pope Manufacturing
\nCompany \u2014 the country’s most successful bicycle manufacturer \u2014 started selling the first
\ncommercial electric car: the Columbia Electric Phaeton, Mark III. It topped out at fifteen miles
\nper hour, and had to be recharged every 30 miles. Within two years, people could choose from an
\narray of electrical carriages, buggies, wagons, trucks, bicycles, tricycles, even buses and
\nambulances made by numerous manufacturers. <\/p>\n

New York City was home to a fleet of electric taxi cabs starting in 1897. The Electric Vehicle
\nCompany eventually had over 100 of them ferrying people around the Big Apple. Soon it was
\nunleashing electric taxis in Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, and Washington DC. By 1900,
\nthough, the company was in trouble, and seven years later it sputtered out. <\/p>\n

As for cars powered by dead dinosaurs, Austrian engineer Siegfried Marcus attached a one-
\ncylinder motor to a cart in 1864, driving it 500 feet and thus creating the first vehicle powered by
\ngas (this was around 25 years after Davidson had created the first electro-car). It wasn’t until
\n1895 that gas autos \u2014 converted carriages with a two-cylinder engine \u2014 were commercially
\nsold (and then only in microscopic numbers). <\/p>\n

Around the turn of the century, the average car buyer had a big choice to make: gas, electric, or
\nsteam? When the auto industry took form around 1895, nobody knew which type of vehicle was
\ngoing to become the standard. During the last few years of the nineteenth century and the first
\nfew of the twentieth, over 100 companies placed their bets on electricity. According to Schiffer,
\n“Twenty-eight percent of the 4,192 American automobiles produced in 1900 were electric. In the
\nNew York automobile show of that year more electrics were on display than gasoline or steam
\nvehicles.” <\/p>\n

In the middle of the first decade of the 1900s, electric cars were on the decline, and their gas-
\neating cousins were surging ahead. With improvements in the cars and their batteries, though,
\nelectrics started a comeback in 1907, which continued through 1913. The downhill slide started
\nthe next year, and by the 1920s the market for electrics was “minuscule,” to use Schiffer’s word.
\nThings never got better. <\/p>\n

Many companies tried to combine the best of both approaches, with cars that ran on a mix of
\nelectricity and gas. The Pope Manufacturing Company, once again in the vanguard, built a
\nworking prototype in 1898. A Belgian company and a French company each brought out
\ncommercial models the next year, beating the Toyota Prius and the Honda Insight to the market
\nby over a century. Even Ferdinand Porsche and the Mercedes Company got in on the act.
\nUnfortunately, these hybrids never really caught on. <\/p>\n

Didik Design \u2014 which manufactures several vehicles which run on various combinations off
\nelectricity, solar power, and human power \u2014 maintains an extensive archive on the history of
\nelectric and electro-fuel cars. According to their research, around 200 companies and individuals
\nhave manufactured electric cars. Only a few familiar names are on the list (although some of
\nthem aren’t familiar as car manufacturers): Studebaker (1952-1966), General Electric (19011904),
\nBraun (1977), Sears, Roebuck, and Company (1978), and Oldsmobile (1896 to the
\npresent). The vast majority have long been forgotten: Elecctra, Pfluger, Buffalo Automobile <\/p>\n

JURIES ARE ALLOWED TO JUDGE THE LAW, NOT JUST THE FACTS JURIES ARE ALLOWED TO JUDGE THE LAW, NOT JUST THE FACTS
\nCompany, Hercules, Red Bug, and Nu-Klea Starlite, to name a few. Henry Ford and Thomas
\nEdison teamed up on an electric car, but, although some prototypes were built, it never was
\ncommercially produced. Though they have faded from mass cultural memory, electric cars have
\nnever been completely out of production. <\/p>\n

The reasons why electrics faded into obscurity while gas cars and trucks became 99.999 percent
\ndominant are complex and are still being debated. If only they hadn’t been sidelined and had
\ncontinued to develop apace, the world would be a very different place. <\/p>\n

22 <\/p>\n

In order to guard citizens against the whims of the King, the right to <\/p>\n

a trial by jury was established by the Magna Carta in 1215, and it <\/p>\n

has become one of the most sacrosanct legal aspects of British and <\/p>\n

American societies. We tend to believe that the duty of a jury is <\/p>\n

solely to determine whether someone broke the law. In fact, it’s not <\/p>\n

unusual for judges to instruct juries that they are to judge only the <\/p>\n

facts in a case, while the judge will sit in judgment of the law itself.
\nNonsense. <\/p>\n

Juries are the last line of defense against the power abuses of the authorities. They have the right
\nto judge the law. Even if a defendant committed a crime, a jury can refuse to render a guilty
\nverdict. Among the main reasons why this might happen, according to attorney Clay S. Conrad: <\/p>\n

When the defendant has already suffered enough, when it would be unfair or against the
\npublic interest for the defendant to be convicted, when the jury disagrees with the law
\nitself, when the prosecution or the arresting authorities have gone “too far” in the single-
\nminded quest to arrest and convict a particular defendant, when the punishments to be
\nimposed are excessive or when the jury suspects that the charges have been brought for
\npolitical reasons or to make an unfair example of the hapless defendant… <\/p>\n

Some of the earliest examples of jury nullification from Britain and the American Colonies were
\nrefusals to convict people who had spoken ill of the government (they were prosecuted under
\n“seditious libel” laws) or who were practicing forbidden religions, such as Quakerism. Up to the
\ntime of the Civil War, American juries often refused to convict the brave souls who helped
\nrunaway slaves. In the 1800s, jury nullifications saved the hides of union organizers who were
\nbeing prosecuted with conspiracy to restrain trade. Juries used their power to free people charged
\nunder the anti-alcohol laws of Prohibition, as well as antiwar protesters during the Vietnam era.
\nToday, juries sometimes refuse to convict drug users (especially medical marijuana users), tax
\nprotesters, abortion protesters, gun owners, battered spouses, and people who commit “mercy
\nkillings.” <\/p>\n

Judges and prosecutors will often outright lie about the existence of this power, but centuries of
\ncourt decisions and other evidence prove that jurors can vote their consciences. <\/p>\n

When the US Constitution was created, with its Sixth Amendment guarantee of a jury trial, the
\nmost popular law dictionary of the time said that juries “may not only find things of their own
\nknowledge, but they go according to their consciences.” The first edition of Noah Webster’s
\ncelebrated dictionary (1828) said that juries “decide both the law and the fact in criminal
\nprosecutions.” <\/p>\n

Jury nullification is specifically enshrined in the constitutions of Pennsylvania, Indiana, and
\nMaryland. The state codes of Connecticut and Illinois contain similar provisions.
\nThe second US President, John Adams, wrote: “It is not only [the juror’s] right, but his duty…to
\nfind the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in
\ndirect opposition to the direction of the court.” Similarly, Founding Father Alexander Hamilton
\ndeclared: “It is essential to the security of personal rights and public liberty, that the jury should
\nhave and exercise the power to judge both of the law and of the criminal intent.” <\/p>\n

Legendary Supreme Court Chief Justice John Jay once instructed a jury: <\/p>\n

It may not be amiss, here, Gentlemen, to remind you of the good old rule, that on questions
\nof fact, it is the providence of the jury, on questions of law, it is the providence of the court
\nto decide. But it must be observed that by the same law, which recognizes this reasonable
\ndistribution of jurisdiction, you have nevertheless the right to take upon yourselves to
\njudge of both, and to determine the law as well as the fact in controversy. <\/p>\n

The following year, 1795, Justice James Irdell declared: “[T]hough the jury will generally
\nrespect the sentiment of the court on points of law, they are not bound to deliver a verdict
\nconformably to them.” In 1817, Chief Justice John Marshall said that “the jury in a capital case
\nwere judges, as well of the law as the fact, and were bound to acquit where either was doubtful.” <\/p>\n

In more recent times, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously held in 1969: <\/p>\n

If the jury feels that the law under which the defendant is accused is unjust, or that exigent
\ncircumstances justified the actions of the accused, or for any reason which appeals to their
\nlogic and passion, the jury has the power to acquit, and the courts must abide that decision. <\/p>\n

Three years later, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals noted: “The pages of history shine on
\ninstances of the jury’s exercise of its prerogative to disregard uncontradicted evidence and
\ninstructions of the judge.” <\/p>\n

In a 1993 law journal article, federal Judge Jack B. Weinstein wrote: “When juries refuse to
\nconvict on the basis of what they think are unjust laws, they are performing their duties as
\njurors.” <\/p>\n

Those who try to wish away the power of jury nullification often point to cases in which racist
\njuries have refused to convict white people charged with racial violence. As attorney Conrad
\nshows in his book, Jury Nullification: The Evolution of a Doctrine, this has occurred only in very
\nrare instances. Besides, it’s ridiculous to try to stamp out or deny a certain power just because it <\/p>\n

can be used for bad ends as well as good. What form of power hasn’t been misused at least once
\nin a while? <\/p>\n

The Fully Informed Jury Association (FIJA) is the best-known organization seeking to tell all
\ncitizens about their powers as jurors. People have been arrested for simply handing out FIJA
\nliterature in front of courthouses. During jury selections, FIJA members have been excluded
\nsolely on the grounds that they belong to the group. <\/p>\n

FIJA also seeks laws that would require judges to tell jurors that they can and should judge the
\nlaw, but this has been an uphill battle, to say the least. In a still-standing decision (Sparf and
\nHansen v. US, 1895), the Supreme Court ruled that judges don’t have to let jurors know their full
\npowers. In cases where the defense has brought up jury nullification during the proceedings,
\njudges have sometimes held the defense attorney in contempt. Still, 21 state legislatures have
\nintroduced informed-jury legislation, with three of them passing it through one chamber (ie,
\nHouse or Senate). <\/p>\n

Quite obviously, the justice system is terrified of this power, which is all the more reason for us
\nto mow about it. <\/p>\n

23
\nTHE POLICE AREN’T LEGALLY OBLIGATED TO PROTECT YOU
\nWithout even thinking about it, we take it as a given that the police must protect each of us.
\nThat’s their whole reason for existence, right? <\/p>\n

While this might be true in a few jurisdictions in the US and Canada, it is actually the exception,
\nnot the rule. In general, court decisions and state laws have held that cops don’t have to do a
\nthing to help you when you’re in danger. <\/p>\n

In the only book devoted exclusively to the subject, Dial 911 and Die, attorney Richard W.
\nStevens writes: <\/p>\n

It was the most shocking thing I learned in law school. I was studying Torts in my first year
\nat the University of San Diego School of Law, when I came upon the case of Hartzler v. City
\nof San Jose. In that case I discovered the secret truth: the government owes no duty to
\nprotect individual citizens from criminal attack. Not only did the California courts hold to
\nthat rule, the California legislature had enacted a statute to make sure the courts couldn’t
\nchange the rule. <\/p>\n

But this doesn’t apply to just the wild, upside down world of Kalifornia. Stevens cites laws an
\ncases for every state \u2014 plus Washington DC, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Canada which
\nreveal the same thing. If the police fail to protect you, even through sheer incompetence
\nand negligence, don’t expect that you or your next of kin will be able to sue. <\/p>\n

Even in the nation’s heartland, in bucolic Iowa, you can’t depend on 911. In 1987, two men broke
\ninto a family’s home, tied up the parents, slit the mother’s throat, raped the 16-year-old daughter, <\/p>\n

and drove off with the 12-year old daughter (whom they later murdered). The emergency
\ndispatcher couldn’t be bothered with immediately sending police to chase the
\nkidnappers\/murders\/rapists while the abducted little girl was still alive. First he had to take calls
\nabout a parking violation downtown and a complaint about harassing phone calls. When he got
\naround to the kidnapping, he didn’t issue an all-points bulletin but instead told just one officer to
\ncome back to the police station, not even mentioning that it was an emergency. Even more
\nblazing negligence ensued, but suffice it to say that when the remnants of the family sued the city
\nand the police, their case was summarily dismissed before going to trial. The state appeals court
\nupheld the decision, claiming that the authorities have no duty to protect individuals. <\/p>\n

