-Caveat Lector- Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.aci.net/kalliste/">The Home Page of J. Orlin Grabbe</A> ----- Today's Lesson from On Truth and Lie in an Extra Moral Sense by Friedrich Nietzsche The intellect, as a means for the preservation of the individual, unfolds its chief powers in simulation; for this is the means by which the weaker, less robust individuals preserve themselves [...]: here deception, flattery, lying and cheating, talking behind the back, [...] acting a role before others and before oneself [...] is so much the rule [...] that almost nothing is more incomprehensible than how an honest and pure urge for truth could make its appearance among men [...] What, indeed does man know of himself! [...] Does not nature keep much the most from him, even about his body, to spellbind and confine him in a proud, deceptive consciousness, far from the coils of the intestines, the quick current of the blood stream, and the involved tremors of the fibers? She threw away the key; and woe to the calamitous curiosity which might peer just once through a crack in the chamber of consciousness and look down, and sense that man rests upon the merciless, the greedy, the insatiable, the murderous, in the indifference of his ignorance--hanging in dreams, as it were upon the back of a tiger. In view of this, whence in all the world comes the urge for truth? [...] What, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms--in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal and no longer as coins. We still do not know where the urge for truth comes from; for as yet we have heard only of the obligation imposed by society that it should exist: to be truthful means using the customary metaphors--in moral terms: the obligation to lie according to a fixed convention, to be herd-like in a style obligatory for all [...] ----- Digital Society Models' Eggs for Sale Over the Internet Designer DNA here. CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts - To the horror and disgust of mainstream infertility groups, a fashion photographer has begun offering up models as egg donors to the highest bidders, auctioning their ova via the Internet to would-be parents willing to pay up to $150,000 in hopes of having a beautiful child. ''It screams of unethical behavior,'' Sean Tipton, spokesman for the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, said of the Web site, www.ronsangels.com, which was already up on the Web on Friday and was to be officially premiered Monday. Infertility specialists deplored the Web site as exactly the kind of ''commodification'' of human egg donation that they hoped to avoid. Just this spring, signs of movement in that direction came when a couple advertised that they would pay $50,000 for an egg from a tall, athletic, top college student with high Scholastic Assessment Test scores. The photographer, Ron Harris, justifies the egg auction as a natural outgrowth of the urge humans have to mate with genetically superior people and produce babies with evolutionary advantages. Particularly, he says, in a society like that of America where a ''celebrity culture'' worships beauty. ''If you could increase the chance of reproducing beautiful children, and thus giving them an advantage in society, would you?'' he asks on the site. On Friday, he described the objections to egg auctions as politically correct. Since not all women are the same, he argued, what they are paid for their eggs ''should be a price that floats based on perceived value.'' Mr. Harris's melding of Darwin-based eugenics, Playboy-style sensibilities and eBay-type commerce struck some infertility specialists as the most worrying sign yet of where the partly unregulated field of ''assisted reproduction'' may be going. ''It's frightening and horrible,'' said Shelley Smith, director of the Egg Donor Program, a center in Los Angeles, ''and the worst part for me is to think there might be something worse still beyond our imagination. It seems to escalate, and ever since the Internet, it seems to snowball more rapidly, this depersonalization of people and selling of eggs.'' She and others said that as far as they knew, Mr. Harris's site was legal. Federal law expressly forbids trafficking in human organs but not in sperm and eggs, they said. Research by Mr. Harris's lawyers produced the same conclusion. The site has already received a serious bid of $42,000 from a couple who found it through a search engine, said Mr. Harris, 66. The models receive the full bid price, and Rons Angels takes a commission of an additional 20 percent. The bid price includes no medical costs, the site specifies, also saying that it takes on no medical functions. But it does list scores of specialists who might possibly be willing to perform the procedure once an agreement is reached. Confidentiality is strongly guarded in such cases and could make the advertisements the only visible sign of the activity. Mr. Harris said the models could not be interviewed on Friday because of an