KNOWLEDGE IS POWER

                  HOW KNOWLEDGE CAN TRANSFORM THE WORLD

Arabs are mostly Muslims. The ancestors of Jews lived as neighbours of Arabs.

Arabs are descendants of Ishmael, Jews of Isaac, half-brother of Ishmael.
Arabs and Jews are cousins if you disregard their faith. But their development and attainments are quite different.Why? According to many authors and wise men, Education is the key.

Yet it was the Jews who had suffered through out the troubled days of history. Their resolve and determination and instincts for survival are amazing. While Muslims conquered and enslaved many nations and massacred those who resisted their domination, Jews were at the receiving end, ridiculed by others and ill-treated over years. They rose from ashes after the Holocaust. All these have changed now. Does Education merely explain the rise of Jews? Read the story below.

UNBELIEVABLE: YET WRITTEN BY A MUSLIM It makes riveting reading........ particularly coming from a Pakistani official: Dr Farrukh Saleem*   Why are Jews so powerful? There are only 14 million Jews in the world; seven million in the Americas , five million in Asia, two million in Europe and 100,000 in Africa. For every single Jew in the world there are 100 Muslims. Yet, Jews are more than a hundred times more powerful than all the Muslims put together.

Ever wondered why? Jesus of Nazareth was Jewish. Albert Einstein, the most influential scientist of all time & TIME magazine's 'Person of the Century', was a Jew. Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis was a Jew. So were Karl Marx, Paul Samuelson and Milton Friedman. Here are a few other Jews whose intellectual output has enriched the whole humanity: Benjamin Rubin gave humanity the vaccinating needle. Jonas Salk developed the first polio vaccine. Albert Sabin developed the improved live polio vaccine. Gertrude Elion gave us a leukemia fighting drug. Baruch Blumberg developed the vaccination for Hepatitis B. Paul Ehrlich discovered a treatment for syphilis. Elie Metchnikoff won a Nobel Prize in infectious diseases. Bernard Katz won a Nobel Prize in neuromuscular transmission. Andrew Schally won a Nobel in endocrinology. Aaron Beck founded Cognitive Therapy. Gregory Pincus developed the first oral contraceptive pill. George Wald won a Nobel for our understanding of the human eye. Stanley Cohen won a Nobel in embryology. Willem Kolff came up with the kidney dialysis machine. Over the past 105 years, 14 million Jews have won 15-dozen Nobel Prizes while only three Nobel Prizes have been won by 1.4 billion Muslims (other than Peace Prizes). Why are Jews so powerful?

     Stanley Mezor invented the first micro-processing chip.                                                        
         Leo Szilard developed the first nuclear chain reactor;

Peter Schultz, optical fibre cable; Charles Adler, traffic lights; Benno Strauss, Stainless steel; Isador Kisee, sound movies; Emile Berliner, telephone microphone; Charles Ginsburg, videotape recorder. Famous financiers in the business world who belong to Jewish faith include Ralph Lauren (Polo), Levis Strauss (Levi's Jeans), Howard Schultz (Starbuck's) , Sergey Brin (Google), Michael Dell (Dell Computers), Larry Ellison (Oracle), Donna Karan (DKNY), Irv Robbins (Baskins & Robbins) and Bill Rosenberg (Dunkin Donuts). Richard Levin, President of Yale University, is a Jew. So are Henry Kissinger (American secretary of state), Alan Greenspan (Fed chairman under Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush), Joseph Lieberman (US Senator), Madeleine Albright (American secretary of state), Casper Weinberger (American secretary of defense), Maxim Litvinov ( USSR foreign Minister), David Marshal ( Singapore 's first chief minister), Issac Isaacs (governor-general of Australia ), Benjamin Disraeli (British statesman and author), Yevgeny Primakov (Russian PM), Barry Goldwater (US Senator), Jorge Sampaio (President of Portugal ), John Deutsch (CIA director), Herb Gray (Canadian deputy PM), Pierre Mendes (French PM), Michael Howard (British home secretary), Bruno Kreisky (chancellor of Austria ) and Robert Rubin (American secretary of treasury). In the media, famous Jews include Wolf Blitzer (CNN), Barbara Walters (ABC News), Eugene Meyer (Washington Post), Henry Grunwald (editor-in-chief Time), Katherine Graham (publisher of The Washington Post), Joseph Lelyveld (Executive editor, The New York Times), and Max Frankel (New York Times). The most beneficent philanthropist in the history of the world is George Soros, a Jew, who has so far donated a colossal $4 billion most of which has gone as aid to scientists and universities around the world. Second to George Soros is Walter Annenberg, another Jew, who has built a hundred libraries by donating an estimated $2 billion. At the Olympics, Mark Spitz set a record of sorts by winning seven gold medals; Lenny Krayzelburg is a three-time Olympic gold medalist. Spitz, Krayzelburg and Boris Becker (Tennis) are all Jewish. Did you know that Harrison Ford, George Burns, Tony Curtis, Charles Bronson, Sandra Bullock, Billy Crystal, Woody Allen, Paul Newman, Peter Sellers, Dustin Hoffman, Michael Douglas, Ben Kingsley, Kirk Douglas, Goldie Hawn, Cary Grant, William Shatner, Jerry Lewis and Peter Falk are all Jewish? As a matter of fact, Hollywood itself was founded by a Jew. Among directors and producers, Steven Spielberg, Mel Brooks, Oliver Stone, Aaron Spelling ( Beverly Hills 90210), Neil Simon (The Odd Couple), Andrew Vaina (Rambo 1/2/3), Michael Man (Starsky andHutch), Milos Forman (One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest), Douglas Fairbanks (The Thief of Baghdad ) and Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters) are all Jewish. So, why are Jews so powerful? Answer : EDUCATION