Similarly, people in various states have been unable to successfully sue over the following
\nsituations: <\/p>\n

..when 911 systems have been shut down for maintenance <\/p>\n

..when a known stalker kills someone <\/p>\n

..when the police pull over but don’t arrest a drunk driver who runs over someone later that
\nnight <\/p>\n

..when a cop known to be violently unstable shoots a driver he pulled over for an inadequate
\nmuffler <\/p>\n

..when authorities know in advance of a plan to commit murder but do nothing to stop it <\/p>\n

..when parole boards free violent psychotics, including child rapist-murderers <\/p>\n

..when felons escape from prison and kill someone <\/p>\n

..when houses burn down because the fire department didn’t respond promptly <\/p>\n

..when children are beaten to death in foster homes <\/p>\n

A minority of states do offer a tiny bit of hope. In eighteen states, citizens have successfully
\nsued over failure to protect, but even here the grounds have been very narrow. Usually, the
\npolice and the victim must have had a prior “special relationship” (for example, the authorities
\nmust have promised protection to this specific individual in the past). And, not surprisingly,
\nmany of these states have issued contradictory court rulings, or a conflict exists between state
\nlaw and the rulings of the courts. <\/p>\n

Don’t look to Constitution for help. “In its landmark decision of DeShaney v. Winnebago County
\nDepartment of Social Services,” Stevens writes, “the US Supreme Court declared that the
\nConstitution does not impose a duty on the state and local governments to protect the citizens
\nfrom criminal harm.” <\/p>\n

All in all, as Stevens says, you’d be much better off owning a gun and learning how to use it.
\nEven in those cases where you could successfully sue, this victory comes only after years
\n(sometimes more than a decade) of wrestling with the justice system and only after you’ve been
\ngravely injured or your loved one has been snuffed. <\/p>\n

THE GOVERNMENT CAN TAKE YOUR HOUSE AND LAND, THEN SELL THEM
\nTO PRIVATE CORPORATIONS
\nIt\u2019s not an issue that gets much attention, but the government has the right to seize your house,
\nbusiness, and\/or land, forcing you into the street. This mighty power, called “eminent domain,” is
\nenshrined in the US Constitution’s Fifth Amendment: “…nor shall private property be taken for
\npublic use without just compensation.” Every single state constitution also stipulates that a
\nperson whose property is taken must be justly compensated and that the property must be put to
\npublic use. This should mean that if your house is smack-dab in the middle of a proposed
\nhighway, the government can take it, pay you market value, and build the highway. <\/p>\n

Whether or not this is a power the government should have is very
\nmuch open to question, but what makes it worse is the abuse of this
\nsupposedly limited power. Across the country, local governments
\nare stealing their citizens’ property, then turning around and selling
\nit to corporations for the construction of malls, condominiums,
\nparking lots, racetracks, office complexes, factories, etc. <\/p>\n

The Institute for Justice \u2014 the country’s only nonprofit, public-interest law firm with a
\nlibertarian philosophy \u2014 spends a good deal of time protecting individuals and small businesses
\nfrom greedy corporations and their partners in crime: bureaucrats armed with eminent domain. In
\n2003, it released a report on the use of “governmental condemnation” (another name for eminent
\ndomain) for private gain. No central data collection for this trend exists, and only one state
\n(Connecticut) keeps statistics on it. Using court records, media accounts, and information from
\ninvolved parties, the Institute I found over 10,000 such abuses in 41 states from 1998 through
\n2002. Of these, the legal I process had been initiated against 3,722 properties, and condemnation
\nhad been threatened against 6,560 properties. (Remember, this is condemnation solely for the
\nbenefit of private parties, not for so-called legitimate reasons of “public use.”) <\/p>\n

In one instance, the city of Hurst, Texas, condemned 127 homes so that a mall could expand.
\nMost of the families moved under the pressure, but ten chose to stay and fight. The Institute
\nwrites: <\/p>\n

A Texas trial judge refused to stay the condemnations while the suit was on-going, so the
\nresidents lost their homes. Leonard Prohs had to move while his wife was in the hospital
\nwith brain cancer. She died only five days after their house was demolished. Phyllis Duval’s
\nhusband also was in the hospital with cancer at the time they were required to move. He
\ndied one month after the demolition. Of the ten couples, three spouses died and four others
\nsuffered heart attacks during the dispute and litigation. In court, the owners presented <\/p>\n

evidence that the land surveyor who designed the roads for the mall had been told to
\nchange the path of one road to run through eight of the houses of the owners challenging
\nthe condemnations. <\/p>\n

In another case, wanting to “redevelop” Main Street, the city of East Hartford, Connecticut, used
\neminent domain to threaten a bakery\/deli that had been in that spot for 93 years, owned and
\noperated by the same family during that whole time. Thus coerced, the family sold the business
\nfor $1.75 million, and the local landmark was destroyed. But the redevelopment fell through, so
\nthe lot now stands empty and the city is in debt. <\/p>\n

The city of Cypress, California, wanted Costco to build a retail store on an 18-acre plot of land.
\nTrouble was, the Cottonwood Christian Center already owned the land fair and square, and was
\nplanning to build a church on it. The city council used eminent domain to seize the land, saying
\nthat the new church would be a “public nuisance” and would “blight” the area (which is right
\nbeside a horse-racing track). The Christian Center got a federal injunction to stop the
\ncondem-nation, and the city appealed this decision. To avoid further protracted legal nightmares,
\nthe church group consented to trade its land for another tract in the vicinity. <\/p>\n

But all of this is small potatoes compared to what’s going on in Riviera Beach, Florida: <\/p>\n

City Council members voted unanimously to approve a $1.25 billion redevelopment plan
\nwith the authority to use eminent domain to condemn at least 1,700 houses and apartments
\nand dislocate 5,100 people. The city will then take the property and sell the land to
\ncommercial yachting, shipping, and tourism companies. <\/p>\n

If approved by the state, it will be one of the biggest eminent domain seizures in US history. <\/p>\n

In 1795, the Supreme Court referred to eminent domain as “the despotic power.” Over two
\ncenturies later, they continue to be proven right. <\/p>\n

25 <\/p>\n

THE SUPREME COURT HAS RULED THAT YOU’RE ALLOWED TO INGEST ANY
\nDRUG, ESPECIALLY IF YOU’RE AN ADDICT
\nIn the early 1920s, Dr. Linder was convicted of selling one morphine tablet and three cocaine
\ntablets to a patient who was addicted to narcotics. The Supreme Court overturned the
\ncon-viction, declaring that providing an addicted patient with a fairly small amount of drugs is an
\nacceptable medical practice “when designed temporarily to alleviate an addict’s pains.” (Linder v.
\nUnited States.) <\/p>\n

In 1962, the Court heard the case of a man who had been sent to the clink under a California
\nstate law that made being an addict a criminal offense. Once again, the verdict was tossed out,
\nwith the Supremes saying that punishing an addict for being an addict is cruel and unusual and,
\nthus, unconstitutional. (Robinson v. California.) <\/p>\n

Six years later, the Supreme Court reaffirmed these principles in Powell v. Texas. A man who
\nwas arrested for being drunk in public said that, because he was an alcoholic, he couldn’t help it.
\nHe invoked the Robinson decision as precedent. The Court upheld his conviction because It had
\nbeen based on an action (being wasted in public), not on the general condition of his addiction to
\nbooze. Justice White supported this decision, yet for different reasons than the others. In his
\nconcurring opinion, he expanded Robinson: <\/p>\n

If it cannot be a crime to have an irresistible compulsion to use narcotics,… I do not see how
\nit can constitutionally be a crime to yield to such a compulsion. Punishing an addict for
\nusing drugs convicts for addiction under a different name. Distinguishing between the two
\ncrimes is like forbidding criminal conviction for being sick with flu or epilepsy, but
\npermitting punishment for running a fever or having a convulsion. Unless Robinson is to be
\nabandoned, the use of narcotics by an addict must be beyond the reach of the criminal law.
\nSimilarly, the chronic alcoholic with an irresistible urge to consume alcohol should not be
\npunishable for drinking or for being drunk. <\/p>\n

Commenting on these cases, Superior Court Judge James R Gray, an outspoken critic of drug
\nprohibition, has recently written: <\/p>\n

What difference is there between alcohol and any other dangerous and sometimes addictive
\ndrug? The primary difference is that one is legal while the others are not. And the US
\nSupreme Court has said as much on at least two occasions, finding both in 1925 and 1962
\nthat to punish a person for the disease of drug addiction violated the Constitution’s
\nprohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. If that is true, why do we continue to
\nprosecute addicted people for taking these drugs, when it would be unconstitutional to
\nprosecute them for their addiction? <\/p>\n

Judge Gray gets right to the heart of the matter: “In effect, this ‘forgotten precedent’ says that >ni!
\ncan only be constitutionally punishable for one’s conduct, such as assaults, burglary, and driving
\nunder the influence, and not simply for what one puts into one’s own body.” <\/p>\n

If only the Supreme Court and the rest of the justice\/law-enforcement complex would apply
\nthese decisions, we’d be living in a saner society. <\/p>\n

26
\nTHE AGE OF CONSENT IN MOST OF THE US IS NOT EIGHTEEN <\/p>\n

The accepted wisdom tells us that the age at which a person can legally consent to sex in the US
\nis eighteen. Before this line of demarcation, a person is “jailbait” or “chicken.” On their
\neighteenth birthday, they become “legal.” But in the majority of states, this isn’t the case. <\/p>\n

It’s up to each state to determine its own age of consent. Only fifteen states have put theirs at
\neighteen, with the rest going lower. Eight have set the magic point at the seventeenth birthday.
\nThe most popular age is sixteen, with 27 states and Washington DC setting the ability to sexually
\nconsent there. (Hawaii’s age of consent had been fourteen until mid-2001, when it was bumped
\nto sixteen.) <\/p>\n

Of course, as with anything regarding the law, there are considerable shades of gray. For one
\nthing, these laws don’t apply if the lovers are married. The age of consent for marriage,
\nespecially with parental permission, is usually lower than the age of sexual consent. <\/p>\n

The Constitution of the State of South Carolina says that females aged fourteen and up can
\nconsent to sex, but state law appears to set the age at sixteen. <\/p>\n

In a lot of states, the age of the older partner is a consideration. For example, Tennessee doesn’t
\nconsider sex with someone aged thirteen to seventeen to be statutory rape if the elder partner in
\nless than four years older. So a nineteen-year-old could get it on with a sixteen-year-old without
\nbreaking the law. The most extreme example of this rule is in Delaware. If you’re 30 or older,
\nboffing a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old is a felony. But if you’re 29 or younger, it’s perfectly
\nlegal. <\/p>\n

And let’s not even get into Georgia’s Public Law 16-6-18, which outlaws sex between anyone
\nwho isn’t married, no matter what their ages or genders. <\/p>\n

Then, of course, we have the laws regarding same-sex relations, which are completely illegal in
\nfifteen or so states. In almost all of the others states, the age of consent for gay sex is the same as
\nthat for het-sex. Two exceptions are Nevada and New Hampshire, which both allow sixteenyear-
\nolds to consent to a member of the opposite sex, but set the limit at eighteen for those who
\ngo the other way. Somewhat startlingly, even though New Mexico’s age of consent for straights
\nis seventeen, it’s thirteen for gays and lesbians. <\/p>\n