exclusive agreement with another newspaper until the site was inaugurated on Monday. But each of the eight displayed on the Web site offered her reasons in print for selling their eggs: They ranged from ''to not be dependent on a man'' to ''to support her 4-year-old son'' to ''I want to help others.'' Several were from other countries, and one said her goal was ''to move to the USA.'' Mr. Harris is probably best known as the creator of Aerobicise, a best-selling 1980s exercise video featuring models in leotards, and ''The 20 Minute Workout,'' a television show with similar appeal. He has been a fashion photographer for 40 years, he said, and has also done some television directing for Playboy. In the United States, the use of donor eggs by infertile couples remains relatively uncommon. According to Resolve, the National Infertility Association, about 1,700 babies were born from procedures involving egg donation in 1996. Those numbers have been growing only slightly since then, experts say. But the compensation for egg donors is a burning issue these days, one under discussion by the ethics panel of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine and at a meeting in Cambridge last week of Resolve, which brings together patients and practitioners to support and educate infertile people. Members of both bodies said they had recently discussed Mr. Harris's Web site, which has been posted in various evolving forms for about two months, as an example of the kind of thing that needs to be stopped. ''Things like this need immediate attention,'' said Diane Aronson, the executive director of Resolve. ''The thing is, where is the appropriate avenue?'' It is routine for egg donation centers to offer would-be parents an extensive profile of the egg donor, including photographs and descriptions of their talents and personalities. Several post their donor catalogues on-line, and West Coast centers report a surfeit of donors, though they say there is a shortage in the East, particularly in New York City. But mainstream infertility groups deem it acceptable only to choose an egg donor based on her traits and then compensate her - usually between $2,500 and $5,000 - for her time, inconvenience and discomfort. (Donors receive hormone shots to hyper-stimulate their ovaries and have a dozen or so eggs removed with a needle.) The groups tend to frown on anything that seems like actually trying to buy extra-nice genes - though the line does seem blurred. ''Basically what it comes down to is we're selling human tissue, and somewhere along the line we've got to bring ethics into it,'' said Karen Synesiou, director of Egg Donation, a private company in Los Angeles. ''I don't know where the line is because I want to balance the needs of the infertile community versus society at large, but I think a bidding game crosses the line.'' International Herald Tribune, October 25, 1999 Russian Follies Russians Seal Chechnya No way out. Chechnya is now a prison. RUSSIAN forces cut rebel Chechnya off from the outside world, blocking the last road out and trapping tens of thousands of civilians in a region still the target of air raids and shelling. Troops yesterday closed the main highway from Chechnya into neighbouring Ingushetia, the escape route for more than 160,000 refugees in the last month, in what Moscow described as an operation to tighten security on the border. Shutting down the road also appeared to mark a beefing up of the military presence north west of Grozny amidst increasing evidence that the army is preparing to storm the Chechen capital. "Bandits and terrorists" had left Chechnya in the flood of refugees, as had fuel, whose sale was financing guerrillas' activities, the FSB, successor to the KGB, claimed in a statement justifying the road's closure. Hundreds of people massed on both sides of the Russian checkpoint, some trying to flee an upsurge in the fighting, others to return home to protect their property from looters. But Russian soldiers would let neither group through. Ruslan Aushev, president of tiny Ingushetia, appealed to Moscow to reopen the refugee corridor, complaining that its closure harmed women, old people and children most of all. He said: "War should be waged against bandits and terrorists, not refugees. But here the bandits are moving freely while the civilian population suffers." Closing the main road, a pleasant walnut-tree lined highway which also connects the two major cities of Rostov-on-Don and Baku, leaves a trek on foot over the snow-capped Caucasus mountains into Georgia as the only exit route for civilians. The alternative is to bribe one's way through the Russian checkpoints, an expensive business, but thanks to the corruption rampant at every level of the military, quite feasible. During the 1994-6 war, roads to the north and east stayed open. This time the Russians have channelled all refugees west into Ingushetia, its population a mere 300,000, and, according to Mr Aushev, in danger of "suffocating under the tide". The London Telegraph, October 