Why are Muslims so powerless?

There are an estimated 1,476,233,470 Muslims on the face of the planet: one billion in Asia, 400 million in Africa, 44 million in Europe and six million in the Americas . Every fifth human being is a Muslim; for every single Hindu there are two Muslims, for every Buddhist there are two Muslims and for every Jew there are one hundred Muslims. Ever wondered why Muslims are so powerless? Here is why: There are 57 member-countries of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC), and all of them put together have around 500 universities; one university for every three million Muslims. The United States has 5,758 universities and India has 8,407. In 2004, Shanghai Jiao Tong University compiled an 'Academic Ranking of World Universities' , and intriguingly, not one university from Muslim-majority states was in the top-500. As per data collected by the UNDP, literacy in the Christian world stands at nearly 90 per cent and 15 Christian-majority states have a literacy rate of 100 per cent. A Muslim-majority state, as a sharp contrast, has an average literacy rate of around 40 per cent and there is no Muslim-majority state with a literacy rate of 100 per cent. Some 98 per cent of the 'literates' in the Christian world had completed primary school, while less than 50 per cent of the 'literates' in the Muslim world did the same. Around 40 per cent of the 'literates' in the Christian world attended university while no more than two per cent of the 'literates' in the Muslim world did the same. Muslim-majority countries have 230 scientists per one million Muslims. The US has 4,000 scientists per million and Japan has 5,000 per million. In the entire Arab world, the total number of full-time researchers is 35,000 and there are only 50 technicians per one million Arabs. (in the Christian world there are up to 1,000 technicians per one million). Furthermore, the Muslim world spends 0.2 per cent of its GDP on research and development, while the Christian world spends around five per cent of its GDP. Conclusion: The Muslim world lacks the capacity to produce knowledge! Daily newspapers per 1,000 people and number of book titles per million are two indicators of whether knowledge is being diffused in a society. In Pakistan, there are 23 daily newspapers per 1,000 Pakistanis while the same ratio in Singapore is 360. In the UK , the number of book titles per million stands at 2,000 while the same in Egypt is 20. Conclusion: The Muslim world is failing to diffuse knowledge.  Exports of high technology products as a percentage of total exports are an important indicator of knowledge application. Pakistan 's export of high technology products as a percentage of total exports stands at one per cent. The same for Saudi Arabia is 0.3 per cent; Kuwait, Morocco, and Algeria are all at 0.3 per cent, while Singapore is at 58 per cent. Conclusion: The Muslim world is failing to apply knowledge.    Why are Muslims powerless? .....Because we aren't producing knowledge, .....Because we aren't diffusing knowledge., .....Because we aren't applying knowledge. And, the future belongs to knowledge-based societies. Interestingly, the combined annual GDP of 57 OIC-countries is under $2 trillion. America, just by herself, produces goods and services worth $12 trillion; China $8 trillion, Japan $3.8 trillion and Germany $2.4 trillion (purchasing power parity basis). Oil rich Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait and Qatar collectively produce goods and services (mostly oil) worth $500 billion; Spain alone produces goods and services worth over $1 trillion, Catholic Poland $489 billion and Buddhist Thailand $545 billion. ..... (Muslim GDP as a percentage of world GDP is fast declining). So, why are Muslims so powerless? Answer: Lack of education.    All we do is shout to Allah the whole day !!! and blame everyone else for our multiple failures!!!!! =============================== Muslims are not happy They’re not happy in Gaza They're not happy in Egypt They're not happy in Libya They're not happy in Morocco They're not happy in Iran They're not happy in Iraq They're not happy in Yemen They're not happy in Afghanistan They're not happy in Pakistan They're not happy in Syria They're not happy in Lebanon So, where are they happy? They're happy in Australia They're happy in England They're happy in France They're happy in Italy They're happy in Germany They're happy in Sweden They're happy in the USA & Canada They're happy in Norway They're happy in almost every country that is not Islamic! And who do they blame? Not Islam... Not their leadership... Not themselves... THEY BLAME THE COUNTRIES THEY ARE HAPPY IN And they want to change the countries they're happy in, to be like the countries they came from,where they were unhappy. Try to find logic in that !

