-Caveat Lector-
>From http://www.bookwire.com/HMR/nonfiction.review$5991
Hungry Mind Review
An Independent Book Review
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
Fiction ||| Nonfiction ||| Children's ||| Poetry
BookWire ||| HMR Home ||| Discussion ||| Postcards ||| Bookstore
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
<<begin embedded links>>
The Alphabet Vs. the Goddess
by Leonard Shlain
Life the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality
by Neal Gabler
The Rise of the Image the Fall of the Word
by Mitchell Stephens
<<end embedded links>>
The War Between Image and Word
Review by Donna Seaman
The eyes, it's long been said, are the windows of the soul, a trope that not
only states the obvious, that eyes can reveal a person's innermost self, but
that also hints at the reverse, that what is placed before those twin
windows, our beautiful and miraculous organs of perception, has a profound
effect on the consciousness within. Our eyes, so complex in form and
function that they continue to baffle scientists, evolved to help us make
sense of the world around us, of sun-blasted savannas and shadow-laced
forests. Now, however, we increasingly direct our gaze at objects and
activities of our own devising. We were captivated first by the images we
created, then by pictographs, the union of language and image, followed by
the great leap from representation to symbol, the invention of a versatile
code capable of recording the flow of thought, the flash of ideas, the
blossomings of revelations.
With the advent of the alphabet, spiritual beliefs could literally be set in
stone and codified in books, and one of the most significant, enduring, and
poetic of the early texts was the Old Testament, which, curiously enough,
used the new power of the alphabet to teach the faithful that images were
primitive and evil, and that the Word was supreme.
Leonard Shlain, Mitchell Stephens, and Neal Gabler each boldly address the
consequences of this ancient opposition between image and word, albeit from
different perspectives. Their theories are radical and tantalizing, and they
explore everything from the history of religion to the consequences of
literacy, women's rights, the movie revolution, and the difference between
art and entertainment as they undertake their off-the-map intellectual
journeys. Their new books are remarkable for their depth of research,
breadth of thought, intrepid spirit, and provocative conclusions.
Leonard Shlain's The Alphabet versus the Goddess is the most ambitious and
dramatic of the group. It is so full of original interpretations and
theories, and so charged with empathy for and outrage on behalf of
womankind, that reading it becomes an obsession and very nearly takes over
your life. Not only is his sure-to-be-controversial book unique, Shlain
himself is unusual. A surgeon and an independent scholar (what a fine and
noble calling, and how rare in this culture of affiliation), he possesses a
preternatural gift for discerning hidden patterns within the complexity of
the historical record. In his previous book, Art and Physics (1991), he
wrote about a relationship between these two disciplines that not even the
most adventurous of art historians or creative of scientists would have
conceived of, and now he presents a radical theory about the dark side of
literacy.
Shlain's analytical expedition began at a Greek archaeological site.
Thunderstruck by the absence of female deities, he found himself
wondering,"What caused the disappearance of goddesses from the Western
world?" What brought down the reigning spiritual figure in nearly every
ancient belief system--the"ur-" subject for the world's first sculptors, the
metaphor for life itself--so violently, thoroughly, and enduringly? What, he
asked himself, was going on in Western civilization at the time that could
have precipitated a paradigm shift of such cosmic dimensions? His surprising
answer? The invention of the alphabet and the advent of reading and writing.
Literacy, Shlain is convinced, is the force that dethroned the goddess,
demoted women, and set the course for 5,000 years of patriarchal oppression,
intolerance, and misogyny. How is this possible? Because, Shlain believes,
there was "something in the way people acquired this new skill that changed
the brain's actual structure."
Shlain's discussions of the workings of the brain are fascinating in light
of his surgeon's hands-on knowledge. His theory is anchored in hemispheric
lateralization, the fact that each side of the brain has distinct and
complementary functions. This is the oft-cited left-brain/ right-brain
split, the source of our joking about women being from Venus and men from
Mars as well as the obvious antipathy between, say, a strict, by-the-book
accountant (a left-brainer) and a mystical, abstract expressionist painter
(drawing on the right side).
Shlain explains that the left brain is the more masculine hemisphere, the
seat of abstract thought, of reading and writing, aggression and
reductionism. The right brain is more feminine in its emphasis on "being"
rather than doing. It is nonverbal, inclusive, creative, and contemplative.
