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Date Posted: 12:33:21 11/07/07 Wed
Author: part 2
Subject: Re: November 7, 2007
In reply to: part 1 's message, "November 7, 2007" on 12:29:50 11/07/07 Wed

EUROPE

Round of Kosovo Talks Ends Without Progress

Nov. 6, 2007 (LPAC)--A new round of talks to resolve the future
of Kosovo ended yesterday at the Austrian Ministry of Foreign
Affairs in Vienna, mediated by the Contact Group Troika of
diplomats from the EU, the U.S. and Russia. This is an issue
around which London hopes to blow up relations between Washington
and Moscow. No progress was made in the talks, reports the
Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
The Serbian side suggested the arrangement between China and
Hong Kong, as a possible model for the future status of Kosovo.
Serbian President Tadi said the Hong Kong model "provides
elements that should be assessed carefully as offering answers to
the challenges we are addressing. First, a single constitutional
framework is agreed, within which different regions may govern
themselves and cooperate under a common sovereign roof. As a
natural parallel, there is no freedom to either party to take
unilateral action regarding constitutional and sovereign matters.
Second, internationally-recognized borders are not altered. They
remain unchanged and protected through cooperation with the
international community. Third, the development of any security
forces is clearly restricted to a local capacity to ensure law
and order. These conditions are very much in line with our
proposal about how to move ahead on the future status of Kosovo."
Skender Hyseni, the Kosovo Albanian spokesman, rejected this
completely: "Kosovo is against any half-solutions, any improvised
solutions. Kosovo is in favor of a lasting, a sustainable
solution. And the only sustainable and lasting solution is
independence."
The Kosovo Albanians again announced their intention to
declare independence unilaterally, shortly after negotiations are
supposed to end on December 10. (wfw)

Nicolas Sarkozy in Washington to Bargain over NATO

Nov 6, 2007 (LPAC)--French President Nicolas Sarkozy arrives
today in the US for a two-day official visit, where he will get
red-carpet treatment by the Bush administration. In the menu are
meetings with Condoleezza Rice and Henry Paulson, and an address
to the Senate Wednesday. Among the most treasonous symbols, a
visit to Mount Vernon, home of George Washington.
Discussions will be apparently all-encompassing, dealing
with: Lebanon, the Iran nuclear question, Kosovo, the American
ABM systems in Eastern Europe, the environment, and the
under-valuation of the dollar.
According to Le Figaro, however, negotiations behind the
scenes on the conditions for France to return to the integrated
military structure of NATO, are fully on. In his address to the
French diplomats assembled in Paris in early September, Sarkozy
announced he would be taking "very strong initiatives in favor of
a strong Europe." At the same time he stressed that he wanted
France to "regain its place" in NATO. Sarkozy's price is high:
First, he wants the chairmanship or deputy chairmanship of the
Military Committee, the highest military authority in NATO, whose
members are formally the Defense Ministers each member state.
Second, he is interested in the position of Deputy Supreme Allied
Commander, a position traditionally held by a British or German
officer, since DeGaulle took France out of the integrated
military structure of NATO.
Note that Sarkozy recently created a commission in charge of
producing, by March 2008, a White Book on Defense and Security, a
kind of guideline for reforms of the French military. Sarkozy
stuffed that Commission with non-military personalities, all
totally favorable to the Iraq war and to a coming adventure
against Iran. Among them: Nicolas Baverez, an ideologue of the
Petainiste ideology of the decline of France; Therese Delpech, a
straight neo-con heading the Office of Strategic Affairs at the
National Commissariat for Nuclear Energy, Francois Heisbourg, a
French strategist, one of the only Frenchmen to have led London's
IISS, and Bruno Tertrais, a think tanker who works with
Heisbourg. [CBI-DEA]