* The writer is the Pakistani Executive Director of the Center for Research and Security Studies, a think tank established in 2007, and an Islamabad-based freelance columnist.

I think everyone should read this, every Muslim and every Christian. 

The Jews already know this information.    

     

A Jewish Boycott           ~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~ A short time ago, Iran's Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Khomenei urged the Muslim World to boycott anything and everything that originates with the Jewish people. In response, Meyer M. Treinkman, a pharmacist, out of the kindness of his heart, offered to assist them in their boycott as follows: "Any Muslim who has Syphilis must not be cured by Salvarsan discovered by a Jew, Dr. Ehrlich.  He should not even try to find out whether he has Syphilis, because the Wasserman Test is the discovery of a Jew.  If a Muslim suspects that he has Gonorrhea, he must not seek diagnosis, because he will be using the method of a Jew named Neissner. "A Muslim who has heart disease must not use Digitalis, a discovery by a Jew, Ludwig Traube. Should he suffer with a toothache, he must not use Novocaine, a discovery of the Jews, Widal and Weil. If a Muslim has Diabetes, he must not use Insulin, the result of research by Minkowsky, a Jew.  If one has a headache, he must shun Pyramidon and Antypyrin, due to the Jews, Spiro and Ellege. Muslims with convulsions must put up with them because it was a Jew, Oscar Leibreich, who proposed the use of Chloral Hydrate. Arabs must do likewise with their psychic ailments because Freud, father of psychoanalysis, was a Jew. Should a Muslim child get Diphtheria, he must refrain from the “Schick" reaction which was invented by the Jew, Bella Schick. "Muslims should be ready to die in great numbers and must not permit treatment of ear and brain damage, work of Jewish Nobel Prize winner, Robert Baram. They should continue to die or remain crippled by Infantile Paralysis because the discoverer of the anti-polio vaccine is a Jew, Jonas Salk. "Muslims must refuse to use Streptomycin and continue to die of Tuberculosis because a Jew, Zalman Waxman, invented the wonder drug against this killing disease. Muslim doctors must discard all discoveries and improvements by dermatologist Judas Sehn Benedict, or the lung specialist, Frawnkel, and of many other world renowned Jewish scientists and medical experts. "In short, good and loyal Muslims properly and fittingly should remain afflicted with Syphilis, Gonorrhea, Heart Disease, Headaches, Typhus, Diabetes, Mental Disorders, Polio Convulsions and Tuberculosis and be proud to obey the Islamic boycott." Oh, and by the way, don't call for a doctor on your cell phone because the cell phone was invented in Israel by a Jewish engineer. Meanwhile I ask, what medical contributions to the world have the Muslims made?" The Global Islamic population is approximately 1,200,000,000; that is ONE BILLION TWO HUNDRED MILLION or 20% of the world's population. They have received the following Nobel Prizes: Literature: 1988 - Najib Mahfooz Peace: 1978 - Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat 1990 - Elias James Corey 1994 - Yaser Arafat: 1999 - Ahmed Zewai Economics: (zero) Physics: (zero) Medicine: 1960 - Peter Brian Medawar 1998 - Ferid Mourad TOTAL: 7 SEVEN The Global Jewish population is approximately 14,000,000; that is FOURTEEN MILLION or about 0.02% of the world's population. They have received the following Nobel Prizes: Literature: 1910 - Paul Heyse 1927 - Henri Bergson 1958 - Boris Pasternak 1966 - Shmuel Yosef Agnon 1966 - Nelly Sachs 1976 - Saul Bellow 1978 - Isaac Bashevis Singer 1981 - Elias Canetti 1987 - Joseph Brodsky 1991 - Nadine Gordimer World Peace: 1911 - Alfred Fried 1911 - Tobias Michael Carel Asser 1968 - Rene Cassin 1973 - Henry Kissinger 1978 - Menachem Begin 1986 - Elie Wiesel 1994 - Shimon Peres 1994 - Yitzhak Rabin Physics: 1905 - Adolph Von Baeyer 1906 - Henri Moissan 1907 - Albert Abraham Michelson 1908 - Gabriel Lippmann 1910 - Otto Wallach 1915 - Richard Willstaetter 1918 - Fritz Haber 1921 - Albert Einstein 1922 - Niels Bohr 1925 - James Franck 1925 - Gustav Hertz 1943 - Gustav Stern 1943 - George Charles de Hevesy 1944 - Isidor Issac Rabi 1952 - Felix Bloch 1954 - Max Born 1958 - Igor Tamm 1959 - Emilio Segre 1960 - Donald A. Glaser 1961 - Robert Hofstadter 1961 - Melvin