The situation around the world varies even more than within the US. The age of consent in the
\nUK is sixteen, except in Northern Ireland, where it’s a year older. Various territories in Australia
\nset the age at sixteen or seventeen, and in Canada it’s universally fourteen. The lowest age \u2014 in a
\nfew countries, such as Chile and Mexico \u2014 is twelve. Only one country is known to have set the
\nage above eighteen \u2014 Tunisia, which feels that twenty is the acceptable age. <\/p>\n

27
\nMOST SCIENTISTS DON’T READ ALL OF THE ARTICLES THEY CITE <\/p>\n

Every scientific discovery builds on what came before. Because of this, research papers are
\nchock-full of references to previous papers, leading you to believe that those older studies
\nactually have been read and digested and are now being expanded upon. <\/p>\n

After noticing that a lot of citations with identical mistakes were showing up in various papers,
\ntwo researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, set out to study the problem. They
\nlooked at the way well-known, heavily-cited papers had been referenced in subsequent papers.
\nRegarding an influential paper on crystals published in 1973, New Scientist explains: <\/p>\n

They found it had been cited in other papers 4300 times, with 196 citations containing
\nmisprints in the volume, page or year. But despite the fact that a billion different versions <\/p>\n

of erroneous reference are possible, they counted only 45. The most popular mistake
\nappeared 78 times. <\/p>\n

Obviously, these pursuers of scientific truths hadn’t actually read the original paper, but had just
\nclipped the reference from another paper, a trick they probably learned in college and never
\nstopped using. Of course, some of the scientists who got the citation right hadn’t read the paper,
\neither. In the final analysis: <\/p>\n

The model shows that the distribution of misprinted citations of the 1973 paper could only
\nhave arisen if 78 percent of all the citations, including the correct ones, were “cut and
\npasted” from a secondary source. Many of those who got it right were simply lucky. <\/p>\n

28
\nLOUIS PASTEUR SUPPRESSED EXPERIMENTS THAT DIDN’T SUPPORT HIS
\nTHEORIES <\/p>\n

One of the greatest scientific duels in history occurred between those who believed that
\nmicroorganisms spontaneously generate in decaying organic matter and those who believed that
\nthe tiny creatures migrated there from the open air. From the late 1850s to the late 1870s, the
\neminent French chemist and microbiologist Louis Pasteur was locked in a death-match with
\nopponents of spontaneous generation, especially Felix Pouchet. <\/p>\n

The two camps performed experiments one after f the other, both to prove their pet theory and to
\nprove the opponent’s. As we know, Pasteur won the debate: The fact that microbes travel through
\nthe air is now accepted as a given, with s spontaneous generation relegated to the slagheap of
\nquaint, discarded scientific ideas. But Pasteur didn’t win fair and square. <\/p>\n

It turns out that some of Pasteur’s experiments gave strong support to the notion that rotting
\norganic matter produces life. Of course, years later those experiments were realized have been
\nflawed, but at the time they buttressed the position of Pasteur’s enemies. So he kept them secret. <\/p>\n

In his myth-busting book Einstein’s Luck, medical and scientific historian John Waller writes:
\n“In fact, throughout his feud with Pouchet, Pasteur described in his notebooks as ‘successful’ any
\nexperiment that seemed to disprove spontaneous generation and ‘unsuccessful’ any that violated
\nhis own private beliefs and experimental expectations.” <\/p>\n

When Pasteur’s rivals performed experiments that supported their theory, Pasteur would not
\npublicly replicate those studies. In one case, he simply refused to perform the experiment or even
\ndiscuss it. In another, he hemmed and hawed so long that his rival gave up in exas-peration.
\nWaller notes: “Revealingly, although Pasteur publicly ascribed Bastian’s results to sloppy
\nmethodology, in private he and his team took them rather more seriously. As Gerald Geison’s
\nstudy of Pasteur’s notebooks has recently revealed, Pasteur’s team spent several weeks secretly
\ntesting Bastian’s findings and refining their own ideas on the distribution of germs in the
\nenvironment.” <\/p>\n

Pasteur would rail at his rivals and even his mentor when he thought they weren’t scrupulously
\nfollowing the scientific method, yet he had no qualms about trashing it when doing so suited his
\naims. Luckily for him, he was on the right side of the debate. And just why was he so cocksure
\nthat spontaneous generation was wrong? It had nothing to do with science. “In his notes he
\nrepeatedly insisted that only the Creator-God had ever exercised the power to convert the
\ninanimate into the living,” writes Waller. “The possibility that life could be created anew without
\nman first discovering the secrets of the Creator was rejected without any attempt at scientific
\njustification.” <\/p>\n

29 <\/p>\n

THE CREATOR OF THE GAIA HYPOTHESIS SUPPORTS NUCLEAR POWER
\nJames Lovelock is one of the icons of the environmental movement. His idea that the Earth is a
\nself-regulating, living organism (the GAIA hypothesis, first expounded in his 1979 book GAIA:
\nA New Look at Life on Earth) provides the philosophical underpinning of environmentalism. <\/p>\n

So it may be surprising that Lovelock is an enthusiastic supporter of nuclear energy, which he
\nsays has “great benefits and small risks.” In the preface to the seemingly paradoxical book
\nEnvironmentalists for Nuclear Energy, he writes: “I want to put it to you that the dangers of
\ncontinuing to burn fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal) as our main energy source are far greater and they
\nthreaten not just individuals but civilization itself.” The answer, he maintains, is the clean energy
\nfrom nuke plants, which produce almost nothing that clogs up the atmosphere. As for what to do
\nwith all that radioactive waste, Lovelock has a shocking answer: <\/p>\n

Natural ecosystems can stand levels of continuous radiation that would be Intolerable in a
\ncity. The land around the failed Chernobyl power station was evacuated because its high
\nradiation intensity made it unsafe for people, but this radioactive land is now rich in
\nwildlife, much more so than neighboring populated areas. We call the ash from nuclear
\npower nuclear waste and worry about its safe disposal. I wonder if instead we should use it
\nas an incorruptible guardian of the beautiful places of the Earth. Who would dare cut
\ndown a forest in which was the storage place of nuclear ash? <\/p>\n

Lovelock does admit that nuclear power is “potentially harmful to people,” something that his
\nbrethren in the group Environmentalists for Nuclear Power often try to downplay. Truthfully,
\nsome of their points are good ones. More people have been killed by coal-mining than by nuclear
\npower, even when you factor in the shorter time that nuclear power has existed. Most of the
\nradiation we get zapped with comes from outer space (around two-thirds) and medical
\nprocedures (around a third), with only a smidgen from nuke plants. <\/p>\n

Still, when you know about all the unpublicized accidents and near-meltdowns that have
\noccurred, it’s hard to be quite so blas\u00e9 about the dangers. After all, the group’s own literature
\nsays, “Nuclear energy is a very clean energy if it is well designed, well-built, well operated, and
\nwell managed.” Trouble is, it’s often none of those things. Design flaws, human error, corruption,
\nincompetence, greed, and toothless oversight mean that in the real world, nuke plants often don’t
\nwork as advertised. <\/p>\n

GENETICALLY-ENGINEERED HUMANS HAVE ALREADY BEEN BORN
\nThe earthshaking news appeared in the medical journal Human Reproduction under the
\nimpenetrable headline: “Mitochondria in Human Offspring Derived From Ooplasmic
\nTransplantation.” The media put the story in heavy rotation for one day, then forgot about it. We
\nall forgot about it. <\/p>\n

But the fact remains that the world is now populated by dozens of children who were genetically
\nengineered. It still sounds like science fiction, yet it’s true. <\/p>\n

In the first known application of germline gene therapy \u2014 in which an individual’s genes are
\nchanged in a way that can be passed to offspring \u2014 doctors at a reproductive facility in New
\nJersey announced in March 2001 that nearly 30 healthy babies had been born with DNA from
\nthree people: dad, mom, and a second woman. Fifteen were the product of the fertility clinic,
\nwith the other fifteen or so coming from elsewhere. <\/p>\n

The doctors believe that one cause for failure of women to conceive is that their ova contain old
\nmitochondria (if you don’t remember your high school biology class, mitochondria are the part of
\ncells that provides energy). These sluggish eggs fail to attach to the uterine wall when fertilized.
\nIn order to soup them up, scientists injected them with mitochondria from a younger woman.
\nSince mitochondria contain DNA, the kids have the genetic material of all three parties. The
\nDNA from the “other woman” can even be passed down along the female line. <\/p>\n

The big problem is that no one knows what effects this will have on the children or their
\nprogeny. In fact, this substitution of mitochondria hasn’t been studied extensively on animals,
\nnever mind homo sapiens. The doctors reported that the kids are healthy, but they neglected to
\nmention something crucial. Although the fertility clinic’s technique resulted in fifteen babies, a
\ntotal of seventeen fetuses had been created. One of them had been aborted, and the other
\nmiscarried. Why? Both of them had a rare genetic disorder, Turner syndrome, which only strikes
\nfemales. Ordinarily, just one in 2,500 females is born with this condition, in which one of the X
\nchromo-somes is incomplete or totally missing. Yet two out of these seventeen fetuses had
\ndeveloped it. <\/p>\n

If we assume that nine of the fetuses were female (around 50 percent), then two of the nine
\nfemale fetuses had this rare condition. Internal documents from the fertility clinic admit that this
\namazingly high rate might be due to the ooplasmic transfer. <\/p>\n

Even before the revelation about Turner syndrome became known, many experts were appalled
\nthat the technique had been used. A responding article in Human Reproduction said, in a dry
\nunderstatement: “Neither the safety nor efficacy of this method has been adequately
\ninvestigated.” Ruth Deech, chair of Britain’s Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority,
\ntold the BBC: “There is a risk, not just to the baby, but to future generations which we really
\ncan’t assess at the moment.” <\/p>\n

The number of children who have been born as a result of this technique is unknown. The
\noriginal article gave the number as “nearly thirty,” but this was in early 2001. At that time, at
\nleast two of the mutant children were already one year old. <\/p>\n

Dr. Joseph Cummin, professor emeritus of biology at the University of Western Ontario, says
\nthat no further information about these 30 children has appeared in the medical literature or the
\nmedia. As far as additional children born with two mommies and a daddy, Cummin says that a
\nreport out of Norway in 2003 indicated that ooplasmic transfer has been used to correct
\nmitochondrial disease. He opines: “It seems likely that the transplants are going on, but very,
\nvery quietly in a regulatory vacuum, perhaps.” <\/p>\n

31 <\/p>\n

THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY WANTS TO GENETICALLY TEST ALL POLICY
\nHOLDERS
\nThe insurance industry’s party line is that it doesn’t want to genetically test people who sign up
\nfor policies, a practice that would detect a predisposition to develop cancer, multiple sclerosis,
\nand other diseases and disorders. The industry’s internal documents tell a completely different
\nstory, though. <\/p>\n

While researching War Against the Weak \u2014 his sweeping history of eugenics (and its successor,
\ngenetics) in the United States and Germany \u2014 Edwin Black found two reports written by
\ninsurers for insurers. “Genetic Information and Medical Expense” \u2014 published in June 2000 by
\nthe American Academy of Actuaries \u2014 intones that an inability to ask for genetic tests “would
\nhave a direct impact on premium rates, ultimately raising the cost of insurance for everyone.” <\/p>\n

A paper issued by the same group in spring 2002 goes further, envisioning a nightmare scenario
\nin which the entire insurance industry collapses. The genetically impure can’t be weeded out,
\nthus meaning that more of them get covered. Because of this, the insurers have lo pay out more
\nbenefits, which drives up premiums for everybody. This causes some people with perfect
\nchromosomes to be unable to afford insurance, which means a higher percentage of the insured
\nare chromosomally challenged. A downward spiral has started, with more benefits paid out,
\nhigher premiums charged, fewer healthy people covered, more benefits, higher premiums, fewer
\nhealthy people, etc. This, the report warns, “could eventually cause the insurers to become
\ninsolvent.” <\/p>\n