Shlain quotes a line from William Blake, an artist at home in both halves of
the brain, that says it all: "Time is a Man and Space is a Woman." Not that
individuals neatly conform to such a severe distinction, but on average even
the most articulate of women tend to favor right-brain interpretations just
as the most empathic of men remain left brained in their mental logistics.
Aware of the red flags his theories raise, Shlain proceeds with care,
dissecting each phase of his argument to allay fears of sexist attitudes.
Once he's led his rapt readers through that particular minefield, he
elucidates the even more complex connections between left-brain power and
right-hand dominance, describing the right hand as the hand of both war and
writing, leadership and tyranny, ultimately presenting a striking, if
troubling, vision of an organic alliance between the left brain and the
right hand manifest in the male grab for supremacy as the primary wielders
of the pen as well as the sword.
An arresting proposition to be sure, but what evidence can be presented to
substantiate such a wild claim? Enough to fill the balance of the book and
to ignite the imagination of any open-minded reader. Like a bloodhound
following the scent of a missing person over rough terrain, Shlain sets off
on an astoundingly purposeful and fruitful trek though the labyrinthine
histories of Egypt, Greece, and Rome, tracking the fall of the goddess and
the rise of the alphabet as played out in a stupendous series of epic
skirmishes: the battle between the sexes for the right to rule as both
political and spiritual leaders, and the conflict between the old ways--an
intimate knowledge of the sacredness of the tactile earth, the home of the
goddess--and the divinity of an abstract heaven, the realm of an unnamed
God, as ordained in holy texts, the struggle, that is, between an ancient
form of knowing grounded in a profound involvement with nature and a new
order based on laws dictated from on high and preserved in writing, the
essence of what we now call Western civilization.
What was lost when the goddess was vanquished? Shlain elucidates the
all-encompassing nature of female power by vividly describing the myriad
forms the goddess assumed in diverse cultures, venturing into Joseph
Campbell country in fascinating comparisons of female deities and the
symbols used to represent them. His interpretations of such symbols as the
snake and the head of a bull--which, he explains, resembles the female
reproductive organs when viewed straight on, an image he believes Georgia
O'Keeffe knowingly employed--are dazzlingly perceptive, innovative, and
utterly convincing. And each symbol and image he describes refers directly
to the sensuality of the fecund earth, to the wonder of the seasons, of
birth and death, of the intricate connections between human beings, plants,
animals, stars, bodies of water, and landscapes. Every image is concrete and
all predate and transcend language; all are emblematic of existence, not
thought; and all are as mysterious as the womb itself. Women, real
flesh-and-blood mothers and daughters, were associated with this bounty,
this beauty, this essence, this life force; they lived as equals with men,
and the qualities of mind now associated with both the right and left sides
of the brain were held in mutual respect. The balance between women and men,
the yin-yang of female and male forces, was revered, just as the swing from
night to day, from winter to summer, was cause for prayer and gratitude. And
then came the alphabet.
In one incendiary passage, Shlain refutes the long, if loosely, held belief
that Phoenicians invented the alphabet and suggests instead that the
alphabet was created in the Sinai, where "Yahweh gave Moses the Ten
Commandments for the Hebrew people," a watershed event that transformed
religion from a matter of faith into a set of laws and a lifelong course of
study, conformity, and obedience. The Hebrews were instructed to revere the
written words of an amorphous entity and forbidden to create images of this
solitary, recondite God. Shlain's scenario of how the Hebrews, the future
people of the book, came to invent the alphabet and to transcribe the Old
Testament as we know it,"the deepest gnarled root of Western literature and
tradition," makes solid sense. He then goes on to offer some stunning
interpretations of key episodes in the Bible that reflect the emergence of
the word of God as the ruling power of the Western world, and of how this
focus on literacy, a skill taught only to boys and men, so effectively
relegated women to the sidelines.