Calvin 1962 - Lev Davidovich Landau 1962 - Max Ferdinand Perutz 1965 - Richard Phillips Feynman 1965 - Julian Schwinger 1969 - Murray Gell-Mann 1971 - Dennis Gabor 1972 - William Howard Stein 1973 - Brian David Josephson 1975 - Benjamin Mottleson 1976 - Burton Richter 1977 - Ilya Prigogine 1978 - Arno Allan Penzias 1978 - Peter L Kapitza 1979 - Stephen Weinberg 1979 - Sheldon Glashow 1979 - Herbert Charles Brown 1980 - Paul Berg 1980 - Walter Gilbert 1981 - Roald Hoffmann 1982 - Aaron Klug 1985 - Albert A. Hauptman 1985 - Jerome Karle 1986 - Dudley R. Herschbach 1988 - Robert Huber 1988 - Leon Lederman 1988 - Melvin Schwartz 1988 - Jack Steinberger 1989 - Sidney Altman 1990 - Jerome Friedman 1992 - Rudolph Marcus 1995 - Martin Perl 2000 - Alan J. Heeger Economics: 1970 - Paul Anthony Samuelson 1971 - Simon Kuznets 1972 - Kenneth Joseph Arrow 1975 - Leonid Kantorovich 1976 - Milton Friedman 1978 - Herbert A. Simon 1980 - Lawrence Robert Klein 1985 - Franco Modigliani 1987 - Robert M. Solow 1990 - Harry Markowitz 1990 - Merton Miller 1992 - Gary Becker 1993 - Robert Fogel Medicine: 1908 - Elie Metchnikoff 1908 - Paul Erlich 1914 - Robert Barany 1922 - Otto Meyerhof 1930 - Karl Landsteiner 1931 - Otto Warburg 1936 - Otto Loewi 1944 - Joseph Erlanger 1944 - Herbert Spencer Gasser 1945 - Ernst Boris Chain 1946 - Hermann Joseph Muller 1950 - Tadeus Reichstein 1952 - Selman Abraham Waksman 1953 - Hans Krebs 1953 - Fritz Albert Lipmann 1958 - Joshua Lederberg 1959 - Arthur Kornberg 1964 - Konrad Bloch 1965 - Francois Jacob 1965 - Andre Lwoff 1967 - George Wald 1968 - Marshall W. Nirenberg 1969 - Salvador Luria 1970 - Julius Axelrod 1970 - Sir Bernard Katz 1972 - Gerald Maurice Edelman 1975 - Howard Martin Temin 1976 - Baruch S. Blumberg 1977 - Roselyn Sussman Yalow 1978 - Daniel Nathans 1980 - Baruj Benacerraf 1984 - Cesar Milstein 1985 - Michael Stuart Brown 1985 - Joseph L. Goldstein 1986 - Stanley Cohen [& Rita Levi-Montalcini] 1988 - Gertrude Elion 1989 - Harold Varmus 1991 - Erwin Neher 1991 - Bert Sakmann 1993 - Richard J. Roberts 1993 - Phillip Sharp 1994 - Alfred Gilman 1995 - Edward B. Lewis 1996- Lu RoseIacovino TOTAL: 129! The Jews are NOT promoting brainwashing children in military training camps, teaching them how to blow themselves up and cause maximum deaths of Jews and other non-Muslims. The Jews don't hijack planes, nor kill athletes at the Olympics, or blow themselves up in German restaurants. There is NOT one single Jew who has destroyed a church. There is NOT a single Jew who protests by killing people.  The Jews don't traffic slaves, nor have leaders calling for Jihad and death to all the Infidels. Perhaps the world's Muslims should consider investing more in standard education and less in blaming the Jews for all their problems. Muslims must ask 'what can they do for humankind' before they demand that humankind respects them. Regardless of your feelings about the crisis between Israel and the Palestinians and Arab neighbors, even if you believe there is more culpability on Israel 's part, the following two sentences really say it all: 'If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence.  If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel." Benjamin Netanyahu:  General Eisenhower warned us.  It is a matter of history that when the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Dwight Eisenhower, found the victims of the death camps he ordered all possible photographs to be taken, and for the German people from surrounding villages to be ushered through the camps and even made to bury the dead. He did this because he said in words to this effect:  'Get it all on record now - get the films - get the witnesses - because somewhere down the road of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened' Recently, the UK debated whether to remove The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it 'offends' the Muslim population which claims it never occurred. It is not removed as yet.  However, this is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving into it. It is now more than 65 years after the Second World War in Europe ended. Now, more than ever, with Iran, among others, claiming the Holocaust to be 'a myth,' it is imperative to make sure the world never forgets. How many years will it be before the attack on the World Trade Center 'NEVER HAPPENED' because it offends some Muslim in the United States?