In the UK, insurance companies were widely screening applicants for genetic red flags until
\nParliament slapped a moratorium on the practice in 2001, allowing only one type of test to be
\nused. British companies argue that they will go belly-up if the ban isn’t lifted soon. Based on this
\nalone, it’s ridiculous for the US insurance industry to claim it isn’t hoping to use these tests. <\/p>\n

With the fate of the insurance racket supposedly hanging in the balance, how long can it be
\nbefore genetic screening is mandatory when applying for health or life coverage? <\/p>\n

32 <\/p>\n

SMOKING CAUSES PROBLEMS OTHER THAN LUNG CANCER AND HEART
\nDISEASE <\/p>\n

The fact that smoking causes lung disease and oral cancer isn’t exactly news, and only tobacco
\nindustry executives would express (feigned) shock at being told. But cigarettes can lead to a
\nwhole slew of problems involving every system of your tar-filled body, and most people aren’l
\naware of this. <\/p>\n

The American Council on Science and Health’s book Cigarettes: What the Warning Label
\nDoesn’t Tell You is the first comprehensive look at the medical evidence of all types of harm
\ntriggered by smoking. Referencing over 450 articles from medical journals and reviewed by 45
\nexperts \u2014 mainly medical doctors and PhDs \u2014 if this book doesn’t convince you to quit, nothing
\nwill. <\/p>\n

Among some of the things that cancer sticks do: <\/p>\n

..Besides cancers of the head, neck, and lungs, ciggies are especially connected to cancers of the
\nbladder, kidney, pancreas, and cervix. Newer evidence is adding leukemia and colorectal cancer
\nto the list. Recent studies have also found at least a doubling of risk among smokers for cancers
\nof the vulva and penis, as well as an eight-fold risk of anal cancer for men and a nine-fold risk
\nfor women. <\/p>\n

..Smoking trashes the ability of blood to flow, which results in a sixteen-fold greater risk of
\nperipheral vascular disease. This triggers pain in the legs and arms, which often leads to an
\ninability to walk and, in some instances, gangrene and\/or amputation. Seventy-six percent of all
\ncases are caused by smoking, more than for any other factor, including diabetes, obesity, and
\nhigh blood pressure. <\/p>\n

..Smokers are at least two to three times more likely to develop the heartbreak of psoriasis. Even
\nif that doesn’t happen, they’ll look old before their time. The American Council tells us,
\n“Smokers in their 40s have facial wrinkles similar to those of nonsmokers in their 60s.” <\/p>\n

..Smokers require more anesthesia for surgery, and they recover much more slowly. In fact,
\nwounds of all kinds take longer to heal for smokers. <\/p>\n

..Puffing helps to weaken bones, soft tissue, and spinal discs, causing all kinds of musculoskeletal
\npain, more broken bones and ruptured discs, and longer healing time. “A non-smoker’s
\nleg heals an average of 80 percent faster than a smoker’s broken leg.” <\/p>\n

..Smoking is heavily related to osteoporosis, the loss of bone mass, which results in brittle bones
\nand more breaks. <\/p>\n

..Cigarettes interfere with your ability to have kids. “The fertility rates of women who smoke are
\nabout 30 percent lower than those of nonsmokers.” If you’re an idiot who continues to smoke
\nwhile you’re expecting \u2014 even in this day and age, some people, including stars Catherine Zeta<\/p>\n

Jones and Courtney Love, do this \u2014 you increase the risks of miscarriage, stillbirth, premature
\nbirth, low birth weight, underdevelopment, and cleft pallet. If your child is able to survive
\noutside the womb, it will have a heavily elevated risk of crib death (SIDS), allergies, and
\nintellectual impairment. <\/p>\n

..Smoking also does a serious number on sperm, resulting in more deformed cells, less ability of
\nthem to swim, smaller loads, and a drastic decrease in overall number of the little fellas. The
\nlarger population of misshapen sperm probably increases the risk of miscarriages and birth
\ndefects, so even if mommy doesn’t smoke, daddy could still cause problems. What’s more,
\nbecause smoking hurts blood flow, male smokers are at least twice as likely to be unable to get it
\nup. <\/p>\n

..Besides shutting down blood flow to the little head, smoking interferes with the blood going to
\nthe big head in both sexes. This causes one quarter of all strokes. It also makes these strokes
\nmore likely to occur earlier in life and more likely to be fatal. <\/p>\n

..”Depression \u2014 whether viewed as a trait, a symptom or a diagnosable disorder \u2014 is overrepresented
\namong smokers.” Unfortunately, it’s unclear how the two are related. Does smoking
\ncause depression, or does depression lead to smoking? Or, most likely, do the two feed on each
\nother in a vicious cycle? <\/p>\n

..”Smokers experience sudden hearing loss an average of 16 years earlier than do never
\nsmokers.” <\/p>\n

..Smokers and former smokers have an increased risk of developing cataracts, abnormal eye
\nmovements, inflammation of the optic nerve, permanent blindness from lack of blood flow, and
\nthe most severe form of macular degeneration. <\/p>\n

..Lighting up increases plaque, gum disease, and tooth loss. <\/p>\n

..It also makes it likelier that you’ll develop diabetes, stomach ulcers, colon polyps, and Crohn’s
\ndisease. <\/p>\n

..Smoking trashes the immune system in myriad ways, with the overall result being that you’re
\nmore susceptible to disease and allergies. <\/p>\n

..And let’s not forget that second-hand smoke has horrible effects on the estimated 42 percent of
\ntoddlers and infants who are forced to inhale it in their homes: <\/p>\n

According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), children’s “passive smoking,”
\nas it is called, results in hundreds of thousands of cases of bronchitis, pneumonia, ear
\ninfections, and worsened asthma. Worse yet, the Centers for Disease Control and
\nPrevention estimates that 702 children younger than one year die each year as a result of
\nsudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), worsened asthma and serious respiratory infections. <\/p>\n

It’s very surprising to note that smoking can have a few health benefits. Because they zap
\nwomen’s estrogen levels, cigarettes can lead to less endometriosis and other conditions related to
\nthe hormone. Smoking also decreases the risk of developing osteoarthritis in the knees, perhaps
\nbecause the pliability of thin bones takes some pressure off of the cartilage. And because it jacks
\nup dopamine levels, it helps ward off Parkinson’s disease. Of course, these benefits seem to be
\nside effects of the hazards of smoking, so the trade-off hardly seems worth it. <\/p>\n

33
\nHERDS OF MILK-PRODUCING COWS ARE RIFE WITH BOVINE LEUKEMIA
\nVIRUS <\/p>\n

Bovine leukemia virus is a cancer-causing microbe in cattle.
\nJust how many cows have it? The US Department of
\nAgriculture reports that nationwide, 89 percent of herds
\ncontain cows with BLV. The most infected region is the
\nSoutheast, where 99 percent of herds have the tumor-causing
\nbug. In some herds across the country, almost every single
\nanimal is infected. A 1980 study across Canada uncovered a
\nlower but none-too-reassuring rate of 40 percent. <\/p>\n

BLV is transmitted through milk. Since the milk from all
\ncows in a herd is mixed before processing, if even a single
\ncow is infected, all milk from that herd will have BLV
\nswimming in it. Citing an article in Science, oncologist <\/p>\n

Robert Kradjian, MD, warns that 90 to 95 percent of milk
\nstarts out tainted. Of course, pasteurization \u2014 when done the right way \u2014 kills BLV, but the
\nprocess isn’t perfect. And if you drink raw milk, odds are you’re gulping down bovine leukemia
\nvirus. <\/p>\n

Between dairy cows and their cousins that are used for meat (who tend to be infected at lower
\nrates), it appears that a whole lot of BLV is getting inside us. A 2001 study in Breast Cancer
\nResearch detected antibodies to the bovine leukemia virus in blood samples from 77 out of 100
\nvolunteers. Furthermore, BLV showed up more often in breast tissue from women with breast
\ncancer than in the tissue from healthy women. Several medical studies have found positive
\ncorrelations between higher intake of milk\/beef and increased incidence of leukemia or
\nlymphoma in humans, although other studies haven’t found a correlation. <\/p>\n

No hard evidence has yet linked BLV to diseases in humans, but do you feel comfortable
\nknowing that cow cancer cells are in your body? <\/p>\n

MOST DOCTORS DON’T KNOW THE RADIATION LEVEL OF CAT SCANS <\/p>\n

Using extended doses of encircling X-rays, CAT scans give a detailed look inside your body,
\nrevealing not only bones but soft tissue and blood vessels, as well. According to the health site <\/p>\n

lmaginis.com, over 70,000 places around the world offer CAT scans to detect and diagnose
\ntumors, heart disease, osteoporosis, blood clots, spinal fractures, nerve damage, and lots of other
\nproblems. Because it can uncover so much, its use has become widespread and continues to rise.
\nIn fact, healthy people are getting scans just to see if anything might be wrong, kind of like a
\nroutine check-up. <\/p>\n

The downside, and it’s a doozy, is that a CAT scan jolts you with 100 to 250 times the dose of
\nradiation that you get from a chest X-ray. What’s even more alarming is that most doctors
\napparently don’t know this. <\/p>\n

An emergency physician from the Yale School of Medicine surveyed 45 of his colleagues about
\nthe pros and cons of CAT scans. A mere nine of them said that they tell patients about the
\nradiation. This might be just as well, in a weird way, since most of them had absolutely no clue
\nabout how much radiation CAT scans give off. When asked to compare the blast from a chest X-
\nray to the blast from a CAT scan, only 22 percent of the docs got it right. As for the other three-
\nquarters, The Medical Post relates: <\/p>\n

Three of the doctors said the dose was either less than or equal to a chest X-ray.
\nTwenty (44%) of the doctors said the dose was greater than a chest X-ray, but less than 10
\ntimes the dose. Just over one-fifth of the doctors (22%) said the radiation dose from a CT
\nwas more than 10 times that of an X-ray but less than 100 times the dose. <\/p>\n

Only ten of them knew that a single CAT scan equals 100 to 250 chest X-rays, while two thought
\nthat the scans were even worse than that. <\/p>\n

Feel free to give your doc a pop quiz during your next office visit. <\/p>\n

35
\nMEDICATION ERRORS KILL THOUSANDS EACH YEAR <\/p>\n

Next time you get a prescription filled, look at the label very carefully. Getting the wrong drug or
\nthe wrong dosage kills hundreds or thousands of people each year, with many times that number
\ngetting injured. <\/p>\n

Renegade health reporter Nicholas Regush \u2014 a self-imposed exile from ABC News \u2014 provides
\nii long list of specific problems: <\/p>\n

Poor handwriting. Verbal orders. Ambiguous orders. Prescribing errors. Failure to write
\norders. Unapproved uses. When the order is not modified or cancelled. Look-alike and
\nsound-alike drug names. Dangerous abbreviations. Faulty drug distribution systems in
\nhospital. Failure to read the label or poor labeling. Lack of knowledge about drugs. Lack of
\nknowledge concerning proper dose. Lack of knowledge concerning route of administration.
\nAd nauseam. <\/p>\n

After pouring over death certificates, sociology professor David Philips \u2014 an expert in mortality
\nstatistics \u2014 determined that drug errors kill 7,000 people each year in the US. His study was <\/p>\n

published in The Lancet, probably the most prestigious medical journal in the world. The
\nInstitute of Medicine, a branch of the National Academies of Science, also estimated 7,000.
\nInterestingly, the Food and Drug Administration published the lowball figure of 365 annually
\n(one per day). But even the FDA admits that such bungling injures 1.3 million people each year. <\/p>\n