RUSSIA

Russian Nuclear Industry to Expand, To Build More Plants

Nov. 6, 2007 (LPAC)--Russia's manufacturing factories are being
expanded to allow for a gear-up in building new nuclear power
plants, for domestic use and for export, world nuclear news
reported on October 30th. The OMZ, or United Heavy Machinery,
Izhora facility produces high-quality heavy forgings, used in
Russia's VVER-400 and VVER-1000 pressurized water reactors. The
plant can now produce forgings for heavy piping, steam
generators, and reactor pressures, at the rate of only two per
year. The plan calls for a ``radical modernization of existing
equipment,'' and doubling of capacity. Russian plans call for
the domestic deployment of one new reactor per year from 2009, of
its new AES-2006 model VVER-1200, three per year from 2015, and
four per year from 2016. On top of that, Russia plans to export
reactors, including to India, China, and Bulgaria. Only two
other companies do work on nuclear-qualified heavy
forgings--Japan Steel and France's Areva--which are also planning
to expand.
Today, Kommersant reports, in a further effort to
consolidate its multi-faceted and widespread nuclear industry,
Russia's Federal Atomic Energy Agency (Rosatom), announced that
it will join with Gazprombank to establish a nuclear engineering
enterprise, worth $3-5 billion, for joint management of the
nuclear industry. The production chain for plant building will
be consolidated, and co-owners will be Rosatom, Gazprombank, and
the state-run Bank for Development. [mgf]

Russia to Help China Expand its Uranium Enrichment; Build Two
More Reactors

Nov. 6, 2007 (LPAC)--Russia will provide technical assistance to
China in the construction of a fourth unit of its gas centrifuge
uranium enrichment plant, Itar-Tass reported today. The plant
supplies fuel for China's nuclear power plants. The framework
agreement was signed today between Russia's Tekhsnabexport and
the China Nuclear Energy Industry Corporation, at the 12th
regular meeting of Russian and Chinese Prime Ministers.
China's first, small, enrichment plant was imported from
Russia. China's plans to add more than two dozen nuclear plants
to its electric grid over the next 15 years require that, to
maintain self-sufficiency, it expand its enrichment capability.
An agreement in principle was also signed to build two more
nuclear reactors at the Tianwan site in China where Russia has
built two reactors, the first of which went on line last Spring.
The original nuclear cooperation protocol between Russia and
China was signed in 1992. Signatures were also placed on a
protocol on the development of medium-term cooperation in the
peaceful uses of nuclear energy. [mgf]

AFRICA

Mbeki: Biggest Killer in Africa is Not Aids But Poverty and
Globalization

Nov. 6, 2007 (LPAC)--A new biography of South African President
Thabo Mbeki, by Mark Gevisser, has just been released. Mbeki
told the author,according to the Guardian, that he remains an
"AIDS dissident," and withdrew from the debate only because of
pressure from his cabinet. Gevisser maintains that Mbeki
believes that HIV drugs are a fraud. But he says that Mbeki,
when asked why he was so absorbed by these debates, replied:
"It's the way it was presented! You see, the presentation of the
matter, which is actually quite wrong, is that the major killer
disease on the African continent is HIV/AIDS; this is really
going to decimate the African population! So your biggest threat
is not unemployment or racism or globalization, your biggest
threat, which will really destroy South Africa, is this one!"
[dea]