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What's New for Visual Basic in Visual Studio 2012

VB.NET FROM MICROSOFT: ANOTHER FIRST

In the mid 1950s and early 1960s, the three major programming languages for computers were COBOL, Fortran and Basic. Of these three, Basic, a group of general-purpose, high-level programming languages and an acronym from Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, was developed in 1964 in the USA. Visual Basic (VB) 1.0 was introduced as a misnomer more than two decades ago, in early 1991, as a drag and drop design for creating a user interface (UI) by one Alan Cooper. Interestingly, VB did not include a programming language. Microsoft, the budding IT colossus of that era, immediately noted its potential when used with its then operative Windows 3.0, and hooked up with Cooper to create a programming language using the extant Basic language so that VB could be brought back into the mainstream and released as such in May 1991.

Facing teething troubles, Visual Basic 1.0 was released as a "Disk Operating System” (DOS) in September 1992 as VB 2.0, a user-friendly programming development with a notable increase in speed. Each passing year saw an upgrade, with VB 6.0 released in 1998 exclusively for 32-bit versions of Windows, with the ability to create web-based applications. VB 6.0 was dropped by Microsoft in 2008 as a prelude to Microsoft’s new application, VB.NET.

According to Microsoft, its .NET Framework was designed to run primarily on Microsoft Windows. Using VB, it consists of two parts, a class library and the Common Language Runtime (CLR) application. Amongst its many properties, this framework provides ‘language interoperability,’ technical jargon that means that each language can use code written in other languages across several programming languages. What is unique to CLR is that its programs can be run in a software environment, as against a hardware environment, an application that facilitates provision of services such as security and memory management.