New York Newsday cited several specific cases, such as: “In 1995, a Texas doctor wrote an
\nillegible prescription causing the patient to receive not only the wrong medication, but at eight
\ntimes the drug’s usually recommended strength. The patient, Ramon Vasquez, died. In 1999, a
\ncourt ordered the doctor and pharmacy to pay the patient’s family a total of $450,000, the largest
\namount ever awarded in an illegible prescription case.” <\/p>\n

Besides doctors’ indecipherable chicken scratch, similar-sounding drug names are another big
\nculprit. Pharmaceutical companies have even started warning medical professionals to be careful
\nwith the cookie-cutter names of their products. In a typical example, Celebrex, Cerebyx, Celexa,
\nand Zyprexa sometimes get confused. (Respectively, they’re used to treat arthritis, seizures,
\ndepression, and psychosis.) According to WebMD: “Bruce Lambert, an assistant professor of
\npharmacy administration at the University of Illinois at Chicago, says there are 100,000 potential
\npairings of drug names that could be confused.” <\/p>\n

36
\nPRESCRIPTION DRUGS KILL OVER 100,000 ANNUALLY <\/p>\n

Even higher than the number of people who die from medication errors is the number of people
\nwho die from medication, period. Even when a prescription drug is dispensed properly, there’s no
\nguarantee it won’t end up killing you. <\/p>\n

A remarkable study in the Journal of the American Medical Association revealed that
\nprescription drugs kill around 106,000 people in the US every year, which ranks prescription
\ndrugs as the fourth leading cause of death. Furthermore, each years sees 2,216,000 serious
\nadverse drug reactions (defined as “those that required hospitalization, were permanently
\ndisabling, or resulted in death”). <\/p>\n

The authors of this 1998 study performed a meta-analysis on
\n39 previous studies covering 32 years. They factored out such
\nthings as medication errors, abuse of prescription drugs, and
\nadverse reactions not considered serious. Plus, the study
\ninvolved only people who had either been hospitalized due to
\ndrug reactions or who experienced reactions while in the
\nhospital. People who died immediately (and, thus, never went
\nto the hospital) and those whose deaths weren’t realized to be
\ndue to prescription drugs were not included, so the true figure
\nis probably higher. <\/p>\n

Four years later, another study in the JAMA warned: <\/p>\n

Patient exposure to new drugs with unknown toxic effects may be extensive. Nearly 20
\nmillion patients in the United States took at least 1 of the 5 drugs withdrawn from the
\nmarket between September 1997 and September 1998. Three of these 5 drugs were new,
\nhaving been on the market for less than 2 years. Seven drugs approved since 1993 and
\nsubsequently withdrawn from the market have been reported as possibly contributing to
\n1002 deaths. <\/p>\n

Examining warnings added to drug labels through the years, the study’s authors found that of the
\nnew chemical entities approved from 1975 to 1999, 10 percent “acquired a new black box
\nwarning or were withdrawn from the market” by 2000. Using some kind of high-falutin’
\nstatistical process, they estimate that the “probability of a new drug acquiring black box warnings
\nor being withdrawn from the market over 25 years was 20%.” <\/p>\n

A statement released by one of the study’s coauthors \u2014 Sidney Wolfe, MD, Director of Public
\nCitizen’s Health Studies Group \u2014 warned: <\/p>\n

In 1997, 39 new drugs were approved by the FDA. As of now [May 2002], five of them
\n(Rezulin, Posicor, Duract, Raxar and Baycol) have been taken off the market and an
\nadditional two (Trovan, an antibiotic and Orgaran, an anticoagulant) have had new box
\nwarnings. Thus, seven drugs approved that year (18% of the 39 drugs approved) have
\nalready been withdrawn or had a black box warning in just four years after approval.
\nBased on our study, 20% of drugs will be withdrawn or have a black box warning within
\n25 years of coming on the market. The drugs approved in 1997 have already almost
\n“achieved” this in only four years \u2014 with 21 years to go. <\/p>\n

How does this happen? Before the FDA approves a new drug, it must undergo clinical trials.
\nThese trials aren’t performed by the FDA, though \u2014 they’re done by the drug companies
\nthemselves. These trials often use relatively few patients, and they usually select patients most
\nlikely to react well to the drug. On top of that, the trials are often for a short period of time
\n(weeks), even though real-world users may be on a drug for months or years at a time. Dr. Wolfe
\npoints out that even when adverse effects show up during clinical trials, the drugs are sometimes
\nreleased anyway, and they end up being taken off the market because of those same adverse
\neffects. <\/p>\n

Postmarketing reporting of adverse effects isn’t much better. The FDA runs a program to collect
\nreports of problems with drugs, but compliance is voluntary. The generally accepted estimate in
\nthe medical community is that a scant 10 percent of individual instances of adverse effects are
\nreported to the FDA, which would mean that the problem is ten times worse than we currently
\nbelieve. <\/p>\n

Drugs aren’t released when they’ve been proven safe; they’re released when enough FDA
\nbureaucrats \u2014 many of whom have worked for the pharmaceutical companies or will work for
\nthem in the future \u2014 can be convinced that it’s kinda safe. Basically, the use of prescription
\ndrugs by the general public can be seen as widespread, long-term clinical trials to determine their
\ntrue safety. <\/p>\n

We are all guinea pigs. <\/p>\n

WORK KILLS MORE PEOPLE THAN WAR <\/p>\n

The United Nations’ International Labor Organization has revealed some horrifying stats: <\/p>\n

The ILO estimates that approximately two million workers lose their lives annually due to
\noccupational injuries and illnesses, with accidents causing at least 350,000 deaths a year.
\nFor every fatal accident, there are an estimated 1,000 non-fatal injuries, many of which
\nresult in lost earnings, permanent disability and poverty. The death toll at work, much of
\nwhich is attributable to unsafe working practices, is the equivalent of 5,000 workers dying
\neach day, three persons every minute. <\/p>\n

This is more than double the figure for deaths from warfare (650,000 death* per year).
\nAccording to the ILO’s SafeWork programme, work kills more people than alcohol and
\ndrugs together and the resulting loss in Gross Domestic Product is 20 times greater than all
\nofficial development assistance to the developing countries. <\/p>\n

Each year, 6,570 US workers die because of injuries at work, while 60,225 meet their maker due
\nto occupational diseases. (Meanwhile, 13.2 million get hurt, and 1.1 million develop illnesses
\nthat don’t kill them.) On an average day, two or three workers are fatally shot, two fall to their
\ndeaths, one is killed after being smashed by a vehicle, and one is electrocuted. Each year, around
\n30 workers die of heat stroke, and another 30 expire from carbon monoxide. <\/p>\n

Although blue collar workers face a lot of the most obvious dangers, those slaving in offices or
\nstores must contend with toxic air, workplace violence, driving accidents, and (especially for the
\nhealth-care workers) transmissible diseases. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration
\nwarns that poisonous indoor air in nonindustrial workplaces causes “[t]housands of heart disease
\ndeaths [and] hundreds of lung cancer deaths” each year. <\/p>\n

But hey, everybody has to go sometime, right? And since we spend so much of our lives in the
\nworkplace, it’s only logical that a lot of deaths happen \u2014 or at least are set into motion \u2014 on the
\njob. This explanation certainly is true to an extent, but it doesn’t excuse all such deaths. The
\nInternational Labor Organization says that half of workplace fatalities are avoidable. In A Job to
\nDie For, Lisa Cullen writes: <\/p>\n

In the workplace, few real accidents occur because the surroundings and operations are
\nknown; therefore, hazards can be identified. When harm from those hazards can be
\nforeseen, accidents can be prevented…. <\/p>\n

Most jobs have expected, known hazards. Working in and near excavations, for example,
\nposes the obvious risks of death or injury from cave-in…. When trenches or excavations
\ncollapse because soil was piled right up to the edge, there is little room to claim it was an
\naccident. <\/p>\n

THE SUICIDE RATE IS HIGHEST AMONG THE ELDERLY <\/p>\n

If you judge by the media and the public education programs, you might be inclined to think that
\nteenagers and young adults (aged 15 to 24) are the age group most likely to kill themselves.
\nActually, they have the second-lowest rate of suicide. (The absolute lowest rate is among kids
\naged 5 to 14; children younger than that are apparently deemed incapable of consciously
\nchoosing to end their lives.) It is the elderly, by far, who have the highest rate of suicide. <\/p>\n

In the US, of every 100,000 people aged 75 to 79, 16.5 kill themselves. For those 80 and over,
\nthe rate is 19.43. This compares to a rate of 8.15 per 100,000 for people between the ages 15 and
\n19, and 12.84 for people aged 20 to 24. <\/p>\n

As with every age group, men are far more likely to kill themselves, but among the elderly this
\ntrend reaches extreme proportions. Of people 65 and older, men comprise a staggering 84
\npercent of suicides. <\/p>\n

Because men commit the vast majority of hara-kiri among old people, looking at these male
\nsuicide rates makes for extremely depressing reading. For guys aged 75 to 79, the suicide rate is <\/p>\n

34.26 per 100,000. In the 80 to 84 group, men’s suicide rate is 44.12. When you look at men 85
\nand older, the suicide rate is a heart-breaking 54.52. Compare this to the suicide rate for dudes in
\ntheir mid to late teens: 13.22 per 100,000.
\nIt is true that suicide ranks as the second or third most common cause of death in young people
\n(depending on age group), while it is number 15 and under for various groups of the elderly.
\nStill, the suicide rate among the young is equal to their proportion of the population, while the
\nelderly are way overrepresented as a group. And old people are cut down by a great many
\ndiseases and disorders virtually unknown to the young, which naturally pushes suicide down in
\nthe rankings. <\/p>\n

The reasons why this suicide epidemic is ignored are highly speculative and would be too
\nlengthy to get into here. However, we can rule out one seemingly likely explanation \u2014 suicide
\namong the aged is invisible because they usually O.D. on prescription drugs or kill themselves in
\nother ways that could easily be mistaken for natural death in someone of advanced years. This
\ndoesn’t wash, primarily because guns are the most common method of dispatch. Of suicides over
\n65, men used a gun 79.5 percent of the time, while women shot themselves 37 percent of the
\ntime. It’s hard to mistake that for natural causes. <\/p>\n

The sky-high suicide rate among the elderly applies to the entire world, not just the US. Plotted
\nin a graph, suicide rates by age group around the globe gently curve upward as age increases.
\nWhen the graph reaches the final age group, the line suddenly spikes, especially for men.
\nWorldwide, men 75 and over have a suicide rate of 55.7 per 100,000, while women in the same
\nage group have a rate of 18.8. This rate for old men is almost three times the global rate for guys
\naged 15 to 24, while the rate for old women is well over three times the rate for young gals in
\nthat age group. <\/p>\n

39
\nFOR LOW-RISK PEOPLE, A POSITIVE RESULT FROM AN HIV TEST IS WRONG
\nHALF THE TIME <\/p>\n

Although a lot of progress has been made in improving the length and quality of life for people
\nwith AIDS, getting a positive result from an HIV test must still rank as one of the worst pieces of
\nnews a person can get. It’s not uncommon for people to kill themselves right after hearing the
\nresults, and those who don’t commit suicide surely go through all kinds of mental anguish. But
\nthe accuracy of these tests is lower than generally believed. In fact, if you test positive but you’re
\nnot a member of a high-risk group (such as non-monogamous gay men and intravenous drug
\nusers), the odds are 50-50 that you actually have the virus. <\/p>\n