SOUTHWEST ASIA

Bill Clinton Remembers Yitzhak Rabin

Nov. 6, 2007 (LPAC)-- Former President Bill Clinton published a
tribute to slain Israel Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in
today's Ha'aretz daily.
"In the 21st Century, as our world grows increasingly
interdependent, and local challenges and opportunities relate
increasingly to the groups we once knew as `them,' the walls that
divide us are getting thinner, less important, and ever more
transparent," Clinton wrote. "We are compelled to expand the
definition of who is `us,' and shrink the definition of who is
`them,' to understand that, as important as our differences are,
our common humanity matters more. The inability to embrace this
fundamental value lies at the heart of peace and conflict
throughout the world today, and of course in the Middle East.
"Yitzhak Rabin understood this. My friend knew that the
Middle East is highly interdependent, that there could be no
final military victory: it would come only through peace and
reconciliation based on our shared humanity. He worked
tirelessly to forge a just, secure, and lasting peace with the
Palestinians, and his ultimate sacrifice proved it." Clinton
wrote that despite the dismal events of the last years, "they in
no way undermine the logic of his vision, the power of his faith,
or the beauty of his gifts to us...." Rabin understood that
maintaining security requires a resolution of the conflict with
the Palestinians, and a commitment to share a peaceful future
with them.
"In this spirit, the words of the late King Hussein at
Yitzhak Rabin's funeral resound as powerfully today as they did
several years ago: `Let us not keep silent. Let our voices raise
high to speak of our commitment to peace for all times to come.
And let us tell those who live in darkness, who are the enemies
of life and true faith, this is where we stand. This is our
camp.'" [dea]

Egypt Moves Ahead with its Nuclear Program

Nov. 6, 2007 (LPAC)--Last week, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak
announced that his nation would relaunch its nuclear energy
program, which was halted after the 1986 Chernobyl accident.
Mubarak's son, Gamal, who is assistant secretary-general of the
ruling National Democratic Party, and has been promoting the
development of civilian nuclear power, said at the party's annual
conference in September, that ``it is time for Egypt to put
forth...this proposal'' for nuclear energy. Today, he announced
that Egypt would immediately begin constructing four nuclear
power stations. Egypt's minister for electricity reports that
the first 1,000 MW reactor will be built near the coast of the
east Mediterranean town of Alexandria, and will also be a vital
source of desalinated water. It is to be up and running by 2018.
The proposal has garnered international support, from the
IAEA, the U.S., and France. Jean-Marie Bockel, French Secretary
of State for Foreign Cooperation and Francophonic Affairs,
attending the EU-Africa-Mideast conference on energy held last
Thursday in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, said that French President
Nicolas Sarkozy supports Arab countries' right to possess nuclear
energy for peaceful purposes. During a five-day visit to Egypt,
Bockel met with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit and
other officials on regional issues and Mideast peace efforts.
[wfw, mgf]

Mashaal: Mideast Summit is "Distraction" from War with Iran

Nov. 6, 2007 (EIRNS)--The leader of Hamas, Khaled Mashaal, warned
that the US-sponsored Mideast peace conference planned for the
end of November was to distract attention away from the fact that
the Bush Administration is preparing for an attack against Iran.
"Strategically, it [the US] is setting the stage and
covering up for the upcoming American war in the region," Mashaal
told a press conference at s forum of Palestinian intellectuals
in Damascus. "There are preparations for an aggression against
Iran, which could include other parties -- Syria, Lebanon and
Hezbollah. Therefore, America is distracting us with a false game
and is preparing itself for the real one," he said, according to
a report in today's Jerusalem Post. [dea]

ASIA

Gates Says China Not a Military Threat to U.S.

Nov. 6, 2007 (LPAC)--U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates
concluded a three-day visit to China on Tuesday, meeting Chinese
Defense Minister Cao Guangchan and President Hu Jintao. Prior to
the visit, Gates had commented that he does not regard China as a
military threat to the U.S. According to Xinhua, Gates stated
after the talks with Cao: "Mr. Cao and I discussed ways to build
on positive momentum in our defense relations and how to use the
interactions to improve communications and reduce the risk of
misunderstanding. Progress in our defense exchanges will largely
depend on the choices we make. I look forward to working with
the Minister of Defense and other Chinese leaders to continue
building mutual trust and confidence between our two countries."
One outcome of the consensus reached between Gates and his
counterparts in China, was the opening of a direct telephone link
between the Chinese Defense Ministry and the U.S. Department of
Defense.
Gates repeated assurances that the U.S. government would not
change its adherence to the one-China policy and the three
U.S.-China joint communiques.
Cao and Gates also agreed to strengthen exchanges between
military academies and between young officers, and to cooperate
on finding Americans who disappeared during the Korean War.
As Professor Zhu Feng of Beijing University put it: "Gates
does not see China's military power as a threat, and he has been
promoting defense and military exchanges between China and the
U.S. since he assumed power. He pursues the policy of contact and
dialogue." wfw