Image courtesy http://symbiosysnews.blogspot.in

Integral to Microsoft's .NET platform, VB.Net compiles and runs using the .NET Framework. Microsoft reveals that its new features include inheritance, method overloading, structured exception handling, and more. These capabilities make it easier than ever to create .NET applications, including Windows applications, web services, and web applications. VB.NET is an object-oriented computer programming language, evolving from the classic VB implemented on the .NET Framework. Microsoft provides two main editions of Integrated Development Environments (IDEs- yet another advanced software application) for developing in its commercial software Visual Basic: Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 and freeware Visual Basic Express Edition 2012. VB.NET features characteristics like scrolling, forms inheritance, inheritance-based polymorphism, the set up to build secure assemblies, and a host of other cyber applications.

 

THE TRUTH ABOUT CHOLESTEROL

Cholesterol Myths that May Surprise You

By Lisa Collier Cool

Life insurance companies know a surprising secret about cholesterol that most doctors never tell patients: When it comes to rating your risk for a fatal heart attack, the least important cholesterol number is your level of LDL (bad) cholesterol. In fact, life insurance actuaries don’t even look at LDL levels, because large studies show it’s the worst predictor of heart attack risk.Instead, life insurance companies use a simple math formula to rate your heart attack risk: They divide your total cholesterol by the level of HDL (good) cholesterol.“If the ratio is below three, and there’s no inflammation in your arteries, you’re practically bulletproof against heart attacks and strokes, even if your LDL is high,” reports Amy Doneen, MSN, ARNP, medical director of the Heart Attack & Stroke Prevention Center in Spokane, Washington.Here’s a look at eight common cholesterol myths.

• Myth: Cholesterol is inherently evil.

Fact: You couldn’t survive without cholesterol, since this waxy substance produced by the liver plays many essential roles in our body, from waterproofing cell membranes to helping produce vitamin D, bile acids that help you digest fat, and sex hormones, including testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone.Cholesterol is ferried through your body by molecular “submarines” called lipoproteins, such as low-density lipoprotein (LDL) and high-density lipoprotein (HDL).

Cholesterol: The Good, The Bad, The Essential

• Myth: Low cholesterol is always a sign of good health.

Fact: Although low levels of LDL cholesterol are usually healthy, a new study reports that people who develop cancer typically have lower LDL in the years prior to diagnosis than those who don’t get cancer. Researchers compared 201 cancer patients to 402 control patients without cancer, matched by such factors as age, gender, smoking, blood pressure, diabetes, and body mass index. None of the patients had taken statins. Thirteen earlier randomized clinical trials of statin therapy also found a link between low LDL and cancer, causing medical debate about whether statins raise risk. The new study suggests that an unknown biological mechanism—rather than cholesterol-lowering medication—may be the culprit. 

• Myth: High LDL means you could be headed for a heart attack.

Fact: Nearly 75 percent of people hospitalized for a heart attack have LDL (bad) cholesterol levels that fall within current recommended targets, and close to half have “optimal” levels, according to a national study of about 136,000 people. The researchers also reported that levels of protective HDL (good) cholesterol have dropped in heart attack patients over the last several years, probably due to the rise in obesity, diabetes, and insulin resistance. Only 2 percent of the patients studied had ideal levels of both LDL and HDL.

• Myth: All LDL particles are equally dangerous.

Fact: The size of the particles matters, says Doneen. “Think of beach balls and bullets. Some LDL particles are small and dense, making it easier for them to penetrate the arterial lining and form plaque, while others are big and fluffy, so they tend to bounce off the artery walls.”People who mostly have small, dense LDL cholesterol are up to three times more likely to have heart attacks than those with big, fluffy particles.

Find Foods that Lower Cholesterol but Keep Flavor

• Myth: Americans have the world’s highest cholesterol levels.

Fact: Contrary to the stereotype that most of us are just a few big Macs away from a heart attack, US men rank 83^rd in the world in average total cholesterol and US women 81^st, according to the World Health Organization. For both sexes, the average is 197 mg/dL, slightly below the borderline high range (200 to 239 mg/dL). In Colombia, men average a whopping 244 mg/dL—a level that doubles heart-disease risk—while Israeli, Libyan, Norwegian, and Uruguayan women are in a four-way tie for the highest average with 232. 

• Myth: Triglycerides trigger heart disease.