To be declared HIV-positive, your blood goes through three tests \u2014 two ELISA tests and one
\nmore sensitive and costly Western Blot test. Makers of the tests trumpet a 99.99 percent accuracy
\nrate when all three are used. Many AIDS counselors even tell people that the tests never give a
\nfalse positive (that is, the tests don’t indicate that someone is HIV-positive when he or she really
\nisn’t). The test manufacturers’ claim is misleading, and the counselors’ claim is flat-out BS.
\nCognitive scientist Gerd Gigerenzer \u2014 who specializes in risk and uncertainty \u2014 explains the
\nreality in plain English: <\/p>\n

Imagine 10,000 men who are not in any known risk category. One is infected (base rate)
\nand will test positive with practical certainty (sensitivity). Of the 9,999 men who are not
\ninfected, another one will also test positive (false positive rate). So we can expect that two
\nmen will test positive. <\/p>\n

Out of these two men, only one actually carries the virus. So, if you’re a low-risk man who tests
\npositive, the chances are even \u2014 the same as a coin flip \u2014 that the result is right. It’s highly
\nadvisable that you take the tests again (and again). The results are even less reliable for women
\nin low-risk groups, since they have a still lower rate of HIV. <\/p>\n

Of course, this doesn’t apply to an HIV-negative result. If you test negative, the odds are
\noverwhelmingly good (9,998 out of 9,999) that this is correct. It also doesn’t hold for people in
\nhigh-risk categories. For example, if we accept the estimate that 1.5 percent of gay men are HIV-
\npositive, this means that out of every 10,000, an average of 150 are infected. An HIV test will
\nalmost surely pick up on all 150, and out of the remaining 9,850 uninfected men, one will
\nincorrectly be labeled positive. This means that only one out of 151 gay men will be falsely
\ndiagnosed as having HIV A false positive is thus still possible but much more unlikely. <\/p>\n

40
\nDNA MATCHING IS NOT INFALLIBLE <\/p>\n

Speaking of tests that aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, let’s look at DNA testing. This is
\nsupposed to be the absolute silver bullet of criminal justice, an incontrovertible way to pin guilt
\non someone. After all, the chances of a mismatch are one in a billion, a quadrillion, a jillion!
\nSome experts have testified under oath that a false match is literally impossible. <\/p>\n

Not quite. As he did with HIV testing, risk scholar Gerd Gigerenzer of the Max Planck Institute
\npunches a hole in the matching of genetic material: <\/p>\n

In the first blind test reported in the literature, three major commercial laboratories were
\neach sent 50 DNA samples. Two of the three declared one false match; in a second test one
\nyear later, one of the same three laboratories declared a false match. From external tests
\nconducted by the California Association of I Crime Laboratory Directors, the
\nCollaborative Testing Services, and other agencies, the psychologist Jonathan Koehler and
\nhis colleagues estimated the false positive rate of DNA fingerprinting to be on the order of 1
\nin 100. Cellmark Diagnostics, one of the laboratories that found matches between O.J.
\nSimpson’s DNA and DNA extracted from a recovered blood stain at the murder scene,
\nreported its own false positive rate to the Simpson defense as roughly 1 in 200. <\/p>\n

It gets even worse. In 1999, the College of American Pathologists performed its own secret tests
\nof 135 labs. Each lab was sent a DNA sample from the “victim,” some semen from the “suspect,”
\nand a fake vaginal swab containing DNA from both parties. They were also sent a strand of the
\n“victim’s” hair. The object was to see how many of the labs would make the matches (ie, match
\nthe two sperm samples of the man, and match the hair and DNA sample of the woman). But
\nsomething unexpected happened: Three of the labs reported that the DNA from the suspect
\nmatched the victim’s DNA! Obviously, they had mixed up the samples. Only fourteen labs tested
\nthe hair, but out of those, one screwed it up by declaring a match to the “suspect.” <\/p>\n

These kind of switches don’t happen only during artificial situations designed to gauge a lab’s
\naccuracy (which are usually performed under ideal conditions). During a 1995 rape trial, a lab
\nreversed the labels on the DNA samples from the victim and the defendant. Their testing then
\nrevealed a match between the defendant’s alleged DNA (which was actually the victim’s) and the
\nDNA on the vaginal swab, which didn’t contain any semen from the rapist. Luckily, this
\nboneheaded move was caught during the trial, but not everyone is so lucky. <\/p>\n

The Journal of Forensic Science has reported an error that was discovered only after an innocent
\nman had been convicted of raping an 11-year-old girl and sentenced to prison, where lie was
\nundoubtedly brutalized in ways that would give you nightmares for the rest of your life, were
\nyou to hear them described in detail. After four years, he was released because the lab hadn’t
\ncompletely separated the real rapist’s DNA (extracted from his semen) from the victim’s DNA.
\nWhen the two were swirled together, they somehow matched that of the poor bastard whose
\neleven alibi witnesses failed to sway the jury. But when the semen DNA was checked properly, it
\nwas beyond doubt that a match didn’t exist. <\/p>\n

While most false matches are the result of human error, other factors do come into play. Some
\ntesting techniques are more definitive than others. In the case of one innocent man \u2014 Josiah
\nSutton, found guilty of rape based primarily on DNA evidence \u2014 criminology professor William <\/p>\n

C. Thompson said: “If police picked any two black men off the street, the chances that one of
\nthem would have a DNA profile that ‘matched’ the semen sample as well as Sutton’s profile is
\nbetter than one in eight.” Also, we mustn’t forget about corruption. In some known cases, DNA
\nanalysts have misrepresented (ie, lied about) their findings in order to obtain convictions. <\/p>\n

AN FBI EXPERT TESTIFIED THAT LIE DETECTORS ARE WORTHLESS FOR
\nSECURITY SCREENING <\/p>\n

Now let’s turn our attention to the last member of our trifecta of defective tests \u2014 the polygraph,
\nmore commonly referred to as the lie detector. Invented by the same person who created Wonder
\nWoman and her golden lasso that makes you tell the truth (I’m not kidding), the polygraph is said
\nto detect deception based on subtle bodily signals, such as pulse rate and sweatiness. Its
\nproponents like to claim that it has a success rate of 90 percent or more. This is pure hogwash.
\nWhile the evidence against lie detectors is way too voluminous to get into here, it will be very
\ninstructive to look at a statement from Dr. Drew Richardson. Richardson is a scientist who was
\nan FBI agent for 25 years; in the late 1980s and early 1990s, he dealt with polygraphs. <\/p>\n

In fall 1997, a Senate Judiciary subcommittee held hearings regarding the FBI Crime Lab.
\nRichardson gave scorching testimony about polygraphs. Referring specifically to the practice of
\nusing lie detectors to question people in sensitive positions, he said under oath: <\/p>\n

It is completely without any theoretical foundation and has absolutely no validity. Although
\nthere is disagreement amongst scientists about the use of polygraph testing in criminal
\nmatters, there is almost universal agreement that polygraph screening is completely invalid
\nand should be stopped. As one of my colleagues frequently says, the diagnostic value of this
\ntype of testing is no more than that of astrology or tea-leaf reading. <\/p>\n

If this test had any validity (which it does not), both my own experience, and published
\nscientific research has proven, that anyone can be taught to beat this type of polygraph
\nexam in a few minutes. <\/p>\n

Because of the nature of this type of examination, it would normally be expected to produce
\nlarge numbers of false positive results (falsely accusing an examinee of lying about some
\nissue). As a result of the great consequences of doing this with large numbers of law
\nenforcement and intelligence community officers, the test has now been manipulated to
\nreduce false positive results, but consequently has no power to detect deception in
\nespionage and other national security matters. Thus, I believe that there is virtually no
\nprobability of catching a spy with the use of polygraph screening techniques. I think a
\ncareful exam-ination of the Aldrich Ames case will reveal that any shortcomings in the use
\nof the polygraph were not simply errors on the part of the polygraph examiners involved,
\nand would not have been eliminated if FBI instead of CIA polygraphers had conducted
\nthese examinations. Instead I believe this is largely a reflection of the complete lack of
\nvalidity of this methodology. To the extent that we place any confidence in the results of
\npolygraph screening, and as a consequence shortchange traditional security vetting
\ntechniques, I think our national security is severely jeopardized. <\/p>\n

After he ripped polygraphs a new one, the FBI silenced Richardson, refusing to let him speak
\npublicly about the subject again. <\/p>\n

THE BAYER COMPANY MADE HEROIN <\/p>\n

Aspirin isn’t the only “wonder drug that works wonders” that Bayer made. The German
\npharmaceutical giant also introduced heroin to the world. <\/p>\n

The company was looking for a cough suppressant that didn’t
\nhave problematic side effects, mainly addiction, like morphine
\nand codeine. And if it could relieve pain better than morphine,
\nthat was a welcome bonus. <\/p>\n

When one of Bayer’s chemists approached the head of the
\npharmacological lab with ASA \u2014 to be sold under the name
\n“aspirin” \u2014 he was waved away. The boss was more interested
\nin something else the chemists had cooked up \u2014 diacetylmorphine.
\n(This narcotic had been created in 1874 by a British
\nchemist, who had never done anything with it.) <\/p>\n

Using the tradename “Heroin” \u2014 because early testers said it
\nmade them feel heroisch (heroic) \u2014 Bayer sold this popular
\ndrug by the truckload starting in 1898. Free samples were sent
\nto thousands of doctors; studies appeared in medical journals.
\nThe Sunday Times of London noted: “By 1899, Bayer was
\nproducing about a ton of heroin a year, and exporting the drug
\nto 23 countries,” including the US. Medicines containing <\/p>\n

smack were available over-the-counter at drug stores, just as aspirin is today. The American
\nMedical Association gave heroin its stamp of approval in 1907. <\/p>\n

But reports of addiction, which had already started appearing in 1899, turned into a torrent after
\nseveral years. Bayer had wisely released aspirin the year after heroin, and this new non-addictive
\npainkiller and anti-inflammatory was well on its way to becoming the most popular drug ever. In
\n1913, Bayer got out of the heroin business. <\/p>\n

Not that the company has kept its nose clean since then: <\/p>\n

A division of the pharmaceutical company Bayer sold millions of dollars of blood-clotting
\nmedicine for hemophiliacs \u2014 medicine that carried a high risk of transmitting AIDS \u2014 to
\nAsia and Latin America in the mid-1980s while selling a new, safer product in the West,
\naccording to documents obtained by The New York Times…. [I]n Hong Kong and Taiwan
\nalone, more than 100 hemophiliacs got HIV after using Cutter’s old medicine, according to
\nrecords and interviews. Many have since died. <\/p>\n

LSD HAS BEEN USED SUCCESSFULLY IN PSYCHIATRIC THERAPY <\/p>\n

Given the demonization of the psychedelic drug LSD, it may seem inconceivable that
\nmainstream , psychiatrists were giving it to patients during sessions. Yet for at least 20 years,
\nthat’s exactly what happened. <\/p>\n

Created in 1938, LSD was first suggested as a tool in psychotherapy in 1949. The following year
\nsaw the first studies in medical\/psychiatric journals. By 1970, hundreds of articles on the uses of
\nLSD in therapy had appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the Journal of
\nPsychology, the Archives of General Psychiatry, the Quarterly Journal of Studies of Alcoholism,
\nmany non-English-language journals, and elsewhere. <\/p>\n

Psychiatric and psychotherapeutic conferences had segments devoted to LSD, and two
\nprofessional organizations were formed for this specialty, one in Europe and the other in North
\nAmerica. International symposia were held in Princeton, London, Amsterdam, and other
\nlocations. From 1950 to 1965, LSD was given in conjunction with therapy to an estimated
\n40,000 people worldwide. <\/p>\n

In his definitive book on the subject, LSD Psychotherapy, transpersonal psychotherapist
\nStanislav Grof, MD, explains what makes LSD such a good aid to headshrinking: <\/p>\n