Shlain revisits Genesis and notes the shocking belittlement of woman. Once
seen as the human manifestation of the earth herself, she was now merely a
man's spare body part. No more were women viewed as the creators and
protectors of life; they became, instead, inferior to men, unclean and
untrustworthy. Childbirth is made painful as punishment for curiosity. The
earth itself is subjugated to the will of man by the act of naming, a
triumph of language over nature. Over and over again, Shlain reinterprets
the Old Testament and makes readers shiver with the force of his
discernments. And look at the homeland of the alphabet, he urges. It's a
desert: a harsh, nearly lifeless place, the ideal landscape for a distant
and vindictive God, unlike the oceanic clarity and pastoral beauty of Greece
and Italy, and the inspiring sensuality of the Nile, lands blessed by
goddesses and gods alike.
The impulse is to enthusiastically list one example after another of
Shlain's aesthetically pristine and intellectually invigorating exegeses
because The Alphabet versus the Goddess is worth reading simply for the
sheer beauty and frequent audacity of its spectacular riffs on myth, legend,
history, and science. Why did Moses smash the original set of tablets? So
that God would teach him to write. And matzoh? Yes, it's a symbol of
deprivation, of the Exodus, but it's also a refutation of rising bread,
always a symbol of fecundity, of pregnancy. By making unleavened bread
sacred, hardship is elevated over comfort, war is valued more than home, and
the role of men as warriors is accorded more honor than that of women as
nurturers. Even manna from heaven is an unnatural reversal: food had always
theretofore risen up from the earth, not cascaded down from the sky. Shlain
revels in these blazing visions, and his excitement is infectious.
He leaves the Israelites to wander in their comfortless desert and travels
to Greece to see how the goddesses and their earthly twins, ordinary women,
fared under the lash of the written word; he finds there a set of myths
startlingly emblematic of the diminishment of women. Suddenly offspring
emerge fully grown from the heads of gods instead of from the wombs of
goddesses, and the left-brain/ right-brain battle is reflected in the
opposing cults of the gods Apollo and Dionysus. Shlain travels east and
shines the beam of his hypothesis on India and China, then presses forward
in time to the invention of the printing press, then back to the West to
scrutinize the early Christians and, later, the worship of the Virgin Mary,
a rare instance of the church bowing to the longings of the people, who had
never wholly abandoned their worship of the Great Mother. Later still, he
chronicles the shocking and demented persecution of so-called witches in
passages of nearly incandescent fury and compassion.
Eventually Shlain reaches the third revolution in communications, the
invention of photography, and not long after that, the swift evolution of
movies and television. His energy never flags, his insights never grow dim,
and his interpretations of the modern era are every bit as piquant as
earlier sections. In conclusion, he boldly and optimistically equates these
media, and our corresponding fascination with photographic and moving
images, with a resurgence of right-brain values, which he deftly links to
the women's movement, the first step in the long slow walk back to sanity,
to equality of the sexes, the only chance we have for bringing the world
into some kind of equilibrium.
Perhaps less poetic and daring historians will poke holes in some of
Shlain's bolder analyses, but taken in its entirety, his lucid, dynamic,
inspired, and far-reaching book presents a clarifying and intriguing
explanation for the more puzzling and tragic aspects of Western civilization
in all its stubborn irrationality and extravagant cruelty. And it's true, we
are participants, however unconsciously, in the paradigm shift he so avidly
describes. Over the past thirty years goddesses have reappeared in art,
spiritual practices, and books of all kinds. Earth has been named Gaia by
the ecologically minded after the Greek earth goddess in an effort to remind
us of the interconnectedness of life as we slowly acknowledge the ecological
damage we've perpetuated (there is even a movement called ecofeminism), and
now, of course, images surround us and possess an even more seductive power
than before. But will our infatuation with images help redress the madness
of Western civilization? The ongoing persecution of women, abuse and neglect
of children, genocide, terrorism, war?
Obviously not. And it is hard to imagine that the printed word has really
run its course, but then, if Shlain is right in believing that the practices
of writing and reading, the habit of following orderly lines of text,
altered our brains and led to the predominance of left-brain power, then
who's to say that the hours and hours we devote to television, movies, and
video won't cause an equally radical shift, although so far all it seems to
arouse is a trancelike state or a disconnection from the harsher of the
realities depicted. Shlain's brilliant synthesis works gloriously when
applied to the past, but wavers and fades as we try to imagine the future.