Fact: “Triglycerides, a type of blood fat, don’t invade the artery wall and form plaque,” explains Doneen. “However, high triglycerides mark another huge problem: insulin resistance, a pre-diabetic condition that is the root cause of 70 percent of heart attacks.” High triglycerides are also one of the warning signs of metabolic syndrome, a cluster of abnormalities that multiply risk for coronary artery disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes. To be diagnosed with metabolic syndrome, you must have three or more of these disorders: high blood pressure, high blood sugar, a large waist, high triglycerides, and low HDL.

• Myth: Eggs clogs up arteries.

Fact: It’s true that eggs are high in dietary cholesterol, with upwards of 200 mg, mainly in the yolk. Research shows, however, that eating three or more eggs a day boosts blood concentrations of both good and bad cholesterol.  The LDL particles tend to be the light, fluffy ones that are least likely to enter the arterial wall, while the increased HDL helps keep the arteries clean, suggesting that most people’s bodies handle cholesterol from eggs in a way that’s unlikely to harm the heart. The researchers say that their findings add to growing evidence that eggs are not “a dietary evil.”

Read Our Guide to Cholesterol-Free Foods

• Myth: There are no visible symptoms of high cholesterol.

Fact: Some people with high cholesterol develop yellowish-red bumps called xanthomas that can occur on the eyelids, joints, hands, or other parts of the body. People with diabetes or an inherited condition called familial hypercholesterolemia are more likely to have xanthomas. The best way to tell if your cholesterol is too high is to have it checked every three years, starting at age 20, or more often, if advised by your healthcare provider.

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By Lisa Collier Cool

DE MORTUIS NIHIL NISI BONUM

A QUICK LOOK AT MAUSOLEUMS

There is a prevailing belief that one can gauge how civilized a culture is by the way its dead are treated. The Latin phrase de mortuis nihil nisi bonum (“Of the dead, nothing unless good”), exemplifies this belief, to the extent that children are taught or told in hushed whispers, “Never speak ill of the dead.” One way of expressing respect for the dead is by constructing a mausoleum for the deceased. A mausoleum is a free-standing individual monument constructed entirely to enclose the interment space or burial chamber of a deceased person or persons, normally located in a cemetery, a churchyard or on private land. In the United States, the term may be used for a burial vault below a larger facility, such as a church. Mausoleum construction is nothing new-the pyramids in Egypt stand proud testimony to this statement.

Mausoleums may be made of any type of stone, like granite, basalt, sandstone, bricks, marble, etc. Of these types of stones, marble mausoleums are the most elegant and expensive. The Mausoleum of Gaius Cestius in Rome is over 2000 years old, built mainly of marble that was stolen over the centuries. The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, one of the seven wonders of the world was also built using engraved and filigreed marble for its external panels. The most famous marble mausoleum extant is the historic Taj Mahal in India. Marble is also used today to build mausoleums for the rich and famous, leading to Ambrose Bierce’s quip circa 1900: ‘Mausoleum, the final and funniest folly of the rich’.

            Mausoleums can be of many types. A Sarcophagus is a large tomb that looks like it actually contains a body;however, most of the time the body is actually buried under it. A Vestibule looks like small house with a door that opens to a vestibule that has crypts on one or both sides. A Tumulus looks like a large mound that is built into a hill. Baroque style mausoleums have a flowing design with lots of decoration. Classical style mausoleums contain columns and look similar to structures built by the ancient Greeks. Gothic style mausoleums have lots of towers and pointed arches. Egyptian style mausoleums are shaped like pyramids, or mausoleums that contain sphinxes, a symbol of a circle with vulture wings, or twin cobras. There are other mausoleum styles as well, like the Modern style, Open Air and privately designed miscellanea.

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MEDIA: DE FACTO ALLIES TO TERRORISM

ABSTRACT

Some eminent writers and scholars argue that too often the media helps promote terrorists' agenda. Others, however, disagree. I tend to go with the former, and in this short Paper, will show how terrorism can be seen from at least two perspectives, those of the victim and the perpetrator. Using three examples, I will prove that the media would not mind terrorist acts coming up on their own on the agenda, however distasteful and disagreeable they may seem, as much as the terrorists want the media, as it suits the interests of both these parties.  