…LSD and other psychedelics function more or less as nonspecific catalysts and amplifiers
\nof the psyche…. In the dosages used in human experimentation, the classical psychedelics,
\nsuch as LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline, do not have any specific pharmacological effects.
\nThey increase the energetic niveau in the psyche and the body which leads to manifestation
\nof otherwise latent psychological processes. <\/p>\n

The content and nature of the experiences that these substances induce are thus not
\nartificial products of their pharmacological interaction with the brain (“toxic psychoses”),
\nbut authentic expressions of the psyche revealing its functioning on levels not ordinarily
\navailable for observation and study. A person who has taken LSD does not have an “LSD
\nexperience,” but takes a journey into deep recesses of his or her own psyche. <\/p>\n

When used as a tool during full-scale therapy, Grof says, “the potential of LSD seems to be
\nextraordinary and unique. The ability of LSD to deepen, intensify and accelerate the
\npsychotherapeutic process is incomparably greater than that of any other drug used as an adjunct
\nto psychotherapy, with the exception perhaps of some other members of the psychedelic group.” <\/p>\n

Due to bad trips experienced by casual users, not to mention anti-drug hysteria in general, LSD
\nwas outlawed in the US in 1970. The Drug Enforcement Agency declares: “Scientific study of
\nLSD ceased circa 1980 as research funding declined.” <\/p>\n

What the DEA fails to mention is that medical and psychiatric research is currently happening,
\nalbeit quietly. Few researchers have the resources and patience to jump through the umpteen
\nhoops required to test psychedelics on people, but a few experiments using LSD, ecstasy, DMT,
\nketamine, peyote, and other such substances are happening in North America and Europe.
\nUniversities engaged in this research include Harvard, Duke, Johns Hopkins, University College
\nLondon, and the University of Zurich. <\/p>\n

We’re presently in the dark ages of such research, but at least the light hasn’t gone out entirely. <\/p>\n

CARL SAGAN WAS AN AVID POT-SMOKER <\/p>\n

When you’re talking about scientists who achieved rock-star status in
\nthe second half of the twentieth century, the late astronomer and
\nbiologist Carl Sagan is right up there with Stephen Hawking. His
\nCosmos (1980) is one of the most popular science books ever written,
\nplanting itself on the New York Times bestseller list for 70 weeks and
\nstaying perpetually in print ever since. It was a companion for the PBS
\ntelevision series of the same name, which \u2014 along with numerous
\nTonight Show appearances \u2014 introduced Sagan and his emphatically
\nstated phrase “billions and billions” into pop culture. His sole novel,
\nContact, was turned into a love-it-or-hate-it movie starring Jodie
\nFoster as an erstwhile scientist searching for extraterrestrial life, with <\/p>\n

Matthew McConaughey as a New Age flake who, inevitably, makes his own form of contact
\nwith her. <\/p>\n

Besides his pop-culture credentials, Sagan was pals with numerous legendary Nobel
\nPrize-winners while still in college, picked up a Pulitzer Prize for his book Dragons of Eden, and
\nconsulted for NASA, MIT, Cornell, and RAND. He designed the human race’s postcards to any
\naliens that might be out there \u2014 the plaque onboard the Pioneer space probes and the record on
\nthe Voyager probes. <\/p>\n

So it might come as a bit of a surprise that Sagan was an avid smoker of marijuana. Some might
\neven call him a pothead. <\/p>\n

In his definitive biography of the celebrity scientist, Keay Davidson reveals that Sagan started
\ntoking regularly in the early 1960s and that Dragons of Eden \u2014 which won the Pulitzer \u2014 “was
\nobviously written under the inspiration of marijuana.” Davidson says of Sagan: <\/p>\n

He believed the drug enhanced his creativity and insights. His closest friend of three
\ndecades, Harvard psychiatry professor Dr. Lester Grinspoon, a leading advocate of the
\ndecriminalization of marijuana, recalls an incident in the 1980s when one of his California
\nadmirers mailed him, unsolicited, some unusually high-quality pot. Grinspoon shared the
\njoints with Sagan and his wife, Anne Druyan. Afterward, Sagan said, “Lester, I know
\nyou’ve only got one left, but could I have it? I’ve got serious work to do tomorrow and I
\ncould really use it.” <\/p>\n

Perhaps letting Sagan bogart the pot was Grinspoon’s way of returning a favor, since Sagan had
\ncontributed an essay to Marihuana Reconsidered, Grinspoon’s classic 1971 book on the benefits
\nand low risks of reefer. For almost three decades, the author of this ode to Mary Jane was
\nanonymous, but in 1999 Grinspoon revealed that “Mr. X” was Sagan. <\/p>\n

In the essay, Sagan wrote that weed increased his appreciation of art, music, food, sex, and
\nchildhood memories, and gave him insights into scientific and social matters: <\/p>\n

I can remember one occasion, taking a shower with my wife while high, in which I had an
\nidea on the origins and invalidities of racism in terms of Gaussian distribution curves. It
\nwas a point obvious [sic] in a way, but rarely talked about. I drew curves in soap on the
\nshower wall, and went to write the idea down. One idea led to another, and at the end of
\nabout an hour of extremely hard work I found I had written eleven short essays on a wide
\nrange of social, political, philosophical, and human biological topics…. I have used them in
\nuniversity commencement addresses, public lectures, and in my books. <\/p>\n

The staunchly atheistic\/humanistic Sagan comes perilously close to mysticism in some passages: <\/p>\n

I do not consider myself a religious person in the usual sense, but there is a religious aspect
\nto some highs. The heightened sensitivity in all areas gives me a feeling of communion with
\nmy surroundings, both animate and inanimate. Sometimes a kind of existential perception
\nof the absurd comes over me and I see with awful certainty the hypocrisies and posturing of
\nmyself and my fellow men. And at other times, there is a different sense of the absurd, a
\nplayful and whimsical awareness…. <\/p>\n

I am convinced that there are genuine and valid levels of perception available with
\ncannabis (and probably with other drugs) which are, through the defects of our society and
\nour educational system, unavailable to us without such drugs. Such a remark applies not
\nonly to self-awareness and to intellectual pursuits, but also to perceptions of real people, a
\nvastly enhanced sensitivity to facial expression, intonations, and choice of words which
\nsometimes yields a rapport so close it’s as if two people are reading each other’s minds. <\/p>\n

45
\nONE OF THE HEROES OF BLACK HAWK DOWN IS A CONVICTED CHILD
\nMOLESTER <\/p>\n

The movie Black Hawk Down was one of the biggest box office draws of 2001, and it earned its
\ndirector, Ridley Scott, an Oscar nomination. (He didn’t win, but the movie got two Academy
\nAwards for editing and sound.) Based on Mark Bowden’s nonfiction book of the same title, it
\nconcerns the disastrous raid of Mogadishu, Somalia, by US elite soldiers in 1993. <\/p>\n

One of these Special Forces soldiers underwent a name-change as he moved from the printed
\npage to the big screen. Ranger John “Stebby” Stebbins became Ranger Danny Grimes when
\nplayed by Scottish heartthrob Ewan McGregor. Why? Because in 2000, Stebbins was courtmartialed
\nand sent to the stockade for rape and sodomy of a child under twelve. <\/p>\n

This decidedly unheroic turn of events was confirmed by the Army, the Fort Leavenworth
\nmilitary prison (Stebby’s home for the next 30 years), and Black Hawk Down’s author. Bowden
\ntold the New York Post that the Army asked him to change Stebbins’ name in the screenplay in
\norder to avoid embarrassing the military. <\/p>\n

In an email to the newspaper, Stebby’s ex-wife, Nora Stebbins, wrote: “They are going to make
\nmillions off this film in which my ex-husband is portrayed as an All-American hero when the
\ntruth is he is not.” <\/p>\n

THE AUTO INDUSTRY SAYS THAT SUV DRIVERS ARE SELFISH AND INSECURE <\/p>\n

People who tool around in hulking, big-ass sport utility vehicles have been getting dissed a lot
\nlately, but no one has raked them over the coals like the people who sold them the SUVs in the
\nfirst place. The multibillion-dollar auto industry does extensive research into its customers, and
\nlately that research has focused quite a bit on the people who buy SUVs. <\/p>\n

Investigative reporter Keith Bradsher of the New York Times has looked into the SUV
\nphenomenon for years. He’s read marketing reports meant only to be seen within the industry;
\nhe’s interviewed marketing executives from the car companies and from outside research firms. <\/p>\n

The industry has come to some unflattering conclusions about the people who buy its SUVs. As
\nsummarized by Bradsher: <\/p>\n

They tend to be people who are insecure and vain. They are frequently nervous about their
\nmarriages and uncomfortable about parenthood. They often lack confidence in their
\ndriving skills. Above all, they are apt to be self-centered and self-absorbed, with little
\ninterest in their neighbors and communities…. <\/p>\n

They are more restless, more sybaritic, and less social than most Americans are. They tend
\nto like fine restaurants a lot more than off-road driving, seldom go to church and have
\nlimited interest in doing volunteer work to help others. <\/p>\n

David Bostwick, the director of market research at Chrysler, told Bradsher: “We have a basic
\nresistance in our society to admitting that we are parents, and no longer able to go out and find
\nanother mate. If you have a sport utility, you can have the smoked windows, put the children in
\nthe back and pretend you’re still single.” <\/p>\n

Bostwick says that compared to those who buy similarly large minivans, SUV drivers are selfish: <\/p>\n

Sport utility people say, “I already have two kids, I don’t need 20.” Then we talk to the people
\nwho have minivans and they say, “I don’t have two kids, I have 20 \u2014 all the kids in the
\nneighborhood.” <\/p>\n

One of General Motors’ top engineers also spoke of the difference between minivanners and
\nSUVers: “SUV owners want to be more like, ‘I’m in control of the people around me.'” He went
\non: <\/p>\n

With the sport utility buyers, it’s more of an image thing. Sport utility buyers tend to be
\nmore like, “I wonder how people view me,” and are more willing to trade off flexibility or
\nfunctionality to get that. <\/p>\n

The executive VP for North American auto operations at Honda revealed: “The people who buy
\nSUVs are in many cases buying the outside first and then the inside. They are buying the image
\nof the SUV first, and then the functionality.” <\/p>\n

Jim Bulin, a former Ford strategist who started his
\nown marketing firm, told Bradsher: “It’s about not
\nletting anything get in your way and, in the extreme,
\nabout intimidating others to get out of your way.”
\nDaniel A. Gorell, who also used to market for Ford
\nand now has his own firm, says simply that SUV
\ndrivers are “less giving, less oriented toward others.” <\/p>\n

Defenders of SUVs have attacked Bradsher for
\nreporting these things, but they always forget the crucial point: Bradsher isn’t the one slamming
\nSUV owners \u2014 it’s the auto industry itself. <\/p>\n

47
\nTHE WORD “SQUAW” IS NOT A DERISIVE TERM FOR THE VAGINA <\/p>\n

It’s widely believed that “squaw” is a crude word for the vagina. Whether people under this
\nmisapprehension believe that the word is Native American (specifically from the Mohawk
\nlanguage) or was made up by Europeans, they think that calling a woman “squaw” is the same as
\ncalling her “cunt.” Activists are on a crusade to stamp out the word, which is part of over 1,000
\nplacenames in the United States, and they’ve met with some success. A 1995 Minnesota law, for
\nexample, ordered the changing of all geographical names containing the misunderstood word. <\/p>\n

William Bright\u2014 UCLA professor emeritus of linguistics and anthropology, and editor of the
\nbook Native American Placenames of the United States \u2014 writes: <\/p>\n