A Major Setback for War on Terror in Afghanistan

Nov. 6 (LPAC)--At least 90 individuals, five of whom were members
of the Afghan Parliament, were killed on Nov. 6 in the northern
Afghan province of Baghlan when a suicide bomber walked in a
sugar factory where an Afghan parliamentary delegation was
carrying out an economic fact-finding mission. Opposition
spokesman and former Commerce Minister Mostafa Kazemi, and four
other parliamentary deputies, were among the dead.
The attack, by far the most devastating by any suicide
bomber in Afghanistan so far, occurred at a time when chips were
heavily down on the foreign troops in Afghanistan. In Kabul,
President Hamid Karzai, expressing his grief over the incident,
said that more than 700 Afghan police have been killed in attacks
and fighting this year.
In the early hours of Nov. 6, sixty Afghan militants
(identified by foreign troops spokesman as "Taliban") on
motorbikes and pickup trucks overran a district center in central
Afghanistan, firing on the town from a mountain outlook, pushing
out the police and cutting off the town's main road, officials
said. The district, in Day Kundi province, is the third that the
militants have overrun in the last week. Two districts in the
western province of Farah, bordering Iran, are also in Taliban
hands.
Maj. Charles Anthony, a spokesman for NATO's International
Security Assistance Force (ISAF), said Taliban militants last
fall carried out similar tactics of briefly overrunning district
centers before "hightailing it into the hills." [RMA]

DOCUMENTATION

The LaRouche Show: MySpace, Facebook Will Turn Your Brain to Mush

Here is an edited transcript of The LaRouche Show of Nov. 2,
hosted by Harley Schlanger, Lyndon LaRouche's Western States
spokesman, who was joined by two members of the Larouche Youth
Movement, Oyang Teng, whose article ``video games and the Wars of
the Future,'' appeared in the Aug. 10 issue of {EIR}, and Cody
Jones, a member of the Los Angeles County Democratic Central
Committee. The show airs every Saturday afternoon, from 1:00 to
2:00 p.m., Eastern Time, at www.larouchepub.com/radio/index.html.