What we are experiencing now are not the consequences of the tyranny of the
printed word but rather the frightening results of less than universal
literacy, a lack of widespread, high-quality education, and where schooling
is available, a disturbing disinterest in learning. We need more thought and
understanding, not less, and the more media available, including the printed
word, the better. Each communication technology has its niche and fulfills a
need, and the goddess can be manifest as readily in print as in pictures as
long as women are free to read and we all learn to make good use of both
halves of our mysterious brains.
In The Rise of the Image, the Fall of the Word, Mitchell Stephens, a
professor of journalism and mass communication at New York University,
issues his own call for more power to the image. He cites three major
revolutions in communications: writing, printing, and video--his concise and
handy term for all photographic and moving images. Reading and writing have
served us well, he attests; the expressing of one's thoughts in printed
texts has been a boon to humankind, the epitome, in most cases, of the sunny
aspects of civilization, but the printed word is not, nor should it be, the
only legitimate form of communication. Furthermore, its days of dominion are
numbered, and Stephens has the statistics to prove it. Study after study
reports that the eyes of the world are trained most often and for the
longest stretches of time not on the pages of books but on flickering
screens.
Stephens is not content merely to state the obvious, that moving images
possess "magic"; he dissects and analyzes their power, using, of course, the
endlessly versatile and expressive, eminently portable and low-tech,
thoroughly natural medium of words. He also carefully elucidates why so many
people feel that video threatens our sense of cultural stability and
credibility. Giving equal time to his adversaries, Stephens quotes from the
writings of a host of naysayers who offer variations on the theme of
television as "idiot box," and then he discusses, patiently and fairly, the
often-expressed fear that television is responsible for the dumbing down of
America. He presents this point of view quite nimbly, agreeing with some of
it and filing the rest under the heading of inevitable resistance to change,
an intrinsically human response even as we seem to crave change.
Much as Stephens values video, and as vigorously as he refutes such bogus
claims as the notion that we don't think or use our imagination while
watching moving images, he is not exactly enamored of what he sees on
television and in the movies. The problem, he believes, is that video is far
too attached to the structure of prose. That is why, he theorizes, so much
of what we view is less than artistic. Video is as derivative as early
photographs, which imitated paintings, badly, because photographers hadn't
yet recognized or mastered the unique properties of the camera. Instead of
attempting to conform to the standards of narrative and theater, video must
evolve into a less narrative and more innovatively visual art form to
realize its full potential. Stephens sees intimations of the direction this
"new video" might take in music videos and, ironically enough, commercials,
which brings up a key point, the crushingly corporate aspect of most moving
image productions. Video as we like it costs big money to produce, which
engenders a sell-sell-sell mentality, hardly the correct mind-set for leaps
of the artistic spirit. Stephens does recognize this quandary and believes
that further advances in technology and changing tastes will offer
alternatives.
The writings of such creative and astute observers of the arts as Walter
Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht serve as anchors for Stephens's dynamic analysis
of the nexus of literature and video, in which he casts light not only on
writing's influence on video but also on the very great influence the
experience of viewing moving images has had on prose. He performs such
mind-bending feats as comparing the narrative techniques of Madame Bovary
and Trainspotting; deconstructing such blandly produced television fare as
Nightline; and articulating exactly what is so alluring and ultimately
deadly about video's tiresome self-consciousness and puerile irony.
Stephens's brisk and confident history of film offers a firm base for his
belief that"in the long term the moving image is likely to make our thoughts
not more feeble but more robust, that it is likely to lead us to stronger
understandings." Given the dazzling leaps art has taken in this century in
terms of perspective, content, and medium, his bet is a good one. And,
frankly, we're hooked. We see more in an evening of TV watching "than most
of those who lived before television saw in a lifetime," and we're not about
to give that up. Nor will the next generation question the ranking of
reading and viewing. Born into the screen age, they will accept whatever mix
of print and video they find as being perfectly normal, then make their own
marks on the collective consciousness with words, images, and any as yet
unknown combination thereof.