All linguists who have commented on the word “squaw,” including specialists on Indian
\nlanguages and on the history of American vocabulary, agree that it is not from Mohawk, or
\nany other Iroquoian language. Rather, the word was borrowed as early as 1624 from
\nMassachusett, the language of Aigonquians in the area we now call Massachusetts; in that
\nlanguage it meant simply “young woman.” <\/p>\n

Several languages of the Algonquian family \u2014 including Cree, Objibwa, and Fox \u2014 still use
\nsimilar words for “woman.” <\/p>\n

The confusion might have come from the fact that the Mohawk word for a woman’s naughty bits
\nis “otsiskwa.” But since Mohawk belongs to a different language family (Iroquois), the
\netym-ologies of the words are completely separate. Bright notes that current speakers of Mohawk
\ndon’t consider “squaw” in any way related to their word for vagina. <\/p>\n

Still, there is no doubt that “squaw” has been used as an epithet by white people, starting at least
\nin the 1800s. It even appears this way in the work of James Fenimore Cooper. However, given its
\nmeaning of “woman,” when used in a mean-spirited way, it’s probably more equivalent to
\n“broad” or “bitch” than to “cunt.” Even this is a corruption of the word’s true definition. <\/p>\n

The many places across the US with names incorporating “squaw” were labeled that way to
\nhonor female chiefs or other outstanding Native women, or because women performed
\ntraditional activities at these locations. In an essay that earned her death threats, Abenaki
\nstoryteller and historical consultant Marge Bruchac wrote: <\/p>\n

Any word can hurt when used as a weapon. Banning the word will not erase the past, and
\nwill only give the oppressors power to define our language. What words will be next?
\nPappoose? Sachem? Pow Wow? If we accept the slander, and internalize the insult, we
\ndiscredit our female ancestors who felt no shame at hearing the word spoken. To ban
\nindigenous words discriminates against Native people and their languages. Are we to be
\ncondemned to speaking only the “King’s English?” What about all the words from other
\nNative American languages?…. <\/p>\n

When I hear it [“squaw”] spoken by Native peoples, in its proper context, I hear the voices
\nof the ancestors. I am reminded of powerful grandmothers who nurtured our people and
\nfed the strangers, of proud women chiefs who stood up against them, and of mothers and
\ndaughters and sisters who still stand here today. <\/p>\n

48
\nYOU CAN MAIL LETTERS FOR LITTLE OR NO COST <\/p>\n

I may never receive another piece of mail, but I have to let you in on a secret: It’s possible to
\nsend letters for free or for well below current postage rates. Information on beating the postal
\nsystem has been floating around for decades, but it wasn’t gathered in one place until outlaw
\npublisher Loompanics put forth How To Screw the Post Office by “Mr. Unzip” in 2000. <\/p>\n

Not content to theorize from an ivory tower, Unzip put these methods
\nthrough the ultimate real-world test: He mailed letters. He also
\nexamined the envelopes in which hundreds upon hundreds of
\ncustomers had paid their utility bills. Based on this, he offers proof
\nthat letters with insufficient postage often make it to their destinations. <\/p>\n

The key is that the machines which scan for stamps work incredibly
\nfast, processing ten letters per second. They’re also fairly
\nunsophisticated in their detection methods, relying mainly on stamps’
\nglossy coating as a signal. Because of this, it’s possible to successfully
\nuse lower-rate stamps, including outdated stamps, postcard stamps,
\nand even 1-cent stamps. Beyond that, Unzip successfully sent letters
\naffixed with only the perforated edges from a block of stamps. Even <\/p>\n

those pseudostamps sent by charities like Easter Seals or environ-mental groups can fool the
\nscanners. <\/p>\n

Another approach is to cut stamps in half, using each portion as full postage. Not only does this
\ngive you two stamps for the price of one, but you can often salvage the uncancelled portion of
\nstamps on letters you receive. In fact, the author shows that sometimes the Post Office processes
\nstamps that have already been fully cancelled. This happens more often when the ink is light, but
\neven dark cancellation marks aren’t necessarily a deal-breaker. <\/p>\n

Then there’s the biggie, the Post Office’s atomic secret that lets you mail letters for free. Say
\nyou’re sending a letter to dear old mom. Simply put mom’s address as the return address. Then
\nwrite your address in the center of the envelope, where you’d normally put hers. Forget about the
\nstamp. The letter will be “returned” to her for insufficient postage. <\/p>\n

Unzip covers further techniques involving stamp positioning, metered mail, 2-cent stamps, and
\nother tricks. Except perhaps for the reversed address scam, none of these tricks will guarantee
\nyour missive gets to its destination, so you wouldn’t want to try them with important letters. But
\nif you want to save a few cents once in a while \u2014 or more likely, you want to have fun hacking
\nthe postal system \u2014 it can be done. <\/p>\n

49
\nADVERTISERS’ INFLUENCE ON THE NEWS MEDIA IS WIDESPREAD <\/p>\n

In 1995, the San Jose Mercury News almost went under because of a boycott by all of its car
\ncompany advertisers. Why were they so irate? The Merc had published an article telling
\nconsumers how to negotiate a better price with car dealers. <\/p>\n

When the executive editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, Larry Green, was challenged for
\ndisplaying editorial favoritism toward advertisers, he openly declared: “We have to take care of
\nour customers.” <\/p>\n

Tales like this bubble up every once in a while, so it shouldn’t come as a shock that advertisers
\nsometimes try to influence the news outlets that run their ads. The real shock is how often this
\nhappens. <\/p>\n

In its 2002 survey, the Project for Excellence in Journalism asked 103 local TV newsrooms
\nacross the US about pressure from sponsors: <\/p>\n

In all, 17 percent of news directors say that sponsors have discouraged them from pursuing
\nstories (compared to 18 percent last year), and 54 percent have been pressured to cover
\nstories about sponsors, up slightly from 47 percent last year. <\/p>\n

Of the stations that investigated auto companies that were sponsors, half suffered economically
\nfor it, usually by the withdrawal of advertising. One car company cancelled $1 million of ads it
\nhad planned with a station. <\/p>\n

In a classic 1992 survey (that desperately needs to be repeated), Marquette University’s
\nDepartment of Journalism tallied questionnaire results from 147 editors of daily newspapers.
\nAmong the findings: <\/p>\n

\u00a6 93.2 percent said sponsors had “threatened to withdraw advertising from [the] paper because
\nof the content of the stories.” (89 percent replied that the advertisers followed through on this
\nthreat.)
\n\u00a6 89.9 percent responded that advertisers had “tried to influence the content of a news story or
\nfeature.”
\n\u00a6 36.7 percent said that advertisers had “succeeded in influencing news or features in [the]
\nnewspaper.”
\n\u00a6 71.4 percent said that “an advertiser tried to kill a story at [the] newspaper.”
\n\u00a6 55.1 percent revealed that they had gotten “pressure from within [the] paper to write or tailor
\nnews stories to please advertisers.”
\nIn the decade since this poll, the media have become even more corporate and more
\nconsolidated, so it’s hard to imagine that the situation has improved. <\/p>\n

50
\nTHE WORLD’S MUSEUMS CONTAIN INNUMERABLE FAKES <\/p>\n

The next time you’re marveling at a painting by Picasso, a statue by Michelangelo, or a carving
\nfrom ancient Egypt, don’t be absolutely sure that you’re looking at the genuine article. Art fakery
\nhas been around since ancient times and is still in full swing \u2014 museums, galleries, and private
\ncollections around the world are stocked with phonies. This fact comes to us from an insider’s
\ninsider \u2014 Thomas Hoving, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York
\nCity. In his book False Impressions: The Hunt for Big-Time Art Fakes, he writes: <\/p>\n

The fact is that there are so many phonies and doctored pieces around these days that at
\ntimes, I almost believe that there are as many bogus works as genuine ones. In the decade
\nand a half that I was with the Metropolitan Museum of Art I must have examined fifty
\nthousand works in all fields. Fully 40 percent were either phonies or so hypocritically
\nrestored or so misattributed that they were just the same as forgeries. Since then I’m sure
\nthat that percentage has risen. What few art professionals seem to want to admit is that the
\nart world we are living in today is a new, highly active, unprincipled one of art fakery. <\/p>\n

Ancient Egyptian objects are particularly likely to be bogus. Furthermore, Hoving estimates that
\nthe fraud rate for religious artifacts from pagan and early Christian times is literally 99 percent.
\nAs many as 5,000 fake D\u00fcrers were created after the master’s death, and half of Vienna master
\nEgon Schiele’s pencil drawings are fakes. <\/p>\n

But it isn’t just current con artists making this junk; the ancients did it, too. For around a
\nmillennia, Romans couldn’t get enough of Greek statues, gems, glasses, and other objects, so
\nforgers stepped in to fill the demand. Hoving writes: <\/p>\n

The volume was so great that Seneca the Elder (ca. 55
\nBC – AD 39) is recorded by a contemporaneous historian
\nas remarking that there were no fewer than half a dozen
\nworkshops in the first century AD working full time in
\nRome on just colored gems and intaglios. Today it’s
\nalmost impossible to tell what’s genuinely ancient Greek
\nand what’s Roman fakery, because those gems and
\nintaglios are made of material that dates to ancient times
\nand the style is near perfect. <\/p>\n

Art forgery isn’t the realm of nobodies, either. During
\ncertain periods of their lives, Renaissance masters
\nDonatello and Verochio put bread on the table by creating
\nfaux antiquities. Rubens painted copies of earlier artists. El
\nGreco’s assistants created five or six copies of their boss’
\nwork, each of which was then passed off as the original (and <\/p>\n

they’re still wrongly considered the originals). <\/p>\n

Hoving reveals that pretty much every museum has at one time or another been suckered into
\nbuying and displaying fakes, and many are still showing them. Of course, most of the examples
\nhe uses are from the Met, but he also says that phony works still sit in the Louvre, the Getty, the
\nBritish Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Vatican, among others. (Hoving
\nestimates that 90 percent of the ancient Roman statues in the Holy See’s collection are actually
\neighteenth-century European knock-offs.) <\/p>\n

Revealing further examples, the Independent of London catalogs three Goyas in the Met that are
\nnow attributed to other artists; Rodin sketches actually done by his mistress; Fragonard’s popular
\nLe baiser \u00e0 la d\u00e9rob\u00e9e (The Stolen Kiss), which seems to have been painted by his sister-in-law;
\nand many Rubens works actually created by the artist’s students. According to the newspaper:
\n“The Rembrandt Research Committee claims that most works attributed to Rembrandt were in
\nfact collaborative studio pieces.” <\/p>\n

It’s enough to make you question the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CONTENTS Introduction 01 The Ten Commandments We Always See Aren’t the Ten Commandments 02 One of the Popes Wrote an Erotic Book 03 The CIA Commits Over 100,000 Serious Crimes Each Year 04 The First CIA Agent to Die in the Line of Duty Was Douglas Mackiernan 05 After 9\/11, the Defense Department Wanted to … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “50 THINGS YOU\u2019RE NOT SUPPOSED TO KNOW”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":526,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"slim_seo":{"title":"50 THINGS YOU\u2019RE NOT SUPPOSED TO KNOW - Say NO to NWO","description":"CONTENTS Introduction 01 The Ten Commandments We Always See Aren't the Ten Commandments 02 One of the Popes Wrote an Erotic Book 03 The CIA Commits Over 100,000"},"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-19","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whosreallyrunningtheworld.blogtown.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whosreallyrunningtheworld.blogtown.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whosreallyrunningtheworld.blogtown.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whosreallyrunningtheworld.blogtown.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/526"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whosreallyrunningtheworld.blogtown.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/whosreallyrunningtheworld.blogtown.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29,"href":"https:\/\/whosreallyrunningtheworld.blogtown.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19\/revisions\/29"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whosreallyrunningtheworld.blogtown.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}