{Schlanger:} On today's program, we are going to exam and
dissect the movement which was designed to create a mass-based
fascist movement, targetting the youth of America for
recruitment. As we will demonstrate, this movement was launched
by a gang which is using a model that is centuries old, going
back to Paolo Sarpi and Venice. It's a movement which is
anti-science and anti-technology, yet it claims to be a product
of the so-called high-tech revolution. It's a movement, which,
while proclaiming to be decentralized and anti-hierarchical, is
actually controlled by the highest level of the financial
oligarchy. And, while proclaiming itself to be democratic, is
transforming those in the 16- to 30-year-old age-group into
stormtroopers, cold-blooded killers for a fascist movement.
I'm talking about two interrelated aspects of the so-called
digital revolution: Interactive websites, such as MySpace and
Facebook; and violent video games, which are already leading
contributing factors in mass murder, as in Littleton, Colo., and
last Spring at Virginia Tech University. In remarks last Tuesday
night [Oct. 30], Lyndon LaRouche identified these computer
cybernetic operations as (and I quote) as ``mental cemeteries,
aimed at trapping the entire youth generation, and turning them
into cyber-fodder for the new Hitler movement.''...
As you know, a part of my function over the years, has been
to look at the culture, or rather the accelerating degeneration
of culture, so we can create an awareness of how the present-day
financial oligarchy launches synthetic movements to destroy human
creativity, reducing the majority of the population to the status
of what LaRouche calls ``human cattle.'' One of the things we've
discovered is that the ultimate weapon in social control, is to
convince youth that they are voluntarily, democratically, and
with free will, ``choosing'' what is, in fact, mental slavery.
You two recently presented a forum at a cadre school on the
origins of cyberspace as a mechanism of social control, so I'd
like to begin by asking first Cody, and then Oyang, to summarize
your findings.
{Jones:} Okay. I had centered on the figure of Norbert
Wiener, who, people may know, was a student of Bertrand Russell,
who committed his whole life to one-world government; who had
proposed nuking the Soviet Union, prior to his finding out that
they themselves had developed the bomb; and who had written
numerous attacks on people like Leibniz and Bernhard Riemann, who
are at the foundation of Lyndon LaRouche's own intellectual
development and his discoveries in physical economy. And so,
effectively, what you have with Wiener, who coined the term
``cybernetics,'' and had developed the whole idea of
``information theory,'' was an attempt, as you had mentioned
earlier, Harley, to revive or bring back to the forefront, the
tradition of Paolo Sarpi, which is the tradition of eliminating
creativity, eliminating discovery, and clouding it over with the
idea of ``information'' and linearization of that discovery
process.
And so, what he does in his book {Cybernetics}, is,
initially, he starts off with saying, we can eliminate such
things as trigonometry from our investigations in science,
particularly as it relates to the computer, which, in effect, is
to eliminate that whole arc of development, that LaRouche has
emphasized, going back to the ancient Pythagoreans and Egyptians
in their work on {Sphaerics}, up through Riemann's work on
hypergeometries.

{Schlanger:} Well, in doing that, Cody, Wiener is actually
following an old model of attacking the original discovery and
trying to formalize it, right?
{Jones:} Right, exactly. And that's exactly what he does. He
says, the thing which is more appropriate to dealing with the
so-called science of information theory, is to use formulations
that come out of Brownian motion, as opposed to elliptical
functions, etc. Brownian motion is simply the idea that
everything is random, and that everything can be understood by
simple statistical analysis. You can't really know principle, you
can't know the truth behind anything, but you can get statistical
analysis and an idea of how random events will probably turn out.
And so, in doing that, he had, as you said, wiped out the
idea of discovery, wiped out that whole arc of development that
LaRouche has been pointing to, and replaced it with this
formalization, a sort of ``flat Earth'' view of reality, and
created an alternative reality.

{Schlanger:} In one of his articles, Wiener said the science
of cybernetics is the study of effective messages of control. So
that's somewhat interesting there. But he reduces human
creativity to an interface between man and machines, and says
that, essentially, humans are organisms through which bits of
information flow and are processed. So that's where you have the
destruction of the creative idea, right?
{Jones:} Exactly. If you look, for example, at the work
that's been coming out of the so-called Basement teams [members
of the LYM, working on fundamental scientific discoveries, in the
basement of a home in Loudoun County, Va.], they've been looking
at the development of things like elliptical functions, higher
transcendentals--these are things where singularities pop up, as
paradoxes from a lower system as you try to approach a higher
system. What Wiener does is say, is, we can eliminate that, and
replace those singularities with infinite approximations. It's
tantamount to the idea that you could square the circle: that we
can replace the circle with an infinite series of straight lines
and angles. And by doing that, you eliminate the actual creative
process, and the whole history of the development of modern
science.