25, 1999 US Banking Will US Banks Take Over the World? The end of Glass-Steagall. The global financial industry, fresh from a round of megamergers, now must brace for another jolt of competition in the wake of a historic change in U.S. banking laws, executives said over the weekend. ''It means more competition globally for everybody in the field, and it will lead to bigger American banking institutions, no doubt,'' said Detlev Rahmsdorf, a spokesman for Deutsche Bank AG, which currently ranks as the world's biggest bank in terms of assets. U.S. lawmakers broke a decades-old gridlock Friday and agreed to repeal a Depression-era law that kept banks from merging with securities and insurance firms. Although the biggest financial institutions had long found ways around it, the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act was nonetheless an impediment to the efforts of U.S. banks to match the financial sweep and power of their rivals abroad. All but one of the world's eight largest banks are European or Asian institutions. Banks in those regions face significantly fewer restrictions about the creation of ''financial supermarkets'' with banks, insurers and brokers under one roof. Yesterday's giants look ever smaller with each new merger. The trend took on new dimensions two months ago when a triad of Japanese banks announced plans to forge the world's only bank with more than $1 trillion in assets. When Fuji Bank Ltd., Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank. Ltd. and Industrial Bank of Japan Ltd. complete their merger, they will outstrip Deutsche Bank's $756 billion balance sheet and take the No. 1 spot. The U.S. overhaul still requires congressional approval and has yet to be signed into law, but American financiers immediately celebrated the prospect of fresh international possibilities. ''By liberating our financial companies from an antiquated regulatory structure, this legislation will unleash the creativity of our industry and ensure our global competitiveness,'' Sandy Weill and John Reed, the co-chairmen of Citigroup Inc., said in a statement. With about $670 billion in assets, Citigroup ranks as the biggest financial institution in the world except for Deutsche Bank. But as the sole U.S. bank on the list of the world's biggest banks, Citigroup is an anomaly. But, as foreign competitors pointed out, that may not always be the case. ''American banks, which are not the biggest in the global view, can merge and become bigger,'' Mr. Rahmsdorf at Deutsche Bank said. For Asia's financial sector, the prospect of bigger and possibly stronger U.S. financial institutions only strengthens the urgency of reforms already under way, at varying speeds and with varying degrees of success. In fact, Japan is home to what could be the biggest prize of all in international finance after its ''Big Bang'' deregulation measures: access to the trillions of dollars of Japanese household savings that can now be managed overseas or by foreigners within Japan. With Congress's action Friday, larger and comparatively dynamic U.S. institutions may gain even more of an advantage in fund management over Japan's banks, even though the country's banks are enormous in terms of raw assets. Japan's bank mergers are creating institutions that are large but still under-capitalized. They face immense challenges from nimbler foreign competitors that spend far more on technology. In the major markets of Asia's healthiest banks, the international financial centers of Hong Kong and Singapore, institutions and regulators have already decided that staying within small home markets is not the path to long-term viability. HSBC Holdings Ltd., the London-based banking group that grew out of Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corp., is perhaps the best placed to take on international giants. Too big for its small home market, the bank began an expansion drive in the early 1990s, snapping up large banks in Britain and the United States and moving its headquarters to London. HSBC's appetite for acquisitions continued as it bought banks in Latin America after financial deregulation in that region. A deal to acquire SeoulBank of South Korea has foundered, but HSBC is now in the midst of a $10.3 billion bid to take over Republic New York Corp. It also has been beefing up its equities research arm in Hong Kong, which has consistently been outperformed by the leading U.S. investment banks. In Singapore, the government has already decided that the country's major banks need more vigorous international competition. Last week, Singapore awarded four expanded banking licenses to foreign banks; but it shunned HSBC, the largest bank operating in Hong Kong, which is battling with Singapore to attract an international banking, brokerage and fund-management presence. International Herald Tribune, October 25, 1999 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End 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. 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