The War Between Image and Word (Part II)
Review by Donna Seaman
Shlain and Stephens look forward to the demise of the printed word. They
believe reading and writing have run their course, that their linearity,
rigidity, and self-decreed authority have contributed to divisiveness in
society. Neal Gabler disagrees. Vehemently. In Life the Movie: How
Entertainment Conquered Reality, he takes the opposite stance, expressing
his belief that the surfeit of images now in continual circulation in print,
on video, and over the airwaves has lured us away from logic, order,
accountability, and a sense of context, and into the facile, crass,
moneygrubbing realm of mere entertainment. Just as Shlain argues that the
advent of the alphabet and the spread of literacy gave rise to left-brain
dominance, Gabler believes that the movies, the most seductive form of the
image revolution, ushered in "a whole new way of thinking about life," which
is characterized by an obsession with appearances rather than substance,
with stimulation rather than thought. Images, Gabler implies, are easy.
Just as eloquent and fiery as Shlain, and as adept at substantive research
and fluid interpretation, Gabler--who writes on American culture for the New
York Times and the Los Angeles Times--digs deep for the roots of our
insatiable hunger for entertainment. This quest sends him all the way back
to the birth of the nation, a seizing of independence not only from
political, religious, and economic oppression by Europe but also from its
cultural tyranny. Traditional Western art is strictly Old World and
therefore tainted by the stale and irrelevant privileges of class and
bloodlines. Popular American culture and mass entertainment evolved rapidly
as lively protests against this elitism, an obviously healthy response, but,
Gabler believes, one we have taken too far. We have abandoned art and
enshrined cheap thrills in its place. The negative aspects of a culturewide
penchant for constant entertainment are legion, and Gabler identifies many
over the course of his close scrutiny of the evolution of several mass
media. The most telling example is the enervating decline in responsible
newspaper reporting during the days of the now infamous newspaper wars,
where one ruthlessly ambitious publisher after another--James Gordon
Bennett, Joseph Pulitzer, William Randolph Hearst--competed for the public's
eyes by turning newspapers into scandal sheets designed "to be seen more
than read."
The tabloids, which, Gabler concedes, may have been useful for immigrants
who couldn't read English, were nonetheless a deliberate oversimplification
of the news in a ploy to imitate the instant gratification of movies.
Photographs dominated the pages of the dailies with graphic, unanalyzed
depictions of the more lurid and melodramatic, hence the more entertaining
and profitable, of the events of the day and night. Gabler extends his
comparison to the movies by describing the tabloid newspaper as "the place
where the lifies played." This focus on pumped-up and scandalous, mawkish,
or heroic stories rather than straight-ahead reporting was eagerly adopted
by television news producers, carrying the popular taste for sensationalism
and gossip to the most invasive and addictive medium yet invented.
As Gabler chronicles the early years of television, he offers a fascinating
take on the evolution of"spin" and the gradual blurring of the distinction
between actual events and their broadcast editions. Moving forward in time,
he dissects some of the more blatant meldings of reality with television in
discussions of the orchestrated reportage on the Gulf War--glitzy logos,
theme song, and all; the popularity of "court TV" and the travesty of
justice that was the O. J. Simpson trial, a veritable TV series. Gradually,
this capitulation to the demand for ceaseless entertainment succeeded in
erasing the line dividing news from entertainment. Gabler summarizes:"The
news was entertainment and because the news provided a common window onto
public reality, the window through which most of us apprehended those parts
of life with which we didn't have direct contact, entertainment has
stealthily become the standard of value for reality itself."
Life is instantly mirrored on television--all styled and edited for our
viewing pleasure--and to be on television is to be elevated out of the press
of the masses. Anybody who is anyone appears on the small screen, and all
are judged accordingly by their ability to perform. We ask of politicians
not that they be ethical and intelligent leaders, but that they look good on
camera. Are they relaxed, telegenic, charming, sexy? Writing during the
early days of the Clinton-Starr-Lewinsky debacle, Gabler muses on the
extraordinary impact television has had on the presidency, noting that
Ronald Reagan was a pivotal figure in the drift toward equating life with
movies. An actor first and foremost, Reagan drew unabashedly on his roles in
movies for the tone and language of his addresses to the public,
his"traditional" values, even, God save us, for solutions to world problems.
Every political campaign and federal administration is now so thoroughly
under the direction of filmmakers that Washington, D.C., is referred to as
Hollywood East. Wag the Dog, the movie about a director who fakes a war to
distract attention from a beleaguered president, seemed so plausible it
aroused no more than a shrug. Another movie that met with Gabler's approval
was, of course, The Truman Show, the ultimate transformation of life into
television.