{Schlanger:} Now Oyang, why don't you pick up from what Cody
has just developed in terms of the framework launched by Wiener
in cybernetics. How did that end up getting transferred into the
computer revolution?
{Teng:} Well, I would also just add, in terms of Wiener's
work, if you look at the way that he describes the science of
cybernetics, he's pretty self-consciously aligning himself with
the tradition of Zeus, because he even goes through the parable
of Prometheus, but says that the lesson to draw from that, is
that every time we make scientific discoveries, it comes back to
bite us, and therefore science has to be effectively controlled
by an elite; and makes a very big point of saying the entire
universe is governed by the law of entropy. And so, if the entire
universe is simply a chaotic, random process, then, in that
context, he says, we study cybernetics, which are these local
areas, where certain systems are trying to fight this tendency
toward disorder. But the effect being, that you eliminate
universals from any consideration of cause; that you're simply
looking at what he calls ``feedback mechanisms,'' through the
flow of information.
So, if you think about the way people talk about
globalization today--the Internet revolution, the Information
Age--all of that was already laid down as a pattern by Wiener's
work. And what came afterwards, in basically reducing the entire
universe, and therefore societies and human cultures within that
universe, is just a sort of random accumulation of different
interactions. Which is the appeal of MySpace and all of these
social networking sites, which is that you've got no constraints.
And if you think about the video-game world, this is a very
well-documented history. This came out of the research that was
done, starting with the Defense Department, and the Advanced
Research Projects Agency, ARPA--it became DARPA--and that was all
coming off of Wiener's work, and looking at how do you create
command and control systems in the military. And it's well-known
that this then laid the foundations for things like the Internet,
personal computer, and increasingly, as you get into the '80s and
'90s, as the idea of the ``Information Age'' becomes the idea
driving economic policy, then it becomes the fusion of
entertainment and the military.
That is to say: We've got to create a military that's
adequate to a world where there's going to be no nation-states,
and therefore, we're going to have to be drawing from a
population which is increasingly submerged in virtual reality;
these are going to be the foot soldiers for the 21st Century. And
that became what today is coming out in the form of things like
Halo 3 and these other video games, which is directly the product
of research going from the military, crossing over to the
entertainment ``industry,'' and using the theories of Wiener and
the people that came after him, to say, ``Well, we're really
moving into an era of post-humanism. And the human individual is
going to be simply, effectively, digital system, or something
that can be interfaced with a digital system.'' And that's
really, in terms of the cultural aspect behind what you've got in
the video games, this is what people are putting themselves into
as they sit in front of the screen for four or five hours at a
time.

{Schlanger:} Okay, I want to go into that a little bit more.
Now, Oyang, I wanted to follow up something that you brought
up, which is the role of ARPA, or later, DARPA. The defense
community was very much involved in the beginning in the work on
computers, but there's a mythology out there, which is promoted
by people such as Stuart Brand of the {Whole Earth Catalogue},
which is, ``Well, the defense community was trying to develop it
through mainframes and gigantic systems. But fortunately, a bunch
of pot-smoking hippies infiltrated this defense community
operation in the [San Francisco] Bay Area, and provided the
anti-hierarchical, democratic quality which we see today in the
Internet.'' I'd like to know what either of you have to say about
that. How do you refute that argument?
{Oyang:} I think the key is, if you look at someone like
Timothy Leary, you look at some of the gurus of counterculture
back in the '60s and '70s, who were the icons of the LSD drug
culture--you know, the ``tune in, turn on, drop out''
phenomenon--these guys themselves said that virtual reality and
the cyberculture was an advancement on the kind of social control
and mind-altering experiences that you could have with even
something like LSD. As Leary said, the biggest problem we're
running into is this commitment, this Judeo-Christian commitment
to one God, one religion, one reality. He said, this has plagued
Europe and the United States for centuries.
And so their whole polemic was against the idea that there
is such a thing as reality. And it's not a surprise that these
are the guys who come out as the leading promoters of a virtual
form of economics, in the form of globalized hedge fund
operations, computer modelling and the idea of using the Internet
to replace production.
So they were self-consciously in the driver's seat in the
transition from the counterculture to the cyberculture.