 THE STORY

The horrific events of 9/11 brought terrorism centre stage. Terrorism had existed well before that date, but remained largely underplayed, till Uncle Sam got bearded in his own den. Without attempting to add to the plethora of definitions of terrorism, let me just say that there is a fundamental difference in the way it is seen, related purely to perspective. The victim and the perpetrator portray an incident affecting them quite differently.

             For example, US media might say, “Terrorists detonated a bomb near the camp of the U.S. peacekeeping forces, causing numerous U.S. military casualties.” Arab media would report it as: “Freedom fighters detonated a bomb near the base of the crusaders. The tremendous blast killed and severely injured many infidels.”(n.p.)

              A free press is a mandate in a democracy. If the content available was not salutary, the media would still report it. Terrorism uses this mandate to further its own aim by spreading fear. A terrorist organization actually needs the media to spread information about localized attacks as widely as possible. In the cause of reporting, or at times, hogging the limelight, the media does exactly what the terrorist wants. Paradoxically, terrorism has become a boon for the media, because such attacks make television ratings surge. “Terrorist acts are well calculated, always played to an audience and specific tactics employed to maximize impact” (Bozarth, 2005).

            There are people who feel that the media brings the world up to date and educates people about the ills of terrorism and how it is crucial to lend a hand against this ugly monster. I do not agree and believe that the media is only interested in its ratings, ‘damn the consequences’ (n.p.).  I will use three examples to support my argument.

             Since 1960, advancement in technology had affected the media greatly, giving it a face and voice, not just events reported on black and white paper. The nature of terrorism reporting had also evolved simultaneously. While aimed to promote terror in a larger target audience, terrorism often aims to recruit more supporters. The media is the conduit to both these aims. Terrorism ‘relies almost exclusively on psychological “warfare” for its intended impact. Victims of an attack are the signal that is amplified and broadcast, terrorizing the target audience into capitulating to the terrorists demands’ (Bozarth, 2005). “Terrorists are not interested in three, or thirty – or even three thousand - deaths. They allow the imagination of the target population to do their work for them. In fact, the desired panic could be produced by the continuous broadcast of threats and declarations – by radio and TV interviews, videos and all the familiar methods of psychological warfare” (Ganor 2002).

             Terrorists have “four media-dependent objectives when they strike or threaten to commit violence. The first is: Gain attention, intimidate, create fear. The second is: Recognition of the organization’s motives. Why they are carrying out attacks? The third is: Gain the respect and sympathy of those in whose name they claim to attack. The last is: Gain a quasi-legitimate status and media treatment at par with legitimate political actors” (Nacos 2007, 20). Many cases confirm that ‘getting attention through the media is important terrorist strategy. The 7 July 2005 London bombings on the transit system in London is one example, with the G-8 summit on in Scotland. The terrorists pushed the G-8 leaders off the front pages’ (Ibid, 20-21).

             The Palestinian terrorist organization Black September attack on Israeli athletes in the Munich Olympic Games 1972, when people around the world were watching the Games and large numbers of newspaper and broadcast journalists had gathered, is another example. A  hostage situation and a rescue attempt ensued, closely covered by all media, and watched by approximately 800 million people throughout the world. The terrorists “monopolized the attention of a global television audience. (Ibid, 179). “Black September undoubtedly chose Munich at the time of the Olympics because the technology, equipment, and personnel were in place to guarantee a television drama that had never before been witnessed in the global arena.” (Nacos 2002, 177).

             The images of attacks like 9/11, can inspire awe. For instance, “after 9/11, Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden have become more popular in the Muslim community” (Gunaratna, 2006). “Simply by showing that he and his kind could land a devastating blow against the US on home ground, bin Laden conditioned a large number of young Muslim men – mainly in the Muslim diaspora in western Europe – for recruitment into his cause without ever meeting them.” (Nacos 2007, 22).

             The Internet can be and has been used terrorists for cyber-terrorism, coordination of plans, communication with cells, or propaganda and information. That they can now manage their own media is not the only advantage they have in using the Internet. “There are other advantages in using the Net. The audience is enormous; it is easy to access and stay anonymous, it is incredibly fast and inexpensive, and it offers a multimedia environment, which means that text, graphics, video, songs, books, and presentations can all be combined. In addition, regular media now often report on or even copy Internet content, which means that both old and new media can be influenced by using the Internet alone” (Weimann 2004, 3).

      Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

            

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