Having savaged the realm of politics, Gabler carries his analysis of the
insidious influence of media into the other grand arenas of life--religion,
education, art, and sports--moving steadily toward the most evocative and
least spiky sections of his symphonic argument, an insightful and, finally,
compassionate discussion of the cult of celebrities.
Up to now, Gabler has been so outraged by the trivialization of life by mass
media that he has evinced a dismaying contempt for his fellow readers and
viewers, sounding as though he is convinced that only he and a few other
members of the intelligentsia are observant and educated enough to notice
these things. That, of course, is absurd, as anyone who speaks to her or his
fellow human beings can readily attest. But what Gabler does do, and does
well, is sharpen our perception of the power of media, articulate exactly
what is going on and why, and attempt to grasp what are clearly significant
consequences. Once he moves beyond his overreaching negativity and regains a
sense of camaraderie with the rest of us, he is able to approach the source
of the allure of moving images and their hold on our imaginations,
discovering that this power is derived from the unique ability of movies and
television to create and sustain archetypal heroes, both tragic and noble,
and to tell and retell their resonant stories, poignant tales that affirm
our innermost feelings and give us hope, heart, and strength.
As Gabler explores the cult of celebrities, he creates distinct
constellations of the stars, homing in on the most moving and lasting, those
who died young and at the height of their fame: Marilyn and Elvis, to name
two classics, Princess Diana and Kurt Cobain, to name two more recent
sacrifices to the media god. Part of the appeal of these icons, Gabler
suggests, is the sense that somehow they "had died for society's sins."
Gabler parlays this mythic theme into a resounding passage in which he
declares that "entertainment is the primary standard of value for virtually
everything in modern society." The New American Dream, he declares, is to be
a media sensation, to "get to the other side of the glass," and the
entertainment imperative dictates all aspects of visible life, from body
image to clothing, not to mention the appalling transformation of cities
into corporate theme parks and the countryside into entertainment venues.
People videotape everything from graduations to weddings, births, vacations,
and shopping expeditions, often compulsively, attempting to star in their
own life movies. So obsessed are we with conforming to the norm and keeping
up appearances, and so impossible are these quests, Gabler speculates, that
we abuse antidepressants, popping pills to gloss over the more painful
aspects of the human condition in the hope of achieving a TV-like state of
mind, a"postreality."
Ultimately, Gabler admits that there is an eye at the center of the frenetic
storm of his argument, a calm where ambivalence reigns. Who, after all, can
say with absolute certainty that one mode of thought or expression is more
meaningful than another? The zeitgeist is in a perpetual flux of
recalibration and reinvention, as are our minds, even the functionings of
our brains. If a species is thriving, as ours is in spite of our best
efforts to destroy our environment and each other, evolution proceeds, and
so we and our societies change and adapt and change again. All that such
keen observers as Shlain, Stephens, and Gabler can do is pay close attention
at the highest possible magnification and report on what they see and how it
makes them feel. But one thing is certain: the cultural realm is built on
myriad symbiotic relationships, and any perceived split between image and
word is surely an invented one. We are wired for both forms of expression,
and we need language and visuals intellectually, aesthetically, socially,
morally, and spiritually; so as long as we live on this spinning earth, we
will continue to mine their treasures.
Stephens hovers hopefully in the neutral middle, content with the promise of
new and better forms of moving pictures in the future; Shlain, who believes
writing to be tyrannical and envisions images as vehicles of liberation, and
Gabler, who views images as a lexicon for indulgent entertainment and
writing as the voice of reason, define the extremes. In their zeal, each
overstates his case, but the groundbreaking path their arguments take makes
for adventurous reading. They cover so much territory so gracefully,
illuminate so many dark corners of our history and our psyche, execute so
many spectacular rounds of interpretation, make so many good points and
articulate so many fresh and innovative insights, they provoke and enthrall
every step of the way.
Back to Part I.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
Donna Seaman is assistant editor and reviewer for Booklist. She hosts Open
Books, a book review radio program in Chicago that is partially funded by a
grant from the Illinois Arts Council.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
A<>E<>R
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved
the absolute rejection of authority. -Thomas Huxley
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
is distributed without charge or profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information
for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic
screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! These are sordid matters
and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright
frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects
spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL
gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers;
be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and
nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