{Schlanger:} You mentioned something really interesting
there about this idea of replacing production, and this is one of
the points that LaRouche has been unique in making, in connecting
this idea of cybernetics with the post-industrial society. And
I've just been working on Alan Greenspan's autobiography, where
he talks about how we've ``moved beyond matter,'' in the economy.
It's now the ``light economy.'' And there's this whacked-out
piece by John Perry Barlow, who is the former so-called
``lyricist'' of the Grateful Dead, called ``A Declaration of the
Independence of Cyberspace.'' And in it, he says, in cyberspace,
there is no matter. Cyberspace does not lie within your borders!
He says, we are forming our own ``social contract,'' but it's a
world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where
bodies live.
Cody, I wonder if you could comment on that?
{Jones:} Yeah, well, what you see with cyberspace, it is the
``end of history'' doctrine. Because, as LaRouche has pointed
out, history really is a higher-order succession of
discoveries--discoveries of principle, whether it's in science,
or art, or statecraft.
In cyberspace, discovery has been eliminated, because you're
in a fixed system, with a fixed set of axioms, where everything
that you do, has to take place according to some logical
deduction from that system. So, by its very nature, creativity,
discovery of a new principle, is banned. And so within that, you
could never--I mean, hypothetically, you have someone like
Wiener, who discusses the possibility that computers or machines
could start to produce other machines--they could become
self-replicating. Well, even were that to take place in that
system, you'd be still operating based off a fixed, logical
system, whereas, say those machines started to come up against
real boundaries, in terms of depletion of resources, etc., that
system would never allow for the discovery of a new principle, of
a new resource, to overcome the boundaries which they are running
up against.
And this is indicative of the problem we're running into in
our modern economy, which is, people who think from this
standpoint, have no idea how to now deal with the kind of real
boundaries we're running into in our physical economy, like lack
of water, energy, breaking down of infrastructure, etc.
So, it really is a disease which is dooming mankind right
now.

{Schlanger:} Well, Cody, let me bring this to the question,
also, now, of the social engineering websites, like MySpace and
Facebook. You're one of the founding members of the LaRouche
Youth Movement, and we, on the West Coast, noticed that young
people were, in a sense, there was a hunger among a section of
the youth, seven and eight years ago, for truth, for purpose, for
meaning. I'm wondering, have you noticed that that's changing a
bit now, as we have younger people who have grown up completely
immersed in virtual reality and the computer revolution?
{Jones:} Yeah, of course. You still have the singularities.
You can't completely kill the human spirit. But one thing which
many of us have discussed and noticed, is that, on the campuses
now, the ability to interact socially has been almost totally
destroyed. Just carrying out a simple conversation,
human-to-human interaction, where you actually use your speaking
voice, and have to communicate an idea in real time to a live
human being--that's really been destroyed.
So, you're seeing just a general literacy level, and an
ability to interact socially, have been severely crippled. And
obviously, as LaRouche has made the point, and as our movement
has been committed to, it's really through the social process
that new ideas are communicated from one human being to another,
through metaphor, through paradox. And to the extent that that's
being attacked and destroyed, it's really an attack on the
ability to communicate new ideas.

{Schlanger:} And how prevalent is MySpace with people we're
meeting now, say, who are freshman, 18, 19, 20 year olds?
{Jones:} It's quite prevalent. You have this phenomenon,
that a lot of people like to claim that they're not on it,
because it's becoming one of those things, where it became so
cool that now it's not cool any more. But we've actually caught
some of our contacts: ``No, I'm not on MySpace. That's not cool
any more.'' And then you go on MySpace and look up their name,
and their page pops right up.
So, it's very prevalent, it's a dominant form of social
activity in today's culture.

{Schlanger:} Well, here are two quotes from the so-called
co-founders of MySpace: One is a guy named [Chris] DeWolfe, who
said, ``This generation wants to be known, they want to be
famous. MySpace facilitates that. This generation is
self-involved.'' And then he later describes MySpace as a
``lifestyle choice.'' The other founder Tom Anderson, who is
supposedly everybody's friend, says, ``I think of it [MySpace] as
the reality TV of the Internet.''
Now, Oyang, you wrote on the question of the violent video
games. I assume that's quite prevalent also. What was the most
startling thing you discovered from looking at this?
{Teng:} Well, number one, the axioms behind the research
that led to this stuff are actually out in the open. This a
perfect example of an ``open conspiracy,'' which is generally the
most dangerous kind: You don't have to go searching behind the
curtains to find out why this is being used to destroy a whole
generation of people. Wiener is very open with it. The people who
are carrying out the research today, the front end of the
research, the simulation technology, which is being fused into
the entertainment/mass marketing of these games, these guys
really believe in the fusion between the human being and the
machine, as effectively a ``cyborg.''
And these are people who probably grew up with a little too
much Robocop and Terminator, and this kind of outlook. And
science fiction actually plays a huge role, if you look at the
literature, and even just in the nature of the work itself, they
are kind of flagship institutions for simulations in video-game
research, as it paired with the military: this outfit down in the
University of Southern California, called the Institute for
Creative Technology. And their mandate--maybe it's their
unofficial mandate, but it's open and explicit--is to create the
``holodeck'' from the Starship Enterprise: Which is the
simulations room where, effectively, you can create reality
inside of a room, any kind of reality you choose. And this is
really what these guys are driving for. Their view of the world
is totally dissociated.

{Schlanger:} Both of you live in California, where in a
sense, we're having a social experiment of a fascist, George
Shultz, working with a Democratic fascist, Felix Rohatyn, to
create a governor who some think is a cyborg; who is there to
impose fascism, through cuts in social welfare, cuts in
education, cuts in health care, while portraying himself as a
``man of the people.'' So, in a sense, we may already be further
down this road to the Brave New World than most people think.
{Jones:} One point on that, Harley. It's important for
people to know that, as we mentioned with people like Wiener, one
of the first cybernetics conferences, one of the attendees there
was a guy named Kurt Lewin, who was part of the social
engineering project that came out of the '40s, and developed into
the hippies movement. One of the prote@aage@aas of Kurt Lewin,
was in fact, George Shultz, who studied under Lewin, and then
went and studied under Milton Friedman. So, he sort of brings
those two schools together, and now he's controlling this cyborg,
as you said, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

{Schlanger:} Well, we decided on this program, we're going
to be fair and balanced, as Fox News claims to be. So, we've
invited the owner of Fox, Rupert Murdoch, to come on the program,
to present the other side of what you've been hearing so far.
So, let me welcome him: Good afternoon, Mr. Murdoch, or
should I call you, Sir Rupert.
[At this point, LYM member Aaron Halevy is heard, with a
heavy ``Aussie'' accent, impersonating Sir Rupert Murdoch.]
{``Murdoch'':} G'day, yes, that's fine.

{Schlanger:} You described yourself recently as a ``digital
immigrant.'' Why did you decide to buy MySpace.
{``Murdoch'':} Well, y'know, it really has to do with just
trying to advertise, that's a big part of it. I think this is an
area in which my news enterprise has not been involved. And
getting involved in the Internet is an important area to conduct
business, and I think we can make a lot of money of it. So that
was the initial conception.

{Schlanger:} So, it's a money operation?
{``Murdoch'':} Yeah, well definitely. We spend a bit here in
the investment, but you do have an access to a lot of people, a
lot of people consuming ideas, spending their time on the
Internet, a lot of young people. So, that was the idea.

{Schlanger:} What about the charge that some people make,
that you wanted MySpace as part of a profiling operation.
{``Murdoch'':} Uh, well... well, in a certain way. It's
important to have the ability to see what people are into, to see
what likes and dislikes, so you can, again, like I said,
advertise to them. We do have a certain way of monitoring the way
people--what movie they like, what books--well, they don't read
books any more; what video games they like and things like that.
So, we can use that information and sell it to different
companies and advertise back.

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